When the SB-10 sailed off as the Chazhma had done, everybody on the Glomar Explorer hoped the tug was gone for good. But the pesky little ship came back a few days later, as bothersome as ever. Some of its lunges brought it within a hundred yards of the Explorer. Its skipper reminded Jerry of a teenager playing chicken.

Jerry asked Jack Porter, “Why did it go away and then come back?”

“Asking why Russians do what they do is a mug’s game. That skipper wouldn’t keep trying to ram us if what they did made sense all the time.” Porter might have been talking about John Campbell–style aliens, who thought as well as men but not like them. He went on, “My best guess is, they needed something from a submarine, and didn’t want us to watch them making contact.”

“Ah.” Jerry considered, then nodded. “Sure seems more likely than anything I came up with on my own.”

“It’s still only a guess. Just because it seems likely doesn’t make it true,” Jack said. “The Russians do all kinds of unlikely shit.”

“You mean we don’t? What’s the Glomar Explorer doing way the hell out here in that case?”

“Who? Us?” Porter was unflappable, as a good security man should have been. “We’re mining manganese nodules, of course. Hey, it’s the next big thing. Lots of minerals there at the bottom of the ocean, just waiting to get vacuumed up. Howard Hughes thinks so, and he spent a ton of money building this ship to prove it. He’s got Manfred and other people at ocean mining conferences spreading the word, so it must be true.”

“We’ve got Manfred, you mean,” Jerry said. You’ve got Manfred. The CIA has Manfred. And did Manfred know about the spaceship, or only—only!—about the K-129? Jerry didn’t ask. Jack might not have the need to know. Even if he did, he wouldn’t blab. He was a good security man.

The SB-10 kept hanging around. The Russian crewmen didn’t even bother to pretend they weren’t photographing the American ship. Men on the Glomar Explorer watched the tug, too, to make sure it didn’t slam into their ship—and because it had those women aboard.

One of them was a dishwater blonde, the other a brunette. So some of the pipe farmers and divers swore; Jerry was never sure there actually were two of them. “Oh, hell, yes!” a rent-a-frog said, when he questioned that. “They swap dresses back and forth, too. Ain’t you noticed?”

“No,” Jerry admitted, wondering how they could swap dresses if there was only one of them.