“Gentle swells!” somebody called out. “Try lookin’ out the bloody window, mate!”

The ripple of laughter that greeted this was a trifle apprehensive, but after a few anxious minutes during which people’s eyes roamed in search of a quick exit to the open air of the deck, should one become necessary, the surge grew calm and the ferry settled into a slow heave that most of the passengers found more relaxing than discomforting. The minority who felt otherwise gratefully followed the posted directions to the windowless lowest deck, where ranks of permanently set-up cots were waiting.

The soothing narrative continued: “And now, in the far distance we can see the Isles of Scilly themselves, the fabled Fortunate Islands, thought by many to be the mountain peaks of the sunken, lost land of Lyonesse. There are five inhabited islands, forty uninhabited ones, and a hundred-and-fifty-”

“Am I wrong,” Gideon asked Julie, “or is that Liz Petra in the snack bar line?” He pointed at a small, plump figure in a shawl, a flowing peasant skirt, and sandals.

Julie turned to look. “It sure is. Liz! Over here!”

The pixie-faced blonde’s eyes lit up. “Julene! Hello! Be there in a sec.” She went back to paying for the bag of Cad-bury’s Chocolate Fingers she was buying.

Gideon looked at Julie, eyebrows raised. “ ‘Julene’?”

Julie mumbled something.

“What?”

“Oh, heck, it just seemed more professional,” she muttered.

“Ah. Well, I suppose it is, at that.” He was happier than ever with his decision not to horn in on the meetings.

“Well, hi there, Julene!” Liz chirped as Julie jumped up to embrace her. “My favorite fellow Fellow! And I see you’ve brought the famous, or should I say infamous, Skeleton Detective along with you.” She stuck out her hand. “Long time no see, prof.”

It had been more than five years since she’d sat in on his nonhuman primate social behavior seminar as a graduate student in archaeology, but she seemed to have changed not a bit: still the same soft, dimply, unfailingly jolly dumpling of a person she was back then, grandmotherly (despite her pretty face) and chuckling, nurturing even at the age of thirty-five, and still apparently favoring the same vintage-clothing-store wardrobe, which had been passe even then.