Terry, though, did get out his tools to make a minor modification in the underwater microphone. It had been designed to be directional, so that the sound of surf or fish could be located by turning the mike, but he hadn't been able to point it vertically downward, and last night that had been the key direction--right under the yacht's keel. So now he improvised gimbals for the microphone, and a mounting for it similar to that of a compass, so it could tilt in any desired direction, as well as turn.
Which, of course, was a tacit admission that something peculiar had happened. Presently, Deirdre came and watched him.
"What's that for?" she asked, when he fitted the gimbals in place.
He told her. She said hesitantly, "Yesterday, when I asked you not to try the paddle until we got to shallow water, you got angry and said you'd ask to be put ashore. We're headed for Barca now. Someone there is building something for my father, the same thing I had asked you to build--a fish-driving instrument. If you still want to go, you can get a bus from there to Manila. But I hope you have changed your mind."
"I have," said Terry dourly. "I told your father so. I was irritated because I couldn't get any answers to the questions I asked. Now I've got some questions your father wants answers to. And I'm going to try to find them out."
"I put some pictures and a clipping in a book on the cabin table," she said. "Did you see them?"
"That you put them for me to see," he said.
"It was to make you realize that we can't answer every question, which you know now."
"I still think you could answer a few more than you have," he observed. "But let it go. Is the Barca harbor shallow?"
"Ten, fifteen feet at low tide," she informed him. "We're having a sort of dredge made there. Something to go down into the sea, take pictures, get samples of the bottom, and then come up again. There's an oceanographic ship due in Manila shortly, by the way. It will have a bathyscaphe on board. Maybe that will help find out some answers." Then she said uncomfortably, "I have a feeling the bathyscaphe isn't ... safe."
"_Ellos?_" He grinned as she looked sharply at him. Then he said, "This dredge: isn't it pretty ambitious for a boat this size to try to dredge some thousands of fathoms down?"