And so the day passes. Sinclair packs his luggage, money-making masterpieces and all. Jack, who has nothing to pack but lots to do, stays at the bathysphere and takes occasional breaks to scavenge for parts or murder over-curious splicers.

As artificial evening falls, he's in the bathy's cabin, poking at the jury-rigged steering. He's pulled up a lot of the floor, cut the rudders off from their original radio controls. It's not pretty; there are splinters and wires everywhere. But it's let him stretch salt-saturated ropes from those rudders to a kind of makeshift joystick cluster.

He's even tested it a little. He figured that, if worst came to worst and he was trapped underwater in a non-functioning sphere, he could shoot himself in the head and start over again. But that was never necessary; he managed to take the sphere a few feet down the docking rings without incident, and even got her back again, although it took at least an hour to figure out how to turn around.

Jack is still jubilant from that test run. His heart beats faster every time he thinks about sunlight.

He's whistling, even, completely tunelessly, as he lies on his stomach to check the integrity of his knots.