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Samir turned to her. Surprise lit his round face and a smile revealed his beautiful teeth. ‘According to these coordinates, it’s coming from your island, mate.’
Nell felt her heart pound as they confirmed the signal.
‘Hold on–wait–we’re losing it,’ Warburton warned.
Captain Sol stepped around Samir and squinted at the navigation screen. ‘That’s strange…’
Warburton nodded.
Nell moved a little closer. ‘What’s strange?’
‘You don’t fire off an EPIRB unless you mean business,’ the captain answered. ‘And if you do, the lithium battery should last forty-eight hours, minimum. This signal’s fading.’
‘There it goes,’ Samir reported as the next data update wiped it off the screen.
‘Sam, you better hail the nearest LUT station. And check the beacon’s NOAA registration, Carl.’
Warburton was already scanning the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration database. ‘The beacon’s registered. Oh man…it’s a thirty-foot sailboat!’
‘What the hell is it doing out here?’ Captain Sol scowled.
Warburton scanned the information on file. ‘The vessel’s name is Balboa Bilbo. The owner’s name is Thad Pinkowski of Long Beach, California. OK, this is interesting: the registration on the beacon expired three years ago.’
‘Ha!’ Captain Sol grunted. ‘It’s a derelict.’
‘Maybe the NOAA records are out of date?’ Glyn suggested.
‘Not likely.’
Samir held the Satphone to his ear. ‘LUT reports that we’re the nearest vessel, Captain. Since it’s too far from an airstrip to get a search plane out here, they’re asking us to respond, if able.’
‘How soon can we reach it, Carl?’
‘Around fourteen hundred hours, tomorrow.’
‘Bring her about, due south. Sam, let the LUT station know we’re responding.’
‘Aye, sir!’
‘And try hailing her on VHF.’
‘On it!’
Captain Sol pushed a button and spoke into the ship’s intercom. ‘All hands, as you can see, we are now making a course adjustment. We will be landing sooner than planned, tomorrow afternoon, on an unexplored island. There will be a more detailed announcement at dinner. As you were!’
Faint cheers rose from the deck outside.
Captain Sol turned to Glyn. ‘Mutiny averted. That should hold them for a while. Well, Nell. It looks like the wind keeps blowing your way.’
The southern horizon swung into view in the wide windows as the Trident came about. Captain Sol pointed to the left edge of the navigation monitor, where a small white circle rose on an arc toward the top of the screen.
Warburton smiled. ‘There it is, Nell.’
Nell ran to see the plotting monitor as the men stepped to each side.
‘If you want to find an untouched ecosystem, you certainly came to the right place,’ Glyn conceded.
‘It must be twelve hundred miles from the nearest speck of land, I reckon,’ Samir said.
‘Fourteen hundred.’ Nell’s heart pounded so loudly she feared the others could hear it. ‘Every plant pollinated by insects on this island should be a new species,’ she explained.
Glyn nodded. ‘If your theory holds up.’
The motors revved as the Turbosail rotated over the bridge.
As Nell’s eyes brimmed, the others wondered whether she was looking for more than a new flower on Henders Island.
They all cringed as a voice blasted from a speaker by the camera over the forward window: ‘Tell me this is not a joke, please!’
‘This is not a joke, Cynthea,’ Captain Sol answered.
‘You mean we actually got a distress signal?’
‘Yes.’
‘Captain Sol, you’re my hero! How bad is it?’
Captain Sol looked wearily at Warburton. ‘It’s probably just a derelict sailboat. But the beacon was activated, so we have to check it out.’
‘God, that’s gold! Nell–tell me you’re excited!’
Nell looked up at the speaker over the window, surprised. ‘Yes, it’ll be nice to do a little actual scientific research.’
‘Tell me more about the island, Glyn!’ screeched the electronic voice.
‘Well, according to Nell, it was discovered by a British sea captain in 1791. He landed but couldn’t find a way to the island’s interior. There’s no other record of anyone landing, and there are only three recorded sightings of it in the last 220—’
The starboard hatch slammed open and Cynthea Leeds power-walked onto the bridge wearing a fitted black Newport jumpsuit with white racing stripes.
Everyone froze.
‘I like that. I like that a lot,’ Cynthea announced. ‘Peach, did you get that? Great! Gentlemen–and lady–congratulations!’
