anticipated, white with dark blue trim, lying right-side up but tipped forward onto its nose cone and listing to the left, the collapsed strut of its nose wheel twisted to the side and both ends of the propeller blade bent straight back. A few unidentifiable chunks of metal and plastic lay scattered on the bottom nearby.
Gideon had been expecting a rusting hulk thickly encrusted with sea life, but in fact, other than a heavy layer of dull green algae on those windows that were intact, the encrustations were minimal and the oxidation was pretty much limited to the damaged areas, to seams in the metal, and to the regions around the rivets. (The corrupters of metal, it occurred to him, operated on the same principle as the putrefiers of flesh: go for the weak spots first; the weak spots and the natural openings.) The fuselage number, N7943U, painted on the horizontal blue stripe, seemed as bright as the day it had been put there. The tail, which was in the open air, seemed to have weathered a bit more than the submerged part.
From the Cessna it was impossible to see inside, even with the Grumman’s right window broken out—a patch of almond-colored seat trimmed with blue plastic, a glimpse of the rightmost rudder pedal, nothing more.
Lyle and Harvey tethered a small wooden raft to the Cessna and set it on the water loaded with a few pieces of equipment: an oxyacetylene torch and an open toolbox with some simple implements in it—a cold chisel, a hammer, a hand axe, a couple of pry bars, a few pairs of pliers, and some unfamiliar-looking wrenches. Then, not bothering with wet suits, they strapped on their scuba gear and weight belts. “This is gonna be easy,” Harvey said.
“As pie,” Lyle happily agreed. “No pumps, no compressors, no nothing. We’re gonna be home for dinner. Okay, we’ll take a look-see now,” he told Gideon. “Don’t go ’way.”
They hooked on weight belts, slipped their masks over their faces, got their flippers on, climbed clumsily out onto the Cessna’s wing, and slipped backwards into the water, not taking any of the tools with them. As they approached the Grumman, a school of tiny fish darted out of it, flashed silver as they wheeled, and disappeared. A crab or something like it flopped out of the broken window and scuttled its way into the sand under the fuselage. After a few seconds Harvey popped back up, water streaming from his shining hair.
“What did you—” Gideon began.
“Can’t talk now,” Harvey said cheerfully. He grabbed the torch, cleared his mask, said “Glub-glub,” and pushed himself back down. This time they stayed under for a few minutes, first using the torch to cut through the canopy, after which Lyle squeezed inside.
After a few seconds an orange and blue flickering showed through the algae on the front window.
“They’re working on something with the torch,” John said.
“Let’s hope it’s not the skeleton.”
A minute later, they were at the surface again, with Lyle hanging on to the raft with one hand while grasping in the other a white, angular object about the thickness of a human long bone, and shaped like a distorted, square- cornered “U.” Barnacle colonies clung to it here and there, tightly closed against this unexpected depredation.
“Well, here’s your skeleton,” he said, holding it up for inspection. “And there’s another one just like it, if you want it.”
“What is it?” Gideon asked, feeling let down. He had known from long experience that most of the “human” bones found and reported by laymen turned out to be from bears, or rabbits, or deer, or dogs, or sharks, or just about any animal other than humans, but still he’d been hoping. But whatever this was, it had never been part of the structural framework of any living thing.
“It’s the yoke—the steering wheel—from the co-pilot’s side. You want it?”
When Gideon shook his head, Lyle said, “Happy, happy barnacles, this is your lucky day. Go in peace, my friends.” He dropped the yoke and watched it drift slowly down, gently turning over, until it came to rest on the floor of the lagoon.
“Hey, prof, don’t look so blue,” Harvey said. “We could find something yet. We hardly looked in there. Things are all messed up. It’ll take us a while to go through the inside.You guys want to stretch your legs on the island while we work?”
That sounded like a good idea to both of them. At six-two, an inch taller than Gideon, John had been even more cramped during the flight. And inasmuch as the space behind the passenger seats had been crammed with salvage gear, neatly stowed and secured, but taking up every available inch (even the third row of seats had been removed to make room for it), they had been unable to move around the plane.
Ten minutes later they were seated, canvas tennis hats on their heads, sunglasses on their noses, and smeared all over with sunscreen, in a yellow, eight-foot inflatable dinghy that Harvey had pulled from a rack, inflated with an electric pump, and set in the water. Beside them on the seat-slats were a couple of liter-bottles of water and a bag with four thin ham-and-tomato sandwiches from the Cessna’s cooler. John, on the center-slat, had the oars.
Gideon gave the brothers a few brief instructions—they were to extract anything at all that they thought might be bone, they were to handle all such objects with great care, doing nothing more to them than rinsing them in fresh water, and they were to be on the lookout for any personal belongings—clothing, jewelry, credit cards, etc.— that might be useful in confirming the identity of the occupants. And if they found anything, he would appreciate the use of a ruler and a tape measure, and any kind of measuring calipers they might happen to have. Oh, and a magnifying glass—
“Yeahyeahyeah,” Harvey said, adjusting his mask and regulator preparatory to going back down. “Have a good time, don’t talk to any strangers. See you later.”
WALKING on Maravovo was easier said than done. The seemingly inviting beach of smooth white sand was appallingly hot—even John wilted—and the thousands, the many thousands, of grayish land crabs stirring underfoot and scuttling for their holes made walking unpleasant.
The “interior” of the island—the outside of the “C”— was even worse; crammed with palm trees and pandanus, breezeless, stifling, and practically impenetrable. Creeping lantana and morning glory vines grabbed like snakes at their ankles, and gnarly, above-ground roots tripped them up at almost every step. Before they’d gone a hundred yards they were pouring with sweat, and clouds of gnats and biting black flies were hungrily gathering on them, retreating only a few feet when they batted at them, and then even more aggressively buzzing back.
“Talk about carnivores,” Gideon said, swatting away.
Retreating to the beach again—at least there was a sea breeze and no flies—they took off their shirts and shoes, left them in the dinghy, and waded up to their knees in the calm, crabless, blessedly cool water of the lagoon, occasionally sipping from the water bottles, toward where the cruise line had set up its compound about a
