The morning of 001:101 is marked by the arrival of a 14m Hydrospan Model 317 off the cove, with someone calling on the radio. Dive answers it and sends out Pilot and Whitney to guide it in (although for some reason they first believe they are salvaging an abandoned boat). Bart the boat delivery guy from Hydrospan is on board. He gets them to sign the contract for the boat and tells them about all of its wonderful features. Genny thinks to actually check what they've signed, and finds out that Buckman Charters now owes 2000 Hydrospan scrip per month on it.

They give Bart a lift back to Haven in the VTOL (Pilot's maiden voyage in his new plane) and listen to his unlikely fishing stories. On the way back, they discuss what to do about the company. It's pretty clear that Buckman had some computer accounts, but the only reasonable way to break into them involves breaking into his belt computer, which is probably inside the eel. They make some plans to do that, using an antenna to talk to the computer while it is still inside the eel. Dive remembers that the eel was white, and quite large. Pilot and Whitney decide that Genny is clearly the VP of Buckman Charters.

They get back in the wee hours of 002:101 and start work. Genny builds an antenna, while Whitney, Regina, and Pilot scout the cove. They discover no eel, but some lava tubes, and constructing a longer-range "pinging" antenna they are able to figure out that the eel is in one of them. Regina thinks that the eel is unlikely to come out given its recent large meal, and that the computer will likely not last more than a few days.

Whitney builds a noose-trap for the eel to stick the antenna to it. Then there's a spirited discussion about how to get the eel out of the hole. Luckily, their new boat has a survival kit with two flash-bang grenades. Dive volunteers to throw one into the lava tube. He reluctantly agrees to being tethered to the VTOL so that he can be quickly pulled up if something goes wrong - they run a little comm cable down the line that's holding him.

He throws in the grenade and swims like hell. The VTOL, seeing the explosion underwater, pulls up and drags him out like some sort of pinata, despite his lack of signal. Still, no one is actually hurt, somehow. The antenna stays on the eel long enough to get information from Buckman's computer to Genny's.

Afterwards, Genny takes over the Buckman account and Genny and Regina take ownership of the company (Buckman "left it to them") with Pilot, Whitney, and Dive as employees. It's unclear why the others want to be employees rather than owners, but no one complains about that arrangement. Genny chooses the last name "Buckman" for this, leading Pilot to commend her on her dolphin-like behavior. The Buckman accounts turn out to have 2000 in Hydrospan scrip in them.

They consider the jobs Buckman has lined up. There are two request emails: one for a delivery of goods to the Haven Cluster, one for discreet transport of a person to Simushir. There are also two jobs that the expert system has pulled off the public net, one animal collection job for HIST on Kauai and one spectrometer drag off Bald Spot for Biogene. They decide to take the Biogene job, which pays 500 scrip for 5 days of work.

Pilot, Dive, and Whitney fly to Cliffside to collect the spectrometer buoy. They take responsibility for it (it costs 30000 scrip!) and also receive Biogene's latest publicity packet, which announces Chew Goo III, a new Photoskin enhancement, and a missing little girl named Genny Thurpman who looks familiar. Back at the cove, everyone decides it's the girl's business, not theirs. While they're out, Regina gets a message through the public boards offering her "come back to work for us and all is forgiven" but doesn't respond.

The drag takes from 004:101 to 009:101, and is mostly uneventful. The buoy doesn't want to be accessed by unauthorized personnel and says it's logging attempts, so they don't try to hack it and find out what it's looking for. It gets caught once, and is a habitat for a polypod one morning (which results in Regina and Pilot having a spectacularly ineffective fight with the beast, luckily a small one, before it slimes them both and swims off). Whitney also performs a solo swim under a kelp mat (dangerous predator territory) in order to complete the drag properly, and emerges none the worse for wear.

On 010:101 they return the buoy to Biogene and collect their 500 script. Net in the Buckman accounts: 2000 Hydrospan, 500 Biogene.