Aboard RV Seascope, Near Johnston Atoll, Mid-Pacific

 

The captain spotted the U.S. Coast Guard KC-130 turbo-prop on a low, slow approach to the island’s runway and sent word for his flight crew to launch the ship’s resident Bell Jet Ranger helicopter. It wasn’t part of his brief to know why, but he’d been ordered to waste no time in getting two VIPs aboard the Seascope as soon as possible after they arrived on Johnston Island from Honolulu. When the helo pilot successfully lifted the four-passenger aircraft off his fantail, the captain picked up the phone and got Dr. Janis Fielding on the line.

In an air conditioned conference room below decks, Dr. Fielding got the message, hung up the phone and turned to the scientific staff she’d selected to brief the visitors. “They’re on the way. Should be here in less than a half-hour. Let’s go over it again. No panic, no wild speculations, right? We report what we found from a strictly scientific perspective.”

“These guys are from Homeland Security, right?” Dr. Andrew Merman, the microbiologist looked up from a pile of spreadsheets. “Any chance they’ll even understand what we’re talking about?”

“If Mr. Goodall has trouble with the science, I’m sure Doctor Jerardi will explain it all to him.” Janis Fielding punched keys on her laptop and began to review the slides they’d prepared to illustrate their findings on Wake Island and in the sophisticated research labs aboard Seascope. It was not a pretty picture and had all the potential in the world for getting a lot uglier.