Cynthea smiled wide, flashing her expensive teeth as she tossed back her bangs in girlish joy. A thin black wireless headset arched over her black hair, which was cut in a razor-sharp pageboy.
Cynthea was a dauntingly well-preserved woman, sexy at fifty. Her mother had insisted on strict ballet training from the age of five–the only thing she considered a kindness on her mother’s part. At five feet eleven inches without heels she still had the posture of a ballerina, though her imposing stature was better suited to the high-testosterone arena she had chosen to enter than to ballet.
Like a hermit crab out of its shell, Cynthea looked laughably out of place at sea, or even outside a city. But she couldn’t help noticing lately that she was being herded out to pasture in the youth-centric jungle she inhabited.
Cynthea had produced two number-one reality shows for MTV. But the cutthroat environment she lived in would not tolerate a single misstep. After her last network reality show, the misbegotten Butcher Shop, had cratered, her only offer was the job every other producer in town had passed on: a round-the-world sea voyage with none of the comforts of home.
Sensing that she had to adapt or go extinct, and in the midst of an acute panic attack, she told her manager to take the offer.
She knew she had won the SeaLife gig because of her talent for spicing up a show’s content, which the show’s producers were painfully aware could be a problem if the science stuff got dull. Over the last three weeks, however, her efforts to get seasick scientists to mate had been a gruesome debacle.
If this show was killed, she was convinced it would be the end of her career. No husband, no kids, and no career: all of her mother’s prophecies checked off. Which would be much easier to bear if Cynthea’s mother were dead, but she wasn’t–not by a long shot.
Cynthea pressed her hands together in a gesture of thanks to the powers-that-be. ‘This could not have come at a better time, people! I think we would have killed and eaten each other before we ever got to Pitcairn. Tell me more about this island, Glyn!’
‘Well, it’s never actually been explored, is the neat thing. According to Nell—’
‘When can we land?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ Glyn answered. ‘If we can find a place to put ashore. And if the captain grants permission to go ashore, of course…’
‘You mean we can shoot our landing on an unexplored island for the anything-can-happen segment of tomorrow’s broadcast at five-fifty? Glyn, you will be my superhero if you say yes!’
‘It’s possible, I should think, providing the captain agrees.’ The Englishman shrugged. ‘Yes—’
‘Glyn, Glyn, Glyn!’ Cynthea actually jumped for joy. ‘What was it you were saying about a British sea captain?’
‘The island was discovered in 1791 by Captain Ambrose Spencer Henders…’
Nell was amused to see Glyn’s vanity flattered by Cynthea’s spotlight.
Glyn looked at Nell. ‘However, Nell is the one who—’
‘That’s just gold, Glyn! Do me a favor and make the announcement to the crew?’ Cynthea interrupted. ‘At sunset–right after dinner–and really build it up? Oh, pretty, pretty please?’
Glyn looked apologetically at Nell. She nodded, relieved to have him do the honors. ‘Well, all right.’
‘You know Dawn? The tan, leggy brunette with the tattoo?’ Cynthea gestured in the vicinity of her tailbone. ‘Yes? She was just remarking to me how she thought British scientists were the sexiest men alive.’ Cynthea leaned forward and crooned in Glyn’s ear: ‘I think she was talking about YOU!’
Glyn’s eyes widened as Cynthea turned to Captain Sol. ‘Captain Sol, can we land?’ She jumped up and down like a little girl pleading with her grandfather. ‘Can we, can we, can we?’
‘Yes, we can land, Cynthea. After we check out the beacon.’
‘Thank you, Captain Sol! You know ship’s surgeon Jennings is just crazy about you?’
Warburton shook his head.
‘Now if we could only find someone for Nell,’ the producer persisted. ‘What about it, sweetie? What is your type, anyway?’
Nell saw Glyn looking out the window at Dawn, who was performing yoga stretches on the mezzanine deck below. Hard-bodied and sporting buzzed black hair, Dawn wore a midriff-baring mustard mini-T over her imposingly toned core. A purple and yellow sun tattoo peeked over the rear of her black bikini bottoms. ‘I don’t have a “type,” Cynthea,’ she said. ‘And I wouldn’t want to be anyone’s “type,” either.’
‘Always the loner, eh, Nell?’ Cynthea said. ‘You have to know what you’re looking for to find him, darling.’
Nell looked Cynthea in the eyes. ‘I’ll know him when I see him.’
