There was silence for a long second, then everyone started buzzing. Matthew looked around and Penny was nowhere to be seen.
Becka began a slow scan back and across the whales. The readings appeared in the same red spectrum.
“Could it be that the whale with the peculiar readings is simply not there anymore?” Mary said.
“Peculiar?” Malcolm said. “It was off the scale!”
“I understand, but can you tell if the original leader is there or not?”
In a relatively calm voice, Emory pointed to one of the infrared images of the whales on the screen and said, “According to the tracking coordinates, this one is probably Lefty, but we obviously can’t be sure about the identity of any of the others until daylight.”
“Excuse me,” Ripler said, “but why not send someone over in a Zodiac with lights to make a visual confirmation?”
“They might…” Matthew began, then stopped.
Ripler smiled. “Might what? Go up in a puff of pixie dust?”
“We’re trying not to make them nervous,” Thorssen said. “Don’t know what we’re playing with yet.”
Ripler swung around in his console seat and, without a hint of sarcasm, said, “Then maybe now’s the time to find out?”
“Maybe we should risk it,” Becka said. “Take a run over and have a quick look. If the whale with the apparently ‘off-the-scale’ readout is there or not, we should verify that, one way or another.”
Thorssen looked out toward the whales and then at Ripler and Becka, but when he spoke, he spoke to everyone.
“The only verifiable thing we really have is the odd behavior of these grays. We disturb them, they might separate and go back to usual, and we’ve blown the opportunity to study and record something wonderful.”
Mary nodded her head in agreement. “I believe the Captain is right. This is not the best time to be doing a night raid.”
“Hey!” Malcolm suddenly looked dumbstruck, but managed to speak anyway. “Head count, we could do a head count, that would tell us something!”
“Well, we know that there were fifty-three before,” Becka said, “So, yes, it should be possible to confirm how many are there. Although if there’s one less, we still can’t be sure which one.”
“Worth doing,” Emory said.
Everyone started talking.
“Matthew?” Penny said softly as she came up behind him.
“How do you do that?” he said. “I never see you coming. And where do you keep going off to?” He looked at Penny and saw the moon reflected in her eyes.
“It’s part of my work,” she said. “Silent stalking. You want to blow this Popsicle stand and compare notes?”
He looked around. Everyone seemed to be finding something to do or they had gone back to C-lab.