An ensign showed norman to his room, tiny and gray, more like a prison cell than anything else. Norman’s day bag lay on his bunk. In the corner was a computer console and a keyboard. Next to it was a thick manual with a blue cover.

He sat on the bed, which was hard, unwelcoming. He leaned back against a pipe on the wall.

“Hi, Norman,” a soft voice said. “I’m glad to see they dragged you into this. This is all your fault, isn’t it?” A woman stood in the doorway.

Beth Halpern, the team zoologist, was a study in contrasts. She was a tall, angular woman of thirty-six who could be called pretty despite her sharp features and the almost masculine quality of her body. In the years since Norman had last seen her, she seemed to have emphasized her masculine side even more. Beth was a serious weight-lifter and runner; the veins and muscles bulged at her neck and on her forearms, and her legs, beneath her shorts, were powerful. Her hair was cut short, hardly longer than a man’s.

At the same time, she wore jewelry and makeup, and she moved in a seductive way. Her voice was soft, and her eyes were large and liquid, especially when she talked about the living things that she studied. At those times she became almost maternal. One of her colleagues at the University of Chicago had referred to her as “Mother Nature with muscles.”