"I think I know how they got here, now," he added. "We underestimated what we're trying to understand. I'll be all right in a minute."
It was less than a minute before he shook himself and managed to grin wryly at Deirdre.
"Was there a hum in the water?" asked Deirdre, still staring at him. "I thought I heard it on the bottom of the boat. Was that the trouble?"
"Yes. I wouldn't call it a hum," Terry admitted. "Not any longer. Now I know what a slow fire feels like."
"You frightened me," said Deirdre, "the way you splashed...."
"I heard the humming sound," said Terry, "last night when the yacht came up to the island. We were perhaps a half-mile off-shore. It was very faint, but I had the amplifier turned down low. The hum was at its loudest just before we passed the reef, but nobody else noticed. When Dr. Morton said there were abyssal fish in the lagoon, I knew why they'd be there. I made a guess at what might drive them there. I went to find out if I was right. I found out!"
"The hum?" asked Deirdre again. When he nodded, she said: "What are you going to do now? What do you think makes the hum?"
"I'm trying hard not to guess what makes the hum," Terry told her. "Insufficient data. I need more. I think I'll ask what other odd phenomena have turned up in this neighborhood. Foam-patches on the sea? I can't imagine a connection, but still...."
He swung the little boat alongside the dockedEsperanceand held out his hand to help Deirdre to the dock. His hand was wholly steady again. She accepted the help.
"We'll go to the tracking station?"
"Yes. Everybody seems to be there," said Terry.
They heard a babble of voices coming from the satellite-tracking station. As they approached the buildings, Terry looked around. Off at one side there was the very peculiar aerial system by which tiny artificial moons circling the earth could be detected by their own signals. Minute spheres and cylinders and spiky objects and foolish-looking paddle-wheels, whirling in their man-appointed rounds, sent down signals with powers of mere fractions of a watt. This system of aerials picked up those miniature broadcasts and extracted remarkable amounts of information from them. It was possible to determine the satellites' distance more accurately, by a comparison of phase-changes in their signals, than if steel tape measures were stretched up to make physical contact with them. The accuracy was of the order of inches at hundreds of miles. Floating where the stars were bright and unwinking lights against blackness and the sun was a disk with writhing arms of fire, the small objects sent back information that men had never possessed before and did not wholly know what to do with now that they did. And there were other objects in the heavens, too. There were satellites which no longer signaled back to earth. Some had their equipment worn out. Some objects were satellites which had failed to function from the beginning. Some were mysteries.
The bolide of the night before was a mystery. As Terry and Deirdre entered the wide verandah of the recreation building for the station's personnel, they heard Dr. Morton protesting, "But that's out of the question! I agree that we never know any more about what the Russians throw out to space than what we find out for ourselves. That's true! But this wasn't a terrestrial object! If it was a satellite that wasn't launched right, it had to be sent up from Russian territory. It wasn't. That's positive! If we assume it was a satellite that had already made several orbital turns, we must admit it would be an impossible shift in apogee for it to come down at the angle it did!"
Deirdre and Terry sat down as someone else said hotly, "Our observations were wrong. They had to be! The earth's magnetic field couldn't affect the speed of an objectoutsidethe atmosphere! Our observations say it slowed down. It couldn't!"
Davis lifted a hand in greeting. The argument stopped for a moment. Deirdre was known, but Terry had to be introduced. He was sitting beside a bald young man who explained in a low tone, as the argument resumed. "They're having fun. They argued for days when our radar picked up an empty second stage in orbit. They're still ready to dispute for hours about a supposed retrograde satellite that was spotted last year, was watched for four turns, and then disappeared. Beer?"
"Too early," said Terry. "Thanks just the same."
Davis said earnestly, at the other side of the room, "I'd feel a lot better if that thing last night hadn't splashed where it did."
"The bolide," said a voice humorously, "is a free animal."
The discussion went on. Terry saw Deirdre talking to a middle-aged woman with a splendid sun-tan and a placid expression on her face. Doug and Tony sat watchfully on the side lines, listening. Doug had been offered, and had accepted, a sandwich. He ate it methodically.
Terry had a sudden feeling of unreality. Less than half an hour before he'd been in torment and, but for Deirdre, on his way to death. On theEsperancethere'd been so much that was absorbing in the way of fish behavior that he'd forgotten some people were interested in other things. Here a dozen people squabbled over the behavior of a meteorite. Nothing could be of less consequence to the outside world. But in the outside world, people argued about baseball, or golf, or politics....
Doug excused himself and slipped outside. Terry joined him there a little later. Doug was smoking a cigarette, looking at the sky and the palms.
"Pretty heavy discussion," said Terry.
"It's over my head," said Doug. "I got lonesome. It made me think of my girl. She likes to talk like this. That's why ..."
He stopped.
"Is there an aqualung outfit on theEsperance?" asked Terry.
"Sure! Two or three of them. Mr. Davis had an idea they'd be useful. Used one of them last week to look at theEsperance'sbottom-planks. Why?"
"I'd like to poke around the bottom of the lagoon a little," said Terry, with unconscious grimness. "Would you help?"
"Sure!" said Doug.
They went back to theEsperance. Doug got out two aqualung outfits. They checked the valves and tanks and connections. Doug brought out two spring guns. In half an hour they were in the outboard, headed for what Doug said was the deepest part of the lagoon.
Arrived there, Terry tested the water with his finger and then went overside. Instead of a spring gun, he used one of the fish spears that seemed to be standard equipment for fishing, here. Doug stayed in the boat to watch.
Terry'd guessed that what he looked for would be in the deepest part of the lagoon. He was right. Within half an hour he'd speared five fish of types that had no business being within two thousand fathoms of the surface. He ignored the lagoon's normal inhabitants. He picked on fish of a dark-red color, which is predominant in the depths but not elsewhere. When the fish had extremely small eyes or extremely large ones, he hunted them determinedly, knowing they were deep-sea fish. He caught five, which was a good haul, even considering his previous suspicions.
Doug inspected the catch as the outboard went back to the yacht. Terry replaced his spear under the gunwale.
"They're queer fish," observed Doug. "I wouldn't want to eat them."
"Neither would I," agreed Terry. "But I feel a certain sympathy for them. I think we've shared an experience."
He did. Fish so far from their normal environment would not have migrated unless they'd been forced to. So these fish must have been driven up from the blissful utter blackness of the abyss, which was their habitat. He had a vivid memory of the kind of urging they'd received, because of his recent swim outside the reef opening. That was the experience he believed they shared.
He got his catch onto theEsperance'sdeck and found some sharp knives in the galley, while Doug put the aqualungs away. When Doug came abovedecks again, he looked distastefully at the work Terry had undertaken.
"Do you like to do that sort of thing?" he asked.
"Hardly!" said Terry. "But I want to get it done."
Doug watched for a moment or two.
"I'm pretty keen about poetry. Sometimes I feel I've got to sweat over a poem that I need to get written. It's hard work. There's no real sense to it. But I feel it's got to be done. I guess that's the way you feel now."
"Perhaps," said Terry.
