"You had an idea," said Deirdre accusingly. "What?"
"I was thinking of Horta," said Terry. "Police Captain Horta. A very honest man with no scientific knowledge at all. Nobody with a scientific education would pay any attention, but I could get him to tell a few others who know as little as he does, and if the damned thing does turn up, there'll be proof it was foretold. If it doesn't arrive—" Terry shrugged, "I've no scientific reputation to lose."
"Wonderful!" said Deirdre warmly. "But you wouldn't have proposed it but for me! I'll put things in motion!"
She vanished. Within minutes the Esperance came about in a wide semicircle and headed in the direction from which she had just come. Deirdre stayed out of sight for a long while. When she came up it was to tell Terry that Nick was calling on the short-wave set. He'd raised the flattop in Manila Bay. The flattop had raised the shore. Telephone calls were being made to here and there and everywhere to get Horta to a short-wave station to take a call from Terry.
It was near sunset when the complicated call was ready and Horta's voice came into a pair of headphones Terry was wearing in the Esperance's radio room.
"I need," said Terry slowly, "to have a number of people in Manila know now of something that's going to happen out at sea tonight. They'll be needed to testify that they knew of the prediction before the event. Can you arrange it?"
"Por supuesto," said Horta's voice cheerfully. "Are we not amigos? What is the prediction and who should know?"
"The prediction," said Terry doggedly, anticipating disbelief and protest, "is that at twelve minutes after nine o'clock tonight a large meteorite will fall into the sea where—hmm—where La Rubia catches her fish. No, you'd better not locate it that way. I'll give you the position."
Davis, standing by, wrote the position in latitude and longitude and handed it to him. He read it into the transmitter.
"Have you got it?" he demanded. "Is it written down?"