The night was terrible. Marissa was again bothered by horrid dreams of sharks and Wendy being eaten. On top of that, she was tormented by drunken shouts and fights outside her door. She also had to do battle with all manner of insects that somehow managed to penetrate the netting around her bed.

By morning, Marissa was even more tired than she’d been the day before. But after a shower and some strong coffee, she thought she could face the day. Armed with directions from the hotel owner, she drove out of Windorah and headed to the Wilmington Station on a dusty dirt road.

The cattle ranch looked just as she imagined it would, consisting of a series of low-slung wooden sheds, white clapboard houses with sheet-metal roofs, and lots of fencing. Many dogs, horses, and cowboys were in evidence. Over the scene hung the unpleasant but not unbearable ripe, musty odor of cow dung.

In contrast to the staring disbelief her arrival caused in the pub in Windorah, Marissa was shown every possible hospitality at the cattle station. The cowboys, referred to as stockmen, literally fell over each other trying to help her, getting her a beer and offering to take her to the makeshift airstrip for the doctor’s scheduled noon arrival. One of the stockmen explained their behavior by telling her that an attractive unaccompanied female showed up at a cattle station about once every hundred years.

By eleven-thirty Marissa was out at the airstrip, sitting in her Ford Falcon under a lone gum tree. Out in the sunlight closer to the strip was the Wilmington Station Land-Rover. Just before twelve, she got out of the car and left the tree’s shade. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she searched the pale blue sky for a plane. The day was just as hot as the previous one and just as cloudless. Nowhere could she see a plane. She listened hard but the only thing she heard was the breeze through the acacia.

After ten minutes Marissa was about to get back into the car when she heard the faint drone of an airplane engine. Raising her eyes to the sky again, she searched for the source of the sound. She didn’t spot it until it was almost on top of her.

The plane banked around the airstrip. The pilot seemed to be deciding whether or not he wished to land. At last, after a second pass, he brought the plane down.

The Beechcraft KingAir taxied toward the Land-Rover, then pulled around into the wind. The pilot feathered the engines and prepared to deplane.

Marissa walked briskly toward the plane as the pilot was opening the cabin door. The man who had been sitting in the Land-Rover stepped out into the sunlight, flicking a cigarette butt into the dust.

“Dr. Williams!” Marissa called.