Loch

tourist bucks into the area. “What do they say?”

“Let me tell him!” Zaidee barged in, carrying the laptop and cornering Erdon. “Mrs. Mitchell who runs the grocery store said she saw a big black thing down near the fish grid. And Jesse Sanderson, who’s the caretaker at the logging mill, said he saw something off his dock that had a head the size of a barrel, but everyone says he’s a nasty, no-good pain-in-the-neck who drinks all the time. And a schoolteacher down the street said she saw two sets of fins twenty feet apart, and she thinks there’s something in this lake that could hurt somebody a lot, a real lot. …”

The phone rang and Dr. Sam grabbed it. A moment later he called in to them. “There’s a storm heading down from Canada. Cavenger wants the search under way immediately. Everybody to the dock. On the double!”

2

SOUNDS

Loch drove Dr. Sam and Zaidee in the Volvo. He’d already driven lots of times on expeditions, and now that he had turned fifteen, it was actually legal in Vermont for him to be behind the wheel. Erdon followed alone in his Pathfinder. “Can I turn on the radio?” Zaidee asked, reaching out for the shortwave.

“Sure,” Dr. Sam said. “Just don’t broadcast.”

Zaidee hit a lot of static but finally tuned in a couple of boaters talking about fuel. She switched channels and picked up somebody giving a weather update to a guy with a French accent. Within minutes they had reached the main encampment and pulled into a parking area near Cavenger’s Sea-B, which had been brought ashore and tethered.

The base was swarming with workers, boat crews, and research personnel rushing toward the army-style pontoon dock. Inflated rubber boats with outboards were taxiing the teams out to the lineup of motley skiffs anchored offshore.

“What a mob scene,” Erdon called to Dr. Sam as he got out of the Pathfinder. The Nikons around his neck clanked together, popping one of the lens caps onto the ground.

Sure, because Cavenger hires too many butt-heads like you, Dr. Sam felt like shouting back, though he knew that wouldn’t say much for himself, either. He had learned long ago that Cavenger’s M.O. was to hire cheap, not good. Besides, when anyone finished negotiating a deal with Cavenger, he was lucky if he still had a nose left on his face.

“I can carry something else,” Zaidee said, clutching the laptop.

“We got it,” Dr. Sam said, taking the heaviest box of equipment. Loch grabbed another container and they walked by Erdon, who was struggling to lift a commercial Panasonic video camera with a massive battery pack out of the back of the Pathfinder.

Loch took pity. “You need help?”

“No,” Erdon said, stumbling.

“I still want to show you our Crashers game,” Zaidee shouted to Erdon over the din of the crowd.

Erdon laughed. “I won’t forget.” He got a grip on the equipment and ran to catch up with the Perkins family.

When they reached the dock, Erdon stopped to roll up the sleeves of his shirt to better show off his build, then lugged the video camera and battery pack aboard his assigned boat-a powered catamaran specially designed for photography. The cat, which had first been rigged for one of Cavenger’s Congo expeditions, was fitted with dual 190-horsepower Mercury outboards and an equalizing platform that minimized motor and wave interference to the cameras. The only other boat docked took up the lion’s share of space: Cavenger’s yacht, The Revelation.

Loch broke into a wide smile when he saw Sarah waiting for him at the gangplank. “Hi, Sarah,” he said.

“Hi.” Sarah anxiously pulled at her curly, long brown hair so it fell forward down the sides of her face.

“Did you see me doing stalls on the glider?”

“Of course I saw you,” Sarah said. Her platform shoes made clopping sounds when she shifted from one foot to the other.

Zaidee spoke up, staring at Sarah’s feet like they were gremlins. “Nice footwear for boating.”

“Oh, hi, Zaidee,” Sarah said. She tried to sound enthusiastic about seeing her again, but she found Zaidee getting more and more on her nerves the older she got. “All my friends in London are wearing platforms. They’re really more comfortable than they look.”

Zaidee looked straight into Sarah’s eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’ll catch up with you,” Loch told Zaidee.

“I get the point. I’m being banished. Big deal,” Zaidee said, continuing up the gangplank.

Loch set the box down and smiled at Sarah. “Did your mom come with you?”

“No. You know she hates Dad’s expeditions. Why didn’t you answer my last letter?” she asked. “I wrote you seven months ago!” She didn’t mean to sound so whiny, but she needed words to hide her nervousness. She was thrown to see he had the start of a mustache and even a shadow of a beard. “You’ve gotten bigger.”

“So have you,” Loch said without thinking. He didn’t mean to be looking at her body when the words came out, and he knew she had caught him. “I was going to write,” Loch went on, “but then I kept thinking I was going to see you.” He meant it, but there was something about putting a pen to paper that was really painful. The pen could never keep up with his thoughts.

“All I know is I’m sure the questions were urgent for me when I wrote them, and now I suppose it doesn’t matter at all,” Sarah said. She could tell from the look in his eyes that he’d had enough of her bellyaching.

“Well, I guess I’d better get this on your dad’s boat,” Loch said, picking up the container again.

“Yes, I guess you’d better. See you around,” Sarah said, clopping away from The Revelation, heading across the dock.

“Hey, where are you going?” Loch asked, puzzled.

“Dad said I can drive the catamaran today,” she called over her shoulder. Erdon was waiting for her on the cat. All smiles, he reached out to help her aboard.

Loch watched her get behind the controls. He knew she was just pulling rank as the boss’s daughter, but that wasn’t anything new. He took his shirt off, then set the container on his left knee to get a better grip. He caught Sarah staring at him from the cat, gave her a wave, then boarded the yacht. A deckhand helped him store the gear, and he caught up to Zaidee sitting on the rear lounge deck. She had the laptop open and was mesmerized by Crashers.

“Sarah looks different, don’t you think?” Loch asked.

“She wants to jump your bones,” Zaidee said without looking up.

Loch laughed. “I wish,” he said, tousling her hair and swinging up into his favorite hiding spot, the yacht’s rubber raft, the one used to get to shore in shallow bays. The one thing Zaidee and he had learned a long time ago was to keep out of sight until a search got under way.

“You’re late again!” Cavenger glared from the control console. “We’ve started the sonar check.”

“Sorry,” Dr. Sam said, sliding into his seat at the recorders.

“Are the trawler nets ready?” Cavenger demanded to know.

“Yes sir,” Randolph, a radio specialist, said quickly.

“Tell the fleet to start engines!” Cavenger shot the order out as he stood up to check the port and starboard flanks.

“Start engines!” Emilio, Cavenger’s head trouble-shooter, passed the command.

The simultaneous roar from the engines of the yacht and fourteen skiffs echoed off the mountainsides. Cavenger yanked the microphone out of Emilio’s hand. “Low idle!” he yelled. The tumult from the engines dropped quickly.

He handed the mike back to Emilio. “I want to go in sixty seconds,” Cavenger said as he sat his thin, frail