“Well, come in or out, son. Can’t salt half a peanut.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the youth replied, coming outside, “but this is my first actual catch—outside academy drills, of course. Tell me, can you see them when they goby?”
Papadakis made a sound, chomped hard on the pipe.
“Nope. More’s the pity, too. Oh, the caravaners can, they and their porpoises. But they’re so busy chasing off sharks and groupers and other predators that they’ve got no time to spend admiring things. Got better uses for their lights. Trying to cut a blue shark out of a school at night in this plankton stew is near impossible even with sonar. Couldn’t do it without the porps.”
A voice came from within the bridge. “Two minutes, Cap’n.” Papadakis acknowledged this information by grunting louder than usual. “Isn’t it exciting, sir?” “Exciting? Just fish, son.”
The youth stayed quiet for a minute. Then, “Sir, I know what the book says—it seems silly—but can you really feel them?”
“Oh, sometimes, sometimes not. Doesn’t happen too often. Depends mostly on surface conditions. Then too, they’ve got to pass fairly close under your keel. The Cetacean and her cousins are big. Conditions got to be just about perfect.”
118
A Miracle of Small Fishes
“They’re just about perfect tonight, aren’t they, sir?”
“Yep,” Papadakis spared an inquiring glance for the moon. Full. Good! Tonight they could use all the light they could get. Course, the moon was always full for the catch. Migration set it up that way. The crews would be working till daylight.