45

EAST CHINA SEA
0049 HOURS ZONE TIME; AUGUST 23, 2006

There was so little there, just the faintest widening in one frequency band of the cascade display. And just the faintest, the very faintest of whispers beyond the sea sounds in the audio output coming over the speakers. God! Was it really there at all?

For the thousandth time, Lieutenant Charles Foster wondered if he was making a fool of himself. The Cunningham had been working this frustrating almost-contact for the past two hours, and for the past one, Foster had been riding the main console in Sonar Alley himself. Again, he reached out and tapped in the “Target Identification Analysis” command into the sonar array data annex.

**NO I.D. INSUFFICIENT DATA GATE FOR ANALYSIS**

“Shit!”

“Easy, Lieutenant. Like they used to say out this way, ‘Softly, softly, catchee monkey.’”

Captain Garrett had been standing at his shoulder for the past hour as well, silent for the most part, observing, waiting, disregarding her own loss of rest and time.

“Any change in aspect?” she inquired quietly.

“No, it’s still just hanging out there in the surface sound duct. Bearing between oh ninety-five and one hundred degrees true. Can’t narrow it down beyond that. There’s just not enough to pinpoint.”

“Any new thoughts on range?”

“No, he could be somebody running just ahead of us at good quiet, or he could be some distance away hauling ass. There is just no way of telling.”

“Well, we’ve got an Orion quartering out ahead of us now. We’ll keep running down this bearing toward the contact until we hear what he has to say.”

Foster nodded, his throat suddenly dry. He swallowed twice and forced the words out, speaking to the slim silhouette beside him in the semidarkness of the CIC.

“Captain, I’m sorry, but I think that this is a dead end.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, ma’am. The contact has remained consistently in the surface duct. The contact has not appreciably shifted bearing; it’s either not moving or moving very slowly. The contact is intermittent and transitory. I haven’t been able to pick up a repetitive mechanical pattern off it like a blade count.”

The sonarman swallowed again and finished. “I’m really sorry, but I think I’ve had us chasing a biological, maybe a pack of dolphins or something.”

His captain nodded slowly. “I agree, this is probably a biological. It’s shown every sign of it for the past half hour. But I’m not absolutely sure yet. Are you?”

“No, not absolutely, ma’am.”

“Then let’s stay on it until we are sure.”

Foster felt a small, strong hand rest on his shoulder for a moment. “We don’t have anything better to be doing just now.”

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