“Light meter on. T-S profiling on.” While marine biologists usually specialized in the macroscopic world — invertebrates, fish, or marine mammals large enough to move easily through the water — oceanographers concerned themselves with the measured or predicted properties of the water supporting ocean life, and in the case of microscopic organisms, some fundamental parameters were essential. The T-S — or temperature-salinity — curve, which showed a plot of the heat and salt content of the water with depth, was a time-honored indicator in ocean science. These physical properties could not only be used to define parcels of water, but also to predict water motion and the potential for habitation by marine organisms. Garner now turned his attention to Medusa’s organic data.
“Bottles one and two primed for firing,” he called out to Zubov.
“Firing,” he confirmed a moment later. The readout confirmed that the first two of Medusa’s water samplers had snapped shut, capturing a small parcel of water from a depth of about fifty meters or five atmospheres of pressure. These samples would later be used as a backup confirmation of what Medusa’s particle counters, probes, and cameras recorded or estimated electronically.
“No shortage of zooplankton,” Garner observed. “Lots of copepods… euphausiids… jellies.” Indeed, at first glance, the densities of the most common microscopic animal plankton appeared to be on a par with expected values for the Arctic Ocean at this time of year.
Although precise species identification was something typically left for later work in the lab. Garner readily recognized several forms and these also appeared normal and intact.
“The adults are alive and kicking,” he said. “No obvious signs of damage or mutation.”
“Thank God for that,” Zubov’s voice came back over the radio. “I don’t think I could handle an encounter with Frankenshrimp at this hour.”
“Just mind the wire angle and the tow speed, smartass,” Garner said.
He turned his attention to the new devices hooked onto the rig and confirmed that the initial settings were correct.
“Starting gamma specs,” he said. The display came alive, with the needles on three of the radiation meters jumping once, then remaining pegged at maximum scale. Puzzled, Garner adjusted the scale on the devices, increasing the range they measured by a factor of ten, then a factor of one hundred, then one thousand.
The needles responded in unison, settling back toward the left side of each scale.
From his position on the afterdeck, Zubov could see nothing of the readouts from the various instruments Medusa carried.
“How’s it looking?” he asked.
Garner’s silence was enough to bring Zubov back inside. He ducked through the hatchway into the airlock and looked through the plastic sheeting at the readings on the instruments.
The three gamma spectrometers showed radiation levels nearly twenty-five hundred times their initial setting, which Garner had conservatively set at ten times the expected natural level.
“We’ve got a spike at twenty-five thousand times normal,” he said, still not believing his eyes.
Guided by Medusa’s scrolling numbers, the Phoenix continued on a northward course. The radiation-detection instruments trailing below the ship continued to show alarmingly high levels, rising slightly along an unusually strong temperature anomaly measured at a depth of approximately ten meters. Watching Medusa’s readouts carefully, Garner directed the ship from the main lab, calling for a doubling back each time the track of the radiation was lost. That the direction Medusa was telling them to follow was almost identical to the path Victor had taken south was an unfortunate coincidence. There was no question that the Inuk had walked over some of the highest levels of contamination as he traversed the ice. On the other hand, the whales had continued south since their release, and if their present course suggested anything to Garner and Carol, it was that the whales were probably moving away from the spot where they had been contaminated. Whether this movement was an aversion response or just a natural segment of their seasonal migration could not be determined. At least the Phoenix remained on the right track.
Carol knew that as their path continued to diverge from that of the whales, they would lose the radio signal of the Balaenoptera.
Reluctantly, she called the Nolan Group’s headquarters and arranged for another vessel to search for the corresponding tracking signals as the whales entered the North Atlantic.
“The find of a lifetime slipping away,” Garner remarked, sharing her disappointment.
“Don’t worry, it gets easier each time it happens,” she sighed.
With its battery of sensing equipment and sampling devices deployed, the Phoenix was a floating archivist, cartographer, and geophysicist of Foxe Basin.
Seismographs plotted the contours of the seafloor beneath the ship, while sonar and radar described the location and thickness of the surrounding ice, immediately comparing these data to a database of comparative information downloaded from recent polar research studies.
Medusa’s electronics described the chemical, physical, and biological nature of the water itself, and at least half a dozen deckhands watched the horizon with high-powered binoculars. But only Victor could know exactly where he had seen the fallen polar bear, and it was he alone who spotted the correct position on the floating ice.
The carcass of the bear was no longer there. Only a crescent-shaped fracture gave any indication of what had happened. Given the unseasonably warm weather, the weight of the bear had been enough to eventually break through the pack, causing the carcass to roll over and sink to the bottom. Victor could see a remnant of blue ice that might have once been part of the larger floe, but there was no sign of the bear. Neither were there fresh tracks leading up to the dead bear; the foxes and other scavengers had stayed away.
“Just them fish here now,” Victor commented offhandedly to Byrnes.
“What fish?” Byrnes asked, following Victor’s gaze toward the broken floe.
“There under the ice,” Victor said and gestured with his mitt. “But they’re dead too.”
Eventually, Garner and the others saw what Victor had indicated.
Trapped beneath a small area of thin, nearly translucent ice, a floating accumulation of tapered, whitish bodies came into view. Victor said that the fish had drifted there only recently, otherwise he would have seen them when he had passed by before.
A landing plank was lowered, and Garner, Carol, Byrnes, and Victor ventured down to the pack. Using ice axes, they eventually cleaved an opening in the ice large enough to allow a closer inspection of the fish.
“There must be an entire school here,” Byrnes said.
“Not a school,” Garner corrected. “Just a big assemblage of different kinds.”
Looking over the dead fish, Garner pointed out a half dozen different species — tomcod, grayling, char, for instance — that would not naturally be found together. The thinness of the ice and its slight upward bulge suggested that air trapped beneath it, combined with local current action, had gradually accumulated the dozens of fish from the water column. The four slowly spread out over the expanse of the floe and confirmed Garner’s speculation: wherever the contours on the underside of the ice permitted it, dozens now hundreds of fish had collected at the surface.
“If we took a dive under the thicker parts of the floe,” Garner said, “I’m sure we’d find a lot more.”
“No diving, please,” Carol said, slightly flushed. “We’ve had enough of that for a while.” Instead, she agreed to have Medusa’s cameras brought around for a closer look. As the lenses were refocused to show the underside of the ice, an eerie spectacle was revealed. Hundreds upon hundreds of fish of nearly every description floated dead along the ice. Countless more had no doubt sunk to the bottom or were carried off by the currents.