He glanced up.
"Ellos?" He grinned as she looked sharply at him. Then he said, "This dredge: isn't it pretty ambitious for a boat this size to try to dredge some thousands of fathoms down?"
"It's a free dredge," she said. "It will sink by itself and come up by itself. There's no cable. What are you doing now?"
He'd put away the submarine microphone he'd just altered and was now taking out the still untested underwater horn.
"I'm going to try to make this directional, too," he said. "In fact, I'm going to try to make it project sound in a beam shaped like a fan. A hollow cone may come later."
She was silent. The Esperance sailed on.
"Ever talk to the skipper of La Rubia?" he asked presently.
She shook her head.
"You should. He's a stupendous, self-confident liar," said Terry. "He lies automatically. Gratuitously. A completely amiable man, but he can't tell the truth without stopping to think."
"We found that out," said Deirdre. "I didn't. Someone else."