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Geoffrey adjusted his watch to the time-zone uncertainly. “That’s less than an hour from now. Right?”

“Right,” the copilot said.

“Can’t we stretch and get something to eat first?” Thatcher wadded up the plastic wrapper of his sunflower seeds and stuffed it in pocket number twelve.

“Attendance mandatory, sir,” the pilot replied. “The President called the meeting!”

After a sharp involuntary intake of breath, Thatcher smiled. “I never imagined I would be summoned by the President. Did you, Dr. Binswanger?”

Geoffrey looked out the window as the carrier deck rose beneath them. He braced for impact. “No.”

“Hold on, guys!” the pilot shouted.

Thatcher gasped. “Dear Lord!”

Still buzzing from the adrenaline high of the tailhook landing on the nearly five-acre flight deck of the
Enterprise
, Geoffrey clung to a handle inside the cockpit of the thundering helicopter as it made a dizzying ascent over the island’s sheer putty-brown palisade. Both Geoffrey and Thatcher wore blue hazmat suits, their helmets in their laps.

Scanning the cliff’s overhanging face, Geoffrey noted the metamorphic banding and buckled red layers of rock, deeply corrugated by eons of erosion. They appeared even more weathered than the ancient shores of the Seychelles that had been isolated 65 million years ago at the edge of the age of dinosaurs. As the helicopter cleared the rim, a green bowl opened under them. At its bottom, a broken ring of jungle spread outward like a dark wave from a bald central mesa of weathered rock.

“Looks like a creosote plant,” Geoffrey observed.

Thatcher nodded.

“How so, Doctor?” asked one of the helicopter crewmen.

“Some individual creosote plants are probably the oldest multi-cellular living things on Earth,” Geoffrey answered. “From the air you can see large rings of vegetation across the floor of the Mojave Desert in California. Fossilized root systems show that the rings are from a single plant growing outward for ten thousand years.”

“No kidding!” the young pilot exclaimed, impressed.

Whether it was the geology, the deeply sculpted weathering of the topography, or the strange growth pattern of the vegetation— or all of these cues taken together—Geoffrey’s instincts and training told him that this remote island was considerably older than he had first assumed.

Below, they glimpsed the four sections of StatLab at the outer edge of the jungle. The NASA lab’s first two sections appeared to be dissolving under a wave of multicolored growth, and the other two sections were strangled and encrusted with vegetation. The jungle seemed to be literally consuming the lab and a plume of swarming bugs poured out of the end of the last section.

“That’s the old lab,” the crewman told them. “We had to abandon it last week.”

“Last week?” Geoffrey asked. The ruin looked like it must have been there for decades.

Farther up the slope they saw the Army’s base of operations on the island, a mobile theater command center. NASA had clearly had its chance and failed.

“That’s the Trigon,” said the pilot. “That’s where we’re going.”

The new facility was made up of three olive drab sections joined together in a triangle.

“That baby’s blast-resistant, has virus-proof windows and magnetic-pulse-protected power and communications systems,” bragged the pilot. “It’s a mobile theater base designed to survive germ warfare as well as high velocity direct fire, direct hits by mortar bombs, and a near-miss from a twenty-five-hundred-pound bomb. You’ll be safe as a baby in a cradle there, guys!”

The new base had been established on a level tier carved into the green slope about four hundred yards away from NASA’s crumbling lab. Twelve Humvees and three bulldozers sat in neat rows near the Trigon on the freshly graded terrace.

The Trigon was encircled by a moat lined with butyl rubber and filled with seawater hauled in by helicopter, the pilot informed them. Every thirty seconds powerful fountains sprayed a white wall into the air around the base.

Twenty-two 300,000-liter demountable water storage tanks rested on shelves graded higher up the slope, sprouting PVC pipes that fed moats and sprinklers around the base. Geoffrey recognized the tanks from his visit to Haiti after Hurricane Ella—the giant tanks could be transported to disaster areas anywhere in the world within twenty-four hours—by land, sea, or air—to provide safe water supplies.

As they approached the base, Geoffrey wondered why there were so many tanks. Why did they need so much water? He watched a helicopter filling one from a distended hose, like a robotic Pegasus relieving itself.

“Time to get those helmets on. We’re about to drop you two
off. After you hear the click just twist them clockwise till you hear another click.”

