Free Far From The Sea We Know by Frank Sheldon Page A

is
Becka.”
    Matthew recognized him from the Point. It
was Ripler who had sat next to him in the cafeteria and let his
opinion known: Matthew Amati had only made it into the best marine
science program in the western hemisphere because of accidentally
being in the right place at a time and the closest at hand.
    Ripler still sounded sure of himself, yet
sitting there dressed so fastidiously, he looked more like some
yacht clubbing day-sailor than a research student at the Point.
    “Good to meet you, Jack…Becka. I’m Matthew
Amati.”
    “We know,” Ripler said smiling.
    “I met you before, at the Point.”
    “Yes, the ‘Canadian quota,’” Ripler said in
a slightly bored voice. “You’ve held on like a lamprey, so I give
you credit for that.”
    Matthew was preparing an answer when Ripler
glanced at the display and suddenly held his hand up saying,
“Excuse me for a moment. I have to adjust the auto-tracking.”
    Becka had kept watching her monitor the
whole time, but did finally manage to wave a few fingers in his
direction. Her dark frizzy hair bounced every time she jerked her
head from one readout to another. With her aquiline nose and
intense eyes, she resembled a bird of prey. Her lean, muscular body
told of someone dedicated enough to workout somehow even on a
cramped research ship.
    The large binocular video setup was in
continuous movement, always realigning with the whales.
    “With the rolling of the ship,” Becka said,
“we’ve had a hell of a time keeping the array pointing in the right
direction, even with new tracking algorithms. Still some bugs in
this thing. The sea’s supposed to calm down later, which will make
it easier. Try looking through here.”
    She had not pointed to the binocular array,
but to another set of eyepieces extending out from the console on
an arm with swivels.
    “Doesn’t matter which way they’re pointed,”
she said.
    “Essentially,” Ripler added, “you will be
reviewing the high resolution video feed from those binoculars on
the tripod. What we see on the screen, but in stereo. New
technology. Just try it, and we won’t have to bore you with complex
explanations.”
    Matthew bent over, peered into the eyepieces
and saw an amazingly clear video image of the lead whales, with a
complete sense of depth and life.
    “It’s so sharp!” Matthew said. “I’ve heard
of these systems. Didn’t know you could get them yet.”
    “We got lucky,” Ripler said. “This one’s a
new test model. And as Becka mentioned, it’s still far from
perfected. Not as automatic as the specs would lead one to believe.
Becka keeps it on course, and on this screen I make sure all the
readouts are functioning properly and the perimeters stay
optimized. It’s supposed to do all that automatically, but we’ve
found it still needs some shepherding. It does a good job of
staying on target by itself in light seas, but needs considerable
manual finesse on a day like this. In a year or so, they tell us,
the system will be able to operate completely unaided.”
    “Great, I guess.”
    “This is a game-changer, but don’t worry,
we’ll still have lots to do. Notice that it also tracks the
target’s exact location, water depth, and time of day.”
    “Plus air and ocean temperatures,” Becka
said. “Water constituents from plankton counts, pollutants as well
as the potential to analyze just about any data, on demand.”
    Ripler nodded. “And anytime we do or test
anything, anywhere, the data all go back into a central system.
Every instrument reading on the ship, including this video feed,
does that now. All the real time data is available whenever we play
back the video, because all the timing data are digitally encoded
and coordinated. Or maybe the term is ‘embedded.’ I’m not as much
of a techno-geek as I probably sound.”
    Denials notwithstanding, the glee in
Ripler’s voice as he gushed over the hardware was plain. There was
still much of the boy in him—he looked so