The Esperance heeled over; away, away over. The four crew-cuts adjusted the sheets for maximum effect of the sails on the new direction of motion. The yacht seemed to tear through the water like a racing boat. Terry had to rescue some of his smaller parts which started for the scuppers. He looked up. Deirdre said cheerfully, "Our radar picked up a boat that's probably La Rubia on the way back to Manila. We don't want her to see us."
Terry blinked.
"Why?"
"We're going to take a look at the spot where we think she catches her fish," said Deirdre. "It's strange enough that she catches so many, but what's even stranger is the kind of fish she catches at times."
"How?"
Deirdre shrugged. Then she said irrelevantly, "La Rubia's skipper would like to have the only radar in the world, as you've reason to know, and he doesn't think of radars, except his own and possible competitors. But there are lots of others. We're probably a blip on somebody's radar-screen right now. In fact, we're supposed to be. So when my father got interested in La Rubia and her—catches, he was able to have somebody notice where she goes every time she slips away from the fishing fleet. And so he was told. It was all quite unofficial, of course."
Terry bent over his task again while the Esperance sped along over the off-shore swells. There was no land in sight anywhere. An albatross glided overhead for a time, as if inspecting the Esperance as a possible source of food. When Terry looked for it later it was gone. Once there was a flurry in many wave-flanks, and a small school of flying fish darted out of the sea with hazy, beating fins, and dived back into the sea many yards from where they started.
But nothing of any consequence happened anywhere. Terry fitted and soldered and tested. By noon he had a rather powerful audio amplifying unit, set up to magnify any sound the tape-recorder fed into it. Deirdre prepared a meal. The galley of the Esperance was admirably supplied with all kinds of food. After the noon meal the yacht changed course again to a line which would intersect her original morning course at some point.
Terry found himself fuming. He'd set to work to make something that Davis apparently wanted, but his most elementary questions still ran against a blank refusal to answer. Both Davis and Deirdre had spoken of oddities in the catches of La Rubia. There could not possibly be any reason for them to refuse to tell him what they were. Terry worked himself into irritability, recalling how he volunteered to come on the Esperance but not thinking that he would be treated as someone who wasn't allowed to know what everybody else aboard most certainly did.
In the afternoon there was guitar music down in the forecastle, and Doug came out and settled himself on the bowsprit with a book of poetry. Presently Nick sat down close by Terry and watched interestedly as he put mysterious-looking electronic elements together into incomprehensible groups. When he had finished, Terry did not admire his handiwork. The noisemaking unit came last. The electrical part had to be enclosed, water-tight, with a diaphragm exposed to the water on one side and its working parts protected from all moisture on the other. The device looked cobbled, but it worked, and made monstrous sounds in the air.