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close to the edge of things and that awesome place where everything simply dropped away and it was two thousand feet to the bottom, except for Thunder Point and that, he knew, was somewhere close. But no one ever dived there, the most dangerous reef in the entire region. Even Carney didn’t dive there. Strong currents, a nightmare world of fissures and channels. Carney had told him that years before an old diver had described it to him. A hundred and eighty feet on one side, then the ridge of the reef at around seventy, and two thousand feet on the other. The old boy had hit bad trouble, had only just made it to the surface, had never tried again. Few people even knew where it was anyway, and the sea out there was generally so turbulent that that in itself was enough to keep anyone away, but not today. It was a millpond. Baker had never seen anything like it. A sudden excitement surged in him and he switched on his fathometer, seeking the bottom, throttling back the engines, and then he saw it, the yellow ridged lines on the black screen.
    He killed the engine and drifted, checking the depth reading until he was certain he was above the ridge of the reef at seventy feet, then scrambled round to the prow and dropped the anchor. After a while, he felt it bite satisfactorily and worked his way round to the deck. He felt incredibly cheerful as he stripped, pulled on the orange and blue nylon diving suit, then quickly assembled his gear, clamping a tank to his inflatable. He strapped the computer to the line of his air pressure gauge, then eased himself into the jacket, taking the weight of the tank, strapping the Velcro wrappers firmly across his waist and hooking a net diving bag to his weight belt as he always did with a spotlight inside in case he came across anything interesting. He pulled on a pair of diving gloves, then sat with his feet on the platform at the stern and pulled on his fins. He spat on his mask, rinsed it, adjusted it to his face, then simply stood up and stepped into the water.
     
     
    It was incredibly clear and blue. He swam round to the anchor rope, paused, then started down, following the line. The sensation of floating in space was, as always, amazing, a silent, private world, sunlight at first, but fading as he descended.
    The reef where the anchor was hooked was a forest of coral and sea grass, fish of every conceivable description, and suddenly a barracuda that was at least five feet long swerved across his vision and paused, turning toward him threateningly, which didn’t bother Baker in the slightest, because barracuda were seldom a threat to anyone.
    He checked his dive computer. It not only indicated the depth he was at, but told him how long he was safe there and constantly altered its reading according to any change in depth he made during the dive. He was at this point at seventy feet and he turned and headed over to the left-hand side, where the reef slid down to a hundred and eighty. He went over the edge, then changed his mind and went up again. It was amazing how much an extra ten or fifteen feet reduced your bottom time.
    There was a reasonably strong current; he could feel it pushing him to one side. He imagined what it must be like when conditions were bad, but he was damned if that was going to stop him having a look at the big drop. The edge of the reef over there was very clearly defined. He paused, holding on to a coral head and peered over, looking down the cliff face into a great blue vault that stretched into infinity. He went over, descended to eighty feet and started to work his way along.
    It was interesting. He noted a considerable amount of coral damage, large sections having obviously been torn away, recently, presumably the result of the hurricane although they were on a fault line here and earth tremors were also common. Some distance ahead, there was a very obvious section where what looked like an entire overhang had gone revealing a wide ledge below, and there was