It wouldn't have occurred to him to liken the writing of verses to the dissection of dead deep-sea fish, but Doug had a point. He went away presently, and Terry completed the highly unpleasant task. He had just finished flushing the deck clean when Deirdre came back from the tracking station. He was already at work on the recorder when she stepped onto the deck.
"You didn't stay," said Deirdre. "I was waiting for a chance to tell my father about the hum outside the lagoon, but he was as deep in the meteor argument as any of them. I still haven't told him."
"There's something else to tell him now," Terry remarked. "I went down with an aqualung. Doug was standing by," he added at her gesture of protest, "and speared some fish that don't belong here. I've dissected them. Their swim bladders had been very skillfully punctured, so if they went or were driven into lesser pressure, they'd leak instead of bursting. That's how they survived coming up from the depths. But the main thing is this."
He held out a small plastic object in his hand. It was about an inch in diameter and two in length, and there were inclusions in the clear material. There were plates and threads of metal. They had that look of mysterious purpose that highly-developed technical devices have.
"This was fastened to the fin of a fish that belongs as far down as a fish can go," he said. "I've found out one of its purposes. When it is in the water, it makes a sound more acute than a whistle every time another sound strikes it. Try that on your piano!"
Deirdre stared.
"I'm saying," he repeated, "that it takes in one sound and gives out another. It's ... it could be a relay. What is that for? What's it all about? What does it mean? And I ask just those questions because I don't dare ask who and why!"
"What ... what will you do?" asked Deirdre absurdly.
"I've no idea," Terry told her. "I've got a feeling that the wise thing to do would be to settle down somewhere and buy a shop, and forget all this. If I don't think about it, maybe it'll go away."
"I'll get my father and see what he says."
"Tell him," commanded Terry, "that I want to try out my fish-driving horn. I'd like to have witnesses. If this foolishness has to be reported to somebody, we need evidence of the facts. I want to drive fish and see how many deep-sea ones there are in this lagoon, and how many of them have spy-devices on them."
Deirdre turned away. Then she turned back.
"Spy-dev—"
"I slipped," said Terry. "I shouldn't have said that. Forget it. Just tell your father I have an extremely urgent impulse to drive fish, and would he come and help."
Deirdre looked at him strangely, and went onto the wharf to search for her father.
Terry paced back and forth on theEsperance'sdeck. In a few minutes Davis and the crew-cuts appeared with Deirdre. But they were not alone. Straggling behind them came nearly all the personnel of the tracking station. There would be somebody on official duty, of course. But here was the bespectacled Dr. Morton; the bald young man who'd offered Terry beer; and the installation cook; a typist, and specialists in radar and other abstruse subjects.
Deirdre said, "I told them about the fish-driving business and they want to see. They stopped arguing about last night's bolide to take ringside seats. All right?"
Terry shrugged. He had the recorder already set up. He'd taken a section of the tape made where the sea was bright, at the place where the loudest of the unpleasant humming noise was recorded. He'd made a loop of it so it would play over and over.
He played the much-amplified sound through the underwater horn held in the air. The result was a raucous bellowing noise. He lowered it into the water. The horn touched the surface and went under.
Instantly, the fish of the lagoon seemed to go crazy. All the surface broke and writhed and splashed. There was an incredible number of fish. Terry turned the horn on one side. In this way, not all the water was filled with the intolerable noise, but only a net-like beam of it raced across the water. Within that line the fish continued to leap frenziedly. The rest of the lagoon suddenly quieted down. In a little while the beam's space, also, grew quiet. But that was because the fish that had been previously caught in it had escaped.
"I'm afraid," said Terry, "that this isn't going to be very entertaining. I'm going to sweep the beam across the lagoon, pushing the fish ahead of it, until I should have them all in one small area."
It was curious that he felt uncomfortable as he set about his task. But he'd experienced the sensation this sound produced. And it was not very pleasant.
He turned the beam around, slightly. Again, there were sudden splashings. They died away. He turned the beam again. It was a nasty, snarling vibration in the water. So far as fish were concerned, it was more like a wall than a net, because not even the tiniest living creature could penetrate it. Not only fish fled before it. Shrimps and crabs and all types of crustaceans jerked and crawled and swam ahead of its motion. Jellyfish writhed when it touched them. Sea cucumbers contorted themselves. Everything that lived in the lagoon and could swim or crawl or writhe moved before the invisible barrier. Presently, the effect of crowding could be seen, and fish began to leap out of water.
"This is a great advance in civilization," said Dr. Morton. "Men invented guns and destroyed the buffalo and the passenger pigeon! You may have made it possible to depopulate the sea!"
Terry did not answer. The morning sun shone brightly, a gentle breeze made ripplings on the lagoon, the palms waved their fronds in languid gestures, and the surf could be heard booming and splashing on the outer reef. And about two dozen people stood on the wharf or on theEsperance'sdeck and watched a spliced section of recorder-tape go through and through a recorder, which was set to make a sound underwater that could not be heard by the people above.
The fish of the lagoon had crowded themselves into a minor embayment of the shore. There were innumerable leapings there.
"There should be plenty of fish collected now," said Terry distastefully. "I certainly can't herd them ashore."
The outboard boat pushed away from the yacht, its motor roaring. It reached the area in which the water seemed to seethe and surge with the motion of densely-crowded swimming creatures. The people in the boat examined the surrounding water, then the boat came back at top speed.
"They're there!" called Davis. "And thick enough to walk on! I clearly saw some freaks that must come up from the bottom! We want to collect them!"
"I speared five just now," Terry told him, "and one of them was wearing this."
He held up the plastic object he'd found. There was silence for a moment. Then Dr. Morton said briskly, "We'll want fish spears. We'll take all the boats and go after some more of these piscatory oddities. Who's best with a spear?"
Davis would go. He could use the two fish spears that were standard equipment for the outboard. The staff of the tracking station scattered to launch other boats. Only Terry and Deirdre remained on theEsperance. It was necessary for someone to stand by the recorder.
Boats moved away across the water. One stout member of the island's staff trudged along the shore.
"You're driving them," said Deirdre. "You are right."
"I wish I weren't," said Terry.
"Why?"
"You know how these weird fish got here," he said impatiently. "They were driven here. You know how they've been kept here. I experienced that! I told you why they didn't die when they came up from thousands of fathoms! Now, what's the only possible purpose for their being here? Put it more scientifically! What is the consequence of these happenings, so that to some biological entity it would be a favorable happening?" His tone was sardonic, at the end.
"I don't know."
"I hope I don't either," said Terry dourly.
He was in no amiable mood. He'd made too many guesses like those Davis had mentioned. He was beginning to have less and less hope that they were untrue. Each new development made any imaginable cause of these events just so much more appalling to think about.
In an hour, three boats came back from the small bay into which all the fish of the lagoon had been crowded. Terry turned off the underwater horn. A stout man walked slowly along the shore with a heavy burden of known edible fish. He was the island's cook, and he had speared them from the beach. The boats, altogether, had speared and captured not less than sixty specimens of fish normally found only many thousand feet below the ocean's surface. Upon inspection, all of them were found to have deftly punctured swim bladders, punctured with so slender a barb that the opening would close by itself, except when serving for the release of intolerably expanding gas.
