The second volume of Hughes and Eugel, which I was still leafing through mechanically, began with a systematization that was as ingenious as it was amusing. The table of classification comprised three definitions: Type: Polythera; Class: Syncytialia; Category: Metamorph.

It might have been thought that we knew of an infinite number of examples of the species, whereas in reality there was only the one — weighing, it is true, some seven hundred billion tons.

Multicolored illustrations, picturesque graphs, analytical summaries and spectral diagrams flickered through my fingers, explaining the type and rhythm of the fundamental transformations as well as chemical reactions. Rapidly, infallibly, the thick tome led the reader on to the solid ground of mathematical certitude. One might have assumed that we knew everything there was to be known about this representative of the category Metamorph, which lay some hundreds of metres below the metal hull of the Station, obscured at the moment by the shadows of the four-hour night.

In fact, by no means everybody was yet convinced that the ocean was actually a living ‘creature,’ and still less, it goes without saying, a rational one. I put the heavy volume back on the shelf and took up the one next to it, which was in two parts. The first part was devoted to a resumé of the countless attempts to establish contact with the ocean. I could well remember how, when I was a student, these attempts were the subject of endless anecdotes, jokes and witticisms. Compared with the proliferation of speculative ideas which were triggered off by this problem, medieval scholasticism seemed a model of scientific enlightenment. The second part, nearly 1500 pages long, was devoted exclusively to the bibliography of the subject. There would not have been enough room for the books themselves in the cabin in which I was sitting.

The first attempts at contact were by means of specially designed electronic apparatus.