Nearly twenty kilometers out to sea Manuel lay on the seat of his boat. The sun was strong and a rough awning sheltered him. His hat covered his face, his head was pillowed on a sweater and the heel of one foot rested on the gunwale. A fishline, looped around his wrist and threaded between his toes, dangled in the water.

Lulled by the gentle rocking of the boat, he was dozing when the chuffing sound of a diesel engine intruded.

He lifted the hat and sat up as a ten-meter launch coasted to a stop beside him. In the stern sat Jose, an older fisherman from San Felipe, and his helper Juan. The diesel idled and Jose waved.

"Hola -- Manuel! Kind of far out for a small boat, aren't you?"

"Hola." Manuel raised his hand to show the fishline. "I came to try for bigger fish."

"Nothing inshore?"

"Nothing."

"And how are they out here? Catch anything?"

"Nothing. This is not a good day for me."

"Not good for me, either." Jose struck a match and lit a cigarette. Puffed, then threw the match into the sea. "I didn't make enough to pay for my fuel today."

"Huh. I didn't make enough to pay for my water!"

Jose's helper laughed, but Jose didn't. He had worked twenty years to buy his boat, and he understood Manuel's problem.

"That's bad -- but you may do better tonight." Jose glanced at the sun, now high in the sky.

"I'm heading in now -- it will take until noon to reach land from here, and I'm too old to stay out under the sun. Come in with me, and we'll both do better this evening."

Manuel glanced at the sun and shrugged his shoulders.

"You go ahead -- I will stay out."

Jose looked closely at him.

"Why? You will catch no fish while the sun is high, and it is not good to stay out all day. Come in and rest, so you can stay out late tonight."

"I will stay out late tonight if I have to, but if I come back now I will not be out this evening. I have not enough gas, and I have no money."

"Can you not borrow money?"

"I did -- that's why I'm in trouble."

"I don't mean from the bank. From your family?"

"They have nothing to lend me now." Manuel shrugged. "If I don't find fish before I go back, I will lose the boat."

"Is it so bad?"

"It is."

"Then you must find fish." Jose took a puff from his cigarette, let the smoke stream between his lips and narrowed his eyes.

"Four years ago," he said, "when Josepo Gomez had no gas, he stayed out for three days until he found fish."

"Gomez? But he has a small boat -- like mine!"

"Smaller -- but he stayed out all night when he had to."

"But the boat would drift -- " Manuel looked about. "The night wind is off-shore! I will stay out all day, but if I stayed out all night I would drift too far! I could not come back!"

"Josepo is an old timer -- he learned to fish with a sail and he knew the old tricks. He showed me some of them. Catch this."

Jose threw a line over Manuel's boat. "Pull me over."

As Manuel pulled, Jose stepped to the bow of his boat, lifted a hatch cover and bent to rummage in a storage compartment. As the bigger boat bumped gently against Manuel's Jose found what he was looking for and straightened up with a bundle of canvas and sticks in his hands.

"This is a sea anchor," he said. "Like they used in the old days."

As he spoke Jose unfolded the canvas and used the two sticks to spread it like a kite into a square about one meter on each side. Two-meter ropes ran from each corner of the canvas to a rusty steel ring. Jose passed the sea anchor across to Manuel.

"When they had to sail with the wind," he said, "they could not always get back when they wanted to, so they used these. Tie that to your bow and drop it into the sea, and you won't drift."

"Is it safe?" Manuel turned the sea anchor over in his hands.

"Safe enough -- the big ships sometimes use them. I made that one after Josepo told me about them, but I never needed it. I asked the captain of a big ship, and he said the current here would carry me about six kilometers north overnight."

"Six kilometers -- that's not too far."

"Have you water?"

"Some." Manuel held up the bottle.

"Not enough." Jose passed over his own water bottle and a package.

"Take this, and these sandwiches too -- Angelita always gives me more than I can eat."

"Carmine will worry when I don't come back! Will you speak to her?"

"I will, and she will make sandwiches for me to bring you tonight. I will bring a barrel of water too, so you can stay out until you catch fish."

"I will." Manuel moved to the bow of his boat and tied the line from the sea anchor to his painter.

"We'll see you tonight then." Jose put his motor in gear and eased forward on the throttle. He waved as his boat moved toward shore.

Manuel waved, stood and watched for a few minutes. Then he threw the sea-anchor overboard.

Juan Delgado didn't like cleaning fish. He would much rather spend his time playing ball in the schoolyard, or swimming at the beach less than a half kilometer from his father's house. Even catching fish in the boat with his father.

But it wasn't a matter of choice because Juan's family was different.

His father was a fisherman, like so many men in San Felipe, and he lived in an un-painted wooden house with a vegetable garden in the back, like most of the others.

But Juan's father was different, because he owned his own boat. It was a good boat -- fifteen meters long with a diesel engine -- and Juan's father hired two men to help run it. But it was because of the boat that Juan had to clean fish.

Like the other fishermen Juan's father sold fish to wholesalers who came every day from Rio Blanco, nearly a hundred kilometers away. The wholesalers didn't pay much for the fish but they would buy everything a man could catch. It was a good business.

But Juan's father didn't sell them all his catch. He saved out more than a hundred kilos of fish a day for Juan's mother to sell from her stall in the mercado. People at the market paid more than the wholesalers, and it was because of the fish Juan's mother sold from her stall that Juan's father owned his own boat.

And it was these fish that Juan had to clean in his mid-day break from school, working at a wooden table in the back yard with a two-wheeled cart full of fish beside him.

He pulled a ten-kilogram fish from the front of the cart and laid it on the table. Expertly slit it's belly with a razor sharp knife and pulled the guts out. Cut them loose with a flick of the knife and pushed them off the end of the table into the bucket below. Then he lifted the fish into the back of the cart and reached for another from the front.

His mother told him that with his help his family was becoming rich. She said Juan would be able to go to high school when he grew up, and perhaps even to university. He understood that, but he thought it would be better if his family were rich now, when he was ten years old and there were so many things to do, than to be rich later.

When Juan was in high school he wouldn't want to play ball so much. When he was in high school people would expect him to spend his time studying, or walking with muchachas in the plaza, and he wouldn't want to do that anyway. He wouldn't mind cleaning fish then.

If he did go to university, he thought, he would get a job in the government afterward and he would change the law so families would be rich when their sons were ten years old and wanted to play ball. They could be poor later, when it didn't matter so much. He threw the fish he had just cleaned into the cart beside him and reached for another one.

Then he paused as he heard the crashing sound and the screams from the schoolyard.

Dropping his knife he jumped for the wooden fence at the edge of the yard. Standing on the bottom rail and holding the top he could see over the fence and up the alley to the school. Sometimes he clung there to watch his friends playing ball when he was supposed to be cleaning fish.

He grabbed the top of the fence and looked over, but he didn't believe what he saw.

The school crumbled, as he watched, into a sea of liquid mud. A wall of mud as high as a man rolled down the alleyway, carrying broken pieces of houses and half a truck with it. Some of the shapes that appeared briefly on the surface might have been parts of people, but it was hard to tell.

Twelve hours after the earthquake, about a hundred kilometers downstream from the dam and nearly four kilometers from the mouth of the river, the flood was now a moving mass of mud that carried the remains of a city, several towns, a forest and a few dozen plantations.

As it passed Juan's house it picked up the fence and slammed it back into the yard. Juan landed in the wooden fish cart with a section of fence lying over him and that saved his life as the cart was picked up and carried on by the mud.

He woke as cold water rose around him. The flood had carried nearly everything that would float out to sea and the cart, now one of millions of pieces of wreckage that covered the surface of the sea for kilometers, was sinking under its load of fish, flesh and mud.

The section of fence still covered him and Juan pushed against it. The boards were held down by the branches of a floating tree it had drifted under and they didn't move, but the push was just enough to overcome the marginal buoyancy of the cart. Juan had barely time to catch his breath as it sank, and it was a very long time before he struggled to the surface among the branches.

He spat salt water from his mouth and caught hold of a branch while he looked about. He was in the sea -- he knew that from the taste of salt -- but the water was muddy, like the water of a swamp, and he was surrounded by floating junk. It might look like this, he thought, in the swamp where the Indians lived.

The branch he held was too small for him to climb up on but it joined with a larger branch not far away. Juan pulled himself over to the larger branch and pulled himself up onto it. Carefully, he walked the larger branch to the trunk of the floating tree and looked about again.

It looked like the swamp -- there were trees and bushes sticking up out of the water all about him -- but they moved up and down the waves, as though they were floating, not rooted as they would be in a swamp. There were boards too -- parts of fences and houses -- and he recognized one of the docks from the waterfront at San Felipe.

One branch stuck up into the air. Juan shinned up to a crotch, settled himself into it and looked about.

He was at sea! From here he could see the hills behind San Felipe, as he had seen them before from his father's boat. Below them, a smudge on the shoreline must be the village.

About a hundred meters away floated a small boat with a young woman in it and Juan shouted for help. The woman heard him but she had no oars and she gestured helplessly as the boat drifted away.

Maria Munez was sixteen years old and most of the men agreed she was the most beautiful senorita in San Felipe. The daughter of a storekeeper she was engaged to Giorgo, eldest son of the owner of a boat-yard.

