what did you mean danger—?”
The ship lurched. I heard a groan, and turned in time to catch a glimpse of bright orange shift behind a hydraulic crane. It looked as if the buoy might roll straight toward the starboard railing, an enormous toy top. Three guys jumped like fleas on a hot plate to stop it.
“Secure the lines!” someone yelled.
Crewmen scrambled to get the buoy back into position and secured it with stainless-steel cables.
“Bizarre,” I said. “Gear that heavy not fastened tight?”
“Damn right. I’m first on the list to deploy,” Harvey said. “Mine better not be that contrary buoy. Let’s head down to our cabin.”
Between us and the lower-deck staterooms were two sets of steep, narrow ladders. I faced each one and clambered down. The rhythmic drone of the ship’s engine got louder and the stink of oil got stronger. By the time we reached our stateroom, diesel bouquet coated my tongue.
I threw my ratty duffel on the tiny desk next to Harvey’s brand new one. Intrepid rolled to port and threw me onto the bunk bed. My stomach lurched, and I tasted diesel.
“Crap. I checked the weather forecast a dozen times. It’s supposed to be calm until tomorrow. If the seas pick up, I’m in big trouble.”
“Have your seasick patch on?”
I touched the spot behind my ear. “Yes. Look, I’m going up to check the forecast. And my email.” I stepped out of the cabin, stuck my head back in. “Can’t remember. Have you deployed buoys this large in rough weather?”
Harvey ran manicured fingers through her champagne bob, and looked at me, her gray eyes steady. “I’ll be just fine.”
I stepped out into the passageway and turned back once more. “You said dangerous. What did—?” But Harvey had already shut the toilet door.
A half-dozen computers ran along one side of the main deck laboratory. I slipped into one of the mismatched chairs. My dear friend Peter, the youngest PhD on board, clicked away at the keyboard next to me.
“Hey, Peter. How’re Sarah and the twins?”
Focused on his computer, he furrowed his brow.
“Peter, what on earth’s the matter?”
He held both sides of the monitor as if it might take off and turned toward me. “Bizarre email here. Hold on while I read it through.”
I logged onto the NOAA weather site for the Gulf of Maine. A low-pressure system would bring squally weather faster than predicted. Winds fifteen to twenty knots, swells eight feet. My hand went to my stomach.
I skimmed my emails. The subject line “Climate Change Scientists Fudge Data” caught my eye. I leaned forward to read:
Email exchanges show climate change scientists create their own heat by cooking the data. The researchers’ words—“transforming the data” and “removing outliers”—prove what the Prospect Institute has long known. So-called global warming is a manufactured fiction.
I turned to Peter. “Are you reading ‘Scientists Fudge Data’?”
He swiveled his chair to face me. His dark eyes narrowed, black as the storm racing toward us. “Yeah. This one might get us.”
“But everyone knows the Prospect Institute nuts claim smoking isn’t a problem, there’s no acid rain, ozone isn’t depleted. They’re not a credible source.”
“They’ve hacked emails and quoted researchers’ words. Don’t you see? That’s entirely different.”
“Transforming data, removing outliers? That’s just statistical lingo for data analysis. It doesn’t mean we’re fixing the numbers!”
I reread the message and stared at him, speechless. Like an athlete’s doping scandal, this could ruin a scientist’s career in a heartbeat. And the harassment could be horrific. In Australia, climate change scientists had to move after radical deniers threatened their families.
“There’s something else, Mara. At the bottom of the email is a list of the ten hacked scientists. You’re number seven.”
MY STOMACH LURCHED, BUT THIS time it wasn’t the wild sea making me sick. “Why me? I’m not a famous climate change scientist.”
Peter said, “Maybe it’s your Science Today paper, and they’ve pegged you an up-and-coming troublemaker.”
The bitter taste of bile filled my mouth as the room closed in. “I don’t feel so great. Maybe we can talk later.”
Back out on deck, my stomach settled down as I gulped cold sea air. I tried to quiet the chaos in my head. Could a bunch of quacks jeopardize my reputation? I wasn’t an old silverback who could laugh off bad press. The funding I needed for research was hard enough to get. A scandal could be very bad news.
Peter might be right about my paper. I’d taken a chance with preliminary data and predicted unusually high temperatures in the Gulf of Maine this spring. As a young scientist, it’s hard to get noticed. The irony was my desire for attention could have endangered my whole career.
I leaned back against the railing and looked around. A half dozen crew and scientists circled the buoys, peering at instruments. Harvey’s deployment was soon, and I was on the list for the second one, after lunch. I tamed my long wind-whipped hair with an elastic band and twisted around. Twenty feet below, blue-green waves shot silver spray up the side of the ship.
Not good.
Someone bumped into me. A freckled redhead apologized, held out his hand, and pumped mine enthusiastically. “I’m Cyril, Dr. Tusconi. Cyril White. MOI photographer.”
A redhead with a name like that. Cyril must’ve suffered as a kid.
“So happy to meet you, Dr. Tusconi.”
I winced. Being called “Doctor” by a guy who looked sixteen made me feel my thirty-one years.
“Cyril, call me Mara.”
“Cy. Rhymes with lie. Hey, I’ll get better photos if I know what these buoys are for. I got the basics.” He pointed toward them. “One end’s the anchor, the orange float’s on the other end, and instruments on top and below measure things like water velocity and temperature. But what’s the purpose of this cruise?”
“To predict how ocean warming will impact Maine fisheries, we need measurements at more stations.”
“Why?”
“Fishermen want to know if the ocean’s warming. That impacts where and when they catch fish like cod. But Gulf of Maine temperatures vary a lot. The buoys give us better data, so we can judge if last year’s highs were an anomaly or the beginning of a trend.”
“Wow.
