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ladder.
    Matthew immediately followed, but once on
deck trailed behind her at a distance. She headed to the foredeck,
where she ran up to the Captain and gave him a bear hug. Thorssen
eventually acknowledged Matthew by taking a few steps his way, with
his hand held out. “Welcome aboard, Mister Amati.”
    The skipper of the Valentina was in
his late fifties, with a blonde beard turning to gray. He was tall
and heavy, yet he carried his weight well. His firm handshake was
reassuring rather than intimidating, and his eyes, though ice blue,
seemed to have a low-banked fire behind them.
    “Great to see you again, Penny,” Thorssen
said, and gave her a light kiss on the cheek. “Have a look.” He
handed her his binoculars.
    Matthew attempted to ignore the irritation
that lingered from his fight with Penny by scanning for the whales,
eyes unaided. He saw them a few degrees off the starboard bow,
about five hundred meters away. The light from the afternoon sun
made him squint. At this distance it was hard to make out details,
but he could see enough.
    “Your turn, Matthew,” Penny said, her mouth
close to his ear. She was smiling and offered him Thorssen’s
binoculars.
    “Thanks. Penny, I—”
    “Yeah, me too. Let’s drop it.”
    He took the binoculars. She walked to the
tip of the bow and leaned out into the wind. Though her body was
not ample enough to pass for a traditional figurehead, she was
dazzling in the June sunlight.
    “Out there,” Thorssen said, pointing toward
the whales.
    Matthew brought the binoculars up to his
eyes. They were heavy and old, the black worn off all the high
points, exposing the brass.
    “About halfway back from the whales in the
lead,” Thorssen said, “you see that flash of orange? It’s the
transceiver we have on Lefty. From the coordinates you gave, She
must have been in the group you saw from your fishing boat.”
    Matthew could see significantly better with
the binoculars and something was strange and yet familiar about the
whales. Oddly, the grays were swimming in a regular pattern, diving
and rising in unison. One of the whales out front was larger and
seemed to be the leader, but its color was completely typical.
Matthew offered the binoculars to Penny, but she shook her head
no.
    “They’re cruising at about the typical speed
for gray whales,” Thorssen said. “About five knots. We’ve been
hanging back a ways. Didn’t want to spook them.”
    “Is that what you saw?” Penny asked
Matthew.
    “I’m not sure. The grouping looks about the
same size. The whale out front seems…normal, but the behavior is
weird. They seem almost synchronized.”
    “You didn’t mention that before,” she
said.
    “I don’t remember it.”
    An orange-tinged light reflected now and
then from the device pinned onto Lefty’s dorsal ridge. Matthew
brought the binoculars down and surveyed the decks. Up on the
fo’c’sle were a man and a woman, peering at an array of video
monitors. In front of them, aimed at the whales, was an oversized
set of binoculars mounted on a tripod. In the place of eyepieces,
two cameras were attached. He recognized the setup as a video
recording system, but a much more elaborate one than anything he
had ever seen.
    “Been keeping the whales under constant
watch since last night,” Thorssen said.
    Matthew, looking around, said, “I’m
surprised you have the monitoring station out on deck, and the
consoles.”
    “Weather’s good and that should hold the
next few days. The kids tend to get mesmerized by equipment,
especially the new stuff. We try to have things running outside
whenever possible. Too much gear, between us and what we’re
observing, it goes bad.”
    “Lose the forest for the trees.”
    Penny walked up and caught the end of the
Matthew’s sentence. “Not really the best metaphor out here.”
    Thorssen smiled and pointed to the set up.
“They’re designed to run remotely, but it’s still easier from the
deck. The labs are always crowded.