As they talked, they were disturbed. The helicopter, which had left before noon loaded down with biological material for Manila, was approaching again. It landed by the tracking station. Then they were alone again. When night fell, they were astonished at how quickly time had passed. They went back to the station. The helicopter was on the ground. The biologists had stopped their work, exhausted but very excited by their discovery of a new species of squid, of which an immature specimen measured eighty feet. It had offered extremely interesting phylogenic material for the Cephalopoda in general. The photographs they'd taken were invaluable, from a scientific viewpoint. The crew of _La Rubia_ had returned to their boat. The _Esperance_ had been out beyond the reef once more. The unidentified objects were still rising. They had risen to less than a thousand fathoms from the surface, well before sundown. At this same rate of rise, they should reach the surface some time after midnight. What would happen after that? "What will happen depends," said Terry, "on how accurate their information about us is. It depends on their instruments, really. I suspect their ideas about us are weird. I find I haven't any ideas about them." At dinner, Davis said worriedly, "I talked to Manila. The mine layer that was in the Bay left harbor yesterday. The flattop picked it up by radio and they're both going to come on here tomorrow. I had to talk about the foam. They weren't impressed. The squid does impress them, but the foam--no. I hate," he said indignantly, "to try to convince people of things I couldn't possibly be convinced of myself!" They talked leisurely. Somebody mentioned _La Rubia_. It had been more or less expected that her skipper would turn up for drinks and conversation again. But he hadn't. The conversation turned to the plastic objects. They might or might not pick up sounds. It was not likely they'd respond to light. Certainly, complete images would be meaningless to creatures who had evolved in blackness and without a sense of sight. They might respond to pressure-waves, such as are known to be picked up by fish when something struggles in the water, even though man-made instruments have not yet detected them. They might furnish data of a sensory kind that is meaningless to humans, as pictures would be to Jovians. _If_ there were such things.... "Why argue only for Jupiter?" asked Deirdre. "Venus is supposed to be mostly ocean. There could be abyssal life there." The crew-cuts joined in the argument, but tentatively, because there were many experts present. Midnight came. The open sea outside the reef showed nothing unusual. The waves glittered palely at their tips. There were little flashings in the water where an occasional surface fish darted. The stars shone. The moon was not yet risen.