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. But if she did sink, then they will be scouring the whole area for survivors.'
'Sounds logical.' (I had another idea, not at all logical.)
'Our problem is to stay alive till they find us, avoiding sharks and thirst and sunburn as best we can - and all of that means holding still. Quite still and all the time. Except that I think we should turn over now and then, after the sun is out, to spread the burn.'
'And pray for cloudy weather. Yes, all of that. And maybe we should not talk. Not get quite so thirsty
She kept silent so long that I thought she had started the discipline I had suggested. Then she said, 'Beloved, we may not live.'
'I know.'
'If we are to die, I would choose to hear your voice, and I would not wish to be deprived of telling. you that I love you - now that I may! - in a futile attempt to live a few. minutes longer.'
'Yes, my sweetheart. Yes.'
Despite that decision we talked very little. For me it was enough to touch her hand; it appeared to be enough for -her, too.
A long time later - three hours at a guess - I heard Margrethe gasp.
'Trouble?'
'Alec! Look there!' She pointed. I looked.
It should have been my turn to gasp, but I was somewhat braced for it: high up, a cruciform shape, somewhat like a bird gliding, but much larger and clearly artificial. A flying machine
I knew that flying machines were impossible; in engineering school I had studied Professor Simon Newcomb's well-known mathematical proof that the efforts of Professor Langley and others to build an aerodyne capable of carrying a man were doomed, useless, because scale theory proved that no such contraption large enough to carry a man could carry a heat-energy plant large enough to lift it off the ground - much less a passenger
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