“The tomcod and char are saltwater fish, but the grayling and some of the others are freshwater,” Garner explained. “If both kinds are being killed, a huge area — coastline and open water — might be affected.” This was an even more troubling possibility, for it could mean that one or more river systems were the source of the problem.
Victor was the first to see the small hooks lodged in the mouths of the grayling.
“Those river fish were already caught,” he said. “I recognize those hooks — a buddy of mine uses them all the time.”
“Then how did they get out here?” Carol asked. The Phoenix was nearly ten miles from shore.
“Looks like the ice opened up on my buddy,” Victor said quietly. “Since he ain’t here, I guess them fish is all that floated on his sled.”
Junko couldn’t help but notice Victor wasn’t the least surprised his friend had apparently fallen through the melting ice and drowned. To the Inuk hunter, such a fate seemed almost predestined. The sea provided bounty for only so long before reclaiming its debt.
Medusa confirmed that the highest levels of contamination were flowing along a subsurface current from the west. Junko and Zubov joined the group and, working quickly with a pair of dosimeters, determined that the detectable radiation in the atmosphere was not much worse than it had been at the Balaenoptera floe. The levels in the water, however, continued to increase.
Externally, the fish looked healthy. There were no obvious injuries, bruising, or lesions. Garner suggested that a number of each species be retained for dissection and examination in the Phoenix’s lab. The group remained on the ice only long enough to cut a few holes, collect a few bushels of fish, place the specimens into shielded coolers, and cart them back to the ship.
As they completed their inspection of the area, Garner noticed Victor kneeling alone at the edge of one of the ice holes.
“Come on, Victor,” he said. He saw the pain in the Inuk’s expression and so tried to keep his tone cheerful. “Ship’s leaving, with or without you.”
“I think it should leave without me then,” Victor said. The loss of the regal bear combined with the discovery of so many dead fish was a disappointment even a traditional hunter found hard to withstand.
“Thank you for showing me your wonderful boat, but I think I should head back to my village. It’s time to go home.” Kannakapfaluk would agree. Anika too.
Victor would not elaborate further on his need to leave the qablunaq ship, though the others could hardly insist that he stay. Byrnes and two of his crew helped to off load Victor’s sledge from the Phoenix’s deck, and Janey accepted a final round of petting from the scientists and deckhands before taking up Victor’s pack