"Dr. Morton's a dear! Don't take him seriously, Terry! He loves to tease. He'll hound you to tell him how deep-sea fish got up here and into a shallow lagoon. Please don't mind!" "I won't," said Terry. "I'll tell him tomorrow, I think. I believe now I know how it happened, but I want to check it first." _Five_ When Terry awoke, next morning, the reflections of sunlight on water came in through the porthole of his cabin. He watched the shimmering contortions of the light spots on the wall. His thoughts went instantly back to the subject they'd dwelt on before he went to sleep. The man with the spectacles--Dr. Morton, but his doctorate was in astronomy instead of medicine--had said that Deirdre and his father had discussed enlisting him in the _Esperance's_ company a month ago. Deirdre'd come into the shop of Jimenez y Cía. only four days before. Some of the delay could have been caused by time spent in simple sailing from one place to another, mostly on wholly futile errands. They'd gotten a fish-driving paddle at Alua. That'd take some days of sailing each way. Apparently, they'd been fumbling at some vague idea of trying to find out what would produce the facts they'd noted. 'Very queer fish,' Davis had said of some of the catches _La Rubia_ had made. The abyssal fish mentioned last night would be very queer fish to catch in a lagoon. Yes.... He lay still, surveying other aspects of the situation. Davis had called on an aircraft carrier for electronic items, and the _Esperance_ was in constant touch with somebody by short-wave radio. It might be the same carrier. The Manila police department was on very cordial terms with Davis, and the staff of a satellite-tracking installation saved odd specimens of fish for him. The _Esperance's_ enterprise was plainly not a brand-new adventure. It had been carried on for some time. They had had technical aid of the very highest caliber, but they hadn't gotten anywhere yet. It did appear that Terry had added a minor specialty to the arsenal of investigative techniques. Without the data gathered on recorder-tape, their idea of the events of two nights before would be very different. The sea would have seemed very bright, then the glowing area would have been noted to have grown smaller, and something resembling a whale would have been seen leaping high above the water. Then the brightness would have faded out. It would have been mysterious enough, but an entire aspect of the phenomenon would have gone unnoticed. There was still no answer to any of the far-reaching questions Terry had asked himself, but most of them had never been asked before. Sea noises had proved to be closely connected to whatever had to be found out. What was known about them was due to his findings. He'd established a new frame of reference. And he'd discovered the solution of a minor problem before the problem was even stated. He had only to prove it. Then, of course, there would be other problems arising from it.