But the plane saw the bolide as it struck the sea, and huge masses of steam and spray arose. The bolide was not white-hot, then, as when it passed over Thrawn Island. It was barely of dull-red brightness. It hit the sea and sank, leaving steam behind.
The water was forty-five hundred fathoms deep at that point.
Fourteen hours later the _Esperance_ made ready to sail from Thrawn Island. Her purpose was to carry the plastic objects to Manila, where they would be turned over to specialized laboratories to be studied. Five such objects had been found before: one in the Thrawn Island lagoon, while the satellite-tracking station was under construction, and four attached to exotic fish brought to market by the commercial fishing boat _La Rubia_. Now there were eight more, of four different kinds. To the laboratories would go Terry's observation that one kind of these objects absorbed sound at audible frequencies and retransmitted it at much higher ones, but only under water. All this was very interesting and very puzzling.
But a serious disturbance had arisen at the tracking station.
Dr. Morton came to the _Esperance_ before her departure. He had a problem. He'd predicted to the minute, and almost to the mile, the landing of the bolide of the night before. That was the first accurate prediction of the kind in history. But his forecast stood alone in its precision. Nobody else had even come near being right. Now he was being insistently queried by astronomers the world over. They wanted to know how he'd done it. In particular, they wanted to know how he'd figured that the bolide would lose just so many feet per second velocity, neither more nor less, in a three-quarter orbit around the world. Nobody else had such a figure in his equation for the landing spot. Dr. Morton had. His prediction had been exact. Where did he get that necessary but inexplicable figure?
He beckoned Davis and Terry to go below with him, in the _Esperance's_ after cabin. Terry hesitated.
"You may as well hear my troubles," said Morton vexedly. "You're largely responsible for them."
Terry followed uneasily. He didn't see how Dr. Morton could hold them responsible. He had guarded his own guesses about the _Esperance's_ discoveries against even the slightest expression. He couldn't let himself believe in their correctness, but he was appalled at the inadequacy of all other explanations of past events.