The long flight was about over as Samantha Tremaine closed the lid on the laptop and returned the tray table to an upright position. She slipped her precious electronic device in her backpack  and stretched to remove the kinks the Aeroflot airlines had ironed in over the 7500 miles. Professor Fuller had a hired car and a driver to take the three of them west by northwest to Kiryat Yam, the fabled city where mermaids sunned on rocks in the surf.<br/><br/>Sammy looked over at Harper, her comrade in arms, so to speak and grinned. She wished she looked half as put together as Harper but she knew with her short spiked black hair that she looked quite androgynous and not at all lovely. The heavy black eyeliner had been permanently tattooed on one night after a party and so she was a permanent Goth. No biggie, the look went with the black tee shirt and cargo shorts quite well. No one expected more than the high top boots she wore either, so packing for the trip had been quite simple. Her one girly concession had been gold hoop earrings. Harper on the other hand, looked, cute. No other word for it. The fact that Sammy was some older than the typical grad student didn’t help her to look fresh faced and precious, either.<br/><br/>The prof was sleeping with his mouth opened and lightly snoring as the flight attendant gently asked him to sit his seat back straight and fasten his seat belt once more. The professor was an older man, short with this mass of curly brown hair shot through with grey. He had round glasses that looked as if they had come via the 1970s and never been replaced. He was still trim and to some of the girls in their class, was attractive. Not really her type, Sammy thought, but then her type was her own business.<br/><br/>She pulled out the newspaper article about Kiryat Yam and the sightings of the mermaid. They were offering  a huge reward to anyone who provided hard evidence. Sammy patted her backpack to assure herself that her camera was intact. Check.  The Department of Oceanic Research allowed for a liberal studies attitude to the students’ thesis papers. Harper’s was research on mermaids via literature, the humanities and folklore. Sammy’s was more a scientific base.<br/><br/>She had read of Charles Foley’s expose on Animal Planet and it was controversial at best. Her theory was based on anthropology and human evolution. If she could gather enough evidence, maybe she could prove, not that humans evolved into mermaids, but rather that dolphins had mated with human females and the offspring that resulted were the mermaids, or merpeople.  The little reward that Kiryat Yam was offering was quite a tasty morsel too. One stain on the otherwise rosy plan was the disturbing reports that governments worldwide were working to cover up any hard evidence of Mermaids. One whispering conspiracy theorist posited that these governments were killing people that wouldn’t take the hush money.<br/><br/>Sammy didn’t worry about wing nuts. The weather was perfect, sunny and 74. She was with people she cared about and respected. The entire summer stretched ahead of her with possibilities and beaches. What more could she asked for?  She leaned across the aisle and called,<br/><br/>“Hey, Harper. I want to show you these videos that I found online. See what you think about this evidence. I want to find this beach as soon as possible.”<br/><br/><a class="postlink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_eUKBrHKYM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_eUKBrHKYM</a>