“Or if it is, it hasn’t started acting up yet,” Jerry said. Steve stuck out his tongue at him. It wasn’t the kind of thing the man from the RAND Corporation would usually have done, but they were all giddy just then.

Jerry wondered why the Midlothian object seemed relatively light—if that turned out to be true. Whatever it was made of, it wouldn’t be anything earthly science was familiar with. The K-129 had taken a beating while it sank to the ocean floor. The Midlothian object looked as fresh and undamaged as if it had got there only a few minutes before. It also still looked to be airtight, gastight, watertight, whatever the right word was. How, under the crushing weight of three miles of water?

Force fields? he wondered. He’d never liked stories that used them. They seemed like hand-waving bullshit, not something that could really exist. But who could guess what kind of rules the vessel down there played by? Some Earthly physicists might go stark raving mad trying to work them out.

If we can bring it up here for a look, he reminded himself. Yeah. If.

No force fields aboard the Glomar Explorer. Jerry didn’t think so, anyhow, though he still hadn’t been inside a few of the containers she carried. But the Explorer did have thousands of tons of steel. Some of it began to lower: the docking legs forward and aft of the moon pool slowly descended into the Pacific.

Pointing, Jerry asked, “What’s going on?”

“We’re lowering our center of gravity,” Dave answered. “We’ve got all that weight at the apex of the derrick. It makes us top-heavy. We don’t want to capsize if the waves pick up.”

“Ah. Cool.” Jerry nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. With someone his own age, someone closer to his politics, he might have used a peace-symbol V instead. Here, not rattling anybody’s cage seemed the better part of valor.

For the next couple of days, the SB-10 kept flitting around the Glomar Explorer. It would circle the American ship, often at less than a hundred yards. Or it would keep station a mile or two astern of the Explorer. Or it would quit doing that, run up till it was out ahead of the big ship, then kill its engine and let wind and waves shove it back again.

Another ship, a freighter called the Bangkok, steamed past, four or five miles north of the Glomar Explorer. The Bangkok didn’t have any trouble getting in touch with the Explorer: she radioed, asking what kind of ship it was.

“They thought we were funny looking,” Jack Porter said, not without pride, as he told the story at dinner. “And you know what? They were right.”

“We told ’em we were scooping up manganese nodules?” Jerry asked.