Ms. Adventure by Jess Phoenix

Author:Jess Phoenix
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: 2021-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

The cruise was starting to wind down, and our group had made good progress. Mark was pleased with the samples we collected, and I had identified enough interesting features on the South Rift Zone of Lō‘ihi that we agreed I could easily focus my thesis research on the video footage and samples we had. There were about seven identified undersea lava flow morphologies, or forms, when we began our work, but I had seen enough variation between flow types that I thought I could make a case for breaking out the different flow forms into even more precise definitions. I also hypothesized that the angle of the volcano’s downward slope exercised a significant amount of control on the physical form of the flow, and I would need to spend hundreds of hours reviewing Jason’s video footage and using location data to see if there was a correlation between the degree of slope and the flow forms. I was thrilled at the prospect of having Mark as one of my thesis advisors, since he was a fantastic scientist as well as someone I enjoyed working with. The loss of the elevator had been the only hiccup in an otherwise solid cruise.

We had two nights at sea remaining and I was diligently attending to samples in the glove box, thinking about the avalanche of work and personal business awaiting me on the mainland. My two favorite professors at CSULA had volunteered to cover the geology laboratory classes I was scheduled to teach, so I knew I would be returning to students with solid fundamentals. But trading fascinating daily work on active Hawaiian volcanoes for routine graduate student life punctuated by the occasional California earthquake was going to be a challenge.

I scooped some of the olivine crystals I’d pried from the basalt into a small metal cylinder that would serve as an airtight sample container, and then pulled my hands out of the glove box’s gloves and rubber rings. On my way to the bathroom, I offered a greeting to Bill, one of the ship’s data experts, who was red-faced and shiny after a date with the gym, and ran through a mental list of the procedures I would need to do to finish prepping the samples before I could finish entering data for the previous dive. I returned to the glove box and stuck my hands back in, resuming the delicate work. A noise that didn’t fit broke my focus, the sound of something heavy yet soft hitting the ground. The computer lab was to my right, across the passageway that ran down the center of the ship. My view into the lab was at an angle, and I didn’t see anything amiss right away. I heard a few sharp exclamations, and some gasps from people closer to the passage. I looked more closely and was jarred to see the identical soles of two running shoes, toes pointing to the sky and heels on the deck below.

The murmur of worried voices rose

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