‘Well, maybe you’ll find a new rosebud or something to name tomorrow, eh? Give us some drama, if you do, Nell! Pretty please?’
Cynthea turned and loped out the hatch.
Nell looked back down at the plotting monitor, watching the island as it moved down in tiny steps from the top of the screen. As the sight overwhelmed her, she almost forgot to breathe.
Captain Sol looked at Nell with fatherly affection. He placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’d say it was destiny, Nell, if I believed in that sort of thing.’
She looked at him with bright eyes and impulsively squeezed his big, tanned hand.
‘Still no response on the emergency frequencies, Captain,’ Warburton said.
Nell traced a fingertip from their position over the blue plasma screen to the white circle above tiny white letters:
Henders Is.
7:05 P.M.
Huddled inside the cramped, equipment-filled brain center of SeaLife, tucked within the Trident’s starboard pontoon, Cynthea watched three camera feeds of Captain Sol and Glyn making the announcement to the crew after dinner.
‘Peach’ McCloud sat by Cynthea, manning the editing/uplinking bay. Whatever original audiovisual equipment Peach was born with was buried under his hair and beard and replaced with man-made microphones, headphones, and VR goggles.
Cynthea had worked with Peach on live MTV shows in Fort Lauderdale and on the island of Santorini. Her one stipulation when she accepted the job as SeaLife’s producer had been that Peach come along as her engineer. Without Peach, the job would have been unthinkable.
Peach had agreed. He always agreed. Anywhere was his living room if he had a wireless connection. It really didn’t matter to Peach if he was on a boat weathering fifty-foot swells or in his Soho apartment. So long as his digital habitat came with him, Peach was happy.
Cynthea spoke urgently through her headset, on a conference call to the SeaLife producers in New York. Peach equalized sound levels and switched shots according to the jabbing eraser-end of her pencil as she talked.
‘We need the segue, Jack. We’re getting it right now and can zap it to you in ten minutes. We’re landing on an unexplored island in the Anything-Can-Happen feed tomorrow, Fred–come on, that’s the hook! And it’s a rescue mission–we’re responding to a distress signal!’
Cynthea gestured at Peach for confirmation, and Peach flashed ten fingers twice.
‘Peach can send it in fifteen minutes,’ Cynthea lied. ‘Give us the satellite feed, Fred. Yes, Jack, as you’ve mentioned several times already, there’s no sex. The whole crew screwed each other in the first four weeks. All I’ve got to work with now are scientists, Jack, so come on–cut me some slack! How could I know the crew smuggled Ecstasy on board? Anyway, that’s a done deal, Fred, and we’re lucky we kept it off the Drudge Report, OK? Are you kidding me? You must be kidding me now. Then Barry should do a show with scientists and try to have sex in it. I fucking dare him to do it, that flaming asshole, especially while they’re puking on each other! If there were any Ecstasy left I would have slipped it into their green tea by now, Jack! I’m suggesting that we go back to the original angle, the science thing. Right, adventure, Fred, EXACTLY! Thank you! And what comes from adventure but romance, Jack–I swear, if this isn’t the play that saves this show, you can broadcast my execution. Didn’t have to think about that too long, eh, Fred? Well, boys, I’m glad to know the way to your heart. Don’t worry–tomorrow we’re making television history sweetie!’
Cynthea squeezed Peach’s shoulder painfully. ‘We got it!’
Peach grinned and nodded, dialing in sound levels as Captain Sol addressed the crew. ‘This is good stuff, boss.’
7:05 P.M.
Shooting from port to starboard across the mezzanine deck, Zero framed a pointillist sunset of orange, lavender, and vermilion cirrus clouds.
Candlelit dining tables set for dinner dotted the foredeck as the Trident cruised due south. A warm wind played over the tables. The scientists and crew were finishing their dinner of orange roughy, rice pilaf, and green beans almondine. All three cameramen circled the tables as the crew buzzed with curiosity about the upcoming announcement.
Captain Sol finally clanged a glass and, with the South Pacific sunset at their backs, he and Glyn addressed the crew.
‘As I’m sure you’ve all noticed, we are now heading south,’ the captain began, and he pointed his right arm dramatically over the prow.
Cynthea directed Peach to cut to the bridge-mounted camera that showed the Trident heading toward the southern horizon, then to another that showed the prow slicing through the sea, then back to the captain.
