"The squid exists to justify his fears?"
"Something like that, yes."
"I don't know," Beth said. She leaned back and turned her head up, and her high cheekbones caught the light. She looked almost like a model, elegant and handsome and strong. "I'm a zoologist, Norman. I want to touch things and hold them in my hands and see that they're real. All these theories about manifestations, they just ... They're so ... psychological."
"The world of the mind is just as real, and follows rules just as rigorous, as the world of external reality," Norman said.
"Yes, I'm sure you're right, but ..." She shrugged. "It isn't very satisfying to me."
"You know everything that has happened since we got down here," Norman said. "Tell me another hypothesis that explains it all."
"I can't," she admitted. "I've been trying, all the time you've been talking. I can't." She folded the paper in her hands and considered it for a while. "You know, Norman, I think you've made a brilliant series of deductions. Absolutely brilliant. I'm seeing you in a whole different light."
Norman smiled with pleasure. For most of the time he had been down in the habitat, he'd felt like a fifth wheel, an unnecessary person in this group. Now someone was acknowledging his contribution, and he was pleased. "Thank you, Beth."
She looked at him, her large eyes liquid and soft. "You're a very attractive man, Norman. I don't think I ever really noticed before." Absently, she touched her breast, beneath the clinging jumpsuit. Her hands pressed the fabric, outlining the hard nipples. She suddenly stood and hugged him, her body close to him. "We have to stay together on this," she said. "We have to stay close, you and I"
"Yes, we do."
"Because, if what you are saying is true, then Harry is a very dangerous man."
"Yes."
"Just the fact that he is walking around, fully conscious, makes him dangerous."
"Yes."
"What are we going to do about him?"
"Hey, you guys," Harry said, coming up the stairs. "Is this a private party? Or can anybody join in?"
"Sure," Norman said, "come on up, Harry," and he moved away from Beth.
"Was I interrupting something?" Harry said.
"No, no."
"I don't want to get in the way of anybody's sex life."
"Oh, Harry," Beth said. She sat at the lab bench, moving away from Norman.
"Well, you two sure look all charged up about something."
"Do we?" Norman said.
"Yeah, especially Beth. I think she gets more beautiful every day she's down here."
"I've noticed that, too," Norman said, smiling.
"I'll bet you have. A woman in love. Lucky you." Harry turned to Beth. "Why are you staring at me like that?"
"I'm not staring," Beth said.
"You are, too."
"Harry, I'm not staring."
"I can tell when someone is staring at me, for Christ's sake."
Norman said, "Harry - "
" - I just want to know why you two are looking at me like that. You're looking at me like I'm a criminal or something."
"Don't get paranoid, Harry."
"Huddling up here, whispering ..."
"We weren't whispering."
"You were." Harry looked around the room. "So it's two white people and one black person now, is that it?"
"Oh, Harry ..."
"I'm not stupid, you know. Something's going on between you. I can tell."
"Harry," Norman said, "nothing is going on."
And then they heard a low insistent beeping, from the communications console downstairs. They exchanged glances, and went downstairs to look.
The console screen was slowly printing out letter groups.
CQX VDX MOP IM
"Is that Jerry?" Norman asked.
"I don't think so," Harry said. "I don't think he would go back to code."
"Is it a code?"
"I would say so, definitely."
"Why is it so slow?" Beth said. A new letter was added every few seconds in a steady, rhythmic way.
"I don't know," Harry said. "Where is it coming from?"
Harry frowned. "I don't know, but the transmission speed is the most interesting characteristic. The slowness. Interesting."
Norman and Beth waited for him to figure it out. Norman thought: How can we ever get along without Harry? We need him. He is both the most important intelligence down here, and the most dangerous. But we need him.
CQX VDX MOP LKI XXC VRW TGK PIU YQA
"Interesting," Harry said. "The letters are coming about every five seconds. So I think it's safe to say that we know where it's coming from. Wisconsin."
Norman could not have been more surprised. "Wisconsin?"
"Yeah. This is a Navy transmission. It may or may not be directed to us, but it is coming from Wisconsin."
"How do you know that?"
"Because that's the only place in the world it could be coming from," Harry said. "You know about ELF? No? Well, it's like this. You can send radio waves through the air, and, as you know, they travel pretty well. But you can't send radio far through water. Water is a bad medium, so you need an incredibly powerful signal to go even a short distance."
"Yes ..."
"But the ability to penetrate is a function of wavelength. An ordinary radio wave is short-shortwave radio, all of that. The length of the waves are tiny, thousands or millions of little waves to an inch. But you can also make ELF, extremely low-frequency waves, which are long-each individual wave is maybe twenty feet long. And those waves, once generated, will go a very great distance, thousands of miles, through water, no problem. The only trouble is that, since the waves are long, they're also slow. That's why we're getting one character every five seconds. The Navy needed a way to communicate with their submarines underwater, so they built a big ELF antenna in Wisconsin to send these long waves. And that's what we're getting."