California Blue Whales

The gentle, 25-ton giant twisted and spouted for its admirers aboard the Vanguard. In behavior that research biologists say is becoming increasingly common, the 50-foot-long humpback whale spent a half-hour getting friendly with its visitors--poking its head out of the 600-foot-deep waters off Santa Cruz Island, opening its plate-sized eye to watch the watchers and even rolling over like a dog looking for a good scratch.

The gentle, 25-ton giant twisted and spouted for its admirers aboard the Vanguard. In behavior that research biologists say is becoming increasingly common, the 50-foot-long humpback whale spent a half-hour getting friendly with its visitors--poking its head out of the 600-foot-deep waters off Santa Cruz Island, opening its plate-sized eye to watch the watchers and even rolling over like a dog looking for a good scratch.

In darkness, two men in orange spacesuits trudge across the Mojave salt flats to take their seats in the cockpit of a spectral SR-71. Sitting on the Tarmac, the supersonic spy plane is blacker than a moonless midnight. A dozen civilian technicians in jeans and T-shirts tinker with the temperamental aircraft, as rivulets of jet fuel stream like sweat off its wings and angular fuselage. It is a pre-dawn scene that could be drawn from the secret annals of the Cold War.