Before noon, seven more plastic objects had been found among the deep-sea fish. Three seemed identical to the one Terry had found. Two others were identical to each other but of a different kind, and the last two were of two different types altogether. Only those like the one tested by Terry seemed sensitive to sounds, which they changed into other sounds at a twenty-thousand-cycle frequency, or higher. The rest did nothing that could be detected.
During the afternoon, news came to distract the absorption of the tracking station staff in the lagoon's fish. The short-wave operator came running to the wharf, waving a written message. The deck of theEsperancewas not a pretty sight, just then, with the dissection that had been taking place on it. Jug was beginning to flush the debris overside.
The short-wave operator arrived. Dr. Morton read the message. He raised his voice.
"Here's a fancy one!" he told the assembled company. "Space-radar's picked up a new object coming in from nowhere. It will probably orbit once before it hits the air and burns. By the line of motion it should pass nearly overhead here. We're alerted to get it under observation and watch it!" He waved the message in a large gesture. "We've got to get ourselves set up! The argument on the path of last night's bolide and why it fell where it did is again in order. We'll see what we can do about computing the fall-point of this!"
He headed for the shore. The staff followed, babbling. Somebody's mathematics would be verified, and with it his views on the possible effects of terrestrial magnetism on objects approaching the earth.
"We ought to get these plastic things to Manila," Davis said slowly. "They need to be compared to others. But I think we'll wait and see this bolide first."
A heated argument started in the tracking station staff. From Dr. Morton downward, almost to the station's cook, the most varied predictions were made. The official computation from Washington, made from the observed course and height and speed, predicted that the bolide would land somewhere in the South Pacific. Dr. Morton predicted a fall in the China Sea, within a certain precisely stated number of miles from Thrawn Island. Other predictions varied.
At exactly fourteen minutes after eight—a time way ahead of the official schedule but exactly as Dr. Morton had predicted—the bolide passed overhead. It was an amazing spectacle. It left a trail of flame behind, across thirty degrees of sky. It went on and on....
Less than ten minutes later the short-wave radio informed the island that the shooting star had been seen to fall in the sea. It had been observed by a plane which was then circling over the area in which theEsperancehad encountered the circle of shining sea. The plane was there to see if the phenomenon would occur again. It didn't.
But the plane saw the bolide as it struck the sea, and huge masses of steam and spray arose. The bolide was not white-hot, then, as when it passed over Thrawn Island. It was barely of dull-red brightness. It hit the sea and sank, leaving steam behind.
The water was forty-five hundred fathoms deep at that point.
Fourteen hours later theEsperancemade ready to sail from Thrawn Island. Her purpose was to carry the plastic objects to Manila, where they would be turned over to specialized laboratories to be studied. Five such objects had been found before: one in the Thrawn Island lagoon, while the satellite-tracking station was under construction, and four attached to exotic fish brought to market by the commercial fishing boatLa Rubia. Now there were eight more, of four different kinds. To the laboratories would go Terry's observation that one kind of these objects absorbed sound at audible frequencies and retransmitted it at much higher ones, but only under water. All this was very interesting and very puzzling.
But a serious disturbance had arisen at the tracking station.
Dr. Morton came to theEsperancebefore her departure. He had a problem. He'd predicted to the minute, and almost to the mile, the landing of the bolide of the night before. That was the first accurate prediction of the kind in history. But his forecast stood alone in its precision. Nobody else had even come near being right. Now he was being insistently queried by astronomers the world over. They wanted to know how he'd done it. In particular, they wanted to know how he'd figured that the bolide would lose just so many feet per second velocity, neither more nor less, in a three-quarter orbit around the world. Nobody else had such a figure in his equation for the landing spot. Dr. Morton had. His prediction had been exact. Where did he get that necessary but inexplicable figure?
He beckoned Davis and Terry to go below with him, in theEsperance'safter cabin. Terry hesitated.
"You may as well hear my troubles," said Morton vexedly. "You're largely responsible for them."
Terry followed uneasily. He didn't see how Dr. Morton could hold them responsible. He had guarded his own guesses about theEsperance'sdiscoveries against even the slightest expression. He couldn't let himself believe in their correctness, but he was appalled at the inadequacy of all other explanations of past events.
"In sixteen months," said Morton annoyedly, down below, "we've spotted six bolides coming in to land in the Luzon Deep. That's out of all reason! Of course, it could be a mathematical series of wildly unlikely coincidences, such as probability says may happen sometimes. Up to last night that seemed to be a possible explanation."
Davis nodded. His expression was odd.
"But now," said Morton somehow indignantly, "that's ruled out! It's ruled out by last night's bolide, and yesterday's fishing experiment, and that business of the shining sea, plus those damned plastic gadgets and deep sea fish thriving in shallow water! There's no reasonable explanation for such things, and they're not mere coincidences!"
"I'm afraid," admitted Davis, "that they're not."
"The obvious explanation," said Morton doggedly, "I refuse to name or consider. But nevertheless the question is not whether a theory or an explanation is unlikely or not. The question is whether it's true!"
Davis nodded. Terry had to agree. But the way people are trained in modern times puts a great emphasis on reason, often at the expense of fact. Terry felt the customary civilized reluctance to accept a statistically improbable idea.
"I'm on a spot," fumed Morton. "I calculated that the damned bolide would slow after it went into orbit around the earth. I calculated that it would slow exactly so much. Do you want to know how I figured how much it should slow down? I'll tell you! I calculated exactly how much it would have to slow to be able to fall into the Luzon Deep! It did slow. It did fall there. But how am I going to explain that to Washington?"
Terry suddenly felt a warm sympathy for Morton. It is bad enough to dispute with oneself when something incredible happens. But Dr. Morton had gone out on a limb. He'd been caught psychologically naked telling the truth, and now he was asked to explain it. And he couldn't.
"This thing has got to come to a head!" he said angrily. "Sooner or later they'll find out that I don't calculate where it'll land by its behavior in space but by its landing spot! Davis, you've talked about stirring something up. For Heaven's sake, do it! You may save my reputation! And you...."
"I'll try to think of something," said Davis reservedly.
"I've got to have proof that my suspicions are right or wrong before I'm ruined. I know what you're planning to do. Do it! Is there anything that can be done here to help?"
Davis spread out his hands helplessly. But Terry said, "Yes. Send a boat every so often to listen at the gap in the reef. Put an oar overboard and put your ear to the handle. You should hear the underwater hum, if it's still there. It was there this morning."
Morton looked at him suspiciously.
"Why check on it? Should it change?"
"Perhaps," said Terry. "We've speared most of the deep-sea fish in the lagoon. Maybe we've interfered with ... the reports from the plastic objects, telling what was happening up here. There may be a reaction. If so, most likely the humming will stop, and after a longer or shorter time begin again. And then, if my guess is right, there'll be more deep-sea creatures in the lagoon."
"Ha," said Morton. "I think you and I have the same kind of delusions! All right. I'll see that that's done. You two do the rest."
