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The surprise over, the party took off in full swing until after midnight. Friends came and went until Pitt was talked out and fighting to stay awake. Finally, Pitt's mother insisted her son get some rest. They all bid him a good night, wished him a speedy recovery and began drifting out the door for the drive to their homes.
"Don't come to work until you're fit and able," counseled Sandecker. "NUMA will struggle along without you."
"There is one project I'd like to pursue in about a month," said Pitt, the old devilish buccaneer gleam briefly flashing in his eyes.
"What project is that?"
Pitt grinned. "I'd like to be on Gladiator Island when the water clears in the lagoon."
"What do you expect to find?"
"His name is Basil."
Sandecker stared, puzzled. "Who in hell is Basil?"
"He's a sea serpent. I figure he'll return to his breeding ground after the lagoon is free of ash and debris."
Sandecker placed a hand on Pitt's shoulder and gave him a look usually reserved for a child who has claimed to have seen the bogeyman. "Take a nice long rest, and we'll talk about it."
The admiral turned and walked away, shaking his head and mumbling something about no such things as sea monsters as Congresswoman Loren Smith came up to Pitt and held his hand.
"Would you like me to stay?" she asked him softly.
Pitt kissed her on the forehead. "Thank you, but I think I'd like to be alone for a while."
Sandecker offered to drive Loren to her townhouse, and she gladly accepted, having arrived at Pitt's welcome-home party in a cab. They sat in reflective silence until the car passed over the bridge into the city.
"I've never seen Dirk so dispirited," said Loren, her face sad and thoughtful. "I never thought I'd ever live to say it, but the fire has gone out of his eyes."
"He'll mend," Sandecker assured her. "A couple of weeks of rest, and he'll be champing at the bit again."
"Don't you think he's getting a little old to play the daring adventurer?"
"I can't think of him sitting behind a desk. He'll never stop roving the seas, doing what he loves to do."
"What drives him?" Loren wondered aloud.
"Some men are born restless," Sandecker said philosophically. "To Dirk, every hour has a mystery to be solved, every day a challenge to conquer."
Loren looked at the admiral. "You envy him, don't you?"
Sandecker nodded. "Of course, and so do you."
"Why is that, do you think?"
"The answer is simple," Sandecker said wisely. "There's a little of Dirk Pitt in all of us."
After everyone had left and Pitt was standing alone in the hangar amid his collection of mechanical possessions, each of which had in some way touched his past, he walked stiffly to the boat he and Maeve and Giordino had built on the Misery rocks and climbed inside the cockpit. He sat there a long time, silently lost in his memories.
He was still sitting there in the Marvelous Maeve when the first rays of the morning sun brushed the rusting roof of the old aircraft hangar he called home.
