The Solar Sea Read Online Free Page B

how many hours it would be before he could take his boat home, to Juneau. He looked up at the crescent Moon, high overhead. In the shadowed portion, he saw little pinpricks of light dotting the surface—the lunar factories. When he was a boy, he remembered seeing stars much more clearly during the dark of the Moon.
    The vessel was in Frederick Sound to perform a routine count of humpback whales. While there, Dr. Myra Lee recorded the enigmatic, hypnotic music of the giant beasts. Lance Naftel thought there were enough recordings of whale song in the world. However, Dr. Lee had proposed a theory that there might be long-term cycles to the songs. To test her theories, she needed a large, yearly database. The previous night, though, as she analyzed her most recent set of recordings, something happened that sent her into a flurry of activity.
    The captain had been sitting in his tiny cabin, drinking a cup of coffee when someone pounded on his door. Before he could acknowledge the impatient sound, the door burst open. “We have to stay for a couple more days, Skipper,” said Myra.
    Naftel blinked a couple of times and stated he could only do so with permission from the Oceanographic Institute in Juneau. At that point, Dr. Lee darted from the cabin to make the call. Permission came within the hour. A day later, Captain Naftel still had no idea what had sent the marine biologist into such a frenzy. As the sky went from indigo to black, the captain decided it was time to find out.
    He walked inside the ship and stepped down a narrow ladder. He rapped on a dark wooden door. Just as he was about to knock again, he heard a vaguely distracted voice call, “Come in."
    The captain opened the door to find a thin woman sitting at a large wooden table covered in graphs with dates marked at the top. It appeared they were arranged in chronological order. Next to the graphs was a set of headphones connected to an expensive digital audio system. The system held several compact disks, one of which recorded the sounds coming from the hydrophones. Another disk held an older recording. Myra Lee poured over the graphs.
    "Isn't it getting a little late for the whales to be singing?” asked Naftel.
    Myra looked up from the charts. “Normally, I'd say yes.” She looked toward the silently oscillating pattern of red lights on the audio system's meter. “However, except for breaks to feed and sleep, they've been singing almost constantly since yesterday afternoon."
    "What?” The captain tugged at the collar of his beige turtleneck sweater.
    "What's more,” Myra continued quietly, as though she were speaking in church, “their songs have changed."
    The captain stepped up to the table and glanced at the charts. He saw they were graphs of whale songs recorded over several years. “What's unusual about that?” The captain rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I thought humpback whales changed their songs all the time."
    "They do.” There was a slight glimmer in her brown eyes. “But this is different. They completely changed their song yesterday, at almost exactly one o'clock in the afternoon.” Carefully, she laid the charts she had been looking at on the table. “This is a graph of the frequency of one whale's song from three days ago.” She traced the undulating pattern of dots with her thin finger. “If you look, you can see that there are about six distinct phrases in this whale's song."
    The captain looked and nodded, again tugging on the neck of his sweater.
    "Each of the whales I've been recording had been singing almost exactly these six phrases since we got out here a week ago."
    "Sounds normal,” mused the captain.
    "Perfectly.” Myra reached over and retrieved another graph. “This graph was made from songs recorded yesterday.” She drew some lines across the undulating dots with a black pen to help him see the phrases. “Notice that the first three phrases are exactly the same as the beginning of the songs recorded before.”