In And Out Of The Zone

Didier: When are you leaving?

Baby Pierre: I'm rescued. We're leaving right now.

Didier: But you're not moving.

Baby Pierre: We're waiting for a packet, no, a wave, no, an envelope....

Didier: An envelope? Down here? Are you kidding?

Rear Admiral Bruni: We're in a bit of a pickle. Would you consider...?

Didier: A lift? Normally I wouldn't.

Baby Pierre: That means YES!

Rear Admiral Bruni: Good man. You'll be rewarded for this kindness.

Didier: I know I will.

He calls up a friend ( Pogonoski ) and together they grasp the net handle in their trifurcated claspers (with bristles).

In a matter of minutes they have lifted the net and its contents to a zone just below the surface of the dark stormy waters of the Recherche Archipelago, off Lucky Bay.

You're on your own now, says Didier. Come on, Pogonoski!

What about your reward? says Baby Pierre.

No more idiots in the benthic zone, says Didier.

Ha ha! laughs his friend Pogonoski.

They turn tail and dive down to the bottom.

How snobbish.

At least we're where we want to be, says Rear Admiral Bruni.

Not quite, says Ageless lobster.

The net floats like a jellyfish just below the surface with the three of them in it.

How long till a wave packet comes?

To pass the time Rear Admiral Bruni tells Ageless and Baby Pierre about his adventures in the Recherche Archipelago.

I had an excellent hydrographer, says Rear Admiral Bruni. Name of Beautemps Beaupré. He charted these waters with the help of Lieutenant Crétin. Those were the days. Now I have to do all my own calculations.

Ageless chomps thoughtfully on the dorsal fin of the ruby sea dragon. He is saving the soft tender brood pouch for later.

........


.....terrible storms, says Rear Admiral Bruni, and had we not had to head straight for Van Diemen's Land we would have mapped the south coast well before Bass and Flinders .....

.....and then, this was 1793 you know, the officers were ardent royalists and the crew were all revolutionaries, so the voyage was fraught with tensions......

Baby Pierre has nodded off to the drone of the history lesson.

He is well asleep when Rear Admiral Bruni recounts how he died of the scurvy .......

Ageless is just about to bite into the brood pouch. Will it be full of eggs? O joy if it should be!

WHEN! along comes a wave packet-train-envelope, and it gathers them up

and it takes them ......

all the way in to the boat ramp in Lucky Bay, where it is two o'clock in the morning.

.......

The others ( Gaius, Arthur, Sweezus, Ferdy, Kobo, Brianna, Sylvia and Ted and one or two Dempsters) are huddled in tents, drinking cocoa.

No one can sleep.