"My point exactly," said Frank. "We used to land our ships at sea, because that was easier than landing them on land, and—"

"I thought it was because we launched out over the ocean from Canaveral, so—"

"The Shuttle goes up from Canaveral; we bring it down on land. If you’ve got the technology, you come down on land — if that’s where you live; the Russians came down on land from day one."

Clete was shaking his head. "I think you’re missing the obvious, Frankie.

What was it that boy said a moment ago? ‘International waters.’ I think they’ve been watching long enough to figger it’d be a peck o’ trouble landin’ in any particular country. Only place on Earth you can land that ain’t nobody’s turf is in the ocean."

"Oh, come on. I doubt they’ve been able to decipher our radio or TV, and—"

"Don’t need to do none o’ that," said Clete. He was forty years old, thin, gangly, jug-eared, and redheaded — not quite Ichabod Crane, but close. "You can deduce it from first principles. Earth’s got seven continents; that implies regional evolution, and that implies territorial conflict once the technology reaches a level that lets you travel freely between the continents."

Frank blew out air, conceding the point. He looked at his watch for the third time in the last few minutes. "Damn, I wish we could get there faster. This is—"

"Hang on a minute, Frankie," said Clete. He used one of his long arms toaim the remote at the seventeen-inch color TV mounted on the wall, turning off the mute. The aircraft carrier was picking up CNN’s satellite feed.

"…more now on that story," said white-haired Lou Waters. "Civilian and military observers worldwide were stunned late yesterday when what was at first taken to be a giant meteor skimmed through Earth’s atmosphere over Brazil." Waters’s face was replaced with grainy amateur video of something streaking through a cloudless blue sky. "But the object flew right around the Earth well inside our atmosphere, and soon almost every public and private telescope and radar dish on the planet was trained on it. Even the U.S. government has now conceded that the object is, in all likelihood, a spacecraft — and not one of ours. Karen Hunt has more. Karen?"