Waiting alone in the room where Kirk had witnessed the apparition, with the perilous faint traffic hum wafting in from outside, the softly-sobbing Otto thought once more of Archibald, the brilliant scholar who had wanted to make her his life’s work. He was now, according to the message on the dagger, marooned by his own crew on the Isle of Retribution.
   Just then, came the sound of her own name being called, and she shut her eyes tight for one moment of silent prayer. He was here! “Without you I am nothing, my perfect little carrot!” he intoned in his halting Spanish.
   Only in this moment of extremity could it have happened that he excitedly began to show her his plans for the villa they were to share, and as the band began to play, she allowed her willing mind to sink into a rose-colored maelstrom of bliss.