Fragment Read Free Page A

trying not to think about descended over her again. Due to weather delays and low ratings, they were bypassing the island that lay just beyond that horizon—bypassing the only reason Nell had tried out for this show in the first place.
    For the past few hours, she had been trying not to remind the men on the bridge of the fact that they were closer than all but a handful of people had ever come to the place she had studied and theorized about for over nine years.
    Instead of heading one day south and landing, they were heading west to Pitcairn Island, where the descendants of the
Bounty’s
mutineers had apparently been planning a party for them.
    Nell gritted her teeth and caught her reflection scowling back at her. She turned and looked out the stern window.
    She saw the mini-sub resting under a crane on the ship’s center pontoon. Underwater viewing ports were built into the port and starboard pontoons—Nell’s favorite lunch spots, where she had seen occasional blue-water fish like tuna, marlin, and sunfish drafting the ship’s wake.
    The
Trident
boasted a state-of-the-art television production studio and satellite communication station; its own desalinization plant, which produced three thousand gallons of freshwater daily; a working oceanographic lab with research-grade microscopes and a wide spectrum of laboratory instruments; even a movie theater. But it was much ado about nothing, she thought. The show’s scientific premise had been nothing but window dressing, as the cynic in her had chided her from the start.
    On the poop deck below, she watched the ship’s marine biologist, Andy Beasley trying to teach the weather-beaten crew a lesson in sea life.
2:11 P.M.
    Andrew Beasley was a gangly, narrow-shouldered scientist with a mop of blond hair and thick-framed tortoise-shell glasses. His long, birdlike face often displayed an optimistic smile.
    Raised by his beloved but alcoholic Aunt Althea in New Orleans, the gentle young scientist had grown up surrounded by aquariums, for he lived over his aunt’s seafood restaurant. Any specimens that came under his study were automatically spared the kettle.
    He had gone on to live out Althea’s dream of becoming a marine biologist, e-mailing her every day from the moment he left home for college to the day he accepted his first research position.
    Aunt Althea had passed away three months ago. After surviving Hurricane Katrina, she had succumbed to pancreatic cancer, leaving Andy more alone than he had thought possible after feeling so terribly alone all his life.
    One month after her funeral, he had received a letter invitinghim to audition for
SeaLife.
Without telling him, Althea had sent his curriculum vitae and a photo to the show’s producers after reading an article about the casting call for marine biologists. Andy had visited his aunt’s grave to put flowers on it, flown to New York, and auditioned. As if it were Aunt Althea’s last wish being granted, he had won one of the highly contested berths aboard the
Trident.
    Andy usually wore bright clashing colors that gave him a slightly clownish appearance. It also made him a natural target for sarcasm. He was as blindly optimistic and as easily crushed as a puppy—a combination that drew out a maternal impulse in Nell that was surprising to her.
    Andy fidgeted with the wireless mike pinned to his skinny yellow leather tie. He wore a Lacoste blue-white-orange-yellow-purple-and-green-striped shirt, which resembled Fruit Stripe gum. Paired with the vertically striped shirt, he wore Tommy Hilfiger boardshorts with horizontal blue, green, pink, red, orange, and yellow stripes. To set it all off, he wore green size-11 high-top sneakers.
    Andy’s teaching props, a number of latex hand puppets of various sea creatures, lay scattered on the white deck before him. Beside him sat a panting, broad-nosed bull terrier with a miniature life vest strapped on his square chest.
    Zero Monroe, the lead cameraman, changed the memory