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either useless and/or inaccurate. Still, that other two percent can be gold.
    He winced as the program informed him that he had three hundred and sixty-two messages. The program also sorted it for him. The stuff from the various mailing lists could wait until later; that accounted for eighty percent of the messages right there. Of the balance, he recognized only a few e-mail addresses, and only three absolutely required a response. One was from the dive shop, informing him that his new air tanks had arrived and when did he want to pick them up? Another was from Paul Bateman, saying he’d have the transcription of the interview for Hale to go over in a couple of days.
    The third was from his editor at Scientific American, who was justifiably annoyed at his tardiness in delivering his latest column. Hell and damnation, he thought with a sigh. The seismic activity in the local waters had gone into overdrive, and he’d spent every waking moment—and, if it came to that, every napping moment—trying to figure out why. His quarterly column for SA had gone straight out of his mind.
    A whistling sound from the kitchen grabbed his attention. He wandered back into the kitchen, switched the burner off, and poured the water into the waiting mug. He contemplated several options, most of which boiled down to coming up with some kind of excuse. He even briefly entertained the notion of using those two poor sheilas drowning the previous night, then immediately rejected the idea as tasteless and irresponsible.
    Walking back to the computer and setting the steeping tea on a coaster next to it, he decided to just go for the truth. Sighing, he hit the REPLY button and typed, Sorry, love, been a bit crazy hereabouts. By Friday, I promise. Cheers, Ralph.
    None of the e-mails were the one he truly wanted to see: the one from his old friend Andrew Angelopoulos, a marine biologist from Queensland. He’d gone on walkabout at the beginning of the semester, but Hale remembered him as an obsessive net-head. He thought for sure that Angelopoulos would check his e-mail, but he hadn’t replied to any of the messages Hale had sent over the past week. Pity. Could use a marine biologist’s input right about now.
    He took one last quick glance over the various mailing list messages to see if any subject lines looked familiar—sure enough, a few did, and he read those, and started composing replies to one or two. One in particular was a pronouncement made by some know-nothing undergraduate about sharks that Hale couldn’t just let go by without a severe reprimand from someone who actually knew what he was talking about.
    After a minute, he glanced at his watch—which read 1:02. His tea had gone cold and he was late.
    Hell and damnation, this contraption’ll be the death of me. He quit out of the e-mail program, shut the computer down, gulped down the last of his tea, grabbed a small shovel, and headed out to the beach.
    Outside, it was another hot and humid day, as would be expected for a South Seas island. Hale loved it. Well, not the humidity, but other things made up for it—unlike, say, Atlanta, where he had spent many years as a geology professor, and where the humidity seemed all-encompassing.
    He walked the short distance from the bungalow the Institute had rented to the beach where he’d buried the prototype seismograph. On the way, he saw a much lower concentration of people than one would expect on such a beautiful day. Hale thought again about the two American girls who drowned. Poor sheilas, going on vacation and winding up like that.
    Not everyone had been intimidated by the news of drowning tourists—Hale saw a man, woman, and a little bloke who couldn’t have been more than eight eating a picnic lunch, and another man playing Frisbee with his dog. ’Course, maybe they didn’t hear about what happened, Hale thought, then dismissed it. It was possible, of course, but not likely. News travelled faster than the wind on Malau.
    Another