The Micro Spirit and the Micro Trader were sister ships: small freighters that cruised the Micronesian crescent carrying cargo and passengers to the outer islands. There were no cabins other than

those of the captain and crew. Passengers traveled and slept on the deck.

Pardee waved to the first mate, a heavily tattooed Tongan who stood at the rail chewing betel nut and spitting gooey red comets over the side.

“Ahoy!” Pardee called. “Permission to come aboard.”

The mate shook his head. “Not until we finish loading this jet fuel. I’ll come down. How you doing, Scoop?”

Pardee had convinced the crew of the Micro Spirit to call him “Scoop” one drunken night in the Yumi Bar. He watched the mate vault over the railing at the bow and monkey down a mooring line to the dock with no more effort than if he was walking down stairs. Watching him made Pardee sad that he was a fat man.

The mate strolled up to Pardee and pumped his hand. “Good to see you.”

“Likewise,” Pardee said. “Where you guys in from?”

“We bring chiefs in from Wolei for a conference. Pick up some tuna and copra. Same, same.”

Pardee looked back at the sailors loading the barrels. “Did you say jet fuel? I thought the Mobil tankers handled all the fuel for Continental.” Continental was the only major airline that flew Micronesia.

“Mobil tankers won’t go to Alualu. No lagoon, no harbor. We going to Ulithi, then take this fuel special order to the doctor on Alualu.”

Pardee took a moment to digest the information. “I thought the Micro Trader did Yap and Palau States. What are you going all the way over there for?”

“Like I say, special order. Moen has jet fuel, we here in Moen, doctor wants jet fuel soon, so we go. I like it. I never been Alualu and I know a girl on Ulithi.”

Pardee couldn’t help but smile. This was a story in itself. Not a big one, but when the Trader or the Spirit changed schedules it made the paper. But there was more of a story somewhere in those barrels of jet fuel, in the ru-mor of armed guards, and in the two pilots that had passed through Truk on the way to No One’s Island. The question for Pardee was: Did he want to track it down? Could he track it down?

“When do you sail?” he asked the mate.

“Tomorrow morning. We get drunk together tonight Yumi Bar. My boys carry you home if you want. Hey?” The mate laughed.

Pardee felt sick. That was what they knew him for, a fat, drunken white man who they could carry home and then tell stories about.

“I can’t drink tonight. I’m sailing with you in the morning. I’ve got to get ready.”

The mate removed the betel nut cud from his cheek and tossed it into the sea, where tiny yellow fish rose to nip at it. He eyed Pardee suspiciously. “You going to leave Truk?”

“It’s not that big a deal. I’ve gone off-island before for a story.”

“Not in ten years I sail the Spirit.”

“Do you have room for another passenger or not?”

“We always have room. You know you have to sleep on deck?”

Pardee was beginning to get irritated. He needed a beer. “I’ve done this before.”

The mate shook his head as if clearing his ears of water and laughed. “Okay, we sail six in morning. Be on dock at five.”

“When do you come back this way?”

“A month. You can fly from Yap if you don’t want to come back with us.”

“A month?” He’d have to get someone to run the paper while he was gone. Or maybe not. Would anyone even notice he was gone?

Pardee said, “I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t get too drunk.”

“You too,” the mate said.

Pardee made his way down the dock, feeling every bit of his two hundred and sixty pounds. By the time he made it back to the street, he was soaked with sweat and yearning for a dark air-conditioned bar. He shook off the craving and headed for the Catholic high school to ask the nuns if they had any bright students who might keep the paper running in his absence.

He was going to do it, dammit. He’d be on the dock at five if he had to stay up all night drinking to do it.

“How are you feeling today?” Sebastian Curtis pulled the sheet down to Tuck’s knees and lifted the pilot’s hospital gown. Tucker flinched when the doctor touched the catheter. “Better,” Tuck said. “That thing is itching, though.”

“It’s healing.” The doctor palpated the lymph nodes in Tucker’s crotch. His hands were cold and Tuck shivered at the touch. “The infection is subsiding. This happened to you in the plane crash?”

“I fell back on some levers while I was trying to get a passenger out of the plane.”

“The hooker?” The doctor didn’t look up from his work.

Tuck wanted to throw the sheets over his head and hide. Instead, he said, “I don’t suppose it would make a difference if I said I didn’t know she was a hooker.”

Sebastian Curtis looked up and smiled; his eyes were light gray flecked with orange. With his gray hair and tropical tan, he could have been a re-tired general, Rommel maybe. “I’m not really concerned with what the woman was doing there. What does concern me is that you had been drinking. We can’t have that here, Mr. Case. You may have to fly on a moment’s notice, so you won’t be able to drink or indulge in any other chemical diversions. I assume that won’t pose a problem.”

“No. None,” Tuck said, but he felt like he’d been hit with a bag of sand. He’d been craving a drink since he’d regained consciousness. “By the way, Doc, since we’re going to be doing business together, maybe you should call me Tucker.”

“Tucker it is,” Curtis said. “And you can call me Dr. Curtis.” He smiled again.

“Swell. And your wife’s name is?”

“Mrs. Curtis.”

“Of course.”

The doctor finished his examination and pulled the sheet back up to Tuck’s waist. “You should be on your feet in a few days. We’ll move you to your bungalow this afternoon. I think you’ll find everything you need there, but if you do need anything, please let us know.”

A gin and tonic, Tuck thought. “I’d like to find out what happened to the guy who was piloting my boat.”

“As I told you, the islanders found you and a few pieces of your boat.” There was a finality in his voice that made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about Kimi or the boat.

Tuck pressed on. Respect for authority had never been his long suit. “I guess I’ll ask around when I get out of here. Maybe he washed up on a different part of the island. I remember being hung in a tree with him by an old cannibal.”

Tuck saw a frown cross the doctor’s face like a fleeting shadow, then the professional smile was back. “Mr. Case, there haven’t been any cannibals in these islands for a hundred years. Besides, I will have to ask you to stay inside the compound while you are here. You’ll have access to beaches and there’s plenty of room to roam, but you won’t be having any contact with the islanders.”

“Why, I mean if they saved me?”

“The Shark People have a very closed society. We try not to intrude on that any more than is necessary for us to do our work.”

“The Shark People? Why the Shark People?”

“I’ll explain it all to you when you are feeling better. Right now you need to rest.” The doctor took a syringe from a metal drawer by the wall and filled it from a vial of clear fluid, then injected it into Tuck’s IV. “When do you think you’ll be ready to fly?”

Tuck felt as if a veil of gauze had been thrown over his mind. Everything in the room went soft and fuzzy. “Not real soon if you keep giving me that stuff. Wow, what was that? Hey, you’re a doctor. Do you think we taste like Spam?”

He was going to ask another question, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

The Sorcerer stormed into the Sky Priestess’s bungalow, stripped off his lab coat, and threw it into the corner. He went to the open kitchen, ripped open the freezer, pulled out a frosty fifth of Absolut, and poured a triple shot into a water glass that froze and steamed like dry ice in the humidity. “Malink lied,” he said. Then he tossed back half the glass and grabbed his temples when the cold hit his brain.