"I know it's nonsense, but I was ... ashamed to admit ..."
"To admit," Deirdre concluded for him, "that by tapping numbers with a plastic spy-device, you hoped to say to whom it might concern that we've found a communicator, and we know what it is, and we're trying to get in touch with the intelligent creatures who made it."
To hear his own self-denied guesses spoken aloud was appalling. Terry instantly disbelieved them entirely.
"It's ridiculous, of course," he protested. "It's childish...."
"But it could be true," said Deirdre. "And, if true, it could be dangerous. Suppose whatever put those plastic gadgets on the fish doesn't want to be communicated with? Suppose it feels that it should defend the secret of its existence by killing those who suspect it? I wasn't spying on you," she added. "I heard the tappings down below."
Then she was gone. He saw the interruption in the light from the after-cabin hatch as she went below.
He was suddenly filled with horror at the idea that if his guesses did prove to be right, he might have endangered Deirdre. And then he ceased to feel foolish. He felt like a criminal instead.
For a long, long time he listened with desperate intensity to the recorder, lest he hear some reply to his signals.
But no answer came. The sounds from undersea remained utterly commonplace.
When morning arrived he was in a state of desperate gloom. At breakfast Deirdre acted as if she considered the incident closed. And, such being the nature of men, Terry felt worse than before.