We talked it over for a little time. The Captain was apologetic and understanding, but he had his orders. He assured us that he would make it his business to see that we were notified of release at the earliest possible moment; and with that we had to make do. Phyllis hid her disappointment under her usual philosophic good sense. Before we left, she asked:
'Honestly, Captain Winters and off the record, if you like have you any idea what can have done it?'
He shook his head. 'On or off the record, Mrs Watson, I can think of no explanation that approaches being possible and, though this is not for publication, I doubt whether anyone else in the Service has an idea, either.'
And so, with the affair left in that unsatisfactory state, we parted.
The prohibition, however, lasted a shorter time than we expected. A week later, just as we were sitting down to dinner, he rang through. Phyllis took the call.
'Oh, hullo, Mrs Watson. I'm glad it's you. I have some good news for you,' Captain Winters' voice said. 'I've just been talking to your EBC people, and giving them the okay, so far as we are concerned, to go ahead with that feature of yours, and the whole story.'
Phyllis thanked him for the news. 'But what's happened?' she added.
'The story's broken, anyway. You'll hear it on the nine o'clock news tonight, and see it in tomorrow's papers. In the circumstances it seemed to me that you ought to be free to take your chance as soon as possible. Their Lordships saw the point in fact, they would like your feature to go out as soon as possible. They approve of it. So there it is. And the best of luck to you.'
Phyllis thanked him again, and rang off.
'Now what do you suppose can have happened?' she inquired.
We had to wait until nine o'clock to find that out. The notice on the news was scanty, but sufficient from our point of view. It reported simply that an American naval unit conducting research into deep-sea conditions somewhere off the Philippines had suffered the loss of a depth-chamber, with its crew of two men.
Almost immediately afterwards EBC came through on the telephone with a lot of talk about priorities, and altered pro? gramme schedules, and available cast.
Audio-assessment told us later that the feature had an excellent reception figure. Coming so soon after the American announcement, we hit the peak of popular interest. Their Lordships were pleased, too. It gave them the opportunity of showing that they did not always have to follow the American lead though I still think there was no need to make the US a present of the first publicity. Anyway, in view of what has followed, I don't suppose it greatly matters.
In the circumstances, Phyllis rewrote a part of the script, making greater play with the fusing of the cables than before. A flood of correspondence came in, but when all the tentative explanations and suggestions had been winnowed none of us was any wiser than before.
Perhaps it was scarcely to be expected that we should be. Our listeners had not even seen the maps, and at this stage it had not occurred to the general public that there could be any link between the diving catastrophes and the somewhat demode topic of fireballs.
But if, as it seemed, the Royal Navy was disposed simply to sit still for a time and ponder the problem theoretically, the US Navy was not. Deviously we heard that they were preparing to send a second expedition to the same spot where their loss had occurred. We promptly applied to be included, and were refused. How many other people applied, I don't know, but enough for them to allocate a second small craft. We couldn't get a place on that either. All space was reserved for their own correspondents and commentators who would cover for Europe, too.
Well, it was their own show. They were paying for it. All the same, I'm sorry we missed it because, though we did think it likely they would lose their apparatus again, it never crossed our minds that they might lose their ship as well .
About a week after it happened one of the NBC men who had been covering it came over. We more or less shanghaied him for lunch and the personal dope.
'Never saw anything like it never want to,' he said. 'They were using an automatic instrument pretty much like the one you people lost. The idea was to send that down first, and if it came up again okay, then they'd take another smack at it with a manned depth-chamber what's more, they had a couple of volunteers for it, too; funny the way you can always find a few guys who seem kind of bored with life on Earth.
'Anyway, that was the project. We lay off a couple of hundred yards or more from the research ship, but we had a cable slung between us to relay the television, so we could watch it on our screens just as well as they could on theirs.
'We did awhile, but I guess it's one of those subjects you have to have majored in to keep the interest up. The way we saw it, it was more of a test-out. We were aiming to get our real stuff from the depth-chamber dive where there'd be the human angle, even though it'd not go down so far.
'Well, we watched the thing slung overside, then we went into our saloon to look at the screens. I guess what we saw'd likely be what you saw; sometimes it was foggy, sometimes clear, and sometimes there'd be quite a few screwy-looking fish and squids, and whole flocks of things that don't have any names I ever heard of, and, I'd say, don't need 'em, either.
'Over the screens was a lighted panel recording the depth which was a good idea on account of it all looked like it might be going around on an endless band, anyway. By one mile down all the guys with better-trained consciences had taken them up on deck under the awning, with smokes and cold drinks. By two miles down, I was out there, with them, leaving two or three puritanical characters to cover it and tell us if anything new showed up. After a bit more, one of them quit, too, and joined me.
'"Two and a half miles, and the last half-mile as dark as the Tunnel of Love arid that wouldn't interest even fish a lot, from what they tell me," he said.
'He drew himself a coke and started to move over towards me. Then he stopped short.
'"Christ!" he said. And simultaneously there was some kind of yell from inside the saloon.
'I turned my head and looked the way he was looking at the research ship.
'A moment before she had been lying there placid, without a visible movement aboard her, and only the sound of the winch coming over the water to tell you she wasn't derelict. And now she was
'Well, I don't know what kind of thunderstorms you folks have over here, but in some places they have a kind where the lightning looks like it's running around all over a building. And that was the way the research ship looked just then. You could hear it crackle, too.
'She can't have looked that way for more than a few seconds, though it seemed a lot longer. Then she blew up .
'I don't know what they had aboard her, but she sure did blow. Every one of us hit the deck in a split second. And then there was spray and scrap coming down all over. When we looked again there wasn't anything there but a lot of water just getting itself smoothed out.
'We didn't have a lot to pick up. A few bits of wood, half a dozen lifebuoys, and three bodies, all badly burnt. We collected what there was, and came home.'
During the longish pause Phyllis poured him another cup of coffee.
'What was it?' she asked.
He shrugged. 'It could have been coincidence, but say we rule that out, then I'd guess that if ever lightning were to strike upwards from the sea, that'd be about the way it'd look.'
'I never heard of anything like that,' Phyllis said.
'It certainly isn't on the record,' he agreed. 'But there has to be a first time.'
'Not very satisfactory,' Phyllis commented.
He looked us over.