“I didn’t till I started working hard getting ready for my exams, or not much,” Jerry said. “But hey, it’s brain cells in a cup.”

“There you go.” Steve nodded.

Neither one of them had much to do after breakfast. Later, when the Glomar Explorer got farther out into the Pacific, Jerry planned to string his hydrophone to a long length of coaxial cable and see what he could get, but they were still way too close to shore for him to bother.

Just how close they were got emphasized that morning, when the ship stopped and a helicopter thuttered in to land on the platform above the fantail. Ten businesspeople—nine of them men—got out and were escorted to the messroom. Curious, Jerry tagged along behind to see what was going on. Nobody shooed him away, so he went on in.

It turned out to be a ceremony formally turning ownership of the Hughes Glomar Explorer over from Global Marine to the Summa Corporation, which, he gathered, belonged to Howard Hughes. There were speeches. A photographer immortalized the occasion on film (Jerry suspected he wound up in the background on a couple of shots). The guys in the galley had even baked a cake. It was a good cake, too; Jerry got a piece.

Then the visiting firemen went back to the helipad, climbed aboard the chopper, and zoomed away again. Before they went to dinner, Jerry asked Steve, “What the devil was that all about? Flying those people out must have cost a ton. Why didn’t they just sign the papers on dry land a week ago or something?”

Steve smiled a thin smile. “Because Philip Watson is a pain in the … neck.” He seemed the kind of man who didn’t cuss unless badly provoked. Jerry was much looser about it.

The name rang a vague bell, but Jerry said, “Who?” anyway. Then he said, “Oh,” as he remembered.

“He’s the county tax assessor,” Steve told him anyway. “He wants to tax the Glomar Explorer. He wants to tax Summa because he knows Howard Hughes has money. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s what it boils down to. He has no idea the ship really belongs to the CIA, and nobody’s gonna tell him. Doing the transfer to Summa in international waters takes it out of his jurisdiction, or we hope it does.”

Jerry held his head in his hands. “The farther I stay from lawyers, the happier I am.”

“You sound like a sensible fellow,” Steve said. “Shall we see what’s on the menu tonight?”

“Let’s do it,” Jerry said, and out they went.