A few minutes later, Dave Schoals came to the edge of the moon pool. He also had a camera: a 35-millimeter with a fancy lens on it. A leather case on his belt probably held more lenses, and maybe more film with them. He started taking pictures of Humpty Dumpty, too. Jerry figured he had a better chance of keeping his photos than the sailor did. He was sure Dave had a fancier security clearance.

As was often true, he had to look around for something to say. As wasn’t so often true, he found something. “Congratulations,” he told the recovery director. “We’ve got it, thanks to you.”

“Not just me. Team effort all the way,” Dave answered. “But thanks. I was sweating bullets all the way till we got the gates as closed as they get and started pumping water out of the pool.”

“Everybody was,” Jerry said. Anyone who wasn’t nervous about Humpty Dumpty probably wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, either. It could still hit the Glomar Explorer with whatever it had used on the K-129. But this was a different worry: fear of success, not fear of failure.

“Where’s the airlock or whatever it is? I want to get some shots of that,” Dave said.

Jerry pointed. “Starboard side. You can hardly see it. Clementine’s big claw is kind of wrapped around it.”

“Ahh, you’re right. So it is,” Dave said. “Eventually, people like you and Steve and the guys we’ll be bringing in on the B crew will start working out how to go inside and just what we’ve got here.”

“The B crew?” Jerry had heard the phrase at meals a few times, but he wasn’t clear about what it meant.

“Uh-huh. We’re the A crew. For most of us, getting Humpty Dumpty up from the bottom was the big deal. The B crew will come out and exploit it more after we get where we’re going. You and Steve will be part of that, too—don’t worry.”

“Oh.” Of course, Jerry did worry. More hotshot experts would come aboard the Glomar Explorer and not want to notice a lowly grad student (a redundancy, if ever there was one). He asked, “What are we doing now? Where are we going? We’re not staying here, right?”

“We sure aren’t,” Dave said. “We sent out a message in the clear days ago, saying that something had gone wrong with the nodule collector and asking if we can go to an area near Midway to see what we can do about repairs. In case you don’t know, the Navy runs Midway.”

“I did sorta know, yeah. It’s a big breeding reserve for albatrosses, isn’t it?”