As she watched the footage, Adelaide was unduly pleased with herself for buying the drone.

She’d come up with ways to justify, strategic arguments and claims, but the emotional reality had never really gotten away from the fact that it was extremely cool, and there were cool things she wanted to look at. How it would actually get used was something she was confident she’d figure out eventually.

And here they were! When they had realized that the Node moved away from the creature they had been following, there had been this temptation to set off for the new wake trail and try to catch it there. But Adelaide had been forced to play keep-away enough on various playgrounds to realize where that led.

What they’d needed to do was understand where the Node was going to be before it got there, so they could meet it midway. While the Captain kept pace from a less nausea-inducing distance, Adelaide had looked with Percy at the map of Node locations thus far.

One thing that became clear immediately was that it would have been great to get a higher sample rate. When they had been assuming it was moving along with a big spinning scaly whale, it had been natural to draw a mostly continuous curve. But now that they’d seen the deviation, it opened up the possibility space dramatically — for all they knew, it could have been teleporting around. But they’d observed the creature’s path for enough to confirm that it had been where the Node was for several observations.

By comparing Percy’s math to the path the Strider automatically maintained as part of the navigational process that allowed them to know their distance from the Triangle, they had realized that the Node had diverged from the leviathan only shortly before the Strider’s nearest approach. Since then, it was following the wake of the other creature, although they hadn’t observed that creature long enough to know how long it had been moving in that direction.

So that’s what they were doing now: using the drone to watch the creature from above as they moved gradually closer, taking Alessio up on his offer to fly the thing because Adelaide didn’t think that above a gyrating leviathan was the right place for her personal tutorial. If the Node stayed on this new leviathan, they would try another close approach, but they’d get some more perspective before they did.

In the meantime, it was fascinating to watch. Adelaide wasn’t sure if it was the quality of the drone’s camera or the comparative reduction in her own nausea, but she got a much better sense of the creature than she had when she’d been physically closer. For one thing, it was now clear that it was eating as it moved — it didn’t exactly have a mouth so much as a series of vents into which seawater flowed. And there were other vents lower down its body where the water was released.

Adelaide was reminded of a centrifuge, and she wondered if the creature spun for exactly that reason — maybe it was separating the nutrients or prey it needed from the rest of the seawater. But it also seemed to be enabling the motion.

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She could have watched it for hours, just spinning its way through the sea. And, she suddenly realized, that was what it had been doing, forever. Before they entered this Sea, it had been spinning and spinning forever. And this thing didn’t seem like it was noticing them, so it would probably keep on spinning long after they were gone.

And then it did the same rapid stop the other creature had done. Adelaide felt a moment of panic for the drone as a few scales shot into the air. But they didn’t reach that height, and, as they fell, Adelaide saw the same green ball she’d noticed the last time, now shooting off away from the creature.

Ray was looking at the same monitor, and as she turned to face him, it was clear he’d seen the same thing. He yelled to the Captain, “Can we match course with that green thing??

“Probably, but you’ll have to show it to me. What green thing?”

Ray rewound the feed, and Adelaide turned to Alessio. “Can you get the drone to follow it?”

“I mean, I generally use these more to like look at people at secret weddings than to follow speeding objects, but I’ll do my best.”

He lost it a few times, but Captain Mattson managed to anticipate its course well enough, and, within a few minutes, Adelaide saw the drone following it approaching the Strider itself. It was still hard to make it out exactly what the green ball was, as it was under the waves, but it was moving towards them.

Adelaide heard a chime and looked at Percy, who gave her a thumbs up without looking away from the terminal. Her instinct had been right — the green thing was the Node, and they’d gotten close enough for their reading. They hadn’t been wasting their time on this crazy chase, and they wouldn’t need to call it off fruitlessly.

Adelaide turned to the Captain. “We got what we needed. You can break course now.”

“I’m glad for your readings, whatever they are! But don’t you want us to catch it?”

“Catch it?”

“Sure — I mean, who knows, but we can throw down nets for it! We might be able to pull it in, and maybe it’s valuable!”

“Why would it be valuable?”

“Isn’t it the fancy thing from your readings?”

Adelaide paused at that. She had been so focused on the chase that she hadn’t thought about the prospect of harvesting the ball itself. But it could definitely have monetary value, and it definitely seemed interesting. And it was a Node that moved — that seemed like a vital clue all by itself.

But then she thought of the spinning leviathans and paused. She didn’t know how it would affect them, or if it would at all. But it seemed like the process of sending it out was effortful, and presumably not done pointlessly. She couldn’t exactly explain why the prospect of disturbing those spinning creatures mattered to her, but she found herself hesitating.

“It’s approaching!” the Captain said. “Are we moving to intercept?”

Adelaide swallowed and made a decision.