"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.
The _Esperance_ put 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 the _Esperance's_ hull. 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 the _Esperance's_ stern. 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 the _Esperance_ went 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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