As the helicopter lowered toward the Phoenix, a figure in a bright blue exposure suit stepped down from the bridge, a radio gripped in the hand he waved above his head. From the man’s beard and longish, sandy blond hair, Garner correctly guessed that this was Patrick Byrnes, the ship’s operations officer and Zubov’s counterpart on the Phoenix. Byrnes had, in fact, been the boatswain assigned to the final voyage of the Kaiku, and it was good to see that Carol had reassigned him to an equally impressive post. Byrnes pulled down his scarf and drew the radio to his mouth. A moment later his voice came over the helicopter’s radio.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” Byrnes said. “We just put out the red carpet for you.”
Garner could hear the pilots talking, first to each other, then to Byrnes: “I hope you don’t expect us to land on your deck,” the pilot said. Although the Phoenix was equipped with a small helipad, a landing with the ship’s communications array fully deployed, as it now was, would be impossible.
“Negative,” came the reply. “We wanted to build some kind of landing pad next to the main camp, but the ice there is probably too thin. What’s your loaded weight?”
The pilots relayed this information.
“That’s about what I thought,” Byrnes confirmed. “You’re too heavy.”
“Not for long, if we keep using up our fuel chit chatting with this guy,” the copilot muttered.
Byrnes pointed out a large “X” that had recently been sprayed on the ice in fluorescent green paint about a hundred yards from the ship.
Someone had added a happy face to the design and topped it off with a mane of long, tangled “hair” that stood nearly on end a humorous caricature of Medusa.
“Set down over there,” Byrnes said. “We’ll meet you with the Snocats.”
The pilots had the helicopter on the ground within minutes, its tricycle landing gear biting into the snow. If the ice buckled or groaned in protest, the sound was lost beneath the whine of the engines as they were powered down. Garner and Zubov bailed out of their jump seats and began unfastening Medusa even before the rotor blades had stopped.
“Don’t worry, fellas,” Garner said. “We’ll leave you time enough to get home for dinner.” As always happened when he stepped down from an aircraft, Garner felt a hollow sense of relief spread through him. With the arduous flight now over and the task of a rapid unloading before them, Garner felt his fatigue begin to ebb for the first time in forty-eight hours.
As the cacophony of the rotor blades died away. Garner could appreciate the sounds of the Arctic. He held his breath, closed his eyes, and listened for a moment. Even from a hundred yards away, he could faintly hear the grumble of the Phoenix’s generators and the thin chirping of metal pitons being hammered into the snow to accommodate any variety of activities. Closer, ubiquitously, the sloshing and sucking of the sea and the gentle bobbing of the floe were a reminder that this was not solid land they had breached. Otherwise, the air was utterly silent.
They had already unloaded the smaller crates by the time the first Snocat arrived. The Phoenix apparently operated a small fleet of the oversized snowmobiles with steel treads and a generous, three-walled cab for the driver.
The ugly but functional machines looked like bulldozers that had been run over by an eighteen wheeler Byrnes was driving and Carol sat beside him on the bench seat, her hands braced on the walls of the cab for support. As she saw Garner and Zubov, her face broke into a wide grin behind her tinted goggles.
“Welcome to Balaenoptera beach,” she called, hopping off the Snocat and giving Garner a warm embrace.
“The natives seem friendly enough,” Garner said, as he kissed her.
“Only for you southerners,” Carol said.
“Lady, from here everyone is a southerner,” Zubov said, stepping over to them and wrapping Carol in a bear hug.
“As you can see, we have all the comforts of home — mass transit, sport diving, gourmet dining,” Carol said, sweeping her arm behind her.
“And wildlife,” Garner said. “Don’t forget the wildlife.”
“Oh yeah, we’ve got wildlife,” Byrnes agreed. “By the truckload.”
“And contamination by the Sievert,” Carol added gravely. A Sievert was a unit of equivalent biological dose — tissue exposure to radiation.
Typical exposures were given in milli Sieverts or one thousandths of a unit, which made Carol’s remark all the more chilling.
“All five of the whales seem to be carrying horrific levels of uranium and cesium, as well as a laundry list of other radionuclides we couldn’t even begin to measure clearly. So far there aren’t many culprits we haven’t found.”
“That’s my first concern,” Garner said. “This whole station must be hot, yet I don’t see anyone in radiation suits.”
“There are some things even the Nolan Group can’t arrange on short notice,” Carol said. “I’m beginning to find out how unprepared everyone is when it comes to the possibility of a nuclear leak. Suits are coming — a lot of things are coming — so for now we’ve got these whales and a whole lot of questions.”
“You’re not concerned about exposure?” Zubov asked.
“Of course I am, Serg,” Carol said. The grim set of her jaw showed every ounce of her vested leadership in this expedition and its crew.
“But at this point we still have no idea where to go. Any given direction could be out of danger or farther into it. I guess I’d rather keep a foothold in the area than risk losing track of it completely.”
“The atmospheric rad levels as best we can measure them right now seem to be nominal,” Byrnes added. “The greatest accumulation is in the flesh of the whales, with the water column not far behind.”
Garner asked Carol about the status of the two divers.
“We had them airlifted out,” she said. “Helicoptered to Cape Dorset, then onto a Canadian Forces Medevac Hercules to an I.C.U in Toronto. The doctors there confirmed exposure to at least six Sieverts of radiation, though with the effects of immersion it’s hard to tell for sure.” Carol didn’t have to elaborate further in a few minutes of diving, the men had been exposed to more than three thousand times the usual yearly dose of radiation, and a level twice as great as that received by the first emergency teams to arrive at the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Many of those men had collapsed within hours of returning from their missions. Most had died, painfully, within days, after experiencing blindness, lesions and sloughing of their flesh, and a nearly complete collapse of their circulatory, nervous, and excretory systems. Now, reflecting on how Dexter had looked in his cabin and how much his health had worsened by the time the SAR helicopter arrived at the Phoenix, Carol’s voice wavered.
“I don’t think I want to know how they’re doing now. Not really,” she said. “But they’re in good hands. Let’s hope for an improvement and pray we’ll see them again soon.”
If Garner and Zubov had been impressed by a glimpse of the Phoenix from the air, Carol’s personal tour of the vessel was stunning. The original hull had been sliced open and lengthened, reinforced with frame struts sixteen inches apart — instead of the usual thirty-six inches — and an additional inch of iron plating, then stitched back together. The vessel’s twin diesel engines had been overhauled and the screws shielded from ice damage by more plating. The superstructure had been nearly doubled in size to accommodate a larger research lab and a battery of new onboard computers, including state-of-the-art sonar, communications, and a global positioning system rig. Belowdecks, the holds had been improved to better suit the reinforced hull, and twenty crew cabins had been added to the enlarged superstructure. The bridge had been fitted with ceiling-to-deck polarized windows that offered a sweeping view of the surrounding sea. An environmental-monitoring station had been added to the quarterdeck, assisted by a new A-frame and assorted cargo cranes along both gunwales.