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 the _Esperance_ was, 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.