The Sea Dragon descended over a landing zone, and the rear hatch opened, admitting a gale of hot wind and the urgent pulse of the helicopter rotors.

Geoffrey and Thatcher braced themselves for the ramp to touch down, but instead it hovered about five feet off the scorched and salted ground.

“We’re not allowed to land!” the pilot shouted. “Jump! Then run down the path to the building. You’ll be all right.”

“Er—OK.” Geoffrey poised himself for the jump.

But Thatcher balked. “You must be joking, young man.”

“Jump NOW, sir!”

As the ramp dipped, they both jumped and Thatcher took a tumble. “Fuck!”

Geoffrey hit the ground on his two feet, his knees flexing with the impact.

The helicopter rose and the downwash of its rotors pounded their backs.

Geoffrey helped Thatcher scramble to his feet and they both ran down a wet path of glistening rock salt bordered by fountains that sprayed a tunnel of cold water over them.

“I’ve had friendlier welcomes,” Thatcher groused, panting.

The fountains subsided for a moment and for the first time Geoffrey looked out across the island they now stood on. “What are they? Triffids?” He remembered the old science fiction movie in which experimental plants invaded the earth. The desperate humans discovered that saltwater killed the vegetation only moments before it had strangled the entire planet.

“What, pray tell, are ‘triffids,’ Doctor?” Thatcher wheezed as they ran.

“Never mind,” Geoffrey answered, and a thrill swelled inside him—what on Earth had they found here?

Chlorine dioxide gas was replaced with filtered air, and the hexagonal entry hatch inside the Trigon’s germ-warfare-proof air dock swung open.

Standing before them was a slender redheaded woman in a T-shirt, jeans, and Adidas sneakers. “You can take the helmets and suits off now,” she instructed in a crisp voice.

Geoffrey pulled off the helmet and his ears popped as they adjusted to the higher air pressure inside the base.

Geoffrey cocked his head; she was not only attractive, but seemed very familiar. “Do I know you? Oh,
SeaLife
—of course. You were on the show! Sorry.”

She forgave him with a nod and a friendly smile. “They wouldn’t let me go home, so I persuaded them to let me hang around and help. In real life I’m a botanist, though not as esteemed as the ones they’ve shipped in.”

He extended his hand. “Geoffrey.”

“Geoffrey…?” She took his hand.

“Binswanger.”

She frowned.
“Hmm.”

Geoffrey smiled. “Problem?”

“I could never marry you.” She smiled.

“Oh really?”

“My name’s Nell Duckworth. The only reason I ever wanted to get married was to change my last name.”

“Ah.”

“Sorry.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You could always hyphenate it,” Thatcher interposed drily, clearly unhappy at having his presence disregarded.

“That’s funny, Thatcher. You with your great name. By the way, Nell, this is
Thatcher Redmond.”
Geoffrey presented Thatcher with a regal flourish.

“Pleasure,” Thatcher said with a curt dip of his head, but he
avoided eye contact with Nell and moved on toward a cluster of others gathered farther down the corridor.

She shook her head. “Another Nobel Prize winner, no doubt.”

“Tetteridge, as a matter of fact,” Geoffrey said. “Nobel Prize winners are
much
nicer. You could always just keep your own name, you know.” He winked.

She reached out to poke him in the ribs but hesitated. Geoffrey sensed that her moment of levity had passed, and her eyes drifted as some sadness caught up to her.

Geoffrey smiled, curious. “What’s going on, Nell?”

“I was hoping you were going to tell me.”

He detected a surprising fear under the irony. “Seriously?”

She sighed. “A lot of people have died here. And they were my friends.” She looked at him.

Geoffrey was alarmed, and also intrigued by the intelligence he saw working in her eyes. “I see.”

Thatcher returned, walking briskly up to them. He gave Nell an up-and-down look and then addressed Geoffrey. “I believe we’re being summoned, Doctor.”

“Don’t call me
Doctor
, Thatcher,” Geoffrey sighed, and smiled encouragingly at Nell. “Come on.” He gently jabbed her in the ribs with a finger. “Let’s crash this party.”

The conference room, which doubled as an observation bay when the table was pushed against the wall, occupied most of the north side of the Trigon.

The tilted window of laminated glass overlooked the lime-green slopes that rose to the straight edge of the island’s rim against the blazing blue sky.

