"And a bolide fell right there a couple of nights ago," said Terry irrelevantly. "I wonder what the entity on the ocean-bottom thought of the bolide. Hm." He paused. "I wonder, too, what the bolide thought of what it found down there. Is that too crazy for a sane man to think, Deirdre?"
"Why is my father working on this business?" she asked. "And why are the boys helping, and why do radar stations tell us what they find out, and why did the Philippine Government ask the _Pelorus_ to make a bathyscaphe dive at just that spot?"
"Too crazy for official notice, eh?" he said, "but too dangerous not to check up on! Is it absolutely certain that the bolides are bolides?"
"Thanks," said Terry. He pursed his lips as if to whistle. "I've been thinking of this thing as a puzzle. But it isn't. I'm very much afraid it's a threat!" He paused. "Y-y-es. I've just made a new guess. It adds everything together. I do hope it's wrong, Deirdre! I've got cold chills running up and down my spine!"
As the _Esperance_ sailed northward, she looked almost unreal. From a distance she might have been an artist's picture of an imaginary yacht heeled over in the wind, sailing splendidly over a non-existent ocean. The sky was a speckless blue, the sun was high.
But she was real enough, and the China Sea around her was genuine, and what had taken place where the _Pelorus_ lay now hull-down, stowing a ruined bathyscaphe in her hold, had unquestionably taken place.
Something monstrous and terrible was hidden in the dark abyss below the yacht. The ferocity of its attack on the bathyscaphe was daunting. And ferocity has always, somehow, a suggestion of madness about it. But the humming sound in the sea was not the product of madness. It was a technical achievement. And plastic objects with metal inclusions....
Davis joined Deirdre and Terry. Before Davis could speak she said, "I can't imagine any guess that will add everything together, Terry."
"Today's business is beyond all reason," he said unhappily, "and if there ever was an understatement, that's it! If there can be any conceivable motive for the plastic objects, which the _Pelorus dismisses as hoaxes, the motive is to use them to find out_ something about surface conditions; that is, for surface conditions to be reported back. And that's not easy to imagine. But try to think of something easier! And yet, such mindless ferocity as attacked the bathyscaphe ... that wouldn't be curious about the surface!"