The engagement was expected, since both were among the small aristocracy in a village of less than five thousand people, but the couple quarreled often. They had quarreled the night before and Maria had gone to the boatyard that morning to make peace. Then they had quarreled again and Maria had walked away in a temper.

Giorgo would follow, she knew, and he would try to make friends again if he found her -- but Maria decided he would not find her this time. Instead of going back to the village -- to her father's house or to the store -- she walked out on the beach.

There were several small boats pulled up beyond the high-water line and one of them belonged to Maria's uncle Raoul. She sat on the gunwale of Raoul's boat to think.

There! Giorgo came out of the boatyard office and walked quickly toward the village. He was not a bad looking man, she knew, and she did not dislike him -- not really.

But she did not want him to find her and he would see her here when he came back from the village. She looked about.

The bottom of the boat was clean and she would be out of sight if she lay in it. With one last look at Giorgo's retreating back Maria climbed into the boat, lay down and wriggled under the seat. She could lie there all day if she wanted to, and Giorgo would never think of looking for her in a boat.

He never did. Giorgo was still on his way to Maria's father's store when the flood swept through the village. It crushed him under the remains of a building and rolled his battered body along in the sea of mud.

Maria heard screams and the splintering of wood and she struggled to get out from under the seat. She was sitting up when the leading edge of the wave of mud picked up the boat and swept it into the water. Terror-stricken, she clung to the gunwale and watched in horror as the village that had been her home dissolved, and as she was swept out to sea.

Juan Delgado was one of more than a dozen survivors she saw in the next hour but she could not help any of them. Helplessly, she watched as the boat and the tree drifted apart. Sadly, she saw the boy's resignation as he realized that she could not help him.

Juan was not afraid of the sea. He had been out with his father often enough, and his father was at sea now in one of the best boats in San Felipe.

Soon his father would come back and find him missing. His father would know he must have been swept out to sea, and would come to rescue him.

As Maria drifted away Juan took off his belt and used it to tie himself to the branch to which he clung. He might be there for a long time, he knew, and he would get very tired hanging on to the tree. Held in place by his belt and sitting between two big branches, he would be safe until his father came.

The tree rocked gently in the swell and Juan was comfortable, with just enough shade to break the sun. In an hour he was relaxed and by noon he began to drowse.

And then the last of the tons of mud that had clung to the underwater branches melted away. The tree rolled over, with Juan tied to a branch that came to rest five meters under the surface of the water.

Maria's experience hurt too much for her to feel pain. A blessed numbness dulled her memory of the destruction of the village, her knowledge of the destruction of her home and of the death of her family.

The past was blurred as she drifted quietly under a hot sun on a surrealistic sea. Another time she would have recognized the bow of a half-sunk fishing boat nearby. Would have known it for a boat from San Felipe, and would have identified is as evidence of tragedy. Now it was just a splash of color in the macabre wonderland that surrounded her.

The boat rocked gently and after a while she lay again on the bottom again, her face in the shadow of one of the seats. She closed her eyes and passed into a dreamless sleep as she drifted, along with millions of tons of floating wreckage, farther out to sea.

Red One split up as it approached Rio Blanco. Two planes broke away to fly along the shores of the lake and to drop decades of corpsmen at the remains of each town they passed. Two more planes followed the path of the flood down-river and the fifth, with Pedro aboard, circled the remains of the city. Even hardened rescue corpsmen were appalled at the devastation they saw.

The edges of the dam still clung to the mountainsides where they had been anchored and all the foundations remained, but a chunk more than 200 meters across and about 100 meters deep had been torn out of the center. Hundreds of millions of tonnes of water had poured through the gap and had washed out most of the docks and the downtown area near the dam leaving a muddy lake nearly a kilometer across, with parts of the steel skeletons of some buildings showing through the surface, in place of most of the city.

The wreck of an ocean-going freighter, crumpled like a child's toy, lay on a mud flat to one side of the lake, and some debris floated around the edges.

Traces of roads and some rubble surrounded the mud flats, and the remains of a few buildings were recognizable near the outskirts of the former city.

The San Cristobal army was already setting up a field hospital in Rio Blanco as the planes arrived, an army convoy was crawling down the side of the mountain toward the city, and three more were en-route from the capital.

Johnston spoke by radio to the army commander of the area, then ordered Smithers to drop a couple of bundles of medical supplies before the plane turned toward the coast.

There was no river now because the flood had washed away the banks that once confined it. The floor of the valley was a kilometers-wide scar of mud, so wide that the river spread out shallow and seeped into it making a treacherous morass as dangerous as quicksand.

Flying down the valley the corpsmen saw several animals that had wandered onto the mud -- perhaps in search of water -- and had become trapped.

One decade of corpsmen was trapped too. The first to jump near the remains of a crossroads village, they had aimed for an inviting mud flat and had sunk nearly waist-deep when they landed.

Pedro heard their curses over the radio as they struggled to free themselves, and the curses of their centurion who had to drop another decade to help the surviving villagers. The trapped corpsmen could take care of themselves, but it would be hours before they were able to help others.

Other decades dropped on solid ground to set up field stations and message centers on both sides of the flood path. After talking with centurions in the other planes Johnston ordered his century to jump on a rise near the mouth of the river, not far from the former village of San Felipe. They would build a refugee camp there.

But Johnston did not jump at San Felipe and neither did Pedro, for all his protests. They stayed with the plane as it turned back to Hidalgo, where Martin would establish his headquarters.

Something was rubbing against the side of the boat and Manuel opened his eyes in confusion. Sunlight dappled the awning above him and he was surrounded by the smell of green leaves. Impossible!

He turned his head. His eyes confirmed the leaves, and the branches of a tree. He must have drifted ashore while he slept -- but how? He knew the coast for perhaps a hundred kilometers each side of San Felipe, and it was beach and rock all the way -- there were no mangrove swamps except at the mouth of the river. Trees beside the boat must mean he had drifted up the river -- and how could he have drifted against the current? Rolling on his side he peered out under the edge of the awning.

Incredible! There were branches and trees everywhere. He dipped a finger into the water and tasted it.

Salt -- he was still at sea.

But why these trees? And how?

Then he saw that the trees were floating. That the upright sections that looked like the trunks of ordinary trees were in fact the branches of jungle giants. He saw mud clinging to some of them, and splintered ends where some were broken. Crawling out from under the awning, he stood and surveyed the scene.

Floating trees and parts of trees as far as he could see in every direction! A strange dark -- muddy -- look to the water beside the boat. A few bits and pieces of lumber floated among the trees.

He would not start his motor with all that junk floating around him -- Manuel had a healthy concern for his propeller and gear-case. He picked up an oar and pushed away from the tree that had awakened him. Standing near the side of the boat, he began to paddle.

The boat ddn't move. He paddled harder, then noticed the way the bow swung sideways. Looking forward, he saw the taut line leading off the bow to the sea-anchor. Setting the oar down he crawled forward under the awning and pulled the rope. The anchor didn't move but the boat came ahead to the branch on which the rope was fouled. Manuel worked it loose, then hauled the boat up to another branch. At last he was able to bring the anchor to the surface, pour the water out of it and lift it into the boat.

Now he could move -- but where? The tree beside him was so big that even as it lay in the water some of the broken branches lifted five and ten meters above the surface. Manuel paddled over to it and moored the boat to the stub of a branch.

Carefully he climbed onto the trunk of the tree. It would be several meters in diameter if he could see all of it, and the top was nearly two meters above water level.

It moved slightly but felt as stable as a very big boat. A few steps away was a huge branch -- nearly a meter in diameter -- torn off about twenty meters up. It would have been too big to climb had the tree been standing upright, but while the tree floated it formed a broad and steep ramp a man could walk up. Slowly, wary of the danger of slipping, Manuel climbed about ten meters above water level. The branch curved upward there, and the upper section was too steep for safe climbing.

Now he could see kilometers of debris spread across the surface of the sea. He had been about twenty kilometers from land when he went to sleep and from here he should be able to see the hills behind San Felipe to the east, but the east was as empty as any other direction. That was bad.

The weather was good now but there might be a storm brewing and the offshore breeze must be carrying him farther out to sea. The tree heaved gently in the swell but the movement was natural to Manuel and he didn't notice it as he considered his position.

He might be able to use the motor if he was careful and went slowly -- but how far was he from land? He was now about as high above the water as the lookout basket on the biggest boat in San Felipe, and he knew the lookouts could see the hills while they were still six hours out of port. He had fuel for only three or four hours, so he would be unable to return even if he could find clear water.

He sat on the branch and leaned back against the steep section he had been unwilling to climb. From his shirt pocket he took his last cigarillo and a packet of matches. Carefully, he lit the cigarillo and considered.

Jose had told him the sea anchor would hold the boat even against strong winds, and that he would drift no more than a few kilometers with the current. The anchor-line had held, therefore the boat should not have moved.

But it had moved. He had been just barely out of sight of land when he went to sleep and now he could not see the hills from this branch -- and it was as high as the lookout basket on a big boat. He must be very far out.

And all these trees -- the scraps of lumber. A flood?

That might explain it. A flood big enough to uproot this tree would be very big, and it would set up a current in the sea itself. With such a current a sea-anchor would move a boat, not hold it still. There must have been a flood.

