Also, I had to break up a fistfight between Cooper and Virgil. They got into it after one of them made a comment about—actually, I didn’t even care. I pushed them apart and did some yelling. This felt better than it probably should have. I was tempted to confine them to their quarters, but I need everybody working. Their fight made one thing clear: Nerves are starting to fray.

Also, Dr. Hewett’s condition continues to deteriorate. Franklin and Linzi have worked themselves to exhaustion keeping him alive, but they can’t say for sure whether he’ll make it another day. His blood pressure is low. His heartbeat is weak. His urine…I may have blanked out when they told me about his urine.

The trip’s high points are notably fewer.

For one, Nelinha has gotten the LOCUS working. Gem, Ester, Tia, and I join her on the bridge for the big reveal. We’re not sure what to expect. The metal tennis-ball thingy has been mounted on top of the navigation console. Its Slinky-esque coils run in all directions like the tentacles of an octopus, attached to various points of the console with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Do they work like antennae? Grounding wires?

“Here we go.” Nelinha turns a copper dial on the side of the orb.

The room fills with floating green patches of light, like we’re inside an aquarium that desperately needs cleaning.

Ester says, “This seems wrong.”

“Hold on,” Nelinha says. “Let me recalibrate the display resolution….”

She twists another knob. The green lights shrink into a glowing sphere the size of a basketball, hovering over the base of the LOCUS.

I realize immediately what we’re seeing. Our boat is the tiny white dot hovering in the center. The sphere’s upper half is a swirl of faint green lines: wind patterns, rain, and clouds in real time. The lower hemisphere shows conditions underwater in a darker emerald light: currents, depth readings, and a whole host of dots and blobs of various sizes moving beneath us.

“Marine life,” I guess. “That’s got to be a school of fish. What’s that, a whale?”

Nelinha beams. “We are electrolocating, gang.”

I’m enthralled by the three-dimensional readout. It should be too much information, too complicated to read, but I understand it instinctively. I can feel the ship’s position, how it relates to the currents and the winds, how it affects the movements of the creatures around us.

“This is so much better than sonar or ECDIS,” I murmur. “How is this possible?”

Nelinha looks pleased, like she’s just baked a batch of cookies everybody loves. “I told you, babe—a different perspective on the laws of science. What we’re seeing is a visual representation of the way marine mammals sense their environment. And yeah, it’s way better than puny land-animal tech.”

“Nice work, da Silva.” Tia Romero squints at the controls around the base of the LOCUS. “You’re sure this isn’t making us light up on the radar screens of every ship within a thousand miles?”