Austin thanked the captain, and, with a noticeable spring in his step, went down to get the Gooney ready. The ultralight seaplane had been developed as a way to extend a boat's visual reach. The radar that most NUMA ships carried could pick up a gnat at ten miles, but at times there was no substitute for the human eye. Joe Zavala, whose mechanical mind bordered on brilliant, had designed the aircraft. Zavala had asked Austin to take the plane aboard the Argo to test it under real-life conditions, but the ship had been on the go for most of its mission and Austin had been reluctant to ask the captain for time to make a test flight.

The single-seat plane was named after the gooney bird, the nickname sailors gave the albatross, a seabird known for its exquisite beauty in flight, and clumsiness taking off and landing. Austin inspected the aircraft in its deck hangar. The stubby, ungainly appearance didn't bother him. Austin had flown ultralights before, and what was important was stability and ease of operation.

The letters NUMA were painted in black on the side. The flat-bottomed fiberglass hull had an upturned canoe nose, and fiberglass floats supported by aluminum struts hung from both sides of the hull. Attached to the floats and flanking the hull was the manually operated retractable landing gear that allowed the Gooney to set down on waterways or runways.

The plane was hauled out onto the deck and its narrow, thirty-foot Dacron-covered wings were unfolded and locked in place. Austin eased into the snug cockpit, and some of the Argo's crew pushed the Gooney down the ship's broad, slanting stem ramp into the sea. Austin started the power plant, threw off the safety line and taxied to open water to get the feel of the controls. The aircraft handled well on water, and he decided to see what it would do in the air. He pointed the Gooney down an imaginary airstrip and gave it the throttle.

Powered by the compact forty-horsepower engine, the Gooney got on plane quickly with no skidding. The aircraft skimmed the wave tops for about a hundred feet, then lifted into the air and climbed until it was above the survey ship. Austin circled the Argo once, tipped his wings in salute, then headed in a line toward the Bosporus Strait that connected the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. He reasoned that the TV people, based in Istanbul, would be coming from that direction.