Now it struck him. The flood must have passed through San Felipe! Those scraps of lumber that floated about him were the remains of houses -- some might be the remains of his house!

The house beside the creek where Carmine and little Manuello had waved as he left the day before. The house to which he would have returned about noon, if the fishing had been better. If his house was gone -- if there were pieces of it floating about him in the sea -- where were Carmine and Manuello?

The cigarillo slipped un-noticed from his fingers, hit the branch and bounced to the trunk of the tree and into the sea. The burning coal made a slight hiss as it was extinguished, but Manuel didn't hear it.

He rested his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, and wept.

Slowly waking from her sleep, Maria felt the heat of the sun on her back and side. She realized that she was not in her bed at home and that she had slept in her clothes.

She saw the gray floor of the boat curving up to the side. Light reflected from water under the floorboards and the end of a piece of rope lay in front of her eyes.

She sat up and gazed in wonder at the dark brown water and the mass of tangled foliage. Among the foliage floated scraps of lumber and something that might once have been part of a wooden fence. She smelled mud and water -- like a swamp -- with a bit of tang from salt in the air.

She remembered climbing into the boat to hide from Giorgo, and the wave of mud that destroyed the village and swept her away.

Now she was lost and thirsty. On land she might have drunk from a puddle or a stream but she knew better than to drink seawater. Nobody drank seawater -- but there might be a bottle of fresh water in the boat.

Not in the stern. She found a length of rope in the bow, tied to an old paint can full of sand, but nothing to drink. She looked about.

More than a kilometer downwind was an island, but it was a strange island -- it seemed to be moving. It rose perhaps fifteen meters out of the sea to its highest hills but the hills moved and one of them suddenly sank out of sight as she watched. For about ten minutes Maria wondered whether it was a ghost island or if she was dreaming.

Then she realized that there was no island. She was looking at a huge mass of floating debris -- trees ripped whole out of the jungle, parts of buildings, docks and the remains of fishing boats -- that had been swept out to sea along with the boat in which she drifted.

Hundreds of thousands of jungle trees had been uprooted by the flood and rolled and skidded along the river valley -- some of them for 80 and 90 kilometers. Most of their branches had been smashed to splinters as they rolled but the biggest branches -- many of them bigger than the trees of temperate climes -- had resisted breakage and had become locked inextricably together.

Jungle vines, some as thick as a man's body, had been swept up by the flood too. Most had been torn to shreds but the shreds of huge vines are themselves huge, and hundred-meter lengths of vine wound in and around the debris binding it all into a gigantic raft laden with hundreds of tons of mud and clay.

Other trees and vines had been uprooted closer to the coast or had been washed down the river channel, and many of these had drifted out to sea almost intact. Their small branches and leaves were broken and torn and the trees were dying, but big trees die slowly and some leaves would remain green for weeks.

The trees and vines, together with the wreckage of hundreds of boats, houses, storage sheds, fences and other wooden structures, had gathered and were still gathering at the center of a low-pressure atmospheric system. The breezes that pushed them together were gentle but the branches of thousands of trees acted as huge sails and the trees swept other debris ahead of them as they were pushed along.

Huge branches snapped like toothpicks near the center of the floating island, but those that did not snap were forced together in an intricate lacework that would lock them together against the action of wind and waves. A hurricane might break the floating island apart but some trees would float as one until they became waterlogged and sank.

Maria didn't know what had happened but she saw the trees. Where there were trees, she reasoned, there might be fruit. And where there was a lot of wreckage there might be something she could drink -- a barrel of water, perhaps, or a can of soda pop. She tried to decide whether a full can of pop would float or not -- she had never seen one thrown into the water.

Something soft thudded against the side of the boat and she looked to see. It was a dead dog.

Faintly, from the island of wreckage, she heard the scream of a woman or a child. She saw a human shape near the edge.

There were people on the island who might be able to help her. If they could not, it would still be better to die among people than alone.

There would be shade on the island too. Maria looked at the rubbish that floated around her, hoping to see something she could use as a paddle.

In his second week on the job at NASA headquarters in Houston Peter Steiger worked with a dozen other clerks in the main file room. The job was routine but Steiger was still fascinated by the hundreds of satellite photos that crossed his desk every day. He looked up now as a technician dropped two handfuls of prints into the tray on the corner of his desk.

"What are those?"

"First run of the San Cristobal pictures. The Canadians want a survey of the whole country, and this is the first pass."

"The Canadians? What Canadians? And what do they want with San Cristobal, anyway? Steiger reached for the pictures.

"The Canadian Rescue Corps -- they're down there cleaning up that mess. Don't you follow the news?

"Sure -- as long as it's sports." Steiger leafed through the pictures.

"What happened, anyway?"

"An earthquake and a flood, from what I hear. The quake knocked over a power dam and the dam flooded a city."

"Sure made a mess of things, anyway." Steiger turned one photo over and checked the code on the back. "What do they want these for?"

"Survey of the damage and to locate survivors. To plan rebuilding -- all sorts of things, I guess. We shoot pictures every time they go out and send them to their field headquarters but we keep prints on file here to give guys like you something to do."

Steiger dropped the first pile of prints and picked up the second. What about these?"

"They're the over-run. When we shoot a strip across something like that we start the cameras early and stop them late. These are mostly shots of the sea, up to about a hundred miles out. Lots of junk there, but I don't think the pictures are worth saving. We didn't send them to the Canadians."

"Oh." Steiger leafed through the second pile. Stopped and looked again. "My god!"

"What?"

"Look at that! The trees floating out there! They must be worth a fortune!"

The technician leaned over the desk and looked at the picture. It showed a huge mass of floating wreckage, like an island several miles in diameter.

"Yeah. I've seen that sort of thing before after a flood. All the shit gets swept out to sea and a lot of it collects in one place if there's a low-pressure area out there -- but it's mostly just trees.

"Just trees? Fifty million dollars worth of them! Take a tug out there and you'd be rich for life!"

"Fifty million? For trees? Sounds screwy to me. What would you do with them?"

"Sell them to a saw mill."

"Okay -- but they wouldn't be worth that much!"

"They are."

"How do you know?"

"I worked my way through Oregon State scaling trees on the rafts -- looking at pictures like these and figuring what the trees are worth."

"Well -- these ones wouldn't be worth much anyway. Take a look through the glass -- you'll see the way they're torn up."

"Some of the ones I counted on the coast didn't look like much in the boom -- they get beat up before they get to the water -- but the wood inside is good."

"So what would one of those be worth?"

Dropping the photo on his desk, Steiger swung a magnifier over it and reached for his scale. He looked through the glass as he slid the scale over the picture.

"Look at this! One tree with a trunk more than twelve feet in diameter!" He turned the scale. "The main log would be nearly a hundred feet long!"

He tapped the keys of his calculator and looked at the result.

"More than a hundred thousand board feet in one tree! Enough to build a dozen houses!"

"Let's see that!" The technician moved around the desk and leaned over the magnifier. "Which one are you looking at?"

"Here." Steiger tapped with the tip of a pencil on the photo. "That one tree is worth $50,000 or $100,000, just as it floats there!"

"Hold it!" The technician leaned closer. "Move your pencil a bit!"

"Huh?" Steiger moved the pencil and crowded his head beside the technician's. "What are you looking at?"

"There! Just above the tip of the pencil -- what's that beside the log?"

"Looks like a boat. Just a minute." Steiger swung the big magnifier aside, and reached for a high-powered loupe. He dropped it on the picture, bent over and peered through it. Then he straightened up.

"It's a boat, all right. And take a look on the tree. On that big branch, just down from the boat."

The technician leaned forward. Looked through the loupe. Then he straightened up and looked at Steiger.

"I'd swear that's a man!"

"So would I." Steiger looked again through the loupe, then moved it aside. He picked up a yellow grease pencil and circled Manuel and his boat, then handed the pile of pictures to the technician.

"I guess you better send these to the Canadians too," he said.

Maria heard the sound of an aircraft. She turned and searched the horizon.

There! Back where the land must be! A dot that grew as she watched.

The bright red plane passed almost directly overhead as it flew toward the floating island. Maria stood and waved but there was no sign that anyone saw her.

In the plane Pedro sat on a folding seat by the open door, his eyes glued to binoculars as he scanned the floating trees.

"See anything?" Johnston crouched beside him and shouted in his ear. Even Johnston had to shout over the roar of the wind and the scream of the engines.

Pedro shook his head.

"The picture shows a boat out here," Johnston said, "but that was this morning. It won't be there now -- look at the way this stuff is closing up. Any boat has been crushed by now!"

"There still might be people." Pedro's voice was blown away by the wind and Johnston didn't hear him. Suddenly the he leaned forward and his binoculars locked on something.

Johnston shouted again in his ear.

"See something?"

"A man." Pedro turned to the centurion and shouted. "Near the center."

"Shit!" Johnston grabbed the phone by the door.

"Pilot!"

"Sir!"

"We have someone! Circle here!"

As the plane circled, Johnston leaned over Pedro's shoulder to see the lone man near the middle of the floating island. Then he picked up the phone again.

"Pilot?"

"Sir?"

"Can we get a chopper out here?"

"No sir. Too far for a single engine copter, and that's all we have."

"How far out are we?"

"More than fifty kilometers from land, sir."

"Right. Patch me to Martin."