He went abovedecks. When Terry got on deck, Dr. Morton's angular figure was already marching along the wharf to the shore.
There was no ceremony of departure. TheEsperancecast off and her engine started. She moved toward the lagoon entrance under power only, but her sails were hoisted as she floated on, and Jug Bell was trimming the jib when she cleared the opening to the sea.
The humming in the water was still audible to the submarine ear, close to the land. It occurred to Terry to take a bearing on the source of the sound, noting both the compass direction and the vertical angle from the reef. If his vertical-angle reading was accurate, a line from the reef to the source of the sound would touch the bottom at twenty-seven thousand feet down, between four and five miles away.
TheEsperancesailed on. The humming duly faded away. Terry left the recorder picking up undersea sounds, without recording them. It relayed the underwater sounds to the people on deck. It was in Terry's mind to keep at least half an ear cocked to it, in case the mooing sounds, heard and recorded elsewhere, should come again.
They did not. TheEsperancewent methodically on her way, headed south by east, under sail. A slowly swaying horizon of unbroken sea was all about. There was nothing in the least unusual or mysterious to be seen anywhere.
Presently, Terry found himself in conversation with Deirdre, and the world seemed so blatantly normal that their talk dodged all unusual trends. They talked about their childhoods, about things they had done and places they had seen.
At about four in the afternoon Nick bellowed, "Thar she blows!" in a fine attempt at proper whaling ship style, and all theEsperance'scompany joined to watch a spouting far ahead. The yacht changed course a little, and presently reached a pod of sperm whales at the surface. The huge dark bodies moved leisurely through the water. Jud displayed great erudition on the subject and explained in detail how their spouting proved them to be sperm whales. Deirdre pointed out a baby whale close beside a larger one.
They sailed on, leaving the whales behind. The crew-cuts, inevitably, argued about them. They canvassed all the information and misinformation they possessed and came up with a heated discussion about whales, how they can swim down to the enormous depths without suffering from the bends on rising again. Then the conversation turned to the food they eat. Whalers, in the old days, had found snouts of squids and undigested sections of squids' tentacles in the stomachs of harpooned sperm whales. There were reports of sections of tentacles four feet thick, implying a startling total size, all of which proved that the whales had been at the bottom of the ocean, where such gigantic squids can be found. These were the reports of reliable whaling skippers. Certainly the scars made by the tentacular arms of huge squids, indicating battle, have been found on the skin of sperm whales, and there have been reports of battles on the surface between whales and squids of sizes most naturalists would be unwilling to certify. In such cases it was assumed that the squids had been attacked at the bottom of the sea and had followed the whale to the surface when it came up in need of air. Certainly only an enormous squid would be able to sustain a battle with a whale.
Terry listened to the discussion. Everybody had his own opinion.
"You'd never settle the argument, unless you could put a camera and a flash gun on a whale and get an instrument-report from it."
Which was not a new idea, of course. But it was curious that the thought of sending self-reporting instruments down to the bottom of the sea had been suggested by his own suspicion that similar instruments had been sent up from below. Sounding lines had been lowered with thermometers and nets and sampling machines. Core-takers had been dropped to get samplings of abyssal mud. But tethered instrumentation is never more than so useful.
Deirdre said something. Terry realized that she'd repeated it. He'd become absorbed in the possibilities of instrument-reporting from the surface to the depths and back again.
"You're not listening," protested Deirdre. "I'm talking about the bathyscaphe that ought to be in Manila any day now."
"I'm trying to picture myself going down in a bathyscaphe," said Terry hastily. "I don't think I'd like it."
A bathyscaphe is a metal sphere with walls and windows of enormous thickness, hung from a metal balloon filled with gasoline for flotation. It is lowered to appalling depths with the help of heavy ballast, and is equipped with electric motors for independent motion. It carries powerful electric reflectors which allow as much as thirty or forty feet of visibility. It rises to the surface again when its ballast is dumped. There are only three such undersea exploring devices in the whole world.
"I'm not at all sure you wouldn't like it," said Deirdre.
Terry scowled at his own thoughts. There are opinions a man holds firmly without ever being aware of them, unless they are challenged, and if that happens, he is deeply suspicious of the challenge because it suggests that his opinion needs to be re-examined. Terry had been gathering scraps of information here, and unquestionable items there, resisting a conclusion all the while.
It seemed fantastic to think that the plastic objects carried by deep-sea fish out of their natural environment were actually man-made instruments—telemetering apparatus closely comparable to the devices used to transmit information from outer space. It was wildly imaginative to suppose that they transmitted information from the water surface to the depths of the ocean; that fish had been driven up from the abyss in order to report what went on at the surface. Report to whom? It was the most fantastic of fantasies to think that there was curiosity, in the Luzon Deep, about the manners and customs of the inhabitants of the surface waters and of those areas not covered by the sea.
But Terry stopped short. There were limits to the ideas he would allow his brain to think about.
Deirdre walked away, and he assured himself he never thought of anything so ridiculous as the conclusions he had just reached. Presently, dinner was served, and Terry painstakingly acted like a perfectly rational person. After dinner Davis, as usual, settled himself down to enjoy a program of symphonic music from San Francisco, many thousands of miles away. And Deirdre vanished from sight again.
Later on Terry found himself alone on theEsperance'sdeck, except for Nick at the wheel—a mere dark figure seen only by the light of the binnacle lamp. There was a diffused, faint glow coming from the after-cabin hatch. Up forward, one of the crew-cuts plucked a guitar, and Terry could imagine Doug dourly trying to read poetry despite the noise. The sails were black against the sky. The deck was darker than the sea.
Terry's guesses haunted him. He assured himself that he did not entertain them even for an instant. They were absurd! A part of his mind argued speciously that if they were absurd there was no reason not to test them. If he was afraid to try, it would imply that at least part of him believed them.
He picked up one of the plastic objects, and moved the recorder close to the lee rail. It still transmitted faithfully, at minimum volume, the washing of the waves as heard from beneath, and occasional small sounds from living creatures, generally far away in the sea. Heeled over as theEsperancewas, his hand could reach down into the rushing waters overside.
He came to a resolution. He felt foolish, but by now he was determined to try an experiment. Tiny light-blue sparks flashed where the water raced past the yacht's planking. When he dipped his hand, water piled up against his wrist and a streak of brightness trailed away behind.
He tapped the plastic object against the hull. One tap, two taps, three taps, four taps. Then five, six, seven, eight. He went back to one. One tap, two, and three and four. Five and six and seven and eight.
The recorder gave out the tappings the underwater microphone had picked up. It seemed to Terry that the loudspeaker struggled to emit the shrillest imaginable sounds in strict synchrony with the tappings.
Then Deirdre's voice came quietly, very near.
"I don't think," she said evenly, "that that's a fair thing to do."
He'd been bent over the rail in an awkward position. He straightened up, guiltily.
"I know it's nonsense, but I was ... ashamed to admit ..."
"To admit," Deirdre concluded for him, "that by tapping numbers with a plastic spy-device, you hoped to say to whom it might concern that we've found a communicator, and we know what it is, and we're trying to get in touch with the intelligent creatures who made it."
