While the iguana-delivery team is in Haven, Genny has a terrible night of homesickness for her red balloon on blue background wallpaper. Meanwhile, Regina gets pointed at a message from her sister and downloads it. It's a video message telling her she should come back to Biogene, that maybe she's a bit unbalanced after Uncle Pete's death and that the company wants nothing other than to help her. She erases it.

Once the plane gets back it needs a little maintainance, so Genny works on it some and draws balloons on it with grease pencil. Pilot thinks that these are coup marks, but is confused as to what they represent. A little later, Genny finds that a program has broken in to the router dish on top of the office and is probing local computers looking for a tagged video file or someone named "Angela Jaskey". She squishes the program, but doesn't mention it to anyone until later. Afterwards, she draws balloons on the walls of her room. Regina and Whitney, while they're looking at the plane, note that each seems to know the other from somewhere, but not where. They talk about it a bit but don't reach any conclusions.

At dinner, Genny mentions how there have been articles about Dive Jordan on the net, mentioning his sighting in Haven. Dive denies being that Dive. Then Genny mentions the program that she squished, which visibly makes Regina nervous, but that is dropped as well. After that, people start interrogating Genny about the balloons she is drawing in her mashed popo until she turns the conversation back to Dive. This time through he still won't admit anything but also says he gave up hydroshot because of the fans. Genny says that the big theories on the net are drugs or gambling.

After dinner there's a hydroshot scrimmage in which Dive and Pilot play and everyone else mostly gets the puck banked off them. Finally, the Great White Eel surfaces and eats the puck. Everyone flees except for Pilot and Whitney. Pilot seems too large for the eel, but when Whitney attracts its attention it rushes her... only to stop about two feet from her face. She observes the tiny fish that live in its mouth and clean its teeth before Pilot drags her away.

Afterwards, Pilot and Whitney make a balloon out of a puffer fish type fish and a bit of spare helium, and tie it to Genny's doorknob. That night, Whitney has a strange dream as she sleeps in which she runs through the events in her life for the past month or so. Afterwards she has a brief dream about getting Regina to come sleep with her in the bay. Pilot also has a bit of a weird dream about women in the bay, which causes him to be a little overexcited in the morning. Genny is frightened by the inflated fish in the morning, which wasn't the intended result.

That morning they set out on the towel collection expedition, which involves landing on the coast of Kauai and hiking about a day hike in to a likely swamp. Whitney is nearly eaten by a hanging joe until Pilot rams it with his remote and causes it to drop Whitney and curl up, after which Whitney finishes it with her bow. They arrive at the swamp and make camp on a nice hillock. Whitney sleeps badly out of water, but Regina sleeps better than normal.

The next day they find about thirty-five towels over they day - thirty by Whitney, five by Dive, and none from anyone else. Pilot's remote is swallowed by a giant frog-type creature, but spat out afterwards. They camp again that night, this time setting watches.

They finish their collecting early the next morning and head back. On the way back, Dive falls into a lava tube and is briefly entranced by the singing noises he hears deep inside the tube. The rest of the team won't let him go investigate, though, and they make it back to the plane by sundown, and home to the Cove a couple of hours later.

Unfortunately there are a well-dressed man and woman, both named "Kim", waiting there. They are quite forceful in wanting Buckman Charters to recover their crates from the wreck of the Zephyr, but the group is pretty stubborn about doing it since there are no records of what was being transported when the boat went down. Finally the two intruders decide to try a soft sell and offer 700 GEO scrip to help pay for the team's expenses in salvaging the crates, and they agree to that.

The next day Pilot, Dive, and Whitney go to Cliffside and deliver the towels. They also buy some balloons, but these aren't that well received by Genny. Everyone inhales some helium and squeaks anyway including Pilot who is already quite squeaky as a dolphin. That afternoon (019:101) they set off in the new boat to look for the old one.

They arrive in the search area the next morning, and Genny devises an efficient search pattern to follow. The ocean floor is 200-300 meters deep at this point, and mostly bare. Only Whitney and Pilot can efficiently search, since sonar is required to find anything in the lightless depths. The first day of searching is fruitless, but late on the second day Pilot finds a boat on the bottom, its hull cracked open. There is a large polypod living it it, however, and it even attacks Whitney once she arrives and starts nosing around. They are able to find the word "Zephyr" painted on the bow, though, so this seems like the right boat. Genny preps the winches.