Secrets in the deep ocean community

The deep ocean was such a hostile environment and it cost so many millions of dollars to go there that no one ever went there unless there was a good reason. Half the time that reason was a top-secret, national security interest of the government, and the other half it was a highly proprietary big business venture. Everybody in the deep-ocean community ran around with little secrets ricocheting around the insiders of their skulls like billiard balls at the break and talked like good ol' boys, sizing each other up. And since everybody always wanted to know what everybody else was doing, they listened real close to what you said, so you had to be careful how you phrased your questions:The community was so small and incestuous, the equipment so rare and specialized, that one word too specific and the listener could quickly calculate what you were about to do and where you were about to do it.

Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea (New York: Grove Publishing, 1998), Kindle loc. 4534