And what would the Russians think when they found out? Find out they would. Jerry was sure of it. Some secrets were too big to keep … weren’t they? The CIA men on the ship would have argued otherwise. They’d managed to keep the spaceship’s existence secret since the Halibut found it. But that would get harder once the Midlothian object wasn’t hiding under three miles of water. Wouldn’t it?

Little by little, the waves began to ease off. The divers finished fixing things that had gone wrong with Clementine’s video cameras and landing legs. The meteorologist said the seas and winds might soon ease to the point where they could take another stab at lowering the giant steel claw toward the bottom.

Sure enough, Jerry discovered fog outside a couple of mornings later. That spoiled the view, but it was good news: fog and strong winds didn’t go together. The Glomar Explorer sounded her fog whistle every so often. As far as Jerry was concerned, that would scare any ship close enough to hear it out of a year’s growth.

And evidently there was a ship close enough to hear it. Some of the sailors who worked for Global Marine said the radar had picked it up. Jerry peered through the swirling vapor, trying to spot it himself.

It stayed too far away to let him, till a few minutes past nine, when it loomed out of the mist like a ghost manifesting itself. It was lean and looked dangerous, unlike a squat freighter or the even squatter Glomar Explorer. Jerry’s first alarmed thought was Destroyer!

But he soon realized it wasn’t, or wasn’t exactly, a warship. Instead of guns or missiles, it sported a variety of white radomes. It drew closer to the Glomar Explorer, close enough to let him see a name—Chazhma—stenciled near the bow in Cyrillic characters. As if he’d been in much doubt, that told him whose fleet it belonged to.

He wondered how its crew knew the Glomar Explorer was in the neighborhood. He doubted like hell coincidence had anything to do with it. Maybe they’d picked up the radio interchange with the Bel Hudson. Or maybe a Soviet spy satellite had spotted the American vessel and sent the Chazhma out for a look-see.

Like the Glomar Explorer, the Chazhma sported a helipad. Not only that, it also a carried a helicopter: a four-wheeled machine with two big rotors on the main hub and a triple tail instead of a vertical secondary rotor. The outer tail fins sported large red stars. Seeing the chopper, sailors hurriedly carried more barrels and crates to the landing platform. Doing our best to make it an unlanding platform, Jerry thought.

Before long, the Soviet helicopter hopped into the air. It buzzed around the Glomar Explorer for about fifteen minutes, the guy in the copilot’s seat snapping pictures all the while.