Had ever seen. The casualty count was in the billions, as only three in ten survived the plague. The Middle East, China, and the South East Asian coun...tries had been mostly wiped out. The United States had spent the last nine months ferrying its equipment home, bringing ships into port and gathering the survivors together. Allied warships had been towed to the US ports and stored as had ships of other Navies like China's and Russia's ballistic missile submarine fleets.Special Forces had removed. And, man, her ass was even tighter."They continued laughing, jibing each other with merriment. And then they stopped laughing when they heard a loud crash. Running to the parlor, they found pieces of a shattered vase on the floor. Looking at each other in confusion, Mrs. Smither shrugged and was about to get a broom and dustpan when they heard a door slam on the second floor. Mr. Smither retrieved his shotgun, cracked it open and inserted two new shells, then snapped it shut. Stuffing extra. " Okay, but are you sure you were just using the mirror, Nikki?" Of course." It felt like he knew what else she had done."It's just that some money has gone missing from my room recently and I wondered..." It wasn't me! I wouldn't ever do that!" she protested."Well perhaps I should search you." he grinned.Nikki felt herself go redder than ever."But I suppose you've nowhere to hide it." he laughed."Look I swear I just came to use the mirror." Well lets check, shall we?"said Dan, getting up.At. All of the women agreed with me on that feeling, and we decided that we had to deploy both SC1 and SC2 during any maneuvers that might attract a pterodactyl. Z1 was just so damned big that nothing ever happened in a hurry. Oh, well, the pilot spent a lot of time having a cup of coffee handy.Because of the way Z1 held steady at the altitude where it had neutral buoyancy, the only way to go down was to dump gas from the flotation globes. That was done by pumping the helium back into storage.