Garner finalized the travel arrangements and confirmed them with the Lansing’s captain.
“We can make the Falklands by Thursday,” said the captain, a soft-spoken, experienced man named Mike Hahn. He was used to fielding cockeyed requests from agitated researchers and had a placid, evenhanded temperament to accommodate them. Hahn saw no point in getting into pissing matches over egos or priorities; the Lansing’s fee was the same regardless of what her ports of call were.
“But yours is only one vote in six. The rest of the principal investigators will have your head on a platter if we lose any more station time.”
In the weather officer’s estimation, a side trip to the Falklands might help the Lansing avoid another approaching storm front, which would doubtless help to deflect the perceived inconvenience to the other principal investigators, or Pis. An added incentive for those who had been seasick for most of the past week was the prospect of at least twelve hours on solid ground once they got to the Falklands.
“Looks like you’re in luck, Mr. Garner,” Hahn said, then called for the revised course.
“Really?” Garner mused. “Somehow it doesn’t feel like it.”
Garner entered Zubov’s cabin with a sharp knock and relayed the content of his discussion with Carol. His friend, already in his bunk, listened with half-closed eyes.
“They’re gonna have to stop charging you full price on these little junkets,” Zubov said. It wasn’t the first time that Garner’s cruise time had been interrupted by urgent news, calling him off the ship prematurely and suspending his planned sampling regime. “You want me to finish up here with Medusa?”
“No, I need you both to come with me. Pack Medusa for travel, then gather up your stuff. We won’t be back on the Lansing this year.”
Zubov still could not believe what he was hearing. An impromptu journey nearly pole to pole with half a ton of gear and a maverick researcher with severe acrophobia. Still more incredible, it wouldn’t be their first inconvenient detour to result from such an invitation.
“You’re gonna have to stop taking calls from that woman,” Zubov said.
Both men knew that the odds of Garner ignoring a distress call from his ex-wife were as remote as a long, balmy spell in the Southern Ocean in May.
As Zubov pulled on some clothes, Garner switched on the lamp above the desk and paced the small cabin from end to end. He recited items from a mental list of on-hand materials or substitutes they could arrange to pick up along the way.
Over more than nine thousand air miles, they would be passing any number of possible depots.
As Garner finally finished, Zubov looked at his friend.
“Anything else?” Zubov asked sarcastically. He knew Garner well enough to know that there was always something else to be added to the manifest.
“Geiger counters,” Garner said. Zubov saw the familiar look of theoretical distraction settle over his friend’s face. He hated that look; it invariably resulted in tasks of unreasonable proportions. “Radiometers. Dosimeters for handheld use on dry land and waterproofed gamma spectrometers that Medusa could be modified to carry.”
“Right,” Zubov said, shaking his head dumbly.
“Dry land equipment for use on top of the world’s largest slush puddle and some custom-designed, waterproofed gamma specs. On two days’ notice.” This time his tone was acerbic.
“And exactly how many of those will we be needing?”
“A lot,” Garner replied. He was deadly serious.
3
As agreed, Carol dispatched a Nolan Group jet to the Falkland Islands to retrieve Garner and Zubov. The pilot, Ed Dunning, a gruff, heavyset man in his midfifties with a slight paunch, had retooled his career after being laid off by Delta. For his younger and more congenial copilot, Jim Lawrence, the job with the Nolan Group was one of his first in private industry. The two men arrived on the island only hours before the Lansing, rented a flatbed truck from a local sheep farmer, then met the ship at the government dock in Port Stanley. Zubov supervised the loading of Medusa onto the truck using a walkie-talkie and hand motions — some required, some unnecessarily obscene — to direct the crew operating the vessel’s deck-mounted crane. Watching the intricate and convoluted procedure, the Nolan Group pilots could only shake their heads in disbelief and growing annoyance. It was still hard for them to comprehend that the purpose of their two-day trip was to retrieve an ungainly crate and its two unshaven but jocular keepers.
For their part, the rest of the Lansing’s researchers and deck crew were happy to watch the proceedings from one of Stanley’s British-style pubs. Given the alternative — another two days of violent rocking on the Weddell Sea — most gladly made this concession to Garner.
The cab of the farmer’s truck was small and fitted with two seats scavenged from a pair of tractors long ago petrified by age and rust. Garner and Zubov rode in the back with the five-cubic-foot crate housing Medusa and smaller boxes filled with the rest of their gear.
“Are there many potholes in the road?” Garner asked. He thought of Medusa’s more delicate instrumentation and wondered if they should take any exceptional packing precautions. He also anticipated the pilot’s answer.
“Potholes? So many you’ll hardly notice,” the pilot answered. During the entire journey back to the reserve airport, one or another of the truck’s wheels was continually lower than the rest as the vehicle jounced from one drop-out to the next. To the two pilots, still rattled from their landing at the small airfield, packing the two passengers onto the back of a sheep farmer’s truck along with their temperamental luggage to personally share in the discomfort of this pole-to-pole trek was immensely satisfying.
As the truck waggled and wrestled with the road, its straining diesel engine managing little more than fifteen miles per hour, Zubov uncapped a Coca-Cola he had purchased from a vending machine at the government dock. He tried to put the glass neck of the bottle to his lips without bashing himself in the teeth.
“We definitely need more stability in our lives,” he said.
“I think I’d prefer storm waves to this,” Garner said.
“At least they’re more rhythmic.”
“And they don’t smell like sheep.”
The refueled, gleaming-white Lockheed Jetstar III waited for them at the reserve airport with all the misplaced elegance of a swan in a garbage dump. The jet was custom built as a “combi,” in pilot parlance, with a horizontally hinged door for large cargo while retaining a reduced number of seats in a comfortable passenger cabin.
The Jetstar was probably the most advanced technology the airfield had seen since the British-Argentine conflict of 1982.
The airport wasn’t the only one serving the Falklands’ highly elastic population of about two thousand citizens, but it was the closest facility for the Lansing among the collection of nearly two hundred Islas Malvinas, as the Argentines knew them. With the approach of winter, the seasonal facility had been almost entirely shut down, with most of the field equipment stored in half a dozen dilapidated cargo hangars. The smell of spilled fuel and grease and the aroma from an exposed landfill wafted over the pitted tarmac from an adjoining field.
“You guys landed on this’?” Zubov said, impressed.
“Yes, we did,” Dunning replied, in a tone suggesting that he expected an apology from his charges.