To hear his own self-denied guesses spoken aloud was appalling. Terry instantly disbelieved them entirely.
"It's ridiculous, of course," he protested. "It's childish...."
"But it could be true," said Deirdre. "And, if true, it could be dangerous. Suppose whatever put those plastic gadgets on the fish doesn't want to be communicated with? Suppose it feels that it should defend the secret of its existence by killing those who suspect it? I wasn't spying on you," she added. "I heard the tappings down below."
Then she was gone. He saw the interruption in the light from the after-cabin hatch as she went below.
He was suddenly filled with horror at the idea that if his guesses did prove to be right, he might have endangered Deirdre. And then he ceased to feel foolish. He felt like a criminal instead.
For a long, long time he listened with desperate intensity to the recorder, lest he hear some reply to his signals.
But no answer came. The sounds from undersea remained utterly commonplace.
When morning arrived he was in a state of desperate gloom. At breakfast Deirdre acted as if she considered the incident closed. And, such being the nature of men, Terry felt worse than before.
He was not wholly at ease again, even when that afternoon theEsperancesailed in past Cavite and Corregidor and into Manila Bay. A new ship was at anchor in the harbor. It was a stubby, stocky ship which Davis regarded with interest.
"That's thePelorus," he told Terry as the yacht passed within a mile, on the way to her former anchorage. "She's the hydrographic ship with the bathyscaphe on board. We'll visit her. I'll get Nick to call her on short-wave."
He went forward, where Nick was making ready to drop the anchor. Davis took over the chore, and Nick went below.
"Are you going ashore?" asked Deirdre.
Terry shrugged. "I've no reason to."
She looked relieved. "Then you'll stay with theEsperanceuntil—things are settled one way or another? I mean, you're really enlisted?"
"Until there are no more ways left for me to blunder," said Terry distastefully. "I'm about through the list, though."
"Not at all!" protested Deirdre. "Tapping numbers was really a very good idea. I was horrible! I scolded because you'd kept it a secret from me. I'd have been proud if I'd thought of it first!"
Nick came back and spoke to Davis. Davis came aft.
"ThePeloruswill send a boat as soon as we've anchored," he told them. "They've heard something and want to see the plastic objects."
"I'd like the long end of a bet that they don't believe in them, or us," Terry said abruptly. "They're established authorities on the ocean bottom. They know a lot. They probably know so much they can't really believe there's anything more to know than what they're busy finding out now."
Davis shook his head. He was confident. TheEsperanceanchored, almost exactly where she'd been when Terry first came on board. Within half an hour a boat arrived from thePelorus. Terry repeated his refusal to go along. Deirdre went along with her father.
They came back a little over an hour later. At first Davis was almost speechless with fury. Then he told Terry, choking on his rage, "According to them, the plastic objects are a hoax. The hum is a school of fish. We aren't trained observers. At Thrawn Island they're astronomers and they simply don't know anything about biology. And we should realize that it's starkly impossible for intelligence to develop where the oxygen supply is limited. It's unthinkable that abyssal fish should have their swim bladders punctured so they won't explode from release of pressure when they come to the surface. Those in the lagoon aren't abyssal fish, just unfamiliar species!"
"Well?" Terry asked.
"Oh, they're going to make a bathyscaphe dive!" said Davis as angrily as before. "As a matter of courtesy to somebody—not us. They'll make it where we found fish packed in a circle. That happens to be the deepest part of the Luzon Deep, in any case. They don't object to our sending our dredge down first. They will be politely interested if it comes back up."
"I," announced Deirdre, "I am so mad I could spit!"
"There's no use in our staying here," said Davis, seething. "Our dredge should be ready. We'll go up to Barca and tow it to the point we want to send it down."
He ordered Nick to get ready to lift anchor.
"One question," Terry said finally. "Did you mention the bolides?"
"No!" snapped Davis. "Would I want them to think I was crazy?"
He stamped away.
TheEsperanceput to sea again. She sailed north along the coast. At dinner everybody was quiet. It was the only meal, since Terry's joining, that had not been enlivened by an elaborate argument on some subject or other. Davis was still in an abominable mood. He knew it, and held himself to silence.
Later, Terry and Deirdre talked together. They refrained tacitly from speaking of marine biology or any reasons for tapping plastic objects against theEsperance'shull. They discussed only trivia, but somehow Terry found any subject absorbing, when he was with Deirdre.
After a while she went below, and he stayed abovedecks, smoking. The moon had not yet risen when he turned in.
They sailed into the small harbor of Barca at ten in the morning. By twelve, local boatmen had towed out an ungainly object some thirty-two feet long. They tethered it to bitts at theEsperance'sstern. By one o'clock they had loaded on her deck a large, folded sack of sailcloth and half a dozen specially-cast concrete blocks with eyed iron rods cemented in them. At half-past one Deirdre, who had gone ashore in one of the yacht's own boats, came back with innumerable supplies she'd bought. At two o'clock theEsperancewent out to sea again.
The towed object was a construction around a central wooden spar with an iron tube at its top end and half a dozen lesser spars linked loosely to its bottom. A mass of fishnet was fastened to the smaller spars and heavy ropes were holding the spars and the net in place during its tow. There was a hook for attaching the main spar to the concrete sinkers.
"It opens like an umbrella," explained Deirdre. "We'll hoist it upright barely out of the water, and fasten on the weights. The canvas bag fits on that iron pipe. When you let it go, it sinks like an umbrella that's tightly closed, but when it touches bottom the weights spread it out and an explosive charge automatically goes off in that iron tube. It's special explosive. The gas it makes inflates the canvas bag, which can't burn underwater, and that floats the whole thing back up with the ribs of the umbrella stretched out and spreading the net between them. It should catch anything it encounters as it rises. As the pressure lowers, the excess gas can escape through a relief-valve. This dredge is experimental. If it works, it can be modified to do lots of things."
"Such as poking at things we don't believe in," said Terry drily. "That explosion ought to stir up anything in its neighborhood. It'll be much more disturbing and audible than a few light taps against theEsperance'shull!"
Deirdre grinned ruefully and did not answer.
The bulky tow slowed the yacht. She did not reach the position of the fish-filled circle until after nightfall, and it was necessary to have plenty of light by which to locate the inflated bag when it came to the surface, so nothing could be tried until the following morning. A short while before daybreak, lights appeared at the horizon. Red and green sidelights, and white central lights. It was a steamer. It came closer and closer. Presently, it turned and headed upwind and went dead slow, barely keeping steerage. It was thePelorus.
Dawn arrived in a golden radiance which thrust aside the night. ThePelorusshone brightly in the first rays of the sun. A large object was hoisted out of her hold. Its shape was that of a gravid goldfish, with a smaller sphere hanging beneath it. It went overside, slowly, and there it floated, rolling wildly on the waves. For a very long time nothing seemed to happen. Then the water-level of the float sank a little. It was being filled with gasoline, which is lighter than water and practically incompressible.
