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the local sea lion population, which added a small sense of relief to Sarah.
    Blessed with high cheekbones and soft hazel eyes, the pretty scientist quickly ambled the two miles back to camp, easily spotting the trio
    of bright red tents some distance away. A squat, bearded man wearing a flannel shirt and a worn Seattle Mariners baseball cap was rummaging through a large cooler when Sarah approached the campsite.
    “Sarah, there you are. Sandy and I were just making plans for lunch,” Irv Fowler said with a smile. An easygoing man on the thin side of fifty, Fowler looked and acted like a man ten years his junior.
    A petite redheaded woman crawled out of one of the nearby tents clutching a pot and ladle. “Irv’s always making plans for lunch,” Sandy Johnson responded with a grin while rolling her eyes.
    “How did you two make out this morning?” Sarah inquired as she grabbed an empty campstool and sat down.
    “Sandy’s got the stats. We checked a large colony of Steller’s on the eastern beach and they all looked fat and healthy. I found one cadaver, but by all appearances the fellow looked like he expired from old age. I took a tissue sample for lab analysis just to be sure.” While he spoke, Fowler pumped the primer on a propane gas camp stove, then lit the hissing gas escaping beneath the burner, the blue flame igniting with a poof.
    “That’s consistent with what I observed as well. It appears that the affliction has not spread to the sea lions of charming Yunaska,” Sarah replied, her eyes sweeping the green landscape around them.
    “We can check the colony on the west coast of the island this afternoon, since our pilot won’t be back to pick us up until morning.”
    “That will be a bit of a hike. But we can stop for a chat at the Coast Guard station, which I recall our pilot saying was manned this time of year.”
    “In the meantime,” Fowler announced, placing the large pot on the portable stove, “it’s time for the specialty of the house.”
    “Not that fire-belching-” Sandy tried to declare before being cut off.
    “Yes, indeed. Cajun chili du jour,” Fowler grinned, while scraping the lumpy brown contents of a large tin can into the heated pot.
    “As they say in N’Awlins,” Sarah said with a laugh, “Laisse^ k bon temps rouler.”
    Ed Stimson peered intently at a weather radar monitor watching a slight buildup of white electronic clouds fuzz up the upper portion of the green screen. It was a moderate storm front, some two hundred miles to the southwest, that Stimson accurately predicted would douse their island with several days of soggy weather. His concentration was interrupted by a rapping sound overhead. Barnes was still up on the tin roof fooling with the anemometer.
    Static-filled chatter suddenly blared through the hut from a radio set mounted on a corner wall. Nearby fishing boats, their captains yakking about the weather, constituted most of the garbled radio traffic received on the island. Stimson did his best to tune out the meaningless chatter and, at first, failed to detect the odd whooshing sound. It was a low resonance emanating from outside. Then the radio fell silent for a moment and he could clearly hear a rushing sound in the distance, something similar to a jet aircraft. For several long seconds, the odd noise continued, seeming to diminish slightly in intensity before ending altogether in a loud crack.
    Thinking it might be thunder, Stimson adjusted the scale view on his weather radar to a twenty-mile range. The monitor showed only a light scattering of clouds in the immediate vicinity, with nothing resembling thunderheads. Must be the Air Force up to some tricks, he figured, recalling the heavy air traffic in the Alaskan skies during the days of the Cold War.
    His thoughts were broken by a crying wail outside the door from the pet husky named Max.
    “What is it, Max?” Stimson called out while opening the door to the hut.
    The Siberian husky let out a