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cuff moved no closer.

    "Do you want to call for help?" Grayle asked softly, "or stick to the book?"

    "Don't get me mad, boy," the lieutenant hissed. "I've got friends at Gull."

    "What do you do when you're mad, Harmon, blow bubbles?"

    The man made a noise deep in his throat. "A guardhouse lawyer," he grunted. Five seconds passed in silence; then the lieutenant stepped back.

    "I guess I'll give him a break," he said loudly to the sergeant. "This boy won't give us any trouble. He's got enough trouble. He'll want to hit Gull clean—as clean as his kind can be. Cuff him up in front."

    The sergeant secured the manacles. The four armed men boxed the prisoner. Metal clanged as steel doors opened on a bare chamber. They walked in. The doors closed. Two of the men pushed buttons at opposite ends of the small room. A heavy panel slid aside on a big bright-lit garage where two massive gray-painted vehicles bearing the letters CIFP were parked. An attendant unlocked a door at the rear of one; one of the guards stepped up into the windowless compartment, covered Grayle as he entered. A second guard came aboard, and the door closed. Locks snicked.

    "You sit there." The guard indicated a low bench with a sloping back mounted against the driver's compartment. When Grayle was seated in it, knees high, his weight on the end of his spine, a locking bar slid into place across his ribs and sealed with a click. The two guards strapped into the contoured chairs mounted at the sides of the car. Each pressed a button set in the armrest of his chair.

    "In position," one said. Grayle heard a soft sound, saw a minute movement of the tiny glass prism set in the ceiling. It studied him, then swiveled to inspect the guards. The light died behind it. A moment later the turbines started up with a muted howl.

    Grayle felt the car move forward; he sensed the raising of the flint-steel door, was aware of a sense of enclosure as the vehicle entered the upward-slanting tunnel.

    One of the guards stirred in his seat. He was a young fellow, with a bone-and-leather face, prominent teeth.

    "Just try something, bo," he said in a husky whisper. "I hear you're a tough boy. Let's see can you break from us."

    "Shut up, Jimbo," the other man said. "He ain't going noplace."

    "Just to Gull, is all," Jimbo said. He smiled, exposing untended molars. "You think he'll like it there, Randy?"

    "Sure," Randy said. "His kind likes it tough."

    Grayle ignored their conversation. He was listening to the muted, echoic roar of the car's passage through the hundred-yard tunnel. The tone changed as the car slowed, started upgrade, changed again as it moved ahead on the level. They had emerged now onto the causeway linking the islands. Quickly the car built up speed. In six minutes they would pass over the Boca Ciega cut, the deep-water tidal-flow channel spanned by a single-lane bridge. Grayle tensed, counting silently to himself.

    3

    When Weather Control at Kennedy alerted the satellite that the weather-patrol craft was airborne, estimating five minutes to contact, the object of the meteorologists' attention had grown to an estimated diameter of four miles. Its rotation was clearly visible now.

    "About five minutes for a complete revolution," Bunny said. "That means winds topping sixty at the periphery already. And she's holding position as if she'd dropped anchor."

    "Kennedy is patching us directly in on the ground-to-air," Fred said. He plugged a hand microphone into a jack beside the screen. A faint crackle sounded; then the voice of the pilot came through loud and clear: " . . . getting dark fast, but it's clear as a bell out here, sea calm. I see some fishing boats down there, like ducks on a pond. I'm holding ten thousand . . . "

    "He ought to be spotting some sign of it," Bunny muttered. "He's within fifty miles of it—"

    " Hold everything, Kennedy Tower ." The pilot's tone changed. " I have something . . . like a twister, a funnel. Black as soot.