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clamped the earphones on. After about fifteen seconds he removed them and turned to Halzman, who had also removed his.

    'I can't hear a damned thing.'

    'With respect, sir, when I said a minute, I meant just that. A minute. First of all you have to listen until you hear the silence, then you'll hear it.'

    'Whatever that means, I'll try it." Talbot listened again, and just before the allotted minute was up, he leaned forward and creased his brow. After another thirty seconds he removed the head-set.

    'A ticking sound. Strange, Halzman, you were right. First you hear the silence and then you hear it. Tick ... tick ... tick, once every two to three seconds. Very regular. Very faint. You're certain that comes from the plane?'

    'I have no doubt, sir.'

    'Have you ever heard anything like it before?'

    'No, sir. I've spent hundreds of hours, more likely thousands, listening to sonar, asdics, hydrophones, but this is something quite new on me.'

    'I've got pretty good hearing but I had to wait almost a moment before I could imagine I could hear anything. It's very, very faint, isn't it?'

    'It is. I had to turn the hearing capacity up to maximum before I stumbled on it - not a practice I would normally follow or recommend - in the wrong circumstances you can get your eardrums blasted off. Why is it so faint? Well, the source of the sound may be very faint to begin with. I've been thinking about this, sir - well, I've had nothing else to think

    about. It's either a mechanical or electrical device. In either case it has to be inside a sealed or waterproof casing. A mechanical device could, of course, operate in water even if it was totally submerged, but operating in water would dampen out the sound almost completely. An electrical device would have to be totally sealed against sea-water. The plane's own electrical system, of course, has ceased to function, so it would have to have its own supply system, almost certainly battery-powered. In either event, mechanical or electrical, the sound impulses would have to pass through the waterproof casing, after which they must pass through the fuselage of the plane.'

    'Have you any idea as to what it might be?'

    'None whatsoever. It's a two and a half second sequence -I've timed it. I know of no watch or clock movement that follows that sequence. Do you, sir?'

    'No, I don't. You think it could be some sort of timing device?'

    'I thought about that too, sir, but I put it out of my mind.' Halzman smiled. 'Maybe I'm prejudiced against that idea because of all those cheap and awful video film cassettes we have aboard, with all their special effects and pseudo science. All I know for sure, sir, is that we have a mysterious plane lying on the sea-bed there. Lord only knows what mysterious kind of cargo it was carrying."

    'Agreed. I think we'd better leave it at that for the moment. Have one of your boys monitor it, once, say, in every fifteen minutes.'

    When Talbot returned to the bridge he could see the marker buoy just astern, bobbing gently in the very small wake Van Gelder was creating as he edged the Ariadne gently to the north-west. Very soon he stopped, juggled the engines to and fro until he reckoned the bows were a hundred yards distant from the buoy, had the anchor dropped, then moved just as slowly astern, the anchor chain being paid out as he went. Soon the stern anchor had been paid out and the Ariadne was back to where she had started, the buoy nudging the midships port-side.

    'Neatly done,' Talbot said. 'Tell me, Number One, how are you on puzzles?'

    'Useless. Even the simplest crossword baffles me.'

    'No matter. We're picking up a strange noise on the sonar. Maybe you'd like to take a turn along there, perhaps even identify it. Baffles me.'

    'Consider it done. Back in two or three minutes.'

    Twenty minutes elapsed before he returned to the bridge where Talbot was now alone: as the ship was no longer under way, Harrison had retired to his Mess.

    'That was a long