“It’s just that I’ve come across ‘highly implausible’ scenarios before, and—”
“And they tend to be the messiest,” Zubov added.
“Agreed,” Krail said. “Which makes it either very honorable or very stupid that you’d even bother to go look.”
“She’s worth it,” Garner said again.
“Worth the honor or the stupidity?” Krail asked.
“Both. But thanks for your help.”
“You know what they say about free advice,” Krail said. “You get what you pay for. But let me know what you find.” Krail fixed them with his studious eyes. “If there’s anything up there we don’t already know about, I’d be interested. Very surprised, but interested.”
“You, me, and a few others,” Garner said.
4
From Churchill, Manitoba, a chartered De Havilland Twin Otter carried Garner and Zubov to Cape Dorset on Baffin Island, though Medusa had to be freed from her packing crate to fit inside the smaller aircraft’s narrow fuselage. At Cape Dorset, the travelers were transferred to a Canadian Helicopters Sikorsky S-61 for the last leg of their nine-thousand-mile journey.
Compared to the luxurious accommodations aboard the Nolan Group jet or the rugged functionality of the Twin Otter, the Sikorsky felt like the offspring of a garden shed and a paint shaker. Built to be an offshore transport, the helicopter had been modified for longdistance shuttling of cargo and personnel to support the oil industry. Its current home range was the vast eastern expanse of Canada’s Northwest Territories, now Nunavut, including the waters of Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, and Foxe Basin.
The cost to the Nolan Group of delivering Garner and his unique device was already enormous, and with that consideration. Garner’s uneasiness returned.
Carol was far from frivolous when it came to such expenses, and there was more to her request than personal efficiency. She really did believe that the cost of importing him and Zubov was justified compared to the eventual cost of leaving them to do their work in the Antarctic.
As aboard the Jetstar and the shepherd’s truck, Garner and Zubov were relegated to a makeshift space behind the pilots — this time room for them had been created within a cavernous cabin once intended to carry up to three dozen troops but now used almost exclusively for cargo.
Strapped into a pair of jump seats facing aft, Garner and Zubov had a clear view of Medusa, now seated on a borrowed mattress and strapped to the floor over the helicopter’s center of gravity. The vibration through the Sikorsky’s airframe was still uncomfortably intense, varying only slightly as a gusting headwind caused the helicopter to jump in altitude, then drop down sharply as it made its way out over the southern edge of Foxe Basin. Above them, the rotors were hammered through the cold arctic air by two turboshaft engines, the thudding blades flickering past the pale sunlight like a strobe. The stench of kerosene and other hot fluids was thick and cloying. Garner turned his attention away from his growing nausea and the anxious tingling in his chest and focused instead on a forgotten lock washer that vibrated and bounced on the floor of the helicopter.
“Where do you suppose this came from?” Garner asked, nudging the small galvanized ring between his boots.
Zubov shrugged.
“Hell, in a rattletrap like this it could’ve come out of anything — the seat, the hatch, the hoist, the main rotor—”
“Thanks. You’re a big help.”
Garner turned his attention back to the window and gazed out over the majestic landscape slipping past them some three hundred feet below. If one could endure the bitter cold of winter and stay on top of the ice, in summer the Arctic was truly one of the most stunning environs on earth. Seen from the air, the nearly unimaginable stillness resembled a lake or an inland sea more than the savage ocean it was reputed to be. It was only the first of many deceptions this place had in store for visitors.
Along the treeless horizon, snow-encrusted vistas rose up from the sea and distant islands loomed like sounding whales. Ice jutted from the water as much as fifty feet before dropping off sharply or tapering to elongated shapes that bridged the naturally formed crevasses. Wind had sculpted many of the taller icebergs with almost artistic skill, rounding edges and bridging sharp peaks to create stunning profiles.
Unlike the churning slate gray of the Weddell Sea, the ocean here is a deep cobalt blue — nearly black — held in a placid stillness. Garner could see that the spring melt had clearly begun in earnest; massive fissures fractured the sea ice into rafts of every description. Soon the resident plankton populations would respond to the increased daylight here and return in abundance to the surface waters of the Arctic Ocean.
With this florescence would come the Arctic birds eider ducks, guillemots, gyrfalcons, and gulls for a few weeks of feeding and breeding. The seals, walrus, and whales would exploit an ocean surface free of the ice that not only interfered with breathing but also provided a firm foundation for predators. On land, the herds of caribou would be returning from the south, ragged and hungry from their long winter, but food enough for equally hungry polar bears along the coast or for the ravenous Greenland sharks that patrolled the shallow channels between islands. Come summer, the Arctic would open its ice-locked doors and welcome one of the most plentiful but most delicate food webs ever studied. With less than 2 percent of the species diversity found in the tropics, the Arctic was far less resilient to disturbances, human or otherwise. It was this landscape, this slumbering horn of plenty, which now beckoned to Garner, inviting him closer.
Closer. Each time the helicopter lost altitude and the ground suddenly rose up beneath them, Garner was convinced it had nothing to do with turbulence, but rather, that they had used up the last of their fuel and were about to plunge into Foxe Basin. The stark but beautiful wasteland below only made these daydreams more credible: this place of extremes and superlatives, of desolation and simplicity, lent itself easily to thoughts of sudden demise.
“There it is,” the pilot’s voice suddenly came over their headsets.
Garner twisted around in his seat, straining to look forward. He could just make out the dull red shape of the Phoenix’s hull, a gunshot wound against the expansive white background. Since the Nolan Group lost the Kaiku in Puget Sound, the four-hundred-foot Phoenix had become its research flagship. This was the first time Garner had glimpsed the ship since the refitting Carol had requisitioned. Even from a distance, the improvements to the renovated vessel were impressive. The entire bridge had been enlarged and raised two full decks to accommodate a larger superstructure. The expansive antenna array suggested the latest in radio and satellite communication equipment, and heavy-duty winches had been added to manage the variety of scientific gear to be coordinated by the ship’s boatswain.
Zubov shared Garner’s appraisal of the ship.
“The Nolan Group never does anything on a small scale, do they? The thing looks like a cruise ship.” The obvious envy in Zubov’s voice was strictly professional. Except for dedicated military ships, most government research vessels could not come close to having such comfort and technology, nor could they justify the budget required to build one. They also did not pay their crews nearly as well.
Surrounding the vessel on three sides was a variety of equipment and personnel offloaded to the ice in a kind of makeshift base camp. Garner could see the holes broken in the ice and at least one of the whales still trapped beneath the floe. It appeared as though a large piece of the ice had calved into the sea, and Garner wondered if this had anything to do with one or more of the whales being released.