"There are no currents worth mentioning on the bottom here, but from the surface down to about a hundred meters, the direction of the current does change—it rotates clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. So when we’re moving with the current at the surface, we're dragging the cable against the resistance of that fan of crosswise currents, and when we reel it in, it comes back at an angle.”
“I see. How long will it take to reel it in?”
“About half an hour, but I can show you what we got on the last grab, if you want.”
Under a large half-cylinder of white-painted metal on the wall beside the window was a marble-topped table on which was spread what looked like a heap of clods and dirt. When Newland looked at it more closely, he saw that the clods were purplish granular lumps about the size of his fist; the rest was brown clay. Geller handed him one of the lumps, and he turned it over curiously. "How do these form, anyhow? If that isn’t a silly question.”
“No, it's a good question. Nobody knows how they form. There's one theory that the manganese is in solution in volcanic material under the layer of sediment, and it filters up somehow and condenses out at the sediment-water interface. The reason you find it in fields like this is that it only condenses around solid objects, usually fragments of volcanic rock. But you find other things inside them, too—sharks’ teeth and the ear bones of whales."
“That's fascinating," said Newland. “Like pearls forming around grains of sand?"
A prim scientific smile twisted Geller’s lips. “Well, not exactly."
Newland did not quite smile in return. “Could we see what's inside this one?” he asked.
“Sure, if you want.” Geller took the nodule, picked up two others from the table, and took them to a machine that looked a little like a large stainless-steel nutcracker. He put the first nodule into the steel jaws, depressed the handle, and pulled out a little heap of fragments. “Rock,” he said, showing Newland a triangular reddish chunk. He put the second nodule in, cracked it. “Rock.” Then the third. “Well, well," he said. “Will you look at this?"
Newland bent closer. In Geller’s palm, half-surrounded by fragments of porous manganese, was what looked like a cracked hollow sphere of glass. “What is it?”
“Looks like an australite. That’s a real anomaly.”
“I’m sorry, what’s an australite?”
The horror began when Geller opened his mouth to reply. His eyes closed and he staggered. He came upright again, looking bewildered, with his hand to his brow.
"What’s the matter?"
“I don’t know. I felt like I was about to faint.”
“All right now?”
"Sure. Never did that before.” He bent to pick up the fragments he had dropped, and brushed the dirt away from the glass sphere. "An australite’s a kind of tektite. Found near Australia, that’s why they call them that. This one shouldn’t be here.”
“What are they, exactly?”
“Nobody knows that, either. They show evidence of melting and deformation, so they’ve got to be some kind of meteorite, but they’re never found together with any kind of meteoritic material that could have melted to form them. There are theories about that, too. I’m not that crazy about theories. What we need is data.” He put the cracked glass sphere carefully down on the table. "Wait till my boss sees this."
10
The long murmuring corridors were carpeted in different colors, blue for port, red for starboard, shades of violet and purple in between, so that it was easy to tell where you were in Sea Venture. Stevens roamed the vessel, watching the crowds. Most of the passengers looked Middle American, overdressed and overjeweled, but there was an exotic sprinkling of saris and chadors. He sunned himself beside the pool on the Sports Deck and cultivated a nodding acquaintance with some of the young bathers. He visited the casino in the evening and lost a few hundred dollars at roulette. He sat in the lounge with the older passengers, looking at the sky and ocean in the television screens that cleverly counterfeited windows. Several times as he strolled down the corridors, he saw a gray head over the back of a wheelchair, but when he caught up, it was always an old woman.
From his room Stevens called the operator and was told, not to his surprise, that no Paul Newland was listed among the passengers. In the interest of thoroughness, he asked for Harold Winter, the young man who was known to be traveling with Newland; Winter was not listed either.
Stevens was present for every meal in the Liberty Restaurant: breakfast, the ten-o’clock snack, lunch, four-o’clock tea, dinner, the midnight munch. The man he was waiting for did not appear. Evidently he and his companion were taking all their meals in their room. If this state of affairs continued, it would be seen as a blunder that he had not tried to book a suite on the Signal Deck; but there was nothing to be done about that now.
Meanwhile, both for his own comfort and for professional reasons, he needed a companion: to be alone in Sea Venture was to be conspicuous. For that very reason, there were few unattached women. Stevens narrowed his choice to three, all passably attractive young women traveling with their parents. In casual ways, as opportunity presented itself, he got on speaking terms with all three families. One of them took to him more cordially than the other two: Mr. and Mrs. Prescott and their daughter Julie. The Prescotts had spent some time in Europe, where Prescott had been the art director of an automobile company; they were able to share recollections of Paris. Lausanne. Madrid. In response to their delicate queries, he told them that he was a naturalized American citizen, an executive with a family-owned investment firm, taking a sea cruise for his health. In return, they intimated that the daughter, who was fair-haired and sad, was recovering from some ruptured romance. She had given up a job as a graphics designer, and thought she might paint, or go into social work.
Gradually he became a member of their group; they went to lectures together, dined together, strolled on the Promenade Deck. By occasional glances Stevens indicated that he was more than politely interested in Julie, but he made no overt gesture. Presently the parents began to display a kittenish insistence on throwing the two young people together. One evening, when the elder Prescotts had retired early, pleading fatigue (“It must be the sea air!” said Mrs. Prescott, with a girlish laugh), Stevens took Julie to the Quarter Deck Bar and spent an hour with her exchanging confidences. There had, in fact, been a tragic romance; the man had died. There seemed not to be any particular meaning in life, Julie said, but she knew that she had to go on. He took her back to her suite and left her with a European bow and a chaste kiss on the knuckles. Patience was everything; there was plenty of time.
He took her dancing on the following evening, and they stopped for a nightcap in the Liberty Bar. It was quite late. The only other customers were three couples, one drunk and argumentative, the rest too drunk to talk, and a large young man who sat by himself in a comer, nursing a tall drink. Stevens recognized him instantly from his photograph: it was Harold Winter.
Stevens took Julie home, kissed her goodnight, and went back to his cabin to think about methods. His instructions were to dispose of his victim in such a way that the crime could never be solved; it was to remain a mystery. Since it never would have crossed his mind to conduct himself in any other way, Stevens had accepted this without comment, but he had thought about it a good deal and had drawn a conclusion from it, which was that his new clients were not merely interested in the death of Professor Newland: they wanted the crime to remain unsolved, not out of any solicitude for Stevens, to be sure, but because they wanted the blame to fall on someone else. These were merely speculations, and had nothing to do with him as a professional, but he also noted that appropriations bills for the space-colony program were coming up in Congress, and it occurred to him that if the revered leader of the L-5 movement were to be murdered aboard Sea Venture, it could hardly fail to cause a public outcry which might sway a vote or two. Therefore he thought he knew who his new clients were; the knowledge gave him a certain private satisfaction.