Summary

Chapter 3 tells the story Leigh becoming a scientist in her young adulthood. She receives a microscope as a gift on her 11th birthday, and becomes fascinated with microscopy and micro-organisms. Then she leaves for college, studying marine biology, going to the Azores Islands on a project to collect phytoplankton in mountain lakes. Leigh dives in the cold lakes to collect the samples and again has an experience like her near-death swim in the Netherlands. One day after collecting her samples, the narrator feels that something “unnamable” had changed (36). She learns NASA engineers made a breakthrough in propulsion technology. “There were rumors that spacecraft could achieve more than 10,000 times their previous velocity” (40). This technological advance, although geared toward space exploration, creates a major dilemma in the novel by increasing interest in using deep sea environments for experiments and mining the seafloor. However, Leigh...