"Is this another censored subject, or can I ask what happened?"
"I'd better see about lunch," said Deirdre quickly.
She got up and left. Terry shrugged. The day before yesterday, or even yesterday, he'd have been indignant. But then he'd known these people had secrets in which he had no share. Today he was beginning to share those secrets, and he had fabulously nonsensical material on which to work on his own. He had strange ideas about the event of last night. He did not quite believe them, but he thought he had devised some ways to see how much of truth they contained, if any. Deirdre could keep her secrets, so long as he did not have to disclose his own wildly imaginative ideas.
The routine of the yacht went on. It was in a way a very casual routine. Davis gave orders when the need arose, but there was no formal discipline; there was co-operation. Terry heard one of the crew-cuts ask Deirdre a question using her first name. It would have been highly improbable in a paid crew, but it was reasonable enough in a volunteer expedition. He heard Deirdre say, "Why don't you ask him?"
The crew-cut, Tony, came to the part of the deck where Terry worked.
"We got into an argument," he said without preface. "We were talking about that ... 'whale' last night."
Terry nodded. The use of the term "whale" was a deliberate pretense that the previous night's events were natural and normal.
"How fast do you think it was traveling when it broached?" asked Tony. "I know a whale can jump clear of the water. I've seen it in the movies. But that one jumped awfully high!"
"I hadn't tried to estimate it," said Terry.
"You've got a tape of the noise," said Tony. "Could you time the interval between the sound when it left the water, and the splash when it fell back?"