Seated around the conference table were a scattering of military brass and about twenty American and British scientists, some quite well known, some Geoffrey did not recognize. He spotted Sir Nigel Holscombe, a favorite of his, who had hosted many a classic BBC nature documentary series.

A satellite-uplinked teleconference screen dominated the western end of the room. In the Oval Office, the President sat behind his massive desk with his advisors seated nearby, among them the secretaries of Defense and State.

“I hope we’re coming through all right,” the President began. “I apologize for the delay.”

Geoffrey glanced at Nell with wide eyes.

But Nell’s focus was on the screen, her expression intent.

Dr. Cato answered, “Yes sir, Mr. President, we hear you fine.”

“Good. As everyone here knows by now, I trust, the tragic incident on
SeaLife
was unfortunately not a hoax. The cover story was invented to buy us time to make an important decision. I wanted to share what we have now learned with the most distinguished scientific minds we could assemble before having to make that fateful decision. Dr. Cato, please bring us all up to speed on the situation as it now stands.”

Thatcher munched on a peanut from a bag he had stashed in pocket number eight. He observed Dr. Cato with contempt. Suffering from an apparent bout of professional jealousy, Cato had roundly snubbed Thatcher at the Bioethics Convention in Rio last winter, and Thatcher, for one, had not forgotten it.

“Thank you, Mr. President. I’m Wayne Cato, chairman of Caltech’s Biology Division and project leader of the
Enterprise
research team. To give us all some crucial background, Doug Livingstone, our on-site geologist, will explain how we think Henders Island got here in the first place. Doug?”

The tall geologist with a wing of salt-and-pepper hair over his craggy face rose and introduced himself in an upper-class British accent. “This graphic put together by the geologic team on the
Enterprise
illustrates what we have been able to reconstruct about the origins of Henders Island.”

An animation of the Earth appeared on a presentation screen behind him.

“Seven hundred and fifty million years ago, a supercontinent known as Rodinia split into three pieces. One hundred and fifty
million years later, these pieces smashed back together. They formed a second supercontinent we call Pannotia.”

On the screen, the Earth rotated as a sprawling supercontinent cracked into three continents and slammed together.

“Another hundred and fifty million years passed. Then, just as the Cambrian explosion of life introduced an astonishing variety of multicellular species on Earth, Pannotia tore into four vast segments. These pieces would become Siberia, northern Europe, North America, and the supercontinent geologists call Gondwana, which included Antarctica, South America, Africa, India, and China.”

Livingstone waited as the animation caught up.

“Tens of millions of years passed as the new continents converged to form Laurasia, which slammed into Gondwana two hundred seventy-five million years ago and formed the super-continent known as Pangaea, where dinosaurs emerged. Pangaea started breaking apart a hundred and eighty million years ago into the seven continents familiar to us today, which is why dinosaur fossils can now be found on every modern continent.”

The geologist flicked through some stock images of the violent coasts of Cornwall and Alaska.

“Over the eons, landmasses continued to split and collide, dragging mountain ranges under the sea and shoving ocean beds up to create the Andes, Rockies, and Himalayas. Fragments of land continued to break off continents. Some drifted thousands of miles. We know that Alaska, for example, is a train wreck of giant chunks cast off from China and other parts of the world.”

Livingstone clicked to the next animation, which appeared to be a tighter detail of the previous globe.

“We now believe that there was a fifth fragment of Pannotia. Probably about the size of New Zealand, this fragment somehow managed to dodge the geological pie-fight for half a billion years, riding up and down the Pacific rim while being relentlessly ground down between tectonic plates. All that remains above water of this fragment today is Henders Island, which seems to
have been upthrusting just faster than erosion can melt it under the sea.”

Livingstone clicked to an image of a geological cross-section of the island. It looked like a jagged pillar or a tapering candle rising from the sea floor.

“We put together this profile from sonar mapping data collected by Navy subs during the past few weeks. Rock samples from the cliffs indicate that this island is a continental microplate with a craton or basement core composed of prelife Archean-aged rock. Excavations for this command center and rock samples collected during a mountaineering expedition indicate the overlying younger rocks to be freshwater stream and lake deposits that contain fossils of completely unknown organisms with no parallel in the rest of the world’s fossil record.