On theEsperance, the tow had been pulled alongside and the yacht's powerful winch hauled it upright. The yacht heeled over from the weight. The crew-cuts fastened the canvas sack in place, and Davis loaded the explosive charge into the iron tube. The crew-cuts cleared the nets. This preliminary operation seemed promising, and it was quite likely that the dredge would operate as it was designed to do.
ThePeloruswhistled impatiently. Nick abandoned his job and went below to the short-wave set. He returned shortly after.
"ThePelorussays she'll be ready to send the bathyscaphe down for a test dive in two hours," he reported. "She says she will object if our gadget is floating free at the time, on the chance that it might interfere with the bathyscaphe. She asks if you can send our dredge down right away and get it over with."
"Tell them yes," said Davis. "In five minutes."
He compressed his lips. TheEsperance'sdevice, though clumsy, was fundamentally simple. Five minutes later the top of the central spar was level with the water. "Cut away," said Davis.
Doug slashed the single rope holding the dredge. It sank immediately.
The recorder gave off the sound of waves. Occasionally, very occasionally, a chirping or a grunt could be heard. Twenty minutes. Thirty.
There was a "crump!" from the loudspeaker which reported underwater events. The sound seemed to come from very far below. Even a small amount of explosive makes a very considerable concussion when it goes off so far down, and the shock travels in all directions instead of merely upward. The recorder picked up that concussion as a deep-bass sound.
The sun shone. The wind increased. Waves marched in serried ranks from here to there.
A long, long time later the inflated canvas bag came up and was floating on top of the waves. ThePeloruswhistled. Nick went below. A few minutes later he came up again to report.
"ThePelorussays not to cast our dredge adrift. They're sending the bathyscaphe down unmanned, to test all apparatus before a manned dive. They don't want any debris in the sea."
"Tell them we send them a kiss," snapped Davis, "and they needn't worry!"
TheEsperanceapproached the floating bag. Jug swung out on the lifting boom and hooked it. The winch hauled it out of the water. The concrete weights were gone. What the nets had captured was not pretty to see. A dead fish with foliated appendages had come up from far below, to judge by what its unpunctured swim bladder had done to it in uncontrolled expansion. Davis said curtly it wasLinophrine arborifer, belonging two thousand fathoms below. An angry-looking creature, similarly dead, wasOpisthoproctus grimaldi. It belonged deeper than the other. There were other specimens. Agenostomaof a species the books didn't picture; aMyctophum; and various other creatures, mostly as grotesque as their scientific names. All were abyssal fish. They had died while rising from a pressure of several tons per square inch to surface-pressure only.
"It worked," said Davis curtly. "I almost wish it hadn't. Let it down into the water again. We'll jettison it when thePelorusgives us permission."
Time passed. More time. Still more. The bathyscaphe was now in the water, practically awash. Only a small conning tower showed above the waves. Men swarmed around it.
There came a query from thePelorus. TheEsperancegave assurance that the deep-sea dredge had returned to the surface and would be kept there.
The bathyscaphe was allowed to sink.
The recorder on the yacht began to pick up deep-toned mooing sounds from the depths.
Presently, the mooing sounds ceased.
Two hours later, waves broke over an object completely awash on the ocean. ThePelorussteamed cautiously toward it. Boats went down from her sides and surrounded the float.
After a long time thePelorusgot alongside and men quickly fastened the huge buoy to the ship. Then the down-wind sea changed its appearance. A reek of gasoline reached theEsperance.
"Something happened," said Davis dourly. "They're dumping the gasoline—not even pumping it aboard. Let's get out of the stink."
TheEsperancebeat to windward. ThePelorusbegan to lift something large and ungainly out of the water. TheEsperancewent down-wind to take a look at it.
The yacht went past no more than fifty yards away, just as the bathyscaphe left the water and swung clear.
The bathyscaphe's conning-tower was gone. It had been torn away by brute force. The three-inch-thick steel globe.... Half of it was gone. The rest was crushed. The sphere, which had been designed to resist a crushing pressure of ten tons per square inch, had been ripped in half! It had been bitten through. Bitten!
There was no comment by anybody on theEsperance.
Half a mile from the oceanographic ship, Davis said in a peculiarly flat voice, "Cut away the dredge. We won't try to use it again."
Someone slashed the inflated canvas bag. It collapsed. Somebody cut away a rope. The free dredge sank, slowly. It would never come up again.
TheEsperancechanged course. She headed north by west. There was still no conversation at all. The yacht seemed to tiptoe away from the scene of the bathyscaphe's destruction.
A long time later, Deirdre said tentatively, "Have you been making guesses, Terry?"
"Guesses, yes," he admitted.
"Such as?"
"Your father denied that the dredge was designed to stir up whatever gathered the fish together and then carried them down to the bottom of the sea. I was right there with him in the denial, but that's what we intended, just the same. We said we didn't believe there was anything there, so it couldn't do any harm to poke it. We poked, all right! Our dredge, and then the bathyscaphe...."
"But what ..."
"And a bolide fell right there a couple of nights ago," said Terry irrelevantly. "I wonder what the entity on the ocean-bottom thought of the bolide. Hm." He paused. "I wonder, too, what the bolide thought of what it found down there. Is that too crazy for a sane man to think, Deirdre?"
She shook her head.
"Why is my father working on this business?" she asked. "And why are the boys helping, and why do radar stations tell us what they find out, and why did the Philippine Government ask thePelorusto make a bathyscaphe dive at just that spot?"
Terry blinked at her.
"Too crazy for official notice, eh?" he said, "but too dangerous not to check up on! Is it absolutely certain that the bolides are bolides?"
"No."
"Thanks," said Terry. He pursed his lips as if to whistle. "I've been thinking of this thing as a puzzle. But it isn't. I'm very much afraid it's a threat!" He paused. "Y-y-es. I've just made a new guess. It adds everything together. I do hope it's wrong, Deirdre! I've got cold chills running up and down my spine!"
As theEsperancesailed northward, she looked almost unreal. From a distance she might have been an artist's picture of an imaginary yacht heeled over in the wind, sailing splendidly over a non-existent ocean. The sky was a speckless blue, the sun was high.
But she was real enough, and the China Sea around her was genuine, and what had taken place where thePeloruslay now hull-down, stowing a ruined bathyscaphe in her hold, had unquestionably taken place.
Something monstrous and terrible was hidden in the dark abyss below the yacht. The ferocity of its attack on the bathyscaphe was daunting. And ferocity has always, somehow, a suggestion of madness about it. But the humming sound in the sea was not the product of madness. It was a technical achievement. And plastic objects with metal inclusions....
Davis joined Deirdre and Terry. Before Davis could speak she said, "I can't imagine any guess that will add everything together, Terry."
Davis made a jerky gesture.
"Today's business is beyond all reason," he said unhappily, "and if there ever was an understatement, that's it! If there can be any conceivable motive for the plastic objects, which thePelorus dismisses as hoaxes, the motive is to use them to find outsomething about surface conditions; that is, for surface conditions to be reported back. And that's not easy to imagine. But try to think of something easier! And yet, such mindless ferocity as attacked the bathyscaphe ... that wouldn't be curious about the surface!"
