Nobody had.
"It might be smart not to. Watch him with 'scopes ... and when he gets up close to the box, better pull your beams off of it. DalNalten, I don't suppose it would be quite bright for you to go swimming down there too, would it?"
"Very definitely not, which is why I am up here and dry. None of them would go near it."
They waited, and finally Ossmen's purposeless wanderings brought him over the spot on the lake's bottom which was the target of so many Tellurian eyes. He gazed at the discarded lunch-box as incuriously as he had looked at so many other sunken objects, and swam over it as casually—and only the ultra-cameras caught what he actually did. He swam serenely on.
"The box is still there," the spy-ray men reported, "but the package is gone."
"Good!" Kinnison exclaimed, "Can you 'scopists see it on him?"
"Ten to one they can't," Jack said. "He swallowed it. I expected him to swallow it box and all."
"We can't see it, sir. He must have swallowed it."
"Make sure."
"Yes, sir.... He's back on the boat now and we've shot him from all angles. He's clean—nothing outside."