Before noon, seven more plastic objects had been found among the deep-sea fish. Three seemed identical to the one Terry had found. Two others were identical to each other but of a different kind, and the last two were of two different types altogether. Only those like the one tested by Terry seemed sensitive to sounds, which they changed into other sounds at a twenty-thousand-cycle frequency, or higher. The rest did nothing that could be detected.
During the afternoon, news came to distract the absorption of the tracking station staff in the lagoon’s fish. The short-wave operator came running to the wharf, waving a written message. The deck of the Esperance was not a pretty sight, just then, with the dissection that had been taking place on it Jug was beginning to flush the debris overside.
The short-wave operator arrived. Dr. Morton read the message. He raised his voice.
“Here’s a fancy one!” he told the assembled company. “Space-radar’s picked up a new object coining in from nowhere. It will probably orbit once before it hits the air and burns. By the line of motion it should pass nearly overhead here. We’re alerted to get it under observation and watch it!” He waved the message in a large gesture. “We’ve got to get ourselves set up! The argument on the path of last night’s bolide and why it fell where it did is again in order. We’ll see what we can do about computing the fall-point of this!”
He headed for the shore. The staff followed, babbling. Somebody’s mathematics would be verified, and with it his views on the possible effects of terrestrial magnetism on objects approaching the earth.
“We ought to get these plastic things to Manila,” Davis said slowly. “They need to be compared to others. But I think we’ll wait and see this bolide first.”
A heated argument started in the tracking station staff. From Dr. Morton downward, almost to the station’s cook, the most varied predictions were made. The official computation from Washington, made from the observed course and height and speed, predicted that the bolide would land somewhere in the South Pacific. Dr. Morton predicted a fall in the China Sea, within a certain precisely stated number of miles from Thrawn Island. Other predictions varied.
At exactly fourteen minutes after eight—a time way ahead of the official schedule but exactly as Dr. Morton had predicted—the bolide passed overhead. It was an amazing spectacle. It left a trail of flame behind, across thirty degrees of sky. It went on and on…
Less than ten minutes later the short-wave radio informed the island that the shooting star had been seen to fall in the sea. It had been observed by a plane which was then circling over the area in which the Esperance had encountered the circle of shining sea. The plane was there to see if the phenomenon would occur again. It didn’t.
But the plane saw the bolide as it struck the sea, and huge masses of steam and spray arose. The bolide was not white-hot, then, as when it passed over Thrawn Island. It was barely of dull-red brightness. It hit the sea and sank, leaving steam behind.
The water was forty-five hundred fathoms deep at that point.
Six
Fourteen hours later the Esperance made ready to sail from Thrawn Island. Her purpose was to carry the plastic objects to Manila, where they would be turned over to specialized laboratories to be studied. Five such objects had been found before: one in the Thrawn Island lagoon, while the satellite-tracking station was under construction, and four attached to exotic fish brought to market by the commercial fishing boat La Rubia. Now there were eight more, of four different kinds. To the laboratories would go Terry’s observation that one kind of these objects absorbed sound at audible frequencies and retransmitted it at much higher ones, but only under water. All this was very interesting and very puzzling.
But a serious disturbance had arisen at the tracking station.
Dr. Morton came to the Esperance before her departure. He had a problem. He’d predicted to the minute, and almost to the mile, the landing of the bolide of the night before. That was the first accurate prediction of the kind in history. But his forecast stood alone in its precision. Nobody else had even come near being right. Now he was being insistently queried by astronomers the world over. They wanted to know how he’d done it. In particular, they wanted to know how he’d figured that the bolide would lose just so many feet per second velocity, neither more nor less, in a three-quarter orbit around the world. Nobody else had such a figure in his equation for the landing spot. Dr. Morton had. His prediction had been exact. Where did he get that necessary but inexplicable figure?
He beckoned Davis and Terry to go below with him, in the Esperance’s after cabin. Terry hesitated.
“You may as well hear my troubles,” said Morton vexedly. “You’re largely responsible for them.”
Terry followed uneasily. He didn’t see how Dr. Morton could hold them responsible. He had guarded his own guesses about the Esperance’s discoveries against even the slightest expression. He couldn’t let himself believe in their correctness, but he was appalled at the inadequacy of all other explanations of past events.
“In sateen months,” said Morton annoyedly, down below, “we’ve spotted six bolides coming in to land in the Luzon Deep. That’s out of all reason! Of course, it could be a mathematical series of wildly unlikely coincidences, such as probability says may happen sometimes. Up to last night that seemed to be a possible explanation.”
Davis nodded. His expression was odd.
“But now,” said Morton somehow indignantly, “that’s ruled out! It’s ruled out by last night’s bolide, and yesterday’s fishing experiment, and that business of the shining sea, plus those damned plastic gadgets and deep sea fish thriving in shallow water! There’s no reasonable explanation for such things, and they’re not mere coincidences!”
“I’m afraid,” admitted Davis, “that they’re not.”
“The obvious explanation,” said Morton doggedly, “I refuse to name or consider. But nevertheless the question is not whether a theory or an explanation is unlikely or not. The question is whether it’s true!”
Davis nodded. Terry had to agree. But the way people are trained in modern times puts a great emphasis on reason, often at the expense of fact. Terry felt the customary civilized reluctance to accept a statistically improbable idea.
“I’m on a spot,” fumed Morton. “I calculated that the damned bolide would slow after it went into orbit around the earth. I calculated that it would slow exactly so much. Do you want to know how I figured how much it should slow down? I’ll tell you! I calculated exactly how much it would have to slow to be able to fall into the Luzon Deep! It did slow. It did fall there. But how am I going to explain that to Washington?”
Terry suddenly felt a warm sympathy for Morton. It is bad enough to dispute with oneself when something incredible happens. But Dr. Morton had gone out on a limb. He’d been caught psychologically naked telling the truth, and now he was asked to explain it. And he couldn’t.