"No-o-o-o," agreed Terry. "It wouldn't. But we'd set off a bomb down below to stir things up. A couple of hours later the bathyscaphe went down. A stupid and merely ferocious thing of the depths wouldn't associate a bomb that exploded with a bathyscaphe that came down two hours later. It took intelligence to make the association of two falling objects with danger."
Deirdre beamed suddenly.
"Of course! That's it! Go on!"
"Curiosity implies intelligence," said Terry carefully, "and intelligence is a substitute for teeth or claws. We don't assume that the fish that carry the plastic gadgets made them. Why assume that whatever attacked the bathyscaphe did it of its own accord? We believe that something else makes the deep-sea fish come up into the Thrawn Island lagoon, don't we? Or do we?"
"We pretend we don't," said Deirdre.
Davis nodded reluctantly.
"Yes, we pretend we don't," he agreed. "But if intelligence is involved, I find myself getting frightened! We humans are always terrified of strange types of intelligence, anyhow. If it's intelligence that isn't human ..."
Nick came up from below.
"Thrawn Island calling," he reported. "They say the hum at the lagoon opening stopped for some forty-odd hours and then started again. They ask if we're coming. I said we were on the way. They're standing by. Anything we should tell them?"
"We'll get there some time after sunset," said Davis. "And maybe you should tell them about thePelorusand the bathyscaphe."
Nick grinned briefly. "I did. And the guy on Thrawn Island said 'Hooray' and then explained that he said that because he couldn't think of anything that fitted the idea of something biting holes in three-inch steel." He added, "I can't think of a proper comment, either."
"We'll get to Thrawn Island after sunset," repeated Davis. "Then we'll see what we find in the lagoon—if anything."
Nick started back toward the bow. He stopped.
"Oh, yes! It wasn't a scientific guy talking, just the short-wave operator. The science staff is all busy. He said they heard an hour ago that another possible bolide's been spotted by a space-radar back in the US. It was picked up farther out than one's ever been spotted before. Five thousand miles high."
Davis nodded without comment. Nick went forward and disappeared below.
A school of porpoises appeared astern. They caught up with theEsperance. They went rocketing past, leaping exuberantly for no reason whatever. They cut across the yacht's bow and zestfully played around her two or three times, then went on, toward a faraway horizon. They managed somehow to give the impression of creatures who have done something they consider important.
"It's said," said Terry, "that porpoises have brains as good as men's. I wish I could get one or two to talk! They might answer everything! I'm getting obsessed by this infernal business!"
"I've been at it for months," said Davis. "In the past week, though, with you on board, I have found out more things I don't understand than I believed existed!"
He walked away. Deirdre smiled at Terry.
"My father paid you a tribute," she said. "I think we've been wasting time, you and I. We do a lot of talking to each other, but we haven't been applying our massive brains to matters of real importance."
"Such as what?" asked Terry dourly.
"Foam," said Deirdre. "Big masses of foam seen to be floating on the sea. Always over the Luzon Deep. Photographed by a plane less than a month ago. Reported by fishermen much more often than you'd suspect. At least once a ship sailed into a foam-patch and dropped out of sight, exactly as if there were a hole in the sea there. Let's talk about that."
They settled down on the after-cabin roof and began a discussion on the foam-patches, for which there was no hint of an explanation. Then Deirdre mentioned that when she was a little girl she'd always been fascinated by the sight of her father shaving. The foam—the lather—entranced her. And somehow that led to something else, and that to something else still. A full hour later they were talking enjoyably about matters of no conceivable relationship to large patches of foam seen floating on the ocean's surface where the water was forty-five hundred fathoms deep.
Davis came to a halt beside them.
"Morton's just been talking to me from Thrawn Island," he said abruptly. "He's very much upset. It's about that prospective bolide that was spotted from Palomar. It's been right there for two hours."
Terry waited.
"Morton," said Davis, "would like us to try to photograph it when it comes in, back where thePeloruswas this morning."
Terry stared. Shooting stars are not rare. On an average summer night anybody can see at least three in an hour's watch of any one quarter of the sky. Bolides are a rare kind of shooting star. Still, many people have seen one or two in their lifetime. But nobody plans ahead of time to observe a bolide, and still less does anybody ever plan in advance to watch a meteorite arrive on the earth's surface, whether on land or sea. It is simply not thinkable.
"We'll go back and try," said Davis. He seemed embarrassed. "Morton says there's no sense to it at all, and that if we do get photographs they'll be considered fakes. He's really wrought up. But he asked if I thought I could get a plane out from Manila to watch it fall—if it comes. I'm going to try that too." He added, more embarrassed still, "Of course nobody'd pay attention if I explained why the plane should go there. I'll have to say that I'm just looking for something else peculiar to happen at that spot. ThePelorusmust have already reported that one peculiar thing has happened."
Terry opened his mouth, and closed it again. Davis went away.
"You had an idea," said Deirdre accusingly. "What?"
"I was thinking of Horta," said Terry. "Police Captain Horta. A very honest man with no scientific knowledge at all. Nobody with a scientific education would pay any attention, but I could get him to tell a few others who know as little as he does, and if the damned thing does turn up, there'll be proof it was foretold. If it doesn't arrive—" Terry shrugged, "I've no scientific reputation to lose."
"Wonderful!" said Deirdre warmly. "But you wouldn't have proposed it but for me! I'll put things in motion!"
She vanished. Within minutes theEsperancecame about in a wide semicircle and headed in the direction from which she had just come. Deirdre stayed out of sight for a long while. When she came up it was to tell Terry that Nick was calling on the short-wave set. He'd raised the flattop in Manila Bay. The flattop had raised the shore. Telephone calls were being made to here and there and everywhere to get Horta to a short-wave station to take a call from Terry.
It was near sunset when the complicated call was ready and Horta's voice came into a pair of headphones Terry was wearing in theEsperance'sradio room.
"I need," said Terry slowly, "to have a number of people in Manila know now of something that's going to happen out at sea tonight. They'll be needed to testify that they knew of the prediction before the event. Can you arrange it?"
"Por supuesto," said Horta's voice cheerfully. "Are we notamigos? What is the prediction and who should know?"
"The prediction," said Terry doggedly, anticipating disbelief and protest, "is that at twelve minutes after nine o'clock tonight a large meteorite will fall into the sea where—hmm—whereLa Rubiacatches her fish. No, you'd better not locate it that way. I'll give you the position."
Davis, standing by, wrote the position in latitude and longitude and handed it to him. He read it into the transmitter.
"Have you got it?" he demanded. "Is it written down?"
"Ah, yes," said Horta tranquilly. "I will see that they make a memorandum of the matter. Shall I tell three or four persons, or more? I have news for you also. Jimenez...."
"Look here!" said Terry sharply. "I want this thing to be past all doubt! Everybody who's ever been worried aboutLa Rubiashould know about this! There should be no possible doubt about it! But there should be disbelief, so people who don't believe will try to verify that it didn't happen, so they can crow over the people who thought it would, or might."
"Ah!" said Horta. "You wish you stick out the neck! It is serious! Now tell me again!"