Maria knew some planes could land on water and when the Manitou circled she wondered if it were one of them. She leaned over the bow of the boat and paddled with her hands. It might land by the floating island, she thought, and perhaps she could reach it before it flew away again.

She paddled for several minutes while the plane circled and Johnston talked by radio to Group Leader Martin.

"Sir? Johnston here. We've found that mess of trees the Americans told us about, and there seem to be people on it."

"How many?"

"At least one -- possibly more. But we can't do anything sir. Jumpers can't land in that stuff -- it's just a floating log jam and it would kill them. If they didn't hit something and break their legs, they'd go right through and come up under it.

"And we can't drop them in the water. There's so much junk floating round here they'd never find each other -- or the boats."

Pedro stood. Touched Johnston's arm and spoke.

"I'll jump," he said.

Johnston scowled and turned away from him, still speaking to the group leader.

"No sir. The only way I can see is a chopper. How soon could we get a big one here?"

"Not today." Martin answered. "Nothing big this side of the Rio Grande. The Americans are sending some from Dallas but they won't be here 'till about noon tomorrow."

"What about ships, sir?"

"Just fishing boats, and we couldn't ask them to go out that far. They don't like to get out of sight of the coast. Navigator?"

"Sir?"

"What's the weather there? Will those people be all right overnight?"

"Could be sir, but I wouldn't bet on it. The season is just changing now, and it's hard to say. If the weather holds for a week it will be good for the next six months -- but it might not hold.

"And they're right in the middle of a depression here -- that's why the trees are all crammed together. It seems to be moving fast and that could be bad news in these latitudes. They might be okay or they could be in for a storm -- I just don't know."

"Which way are they moving?"

"West, sir. Out to sea."

"So they won't be any closer tomorrow."

"No sir. Tomorrow they may be too far out for most twin-engined helicopters."

"What about a flying boat? The Americans have some in Panama." Martin again.

"No way, sir." Johnston answered this time. "No flying boat could land in that stuff -- it's like noodle soup down there."

Pedro grabbed his arm this time. "I'll jump," he said. Johnston ignored him as Martin continued.

"Figure something out if you can," the group leader said. "But don't lose any men."

"Right sir. I'll call back after we've looked it over a bit more." Johnston looked at the hand-set a moment, then hung up. Less than a second later it buzzed and a yellow light flashed.

"Sir?" It was the pilot.

"Yes."

"We have fuel for about another fifteen minutes on station, then we should head back."

"Okay -- we'll drop that guy a raft and head back. Tomorrow we can figure a way to get him out."

"Right, sir." The plane stopped circling as Johnston hung up the phone and turned on Pedro with a scowl.

"You'll jump, will you? Into that mess? You're supposed to be a trained corpsman, for Christ' sake. You know better than that!"

"I'm a rescue jumper, and there are people down there who need help."

"One man -- I'll grant you that.

"But how in hell could you help him? You'd kill yourself landing in that shit and you couldn't help anyone even if you did survive. We don't know how to get that guy out, and we don't know how we could get you back.

"And on top of that there may be a storm forming here, and you know you're not going to help anyone in a storm. If there were any waves that stuff down there would be like a meat grinder!"

"I still want to jump."

"If I thought you could do any good maybe I'd let you. But that guy can live or die without your help, and whether you jump or not won't make any difference to him."

The plane's two drop-masters dragged a life-raft toward the door. Johnston pulled Pedro out of their way.

As the plane turned again toward the island the lead drop-master released a streamer. Falling at about the same rate as a parachute, the weighted yellow ribbon drifted with the wind as it fell to splash down near the edge of the floating island.

Maria's face fell as the plane stopped circling and turned away from the island.

But it flew straight for a few minutes, then turned back! She wondered if the yellow streamer was attached to a message, or perhaps to a bottle of water.

It would not help her. The streamer would land on the island, and there were people there already. They would find the water first.

"Okay, that's it." The lead drop-master kept his eye on the spot where the streamer landed.

"Drop the raft just about the edge of the island and we'll put it right on top of that guy."

"Right." The second man helped tip the bundled raft on end as the plane began another run.

"Now!" Both men pushed and the raft dropped free. Pedro heard the twang as the static line drew taut, then saw the parachute blossom.

The plane had flown a wide circle and now it approached Maria again. When it was nearly above her a dot fell from it -- a dot that sprouted a huge flower-like brilliant red top, the same color as the plane.

She knew what that was. It was a parachute -- and a parachute meant there was a man coming down. Perhaps the plane wouldn't fly any more. Perhaps it was going to crash!

Maria was disappointed because she thought the men in the plane might have seen her and sent help, but as the parachute came closer she saw that it supported a box or a bundle of some kind. A box that would land on the floating island. She began paddling again, because there might be food in it, or water. She hoped there would be water -- if the men in the plane knew the sea they would know that water was very important.

"How'd we do?" Johnston stood in the doorway beside Pedro and the drop-masters as the parachute drifted to within a few meters of the man. He watched as the bundled raft caught among the branches of a floating tree."

"Shit!" the centurion shifted his hands on the door-frame. "Now what?"

As the plane circled they watched the man clamber through the branches to reach the raft.

"What's he doing?"

"If he's smart he'll just cut it open and get the water and the rations out of it."

"If he's smart," Pedro said. "If he knows rafts, you mean."

"Well -- what else can he do?"

"First thing, he's going to read the instructions, right? I mean -- Christ, they're there in ten languages!"

"Yeah, but that's for inflating the raft. He can't inflate it there!"

"Does he know that? Should he?" Pedro looked out the door again. "Oh Christ -- there it goes!"

As they looked, the raft began to unfold. It pushed the man off the branch on which he balanced, and continued to grow.

Then it sagged. In less than a minute it was a limp yellow mass among the trees, its metallic radar reflector hanging below it and winking in the sunlight.

"Punctured itself." Johnston said.

"Where's the man?" Pedro asked.

"Don't see him." One of the drop-masters peered out the door. "Maybe he got hurt when he was pushed off the branch."

"We killed him."

"All right. Knock it off." Johnston said. "Nothing more we can do out here, and not much time left. We'll see if we can think of something tomorrow."

"He picked up the phone. "Pilot?"

Pedro was lying flat on the floor of the plane now, his head out the door. He grabbed Johnston's ankle.

"People sir! Three of them! One's a woman!"

"Hang on a minute. Make another circle." Johnston hung up the phone and looked out the door.

"Where are they? I don't see them."

"I do. I did. One of them waved at me."

The centurion leaned out and looked down, then pulled himself back inside.

"Okay, you did. But there's nothing we can do for them now."

"We'll see about that." Pedro jumped to his feet and clipped his jump-bag to his harness. Reached to fasten his static line to the clip by the door.

"No we won't." Johnston pulled his arm down. Held it as he roared. "You jump when I tell you to jump -- not when you think it's a good idea."

"Sorry sir." Pedro's fist came up in a short arc that ended just under Johnston's solar plexus. The big man gasped and let go Pedro's arm as he doubled over.

The drop-masters stared in astonishment as Pedro turned and dived head-first out the door. His static line trailed behind him but his hand gripped the ring of his ripcord.

He pulled and heard a rustling sound followed by a dull thud, then felt the comforting drag as his chute unfolded above him.

Maria paused in her paddling to watch when the plane turned back. She saw the second black dot fall and the second red parachute blossom, and she realizes that this one would not fall on the island -- it would land near her boat!

Then she saw arms raised to hold the ropes of the parachute. Legs, dangling below. This was no box -- this was a man. Perhaps the plane was broken after all.

Pedro looked up and checked his canopy first. He had never had a malfunction himself but he had seen two of them. One man had sprained his ankle coming in on the small reserve chute and both had packed their parachutes more carefully after that. Pedro had packed his chute carefully before he saw the malfunctions.

Satisfied with the chute, he looked below. He had some control over his landing and he had a minute or more to select his spot. He pulled a riser and spun slowly beneath the chute to survey the sea.

There! Off to one side was perhaps a hundred meters of clear water. It was close to the limit of his range and he might not make it but it looked good. He steered for it, then scanned the sea for alternate landings.

He was still more than a hundred meters above the surface when he saw the boat, and the girl standing in it. He yanked hard on the right hand riser and his parachute spun. The sea was dirty around the boat but there was nothing big, and there was one clear patch not far away. He headed for it.

Nearing the water he inflated his life jacket, pulle3d down his goggles, folded his arms flat against his chest -- straightened his legs and pressed his feet together. Seconds later he was down.

For a dirty-water landing, it wasn't bad. One branch as thick as his arm broke when his feet hit it and the jagged end grazed his side as he plunged a couple of meters below the surface. When he came up another one caught between his parachute harness and his coveralls, twisting and cutting him slightly as he took its weight. He hadn't expected a feather bed.

Supported by his life jacket he reached back and pulled the branch loose from his harness. Then he flipped up his goggles and, paddling with his arms, he turned to look for the boat.

Maria watched in wonder as the man with the parachute turned toward her. She thought they always fell straight down -- or were carried by the wind -- but this man seemed to be able to go where he wanted to. She realized he was coming to her but she was not surprised -- hers was the only boat in sight. She would have to share it with him for a long time until they were rescued and she hoped he would be friendly -- but not too friendly.

