TWENTY FEET BELOW the surface of the water east of Marathon in the Florida Keys, Trout's wife, Gamay, was chiseling away with a dive knife at a big brain coral. She broke off a small piece and put it in a mesh bag hanging from her weight belt. Gamay had donated some of her working vacation as a marine biologist to a conservation group studying the deterioration of coral growth in the Keys. The news wasn't good. The coral was worse than the year before. The growth that had not been killed outright by the poisonous run-off from south Florida was brown and discolored, totally unlike the vibrant colors to be found in the healthy reefs of the Caribbean and Red Sea.

A sharp rapping sound filled her ears. Someone was signaling from the surface. Tucking her knife back in its sheath, Gamay increased the air in her buoyancy compensator, and with a few flips of her fins, her tightly shaped body rose from the coral. She surfaced near the chartered dive boat and blinked in the bright Florida sun. The boat's skipper, a grizzled old “conch” named Bud, after the beer he favored, was holding a ball-peen hammer he'd used to tap on the metal stern ladder.

“Harbormaster just called on the radio,” Bud yelled. “Says your husband was trying to get in touch with you.”

Gamay swam to the ladder, handed up her tank and weight belt, then climbed aboard. She wrung the seawater out of her dark red hair and wiped her face down with a towel. She was tall, and slim for her height, and had she cared to get down to an unhealthy weight, she would have had the figure of a fashion model. She dug the coral fragment from her bag and held it up for Bud to see.

He shook his head. “My dive business is going down the tubes if this keeps up.”

The fisherman was right. It was going to take a massive commitment from everyone, from the conchs to the Congress, to bring the reefs back to life.

“Did my husband leave a message?” she asked.

“Yeah, says to get in touch with him pronto. That someone named Kurt called. Guess your vacation is over.”

She smiled, showing the slight space between her dazzling white front teeth, and tossed the piece of coral to Bud. “Guess it is,” she said.

NUMA 3 - Fire Ice

-10- WASHINGTON, D.C.

WASHINGTON SWELTERED UNDER a hot sun that combined with the humidity to transform the nation's capital into a giant steam bath. The driver of the turquoise Jeep Cherokee shook his head in wonder at the brave clusters of tourists ignoring the wilting heat. Noel Coward to the contrary, he thought, mad dogs and Englishmen weren't the only ones to go out in the midday sun.