"At twelve minutes after nine tonight," said Terry doggedly, "A shooting star will fall into the sea at...." He named the latitude and longitude Davis had given him. "That is whereLa Rubiacatches her fish."
"A shooting star will fall there?" protested Horta. "But who knows where they fall?"
"You do," said Terry. "This one, anyhow. Now, will you see that a number of people know about it?"
"It is cr-azy!" objected Horta. Then he said, "I will do it."
The short-wave call ended, with Horta too much disturbed to refer again to Jimenez.
By sunset Doug had gotten out the gun-cameras. Doug held an impromptu class on deck, showing the other crew-cuts exactly how to aim the cameras and expose the films, and what button to press to change film automatically between shots. He was unhappy because he did not know how bright the object to be photographed would be, for his lens-settings. He was even more unhappy because the bolide might travel at practically any angular velocity, so he didn't know how to set the shutters. But the focus would be infinity, and if he used the fastest possible film, he could stop most motion with a hundredth second exposure.
Instead of reaching Thrawn Island shortly after sunset, then, theEsperancewas back above the place where the dredge had been dropped and the bathyscaphe wrecked. ThePeloruswas gone. The people on board that ship must have been very upset. The bathyscaphe had cost more money than is usually allotted to most scientific researchers, and now it was smashed. How would they justify themselves? They could hardly blame theEsperance.
The yacht sailed in a closed pattern over this area of the Luzon Deep. Deirdre served dinner on deck. Stars shone down almost instantly after a sunset of unusual magnificence, even for the China Sea. Tony brought his guitar aft, and a contagious feeling of exhilaration spread about theEsperanceand an improvised party took place on deck. Maybe the mood for festivity arose from the realization that at least nine-tenths of the world's population would have graded them as lunatics, had it known their project for the evening.
It would have been unjust, of course. Terry reflected that it had not been their idea to make an appointment with a shooting star. They were doing it out of some sort of professional courtesy, "from one set of crackpots to another," Terry phrased it in his own mind. It was a wild attempt to secure proof of the starkly impossible. So there was chatter, singing, and some dancing. The high spot was perhaps the time when Jug bashfully serenaded the rigging and the stars above it with howling melodies he'd learned in college.
Eventually, Nick went down to the short-wave set. Doug passed out the gun-cameras again, after checking each one. Nick popped his head out of the hatch.
"Dr. Morton's been calling like crazy," he reported. "The bolide's made four orbital turns, coming in all the while. It ought to touch the atmosphere next time around. ETO is nine-twelve-seventeen-seconds. I told him we're all set."
His head disappeared.
"Don't forget!" Doug said anxiously. "The cameras will feel like shotguns but don't lead your target! And don't forget to press the film-changer!"
Terry lifted his gun-camera experimentally. It did feel like a shotgun. And then, suddenly, he disbelieved everything: the purpose of theEsperance'soriginal investigation; the phenomena that had been observed; the guesses that had been made. It was pure insanity! He felt a quick impatience with himself for becoming entangled in anything so ridiculous.
Deirdre leaned toward him and whispered forlornly, "Terry! It's dreadful! I've just had an attack of common sense! What are we doing here? We're crazy!"
He put his hand consolingly over hers. The act was unpremeditated and the sensation was startling. He found that they were staring at each other intently in the starlight.
"I think ..." said Terry, unsteadily, "that it's very sensible to be crazy. We've got to ... talk this over."
Deirdre smiled at him shakily.
"Y-yes, we will."
Then Davis pointed out positions for the camera operators. The bolide's course should be three hundred fifty degrees, not quite on a north-south line. It might land short of, or beyond, theEsperance. Or it might pass many miles to the east or west. Dr. Morton needed as many pictures of it against recognizable stars as could possibly be secured.
Suddenly, there was a faint, dull rumbling in the heavens. It grew louder. Presently, cruising lights appeared in the sky. They maintained a fixed relationship to each other. They looked like moving stars, flying in formation from star-cluster to star-cluster.
Nick popped abovedecks again.
"The planes just called us," he reported. "They've just had a Loran position-check and they're on the mark. They've got orders to observe any unusual phenomena occurring around nine-twelveP.M., Manila time. Using civilian terminology, it sounds like they're saying the Philippine Government asked them to come out and take a look."
"It's five after nine now," said Davis.
TheEsperanceheaded into the wind. Her bow rose and fell. Waves washed past, and roarings trundled about under the stars overhead, and very tiny lights moved in a compact group across the firmament.
Time passed.
At twenty-two seconds after nine-twelve—which is to say at twenty-one hours, twelve minutes, twenty-two seconds—a light appeared in the sky from the north. It grew steadily brighter. It suddenly flared very brightly indeed, then dimmed, and continued to rise above the horizon. Seconds later it flared again, very briefly.
Terry found himself aiming the gun-camera. He pulled trigger and changed film and pulled trigger and changed film.
The bright light ceased to climb. It grew steadily brighter and brighter, and then it flared for the third time—Terry's mind asked skeptically, 'Braking rockets?'—and the light was so intense that the cracks in the yacht's deck-planking could be seen. Then the extra brilliance vanished, and suddenly the moving light was no longer white, but reddish.
Terry aimed again and fired the gun-camera.
The light passed almost directly overhead. Terry had the impression that he felt its heat upon his skin.
It plunged into the sea two miles beyond theEsperance. The shock-wave caused by the impact tapped on the yacht's side-planking a few seconds later. Starlight shone upon a plume of steam.
Then there was nothing but the noise of the circling planes above. Then a sound, as of thunder. It disappeared northward. It was the sound of the bolide's passage, arriving after the object itself had dived into the sea.
The people on theEsperancewere dumfounded. Nick went below and came up again a few minutes latter.
"The planes were calling," he reported. "They say they noted the unusual phenomenon. They ask if they should stay around for something else."
"I think," said Davis caustically, "that that's all that's scheduled just now. Tell them so."
TheEsperancewent on steadily again, a trifle west of north. Davis was below, talking via radio to Dr. Morton at the satellite tracking base.
Terry and Deirdre went to look for a place where they could talk over something privately. It was of enormous importance to them, but it was not connected with fish or meteorites or plastic objects or anything at all but the two of them. And to them the yacht seemed crowded with people, even though there was nobody else abovedecks but one of the crew-cuts at the wheel.
When theEsperanceentered the lagoon the next morning, though, their private talk had evidently come to a satisfactory conclusion. Deirdre smiled at Terry without any reason whatever, and he looked at once smug and embarrassed and uneasy, as if he possessed a new status to which he was still unaccustomed.
The recorder, trailing a submarine ear overboard, had duly reported the presence of the hum in the water, just outside the lagoon. It had not been operating for forty hours or thereabouts. During that time the fish inside could go out of the lagoon, if they chose. And other fish could come in. Terry said suddenly, as the yacht went under power toward the tracking station wharf, "Suppose there was a cone of noise just outside the lagoon, and the flanks of the submarine mountain under us were included in the cone? And suppose the cone grew smaller, like the other one. What would happen?"