"Directional array?" Amy asked. Researchers sometimes towed large arrays of hydrophones that could, unlike a single hydrophone, detect the direction from which sound was traveling.

"Could be," Clay said. "Except they don't have a winch on their boat.

"A wench? What are you trying to say, Clay?" Amy feigned being offended. "Are you calling me a wench?"

Clay grinned at her. "Amy, I am old and have a girlfriend, and therefore I am immune to your hotness. Please cease your useless attempts to make me uncomfortable."

"Let's follow them."

"They've been working on the lee side of Lanai. I don't want to take the Confused past the wind line."

"So you were trying to find out what they're up to?"

"I fished. No bites. Cliff's not going to say anything with Tarwater standing there."

"So let's follow them."

"We actually may get some work done today. It's a good day, after all, and we might not get a dozen windless days all season here. We can't afford to lose a day, Amy. Which reminds me, what's up with Nate? Not like him to blow off a good field day."

"You know, he's nuts," Amy said, as if it were understood. "Too much time thinking about whales."

"Oh, right. I forgot." As they motored out of the harbor, Clay waved to a group of researchers who had gathered at the fuel station to buy coffee. Twenty universities and a dozen foundations were represented in that group. Clay was single-handedly responsible for making the scientists who worked out of Lahaina into a social community. He knew them all, and he couldn't help it — he liked people who worked with whales — and he just liked it when people got along.

He'd started weekly meetings and presentations of papers at the Pacific Whale Sanctuary building in Kihei, which brought all the scientists together to socialize, trade information, and, for some, to try to weasel some useful data out of someone without the burden of field research.