"Yeah."
"Forty-one, forty, thirty-nine..."
"We might never get off the lighthouse. Ever."
"Yeah."
"Thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one..."
"And we said we'd rescue the Light."
"You said, you mean."
"Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three..."
"Well, get in then."
"You first."
"Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen..."
"Ohcrumbshurry up!" Lucy clambered onto the rounded metal top of the rescue boat, took a deep breath and dropped through the hatch. She landed on the seat behind Miarr's, though she could see nothing of its occupant, as the wide, padded headrest concealed his neat, sealskin-clad head from view. Lucy looked out the thick green window and saw Wolf Boy hesitating on the platform.
"Eleven, ten, nine..." Miarr's voice was loud and clear inside the rescue boat.
"Get in!" Lucy yelled at the top of her voice and rapped sharply on the glass.
"Seven, six..."
"For goodness sake, get in now!"
Wolf Boy knew he had to do it. He suspended all hope of surviving for more than another minute and jumped in. He landed with a bump next to Lucy and felt as if he had landed in his coffin. The hatch closed above him and nailed his coffin lid shut.
"Five, four...fasten seat belts, please," said Miarr. "All crew must wear their seat belts."
Lucy and Wolf Boy fumbled with two thick leather straps and buckled them across their laps. Lucy realized that something must have told Miarr that they were fastened, as the cat-man did not look around but continued his countdown.
"Three, two, one - release!"
The Red Tube set off deceptively slowly along the first twenty feet of rail, then it tipped forward. Lucy felt sick. Wolf Boy screwed his eyes shut tight. There was a jarring clang as the boat's nose hit the rails - and they were off. The Red Tube was down the rails in less than two seconds. They hit the water with a deafening bang and then - to Wolf Boy's horror - they kept right on going, down, down, down into the blackness, just as he had done so many years ago that night in the river when he had fallen from the Young Army boat.
And then - just as had happened on that night in the middle of the river - the terrifying dive leveled off, the water loosened its hold and, like a cork, they began to rise to the surface. Beautiful green light began to shine through the tiny windows and, a moment later, in a fountain of dancing white bubbles, they broke the surface and sunlight flooded in.
Wolf Boy opened his eyes in amazement - he was still alive. He looked at Lucy. White-faced, she managed a flicker of a smile.
"Launch complete," said Miarr, his voice still eerily crackly. "Surface successful. Hatches secure. Commence controlled dive."
And to Lucy and Wolf Boy's dismay, the Red Tube began to sink once more. The sunlight changed to green, the green to indigo and the indigo transformed to black. Inside the capsule a dim red light began to glow, giving a contradictory warmth to the chill that was seeping in from the cold depths of the sea.
Miarr twisted around to speak to his passengers. His sealskin cap blended into the shadowy background and his flat, white face shone like a small moon. His big, yellow eyes were bright with excitement. Miarr smiled and once again his two lower canine teeth edged over his top lip. Lucy shivered. He looked very different from the pathetic creature collapsed on the bunkroom floor whom she had so much wanted to help. She began to wonder if she had made a terrible mistake.
"Why have we...sunk?" she asked, trying to keep a tremor out of her voice and not entirely succeeding.
Miarr was obscure. "To find the Light, first we must enter the dark," he replied, and turned back to his control panel.
"He's gone bonkers," Lucy whispered to Wolf Boy.
"Nuts," agreed Wolf Boy, who knew he had been right all along about the coffin.