Minutes to Burn

They were down to their last fuel can when the Zodiac puttered up to the blue-and-white painted dock behind the Bio Mar building. A few marine iguanas labored to get out of the bow's way, their heads and the top ridges of their tails protruding from the water as they swam. The morning light spilled across the water, lighting it a twinkling green.

Save a stop directly over the location of the deep-sea core holes to gather three more water samples, they hadn't slowed their pace for the last seventeen and a half hours. The sea had been choppy, which had stretched their voyage an hour and a half longer than they'd anticipated. Diego's hands were chapped and raw from the salt water and the whip-ping wind, and Rex's back was so sore he could barely straighten up when he stood. Ramoncito was in surprisingly good shape, having passed the time sleeping beneath the edge of a tarp, Rex's Panama hat protecting his sun-chapped face.

Diego was out of the boat in a flash, Rex right behind him, struggling to be careful with the bag full of water samples. He stumbled on the dock and the jars clicked together dangerously, but none broke. They jogged for Diego's office in the Plantas y Invertebrados building, ignoring the overturned furniture and shattered glass inside. Diego pointed down the hallway. "The lab," he said. "I'll grab a few things and meet you there."

Rex entered the lab and arrayed the water jars, seventeen in all, on a countertop. He began to centrifuge the samples, spinning them to iso-late the denser dinos from the rest of the seawater. Accustomed to field-work, he was a little hesitant in the lab.

Diego entered, holding a test tube filled with dinoflagellate DNA, a wild type sample known to be normal and uninfected; he could use it as a control against which to test the seventeen samples from around San-gre de Dios.

"I'm pelleting at two thousand g," Rex said.

Diego picked up a sample jar and weighed its heft in his hand. "Fine. Next we'll need to do genomic preps to pull the DNA away from the rest of the dino molecules." He headed for a storage closet and removed a stack of kits.

"How long do those take?"

Diego shrugged. "One and a half, two hours. Let's fly through them, get as many as possible running simultaneously."

Diego walked over to the minus-twenty freezer and checked inside, locating the test tubes containing the enzymes they'd use to do restriction digests, which would cut specific sections of the dinoflagellates' code once they got the DNA separated.

Working at a furious pace, they began to set up the genomic preps. Rex glanced at his watch. It was already 9:20, and they still had so much work to do.

Out on the empty boat, Ramoncito stirred beneath the tarp, Rex's Panama hat crooked over his face. He pulled it back, squinting into the morning light. Looking around, he realized they had arrived back at Puerto Ayora, and he pulled himself stiffly to his feet and stretched.

Pressing his fingertips to his sunburnt cheeks, his head still spinning with all that he'd been told earlier, he headed for the lab, where he knew Diego would be needing his help.

Chapter 70

Cameron raised her head from Justin's back and peered around. The base camp stood deserted twenty yards to their right. For the time being, they were safe. She rolled her husband onto his back and exam-ined his wound. He opened his eyes, blinking hard. Some of the haze had lifted from his eyes.

"Hey, baby," he said. "Did I rescue you?" He tried to smile but couldn't. "I seem to remember taking out the butt of your knife with my head."

"Stay still," Cameron said. She noted that he didn't ask about Tank; she must have looked worse than she thought.

The mantid's hook had swiped a chunk of flesh from his left shoul-der. His collarbone was exposed and shattered, but it had managed to absorb the brunt of the blow, protecting the subclavian artery beneath. The mantid had not cut deep enough to reach the axillary artery.

Staring at the exposed muscle and tissue, Cameron realized that Justin would be unable to help her. The plexus of nerves on his left side was compromised; his arm would be useless until he received real medical attention. Plus, his transmitter was missing-they had no way to contact anyone. She was on her own against the creature.

Justin read her face. "I know. I've lost so much blood, I'm probably hypovolemic." He tried to raise his arm but could not. "Check my heart rate."

Cameron took his pulse, pulling back the top lip of her pants so she could time it using the small digital clock face sewn into the material. Her lips tightened when she saw the reading. "One twenty-four."

He cursed. "My resting's fifty-five. I'm tachycardic." He blinked hard, focusing. "You're gonna have to clean the wound for me. Apply pressure."