He was going to land less than ten meters from her. Maria stood on the seat, ready to jump in and help him if he could not swim. Even if he could swim, she thought, he would have trouble with those heavy clothes and with the big yellow thing about him.

There was a splash and she prepared to jump. Then the man popped to the surface and Maria realized that the yellow thing was a life jacket. The man faced away from the boat when he surfaced but as she watched he turned toward her and spoke.

"Buenas dias, muchacha!"

He was in no trouble. Maria sat on the side of the boat and watched him paddle toward her.

It was hard to see with the red helmet he wore but she guessed that he was a few years older than she was, and good looking. He spoke Spanish like a native, but not like a native of San Cristobal.

He reached the boat and hung on it while he un-clipped a bag from his chest and handed it to her. She put it on the seat while he swung himself aboard and pulled his floating parachute in.

"I'm sorry about your plane," she said.

"Huh?" He looked at her as he took off his parachute harness.

"I'm sorry your plane is broken."

"He scanned the sky anxiously. Looking up, Maria saw that the plane still circled. The man spoke.

"But the plane isn't broken."

"Then why did you jump with the parachute? Now you are here too, and we may never get to land!"

"I came to help you," Pedro said. "Don't worry -- we'll get to land." From a pocket on the leg of his coveralls he took out a small bright red box wrapped in plastic. Broke the seal of the package and unwrapped a small radio. As Maria watched he held it up to his mouth and pressed the talk switch.

"Pedro here," he said in English. "I'm down and safe -- and I've already got a boat and a girl." Maria heard the words, but she did not understand them. She started at the tone of the answer.

"You son-of-a-bitch. You're going on charge for this!"

Maria did not understand the words but she recognized the mixture of anger and relief in Johnston's voice. Like a father, she thought, speaking to a child that has done something dangerous.

When Pedro answered she knew she was right because his tone was that of a son explaining something to his father.

"Sorry about that, sir, but I've proved my point -- I've already found a survivor."

"Big deal! Now how are you going to get back?"

"I will. Can you drop me a boat and some supplies?"

"I don't know why I should waste them on you," Johnston said, "but I will." "Spread your parachute so we can see you."

"Right." Pedro clipped the radio to a ring on his chest and stood in the stern of the boat. With arms spread, he held his bright red parachute like a bullfighter's cape.

The plane circled and screamed by less than fifty meters off the water. A yellow streamer dropped from it to land within a few meters of the boat.

"Got it," Johnston said. "We'll drop the motorboat next pass, then a raft. You don't need the raft, but it's got enough supplies to keep you a week."

"Your radio works like a telephone? You can talk on it too?" Maria looked at Pedro in wonder.

"Yes. I talk to my friends in the plane." He looked down at her.

"And can they help us?"

"They will drop us a boat, and supplies."

"Will they drop some water?"

"Lot's of water. Here's some for now." With one hand Pedro opened his belt pouch, lifted out a can of water and gave it to her.

Now he turned to face the plane as it approached, skimming the surface of the sea. A yellow bundle was thrust out the open door, a parachute blossomed and the bundle splashed down beside the yellow streamer that still floated near the boat. The plane banked and circled for another pass.

"Leave that for now!" Johnston's voice came from the radio. "Life-raft coming next."

Another low-level pass, and a bundled life-raft splashed into the sea, a few meters from the still-packaged motorboat. The plane climbed and turned toward land. Pedro set the radio on the seat and stripped off his coveralls.

Wearing red shorts and a T shirt he jumped into the water and swam toward one of the floating bundles. As he swam, Johnston's voice came again from the radio.

"There's a radio and a beacon in that raft. Turn it on as soon as you unpack, and I want a report on everything you find there."

Pedro pulled a red ring, then trod water and held the rope as the bundle unfolded. Maria watched in wonder as it inflated into a bright yellow boat.

About five meters long and two wide, the sides of inflated rubber tubes, the new boat had three full-width rubber seats running across it and one small seat in the bow. Mounted on the stiff stern was a bright-red outboard motor, and Maria could see the red gas tank strapped down beside the middle seat.

Grabbing one of the ropes that circled the sides of the boat Pedro climbed aboard. Moving to the stern he primed the outboard motor and started it, then idled the new boat over beside Maria. She passed his coveralls and the radio over, then climbed across herself while Pedro tied the wooden boat to the stern of the inflatable.

Then he drove the boat slowly to the bundled life-raft and tied another rope to it before he headed the motorboat, with the raft and the wooden boat in tow, toward the floating island.

Now Maria inspected the can of water he had given her. The size and shape of the can were familiar -- she had seen them by the hundreds in her father's store -- but the cans in the store held soft drinks. Would such an expensive can contain only water? She snapped the tab, lifted it to her lips and tasted water.

"Is it good?" He was looking at her.

"Very good senor, and I thank you -- but I am not used to drinking water from a can."

"It's water, just the same. That's an easy way to carry it." Pedro rested one knee on the stern-seat of the boat and craned his neck to find a route through the floating debris. One hand held the tiller of the outboard motor.

"Si senor." From the middle seat, Maria looked at him. "And who are you, senor? You look like a soldier -- but soldiers do not wear red clothes. And you are not from San Cristobal.

For the first time, Pedro looked at her. She was young, he thought -- 12 or 13 years -- and tired and frightened, but she remained calm and she was probably pretty smart. Her skin was light bronze, her cheeks were high and her straight shoulder-length hair was jet black. She was probably part Indian, he guessed, like himself.

The fawn-colored cotton dress looked good but it needed pressing now. She was probably a village girl, but much better off and probably better educated than the average village girl. She waited for his answer.

"I am called Pedro, muchacha, and I come from Canada. That," he pointed to the coveralls that lay in the bottom of the boat, "is the uniform of the Canadian Rescue Corps."

"And what is that, senor?"

"It is something like an army, muchacha, but we don't fight wars. Instead, we come to help people who need it."

"From Canada? Where is that?"

"A long way to the north, muchacha. North of Los Estados Unidos."

"Oh. And how did you know I needed help, senor?" Maria took a sip of the water as she waited for his answer.

"I didn't know about you -- but we knew about San Cristobal."

"Yes." Maria was silent a moment, remembering the mud that had swept through San Felipe. "What happened, senor?"

"An earthquake, muchacha. Then the dam broke at Rio Blanco. You know of the dam?"

"I have seen it, senor."

"It was a big dam, muchacha. And there was a terrible flood after it broke."

"I saw the flood in San Felipe, senor. It was terrible. And now -- are we going back to land?" The water can was empty and Maria set it carefully on the bottom of the boat. She turned to see where they were heading.

"No muchacha. We cannot go back to land in this boat -- it is too far. We'll go to the floating trees ahead -- I think there are more people who need help there -- and we'll wait."

"What will we wait for, senor?"

"For my friends to come back. For something to take us to land."

"A ship, senor?"

"I'm not sure about that, muchacha. We'll just have to wait and see."

The inflatable boat could make about 25 knots under normal conditions but it was slowed by the wooden boat and the bundled life-raft in tow. Slowed too by the maze of debris through which it moved, and by the need to thread a route around floating branches and trees. Pedro had landed less than 500 meters from the island, but it took more than 20 minutes to get there.

That gave him time to reconsider his jump. To realize what he had done, and the position he was in. Before he headed the boat toward the floating island he had turned for one last look at the departing plane, and had realized with a shock that the sky was empty.

Now he was alone with this young girl in an inflatable boat among thousands of drifting trees more than fifty kilometers from land. For the first time since he had joined the Rescue Corps, he was on his own.

The feeling came as a shock because he had not realized until then how much he depended on the other corpsmen in his decade. On his century and on the corps.

There had been other times when he thought he was alone but they were nothing like this. He had been following orders then, and other corpsmen had been within easy range of his pocket radio.

There had been helicopters and boats or trucks to bring help should he need it, and a camp nearby to which he could return for the night. He had been doing something specific, and usually something that either Smithers or Johnston had told him to do. He had been a member of a team, following orders.

Now Johnston knew where he was, and the navigator of the plane knew exactly where he had jumped. Pedro had the boat and the raft, and in the raft he had a powerful radio. That wasn't too bad.

The plane would be back tomorrow to drop more supplies if he needed them. He was not lost.

But he was alone and on his own. No other corpsman could jump to his aid if he got into trouble, and there would be no helicopter to take him to a field hospital if he were hurt.

And he was at sea, with no way to get back to land. A Manitou could reach him to drop supplies, but it could not land to pick him up.

Pedro had climbed mountains on three continents. He had trained on deserts, in swamps, in rain forests and on the frozen wastes of the arctic. The Rescue Corps worked everywhere, and the training of a para-rescue corpsman included survival techniques and experience in every type of country to be found in the world.

Every type of country. Everywhere that people might be subject to natural disaster.

But not at sea. There were few disasters of the sort the Rescue Corps was expected to cope with at sea, and there were no courses on seamanship in a regular corpsman's training.

Pedro was alone and on his own in a strange situation for the first time since he had been trapped in the remains of his father's house nearly fifteen years before.

And for the first time in the three years since he had donned the red uniform, he felt fear.

The boat bumped against something in the water and the shock brought Pedro out of his reverie. The floating debris became thicker as he approached the island, and he shifted the motor into neutral while he stood to choose a course.

