Fire Ice

Moments before, he had seen swimmers in the water next to the overturned inflatable. He glanced away to get his bearings, and when he looked again the swimmers were gone.

Kurt Austin had been chasing the Zodiac like an aerial motorcycle cop hot on the tail of a speeder, and had seen the boat flip over. He couldn't figure out why it had gone out of control. The seas were moderate, and no rocks or other submerged objects were visible. Austin wondered if the inflatable, or the fishing boat he had seen steaming away from the coast, had anything to do with the television crew he was looking for. Probably not. The crew should be on its way to meet the NUMA survey ship Argo, not heading for this desolate stretch.

Austin was aboard the Argo as a deep-ocean consultant on loan from his duties as leader of NUMA's Special Assignments Team. The other members of the team, Joe Zavala and Paul and Gamay Trout, had been given different and undemanding assignments in scattered projects around the globe. NUMA director James Sandecker had insisted that they take working vacations after the team had crossed swords with the hired killers of a megacorporation that wanted to take over the freshwater resources of the world. He had been particularly worried about Austin's attachment to the beautiful, brilliant Brazilian scientist who had sacrificed herself to bring down the conspiracy.

The Argo was in the Black Sea, collecting information on wave and wind action for an international data bank. With his master's degree in systems management from the University of Washington and his vast practical knowledge as a diver and undersea investigator, Austin had been invaluable in helping to set up the sophisticated remote-sensing survey instruments.

As the cruise had gone on and systems were set in place, however, his expertise became less necessary. He read some philosophy books he'd brought from his extensive library, but he started to grow bored and restless. The ship seemed like a prison surrounded by a very wide moat. Austin was aware that his psyche had been bruised and that Sandecker had his best interests at heart, but he needed strenuous physical and mental activity, not a cruise ship atmosphere.

The serious scientists aboard the ship had been grumbling about the impending visit from the TV crew. They saw them as intruders who would interrupt their work with dumb questions. The fact that they were from a tabloid show on a mission to find Noah's ark didn't add to their appeal. Austin's outlook was the exact opposite. He looked forward to their arrival as a diversion from his shipboard boredom.

The television people had been due that morning, but they'd never arrived and attempts to reach them by radio were unsuccessful. After lunch, Austin had climbed to the wheelhouse to run an idea past the skipper. The Argo's commander, Captain Joe Atwood, was clearly a

"Any word on our guests?" Austin said, although he knew from Atwood's dour expression what the answer would be.

Atwood scowled at his watch. "I think they're lost," he declared sharply. "The next time those idiots in public affairs want me to entertain some crazy TV people, I'm going to tell them to stick their request where the sun don't shine."

The captain was in no mood to be told that the job done by NUMA's public affairs department in proclaiming the agency's accomplishments helped loosen the congressional purse strings and attracted grants for projects like the Black Sea survey.

"I've got a suggestion," Austin volunteered. "I'm not busy. What say I take a spin around the neighborhood and see if I can spot them?"

The captain's frown dissolved into a knowing grin. "You're not fooling me, Austin. You've wanted to get the Gooney into the air since the day you stepped aboard."

"It would serve a dual purpose. I could test-fly the bird and look for our wayward guests at the same time." And it would be a perfect antidote for his developing case of cabin fever.

Atwood ran his fingers through his pale red hair. "Okay, pal. Go for it. But keep us appraised of your position every few minutes. I've got enough trouble with those missing TV types. I don't want to chase you allover the Black Sea as well."

Austin thanked the captain, and, with a noticeable spring in his step, went down to get the Gooney ready. The ultralight seaplane had been developed as a way to extend a boat's visual reach. The radar that most NUMA ships carried could pick up a gnat at ten miles, but at times there was no substitute for the human eye. Joe Zavala, whose mechanical mind bordered on brilliant, had designed the aircraft. Zavala had asked Austin to take the plane aboard the Argo to test it under real-life conditions, but the ship had been on the go for most of its mission and Austin had been reluctant to ask the captain for time to make a test flight.

The single-seat plane was named after the gooney bird, the nickname sailors gave the albatross, a seabird known for its exquisite beauty in flight, and clumsiness taking off and landing. Austin inspected the aircraft in its deck hangar. The stubby, ungainly appearance didn't bother him. Austin had flown ultralights before, and what was important was stability and ease of operation.

The letters NUMA were painted in black on the side. The flat-bottomed fiberglass hull had an upturned canoe nose, and fiberglass floats supported by aluminum struts hung from both sides of the hull. Attached to the floats and flanking the hull was the manually operated retractable landing gear that allowed the Gooney to set down on waterways or runways.

The plane was hauled out onto the deck and its narrow, thirty-foot Dacron-covered wings were unfolded and locked in place. Austin eased into the snug cockpit, and some of the Argo's crew pushed the Gooney down the ship's broad, slanting stem ramp into the sea. Austin started the power plant, threw off the safety line and taxied to open water to get the feel of the controls. The aircraft handled well on water, and he decided to see what it would do in the air. He pointed the Gooney down an imaginary airstrip and gave it the throttle.

Powered by the compact forty-horsepower engine, the Gooney got on plane quickly with no skidding. The aircraft skimmed the wave tops for about a hundred feet, then lifted into the air and climbed until it was above the survey ship. Austin circled the Argo once, tipped his wings in salute, then headed in a line toward the Bosporus Strait that co

The Rotax two-stroke, twin-cylinder engine driving the rear-mounted propeller could push the blunt-nosed plane at a top speed of sixty-five miles per hour. Not exactly supersonic, but the plane handled like a dream, turning, climbing and diving without a hint of a stall. Austin felt as free as the seabirds he'd seen wheeling high above the Argo in search of scraps from the galley. He flew at about a thousand feet, an altitude that allowed him to see miles in every direction, cruising at fifty-five miles per hour. The five-gallon tank gave the plane a range of about one hundred and fifty miles.

The air was as clear as fine crystal, and the bright sun cast a silvery sheen on the rippled surface of the water. He set up a rough search pattern, ru