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 the _Esperance_ sailed 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 the _Pelorus_," 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 the _Esperance_ until--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. "The _Pelorus_ will 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. The _Esperance_ anchored, almost exactly where she'd been when Terry first came on board. Within half an hour a boat arrived from the _Pelorus_. 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.