Floating logs, branches and bits of wreckage surrounded him but they were no problem. The boat would push them aside easily enough, and it would not be damaged if he travelled slowly. There were several large trees between him and the island but he could avoid them by angling off to the right. He looked past them to the island itself.

Most of the trees had been stripped bare and some were covered in mud. He could land on them if he had to, but there would be no shade. He would probably have to spend several days on the island, so he might as well choose some-place he would want to stay.

Off to the right were several trees that still had leaves, and that looked more inviting than most. Kneeling on the stern seat, Pedro shifted the motor into gear and headed toward them.

Maria was the first to spot another survivor -- a man who stood on one of the trees between them and the island. He called and waved while the boat was about 100 meters away, and Pedro turned to pass close to the tree so they could pick him up.

Then there were more people and more calls, most of them from among the still-green trees they were heading for. Pedro waved back and held the boat on course.

One man dived into the water and swam toward them, and Pedro slowed the boat as he approached. The swimming man caught the rope that circled the boat as they pulled alongside, and the man they had picked up from the tree helped him aboard.

Others saw where they were heading and began scrambling through and over the trees to meet them as they landed. Six people waited on one huge tree as the boat approached.

Pedro had been impressed by the tree as he approached but it was only as he came closer that he could see how big it really was. The trunk was at least four meters in diameter and about thirty meters long from the six-meter root-ball to the massive lower branches that rose ten meters above the sea and stretched about as far to either side.

The trunk was half submerged but it still offered a relatively flat space covered with rough bark, nearly three meters wide by thirty meters long and more than a meter above sea level. Half the root ball loomed like a small hill at one end of it, and from water level the crown of the tree looked like a forest.

One big branch, stripped of small branches and of leaves, stuck straight up about ten meters in the air -- almost like a flag-pole, Pedro thought -- near the base of the crown. Between it and the crown the stub of another branch, nearly a meter in diameter and perhaps five meters long, stuck out to one side of the tree and sloped down to water level. Pedro eased the boat alongside it as two men in faded denim shirts and pants and a woman in a tattered blue dress scrambled to meet him. One of the men took the rope Pedro handed him and knelt to tie it to the stub of a twig.

"Tiennez agua?" The woman asked for water. The men waited anxiously for Pedro's answer.

"Tengo." Pedro reached into his belt-pouch. He handed a can of water to the woman, then turned to pull in the life-raft.

"No tiennez mucho!" The woman looked at the can. Carefully she snapped the tab and drank, then reluctantly she passed it to one of the men.

"Tengo mas!" The life raft was beside the boat now. Maria watched as Pedro turned the floating bundle until he could reach and pull the red ring. All six of the survivors started as the bundle hissed, then began to unfold. They watched in wonder as it turned into a circular ten-man yellow life raft with a teepee-shaped roof crowned with a metallic radar reflector.

Others crowded onto the branch as the raft inflated and Pedro had to wave them back so he could have room to work. He grabbed the rope that ringed the outside of the raft and turned it so one of the four triangular doors faced the boat and another faced the branch. Then he folded back the flap of the door and reached inside for a coil of rope that he passed to one of the men on the branch.

"Tie that, will you? To the branch."

Now he stepped into the raft and folded back the door that faced the branch. He beckoned to the others.

"Tenemos mas agua aqui," he said. "We have more water here."

Maria climbed out of the boat and pushed others aside to follow Pedro into the raft. She watched as he knelt to unfasten one of the bags that lined the sides, and to pull out several cans of water. She took them from him and passed them to the others who followed her into the raft.

From outside came the sound of a splash. Then a shout, and more splashes.

Pedro stepped to the door and looked out, but saw nothing. He climbed onto the branch and walked to the trunk of the tree before he saw the source of the sound.

A woman floundered in the sea beside another tree. As Pedro watched she swam toward a branch where a man knelt to help her.

She would be safe but others would not. Pedro returned to the raft and looked inside. Maria knelt on the floor to read the instructions printed in Spanish on a bag of supplies.

"Muchacha!"

"Si?" She looked up at his call.

"I'm going away for a while, with the motorboat," he said. "You're in charge here. Give water to everybody who comes." He pointed toward a package tied to the side of the raft. "There are food bars in there -- give one to anyone who is hungry." He looked at the men, now sitting in the open doorway by the boat.

"Have you had water?"

One stood, a water can in his hand.

"I have, senor."

"Good. You come with me. Turning, Pedro stepped into the boat and sat by the motor. He started it as the man climbed from the raft into the bow of the boat.

"Senor?" The man questioned with his eyes, one hand on the rope that moored the boat.

"Cast it off!" Pedro waited while the man untied the rope, then put the motor in gear and turned the boat away from the log.

"There are people all over the place," he said. "Some of them will be able to walk in, but we'd better collect the others."

Traffic was heavy at Hidalgo and the Manitou had to wait for clearance to land. For the third time as it circled, Johnston opened the door to the flight deck and poked his head through.

"Any sign of that beacon yet? Any signals?"

"Nothing sir." The navigator looked up at him. "The monitor is automatic -- we'll pick it up as soon as he turns on. I'll call you."

"What about after we land?"

"We won't get the signal, but somebody will. I've reported the jump and there will be a general watch for any signals from that area."

"What about the weather -- any predictions?"

"Mets says they should be safe tomorrow, at least, but they're not making any promises."

Now the pilot turned and spoke back over his shoulder.

"That's our clearance to land, Centurion. We're going down now."

"Right." Johnston backed out of the flight deck, returned to his seat and strapped himself in, then stared out the window as the plane banked into its final approach.

"Dumb son-of-a-bitch!" he growled. "Bloody asshole! If he gets out of this alive, I'm going to kill him!"

The sound of the engines faded as the pilot throttled back for landing.

It was after sunset when Pedro returned to the life-raft with two more survivors, and he could barely see the yellow roof in the gathering gloom. This was his third trip and fourteen people now crowded into the raft that had been designed for ten and there were four more, counting Pedro and the man he had taken as a helper, in the motorboat.

Pedro nosed the boat up to the big branch and tied it to the stub of a small one. One man waited to help the new load of survivors onto the branch and into the raft.

It was crowded in there, Pedro saw, and there was no need for him to go aboard yet. He leaned back into the corner of the boat and closed his eyes for a moment.

Maria handed out food bars and cans of water as people climbed aboard, then stood and looked for Pedro. Treading carefully on the yielding rubber floor of the raft she walked to the door and looked across at the boat.

Pedro had slipped off the seat and he lay on the rubber floor, fast asleep. Maria looked back into the dim light of the raft and saw that the others were lying on the floor or sitting with their backs to the side. Some were already dozing.

She climbed over the side of the raft and stepped into the boat. Moved to the stern and stood a moment, looking down at Pedro. Then she lay beside him, curled up, and went to sleep.

Peter Steiger was at home in Houston, on the phone to a friend in Portland.

"Bill? You remember last year that guy that was telling us about the garbage king? The guy who made a fortune out of junk?"

"No. When was it?"

"Just after the engine on Joe Granville's tug broke down. You remember Joe was talking about scuttling it, and someone started talking about saving old stuff?"

"Where were we?"

"Sitting on the fantail of the tug, drifting beside boom three."

"No. I don't remember anyone talking about a garbage king but I'll tell you who was with us that trip -- it was Alex Foster."

"Foster! That's the guy! You know where he is now?"

"No, but I can find him. Joe would know."

"Would you do that? See if he remembers the guy's name, and where to find him."

"Okay, will do. How's life down there? They going to put you in orbit yet?"

"Maybe next week, if I take my desk with me. About that name -- call me collect if you find anything, will you?"

"Will do. Keep cool."

Pedro and Maria awoke with a start the next morning to the scream of a Manitou transport as it flew past fifty meters above the water.

Hurriedly, Pedro fumbled for the radio that lay beside him. Found it, turned it on and heard Johnston's voice.

"--- you son of a bitch! Answer me! Pedro -- do you read? Over!"

"Got you, sir. Sorry -- I was asleep." Pedro looked up at the plane, now banking in a tight turn for another pass.

"You'll be worse than asleep when I get my hands on you. Why didn't you set the beacon? Did you find any -- Holy Christ! Stop them!"

Startled, Pedro looked at the plane then felt Maria's hand claw at his arm. He turned and gasped.

Sixteen people crowded at one door of the ten-man raft to watch the plane. Now that side of the raft was sinking and the other was rising out of the water. As the raft tipped people closest to the door were crushed against the soft wall of the raft by others behind them, pushing the raft farther off balance. There was no time to do anything, and Pedro watched in fascination as the raft tipped to the point where it must dump.

And stopped, the high side held down by the ropes that tied it to the branch. But water was now pouring in over the low side.

Then people scrambled toward the high side and the raft settled back into the water. Several people shouted but one voice roared out louder than the others. A tall man with a small moustache desperately pushed people this way and that to spread their weight evenly.

"How many have you got there, for God's sake?" Johnston's voice again, from the radio.

"I don't know -- I haven't counted. I know there are more I haven't found yet -- I was still finding them at dark last night."

Johnston stood in the doorway of the plane as it circled about 100 meters over the island, a small radio in his hand.

"That why you didn't start the beacon?"

"I forgot sir. I was pretty busy."

"I guess so. Okay, now what?"

"Can you drop me another raft sir? And I'll need some gas for the boat and more water. I have" -- he stopped a moment and counted -- "fifteen people here now!"

"Okay -- you can have the raft, but I can't drop any more men. You're nearly eighty kilometers from shore now and drifting away.

"The choppers from Dallas are delayed so we still have nothing that can reach you and come back. Martin's trying to get the Americans to send a ship for you but God knows how long that's going to take and we don't know if the weather is going to last."

"That's okay sir -- I'm here now and there isn't much I could do about it even if I wanted to. If you'll get me some supplies though, I can keep these people alive until we figure something out."

"You've got them." Johnston thought for a moment. "I'll drop another raft now and I'll try to get a plane out here this afternoon with more gas and supplies." Johnston looked down from the plane, then spoke again.

"We can't drop it near you though -- there's too much chance of getting it tangled in that stuff so you'd never get it out. There's a bit of clear water about half a kilometer to the south -- will that be all right?"

"Is that the best you can do, sir?"

"Best I can see from here."

"Then it will have to do. It's going to take a long time to get it though."

"Can't be helped. I'll wait 'till you're out there before I drop it. Meanwhile, I'm going to look around. There may be other people out here."

Pedro snapped a switch and set the radio down. He looked at Maria and at the people who watched from the raft, then spoke to the men.

"The plane is going to drop another raft and more water. Who will come with me to get them?"

Maria started to speak but a man's voice interrupted and she fell silent.

"I will senor." It was the tall man with the loud voice, dressed in what must have been expensive work clothes a few days ago. A short machete hung in a leather sheathe at his belt. "I will help."

Pedro had noticed the man the day before, but he looked different now. Last night the man had been frightened -- near panic -- as he scrambled aboard the raft, and he had sat as far as he could from the open door.

He was still tense, Pedro realized, but he was making a determined effort to control his fear. Pedro was afraid himself, and he felt sympathy for the man.

"Okay," he said. "Come then." The man reached for the rope that moored the boat and pulled it toward the raft, then held it while he offered his hand to Maria. She hesitated and looked back at Pedro.

"I will help too senor, if you wish."

Pedro smiled, shook his head. "You can help, muchacha, but not in the boat. Stay here and take care of the raft. You are in charge of the food and the water until we get back."

"If you wish, senor." With a resentful look over her shoulder, Maria climbed into the raft. There she stood and watched as the man climbed across to the boat and cast off. She watched as Pedro started the motor and the boat moved away.

Steering slowly through the floating debris Pedro looked at the man who had joined him. He was tall, tanned and well built, and pure Spanish ancestry from the lines of his face. His moustache had been trimmed with care and he was handsome enough to be a movie actor, Pedro thought with a twinge of envy.

The man had volunteered readily enough but he looked uneasy as he sat in the bow of the boat. Pedro opened the waterproof pocket of his coveralls and pulled out a package of chewing gum. Opened it and offered the man one.

"My name is Pedro," he said.

"Gracias, senor. I am Ramon." Edging carefully toward Pedro, hesitating every time the boat tipped a bit, Ramon took the stick of gum, then edged back to his seat. He looked at it a moment, then at Pedro.

"The gum is good senor," he said. "But a cigarette would be better, if you have any."

Pedro had taken a stick of gum for himself and was unwrapping it. He stopped and looked up, embarrassed.

"No, I don't smoke. I can get some though -- with the supplies."

Ramon shrugged and smiled. "Thank you, senor. I am used to cigarettes, and I'm not sure I want to give them up right now." He unwrapped the gum and put it into his mouth, then looked at Pedro curiously.

"I have heard that many Norteamericanos do not smoke," he said, "but I did not think you were a Norteamericano. I think perhaps you come from Costa Grande -- no?"

"I was born in Costa Grande, but I have lived in Canada for three years. And you?"

"Raised in Costa Grande, but I have worked in several countries. Before yesterday, I was chief foreman on the Agua Dulce plantation, up the river."

"I do not know the plantation -- I do not know San Cristobal."

"No. Well the Agua Dulce was not the biggest plantation, but it was big enough. We grew bananas and pineapples." Ramon looked at the debris that floated around the boat -- through which the boat plowed.

"Perhaps I should keep my eyes open -- our crop may be around here somewhere."

"You are a farmer?"

"Not exactly, senor. I worked on a farm -- yes -- but as a foreman. I worked with men, not with crops. I have also worked as a foreman on construction, once I was a logger and once I worked in a mine."

"You like the work?"

"Not much, senor. But if I must work I prefer to be a foreman. That way I watch other men work, and that is better than doing the work myself."

"But a foreman works too, does he not?"

"Perhaps, senor. I tell my men that but I think it is not quite true. A good foreman doesn't work at being a foreman. He is a good foreman because that is what he is.

"I see." Pedro looked up and saw that the plane was approaching. He picked the radio up and turned in on.

"-- dammit. Do you read me?"

"Sorry sir. I turned the radio off when I put it down, to save the battery."

"Leave the damned thing on! I'll send you all the batteries you want!

"Turn to the right a bit and slow down. You're getting into the drop zone."

"Right." Pedro turned the boat the right and closed the throttle as the plane circled.

I'm giving you another motorboat with a fresh tank of gas and another radio."

"Okay -- and I can use some cigarettes if you have them. Most of the people around here still smoke."

"We know that, and we have cigarettes coming in. I'll put my spare pack and a lighter in the canister with the radio, and bring you a couple of cartons tomorrow."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me, just take care of things. There are two more people on a pile of junk about five kilometers east of you -- can that guy with you handle the boat?"

"I think so. Just a minute." Pedro lowered the radio and looked at Ramon.

"Can you run this boat?"

Ramon had relaxed as they spoke, but his tension returned and he looked pale now. He hesitated a few seconds before he answered the question.

"I think so, senor. I have used outboards." He looked nervously around at the trees that surrounded them.

"But never at sea, senor. I do not like the sea, and I might get lost. I cannot see the life-raft from here!"

"It's just over there." Pedro pointed back toward the tree.

"I know that, senor." Beads of perspiration formed on Ramon's upper lip below his moustache. "But it is so easy to get lost at sea!"

"You won't get lost. I'll leave you the radio, and the plane can guide you."

Ramon's face was set. Determined.

"It must be done," he said. "I will do it."

"Good." Pedro lifted the radio to his lips. " Sir?"

"Yes."

"He can run the boat."

"Okay. Let him haul the raft back and we'll lead you to the survivors."

"Will do, but he's worried about getting lost out here. I'll give him a radio -- will you guide him back?"

"Shit! We've got to guide you to the survivors!"

"Can't you do both?"

"We'll try. Does he speak English? My Spanish isn't so hot, you know!"

Pedro looked at Ramon and started to speak.

Ramon nodded. "I speak a little English, senor."

Pedro thumbed the radio again. "He does."

"Okay. Tell him to call if he gets in trouble. If you had that damned beacon going, he could use the direction finder. Do it when you get back."

"Yes sir."

"Drop run starting now -- ready? We're coming in low, to spot it."

"Ready." Pedro stopped the engine, then sat and watched as the Manitou swept in just a few meters off the water. It passed about fifty meters to the side and, as it passed, a yellow parachute blossomed out the drop door under the tail. Tied to the parachute, two yellow bundles were dragged from the plane. Their parachutes opened and they fell into the sea.

As the plane climbed away from them Pedro started the outboard motor and turned the boat toward the floating bundles.

A yellow plastic canister floated off to one side, tied to the smaller bundle by a length of yellow rope. Reaching over the side of the boat Pedro caught the rope and pulled the canister aboard. Unscrewing the top he pulled out a small red radio, like his own, a fresh pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He set the radio on the floor of the boat and handed the cigarettes and lighter to Ramon.

"Thank you, senor!" Hurriedly, Ramon stripped the cellophane from the package and tore the foil top. He spit his gum over the side of the boat, pulled a cigarette from the pack and lit it.

He relaxed, sucked on the cigarette, then tentatively offered the pack to Pedro, his eyebrows raised.

"You do not smoke, senor."

"No thanks."

"Then I will keep these, if I may." Ramon tucked the pack and the lighter into his shirt pocket.

"Do it, but you'll have to share them with the others when we get back to the tree." Turning, Pedro pulled the rope that still connected the canister to the smaller bundle. As the boat pulled alongside he reached out and pulled the ring that inflated the second boat.

The bundled raft was tied to the boat by about twenty feet of yellow rope. Pedro untied it from the second boat and tied it to a tow-ring at the stern of the first, then picked up the spare radio and showed it to Ramon.

"Can you use one of these?"

"I used a radio on the plantation, senor. That looks about the same."

"It is. If you can use any radio, you can use this one." He handed it over, then picked up his own radio and thumbed the switch.

"Sir?"

"Yes?"

"I've given the spare radio to my friend here. His name's Ramon and if he has any trouble, he'll call you."

"Okay -- now let's go after those other survivors. We haven't got enough fuel to stay out here all day."

"Right sir." Pedro climbed into the new boat and started the motor. Lifted the radio again and thumbed the talk switch.

"Okay," he said. "Where are they?"

Three more survivors had found the raft by the time Ramon returned, and a half dozen people sat near it on the trunk of the tree. Maria sat with them until the boat came into sight, then she stood to watch it approach. She felt cold as she realized that Ramon was alone.

She elbowed people aside and slid down to the branch as the boat pulled alongside, and she pushed her way forward and knelt to catch the boat as it approached. She spoke as Ramon shut the engine off.

"Where is the senor?"

Ramon's face was tense as he looked at her, and his voice sounded higher, somehow.

"He is safe," he said. As he spoke Ramon half-stood, carefully balancing the boat with his hands on the branch.

"But where is he?"

"The plane dropped another boat, and he is using it to search for more people."

"Oh?"

"Yes, senorita. Now if you please -- this boat is not steady!"

Maria stepped back and, with exaggerated care, Ramon climbed carefully onto the branch. His tension seemed to ease as he stood, but he still did not look well.

"Water senor?" A woman leaned out the door of the raft, offering a can of water.

"Si." Ramon began to edge his way toward her, then stopped suddenly as she gently lobbed the can toward him. It was a near-perfect throw but Ramon grabbed desperately for it, and nearly missed.

Clutching the can with an apologetic smile he edged past the raft and up to the truck of the tree, then walked with firmer steps toward the root-ball.

Maria and the others watched him until one woman touched her arm and pointed. Ramon had not moored the boat when he landed, and now it and the bundled raft were drifting several meters away from the branch!

A young man jumped from the branch and just managed to grasp one of the ropes that surrounded the boat as he splashed into the water. He pulled himself aboard.

Several coils of light rope were held to the sides of the boat by tabs with snap fasteners. He un-snapped one and threw it to a man on the branch. The man missed his catch but the rope fell over the branch, and a woman caught it before it slipped into the sea. She handed it to the man, who used it to pull the boat in, as Maria watched.

"Tie it to the branch," she said, "and tie the raft too."

Maria was standing beside the moored raft when she heard the call. It came from the side and, turning, she saw two men and a woman on another tree. They were only about thirty meters away from the raft by water, but much farther if they had to walk across the trees to reach it.

One man looked strong. The other man and the woman did not. At Maria's feet floated the boat Ramon had used.

She had been raised in a fishing village and she had seen people rowing boats all her life -- but boats were men's business and women in San Felipe did not use them.

Maria had tried once, in the basin of the boatyard just a few months ago. She had embroidered a new shirt for Giorgo -- the son of the boatyard owner and the man she was expected to marry -- and she wanted him to wear it to a dance that night so she brought it to him at the yard.

But Giorgo was working on a boat anchored near the middle of the basin and he could not hear her call from shore.

There was a small boat moored at the dock but no man about to take her out to the boat where Giorgo worked. Excited about the shirt Maria had climbed into the boat, untied it and pushed off.

One man noticed her when she was about half-way out, zig-zagging about the basin and making little progress. He called others to watch, and to laugh at her mistakes.

They shouted advice, most of it calculated to increase her problems.

Giorgo heard them. He came out on deck of the boat where he was working and saw Maria in the boat. Saw and heard the men on shore.

Maria's father would have praised her for trying, whether she succeeded or not, but Giorgo didn't. He was angry, and Maria was not sure whether he was angry because she had failed or because she had tried.

Giorgo never spoke of it afterward but that day he stood on the deck of the boat and shouted instructions to her. Shouted orders. Confusing orders.

She tried to obey but perhaps she tried too hard. If she were left alone she could do it, she thought, but the shouting frightened her. Giorgo's was worse than the other men's.

Finally Giorgo sent a seven-year-old boy in another boat to tow her back to the dock. He refused to allow her to come to the boat where he worked, and did not ask her why she had come.

She did not give him the embroidered shirt. Instead she took it home and buried it in the back of a drawer in her dresser. When he came that night to take her to the dance, she said she had a headache.

Now she looked at the boat tied to the branch. Looked around the tree where she stood and saw that no-one was watching her. Some of the others were inside the raft, the rest were on the trunk of the tree and no-one else had noticed the three people on the other tree.

Hesitant, she stepped into the boat and pulled the aluminum oars from under the seat. Found the rubber rings that would hold them on the gunwales.

But she had to guess how to fit the oars into the rings. She had to hold the oar right at the end, with most of it out over the water, and she almost dropped the first one before she got it in. Then she realized that the rings would turn, and that she could slide the oar in from inside the raft. The second one went in easily.

Now she untied the rope.

She dipped one oar into the water and pulled gently. The boat moved slightly. She pulled harder and the boat turned its stern to the tree. Looking over her shoulder she saw that it now pointed toward the three people who waited for her. She dipped both oars into the water and pulled.

And fell off the seat. One oar gripped the water but the other was turned sideways and did not resist. Flustered but unhurt Maria climbed back to the seat and saw that the boat now pointed away from the tree where the people waited.

Watching over her shoulder, she used one oar to turn the boat back.

She tried again with both oars -- gently this time, and making sure both blades caught the water. The boat moved ahead. Concentrating on her rowing, Maria watched the oars until the bow of the boat bumped into something and she slid backward off the seat again. She sprawled on the floor of the boat, then sat up and looked round.

She had reached the tree. A man wearing faded blue denim shirt and trousers, with a machete hung on a rope round his waist, knelt to hold the bow of the boat.

Maria recognized him as she climbed back to her seat. A fisherman from San Felipe -- she had seen him in her father's store. The husband of Carmine Ortega. Manuel? He was said to be a good man, even if he did sometimes drink too much. Carmine spoke well of him.

He smiled in recognition but he did not speak her name and may not have known it. He held the boat while the other man and the woman clambered in and stepped past her to sit on the back seat.

Maria knew the second man too, and she shrank away from him as he stepped past her. A schoolteacher from Rio Blanco who came to San Felipe on weekends, he was a pompous little man who wore fine clothes when there was no occasion for them. He had been born and raised in San Felipe and now he came back to strut about the village and ogle the young women.

Now the fisherman stepped into the boat and stood in front of Maria. He motioned her to move and she looked up at him. He smiled.

"You did well, muchacha, but there is no need now. I have used boats all my life and it is no work for me to row one."

Maria wanted to protest but she could not find the words. With a hand on her arm the fisherman helped her to her feet and pushed her gently toward the single seat at the bow. Sitting, he grasped the oars.

Maria looked at him. "Where is your boat?"

With the flick of an oar the fisherman spun the boat toward the life-raft. As it turned he nodded his head toward the center of the floating island.

"It's part of the island now. Even if I could get it out it would be of no use because the trees have crushed it. It still floats, but it is no longer a boat."

With powerful strokes of both oars he drove the inflatable across the gap, then turned his head to watch the approach to the floating tree. He dipped the oars into the water to stop the boat just before it hit.

He rose and stepped easily past Maria and onto the tree. Picked up the painter and flipped it over the stub of a small branch. Kneeling, he steadied the boat as Maria and the others got out.

Pedro's boat was nearing the tree now, and Pedro was watching them. Had he seen her trying to row the boat? Maria hoped not. She had succeeded, after a fashion, but she hoped the senor had not seen her mistakes. That would be worse than if the tall man with the moustache had been watching!

But Pedro watched the fisherman, not Maria. He watched him as Maria fetched cans of water for her passengers, and while she carried three cans to his boat as it landed. He watched the fisherman as she handed cans of water out to Pedro's two passengers. He barely flicked his eyes to her as she stepped into the boat with a can of water for him!

"Gracias, muchacha." Pedro climbed out of the boat and walked toward the fisherman who looked with interest at the rafts.

"You handle a boat well," Pedro said.

"Gracias, Senor, but it is nothing. I have worked in boats all my life." He held out his hand. "I call myself Manuel."

"Pedro accepted the hand and shook it. "I am Pedro. What work do you do?"

Manuel snapped the tab on his can of water as he spoke.

"I am a fisherman senor." He spoke with pride. "I had my own boat!"

"Do you know outboard motors?"

"I had one on my boat, Senor. It was not quite the same as yours" -- Manuel turned to look at the motor on the stern of the inflatable -- "but I think it is not very different."

He lifted the can to his lips and tipped it to drink as Pedro answered.

"All outboards are about the same. Come and look at this one."

Manuel lowered the can and followed as Pedro stepped into the boat. He sat on the stern seat to inspect the motor as Pedro watched, then he looked up.

"I could run this, Senor." He touched the controls. "Here is the rope for starting, here is the choke. This is the throttle and here is the gearshift. They are not quite the same as they are on my motor but they are the same controls." He lifted the can and drank again.

"Good," Pedro answered. "There is an airplane coming soon with supplies for us. It will drop them into the sea with parachutes and someone has to go out to pull them in. Will you help?"

"Seguro, Senor. I would be glad to help." Manuel drained the last of the water from his can and threw it into the sea. He glanced at the ropes that held the bundled raft to the branch.

"I could help now perhaps, senor." He pointed to the mooring. "That is not good -- it will not hold for long."

Pedro looked at it. "You're right," he said. Will you fix it?"

Maria blushed with shame as Manuel knelt to untie and re-tie the mooring. She blushed again as she realized that Pedro was looking at her.

"Ramon? have you see Ramon? The man who came with me before?"

Ramon! So that was the big man's name. But what did he want Ramon for? Maria turned and saw Ramon sitting in a cave-like hollow among the roots of the tree, staring at the sea. She pointed, then watched as Pedro walked away from her.

Forward to book three of Rescue Trooper

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