'You thought it was alive?'

'Uh, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't know what to think.'

'I don't think it was alive; I think it was a machine. A flying machine. A boat with wings on it. But, either way - a machine or a flying whale - have you- ever in your life seen anything like it?'

'Alec, it was so strange that I have trouble believing that I saw it.'

'I know. But you saw it first and pointed it out to me so I didn't trick you into thinking that you saw it.'

' You wouldn't do that.'

'No, I would not. But I'm glad you saw it first, dearest girl; that means it's real - not something dreamed up in my fevered brain. That thing did not come from the world you are used to... and I can promise you that it is not one of the airships I talked about; it is not from the world I grew up in. So we're now in still a third world.' I sighed. 'The first time it took a twenty-thousand-ton ocean liner to prove to me that I had changed worlds. This time just one sight of something that simply could not exist in my world is all I need to know that they are at it again. They shifted worlds when I was knocked out - I think that's when they did it. As may be, I think they did it to keep me from checking that thumbprint. Paranoia. The delusion that the whole world is a conspiracy. Only it's not a delusion.'

I watched her eyes. 'Well?'

'Alec ... could it possibly be that both of us imagined it? Delirious, perhaps? We've both had a rough experience - you hit your head; I may have hit mine when the iceberg struck.'

'Margrethe, we would not each have the same delirium dream. If you wake up and find that I'm gone, that could be your answer. But I'm not gone; I'm right here. Besides, you would still have to account for an iceberg as far south as we are. Paranoia is a simpler explanation. But the conspiracy is aimed at me; you just had the misfortune to be caught in it. I'm sorry.' (I wasn't really sorry. A raft in the middle of the ocean is no- place to be alone. But with Margrethe it was 'paradise enow.')

'I still think that sharing the same dream is - Alec, there it comes again!' She pointed.

I didn't see anything at first, then I did: A dot that grew into a cruciform shape, a shape that I now identified as 'flying machine'. I watched it grow.

'Margrethe, it must have turned around. Maybe it saw us. Or they saw us. Or he saw us. Whatever.'

'Perhaps.'

As it came closer I saw that it was going to pass to our right rather than overhead. Margrethe said suddenly, 'It's not the same. one.'

'And it's not a flying whale - unless flying whales hereabouts have wide red stripes down their sides.'

'It's not a whale. I mean "it's not alive". You are right,

Alec; it is a machine. Dear, do you really think it has people inside it? That scares me.'

'I think I would be more scared if it did not have people inside it.' (I remembered a fantastic story translated from the German about a world peopled by nothing but automatic machines - not a pleasant story.) 'Actually, it's good news. We both know now that our seeing the first one was not a dream, not an illusion. That nails down the fact that we are in another world. Therefore we are going to be rescued.'

She said hesitantly, 'I don't quite follow that.'

'That's because you are still trying to avoid calling me paranoid - and thank you, dear, but my being paranoid is the simplest hypothesis. If the joker pulling the strings had intended to kill me, the easy time to do it would have been with the iceberg. Or earlier, with the fire pit. But he 's not out to kill me, at least not now. He's playing with me, cat and mouse. So I'll be rescued. So will you, because we're together. You were with me when the iceberg hit - your bad luck. You're still with me now, so you'll be rescued,your good luck. Don't fight it, dear. I've had some days to get used to it, and I find that it is all right once you relax. Paranoia is the only rational approach to a conspiracy world.'

'But, Alec, the world ought not to he that way,'

'There is no "ought" to it, my love. The essence of philosophy is to accept the universe as it-is, rather than ,try to force it into some preconceived shape.' I added, 'Wups! Don't roll off. You don't want to be a snack for a shark just after we've had proof that we are going to be picked up!'

For the next hour or so nothing happened - unless you count sighting two regal sailfish. The overcast burned away and I began to be anxious for an early rescue; I figured they owed me that much! Not let me get a third-degree sunburn. Margrethe might be able to take a bit more sun than I; she was blonde but she was tanned a warm toast color all over - lovely! But I was raw frog-belly white except for my face and hands - a full day of tropic sun could put me into hospital. Or worse.

The eastern horizon now seemed to show a gray unevenness that could be mountains - or so I kept telling myself, although there isn't much you can see when your viewpoint is about seven inches above water line. If those were indeed mountains or hills, then land was not many miles away. Boats from Mazatlán should be in sight any time now... if Mazatlán was still there in this world. If -

Then another flying machine showed up.

It was only vaguely like the other two. They had been flying parallel to the coast; the first from the south, the second from the north. This machine came out from the direction of the coast, flying mostly 'West, although it zigzagged.

It passed north of us, then turned back and circled around us. It came low enough that I could see that it did indeed have men in it, two I thought.

Its shape is hard to explain. Imagine first a giant box kite, about forty feet long, four feet wide, and about three feet between two kite surfaces.

Imagine this box kite placed at right angles to a boat shape, somewhat, like an Esquimau's kayak but larger, much larger - about as large as the box kite.

Underneath all this are two more kayak shapes, smaller, parallel to the main shape.

At one end of this shape is an engine (as I saw later) and at the front end of that is an air propeller, like a ship's water propeller -and this I saw later, also. When I first saw this unbelievable structure, the air screw was turning so extremely fast that one simply could not see it. But one could hear it! The noise made by this contraption was deafening and never stopped.

The machine turned toward us and tilted down so that it headed straight toward us - like nothing so much as a pelican gliding down to scoop up fish.

With us the fish. It was frightening. To me, at least; Margrethe never let out a peep. But she did squeeze my fingers very hard. The mere fact that we were not fish and that a machine could not eat us and would not want to did not make this dive at us less terrifying.

Despite my fright (or because of it) I now saw that this construction was at least twice as big as I had estimated when I saw it high in the sky. It had two teamsters operating it, seated side by side behind a window in the front end. The driving engine turned out to be two, mounted between the box-kite wings, one on the right of the teamsters' position, one on the left.

At the very last instant the machine lifted like a horse taking a hurdle, and barely missed us. The blast of win ' d it created almost knocked us off our raft and the blast of sound caused my ears to ring.

It went a little higher, curved back toward us, glided again but not quite toward us. The lower twin kayak shapes touched the water, creating a brave comet's tail of spume - and the thing slowed and stopped and stayed there, on the water, and did not sink!

Now the air screws moved very slowly and I saw them for the first time ... and admired the engineering ingenuity that had gone into them. Not as efficient, I suspected, as the ducted air screws used in our dirigible airships, but an elegant solution to a problem in a place where ducting would be difficult or perhaps impossible.