"Such as what?" asked Terry dourly.
"Foam," said Deirdre. "Big masses of foam seen to be floating on the sea. Always over the Luzon Deep. Photographed by a plane less than a month ago. Reported by fishermen much more often than you'd suspect. At least once a ship sailed into a foam-patch and dropped out of sight, exactly as if there were a hole in the sea there. Let's talk about that."
They settled down on the after-cabin roof and began a discussion on the foam-patches, for which there was no hint of an explanation. Then Deirdre mentioned that when she was a little girl she'd always been fascinated by the sight of her father shaving. The foam—the lather—entranced her. And somehow that led to something else, and that to something else still. A full hour later they were talking enjoyably about matters of no conceivable relationship to large patches of foam seen floating on the ocean's surface where the water was forty-five hundred fathoms deep.
Davis came to a halt beside them.
"Morton's just been talking to me from Thrawn Island," he said abruptly. "He's very much upset. It's about that prospective bolide that was spotted from Palomar. It's been right there for two hours."
Terry waited.
"Morton," said Davis, "would like us to try to photograph it when it comes in, back where the Pelorus was this morning."
Terry stared. Shooting stars are not rare. On an average summer night anybody can see at least three in an hour's watch of any one quarter of the sky. Bolides are a rare kind of shooting star. Still, many people have seen one or two in their lifetime. But nobody plans ahead of time to observe a bolide, and still less does anybody ever plan in advance to watch a meteorite arrive on the earth's surface, whether on land or sea. It is simply not thinkable.
"We'll go back and try," said Davis. He seemed embarrassed. "Morton says there's no sense to it at all, and that if we do get photographs they'll be considered fakes. He's really wrought up. But he asked if I thought I could get a plane out from Manila to watch it fall—if it comes. I'm going to try that too." He added, more embarrassed still, "Of course nobody'd pay attention if I explained why the plane should go there. I'll have to say that I'm just looking for something else peculiar to happen at that spot. The Pelorus must have already reported that one peculiar thing has happened."
Terry opened his mouth, and closed it again. Davis went away.