Anna won’t think so, went through Jerry’s mind. Maybe half a minute later, so did, Dad may not, either. They’d split the insurance policy the CIA had issued for him when he joined Azorian and Midlothian. He was positive that would keep his father quiet. He wasn’t so sure about Anna, who often got off on talking back to people.

Yeah, she’d want answers. Whether John P. and his buddies on dry land could come up with any convincing enough for her was an interesting question.

Another interesting question was what the USA could do if it didn’t want to take losing the Glomar Explorer lying down. Could they drop an H-bomb on a target three miles underwater? What kind of range did the starship’s bacon-fryer have? Those were the kinds of things you wanted to think about before you started writing an alien-contact story.

It occurred to Jerry that those were also the kinds of things you wanted to think about before you started living an alien-contact story. Naturally, that occurred to him too late to do any good. I’ll be smarter next time, he told himself. But there wouldn’t be a next time, not like this.

A lot of systems on the Glomar Explorer and extending down to Clementine through all that pipe were hydraulically controlled. Just about all of them went haywire at one time or another while the pipe string descended toward the Midlothian object. Several different kinds of oil leaked, sometimes at high pressure.

Jerry eyed his sneakers with sad resignation. After he’d walked through those assorted kinds of oil, they’d never be the same. If he’d worn Blue Tips when he was in junior high, he would have been one of the cool kids. Surfers loved them, for instance. He’d mostly worn Hush Puppies: his dad was the one with the wallet, and with the last word.

Now I’ve got the Blue Tips, and what are they? Just shoes, he thought. Some profound life lesson probably lurked in there somewhere, but it seemed too depressing for him to try to ferret it out.

And the sneakers weren’t the only thing the hydraulic oil spread over. The Glomar Explorer had its very own oil slick. People wondered out loud how far across the Pacific it was stretching.

Another question occurred to Jerry. He asked Dave Schoals, “What can the guys in the SB-10 learn if they scoop up some of the slick and analyze the hell out of it?”

“Huh!” The recovery director sent him a thoughtful stare. “You do come up with the interesting questions, don’t you?”

“I try,” Jerry said modestly, adding, “People say I’m trying a lot of the time, as a matter of fact.”

“Wonder why,” Dave said with a grin. Then he caught himself. “Wait. You’re writing your thesis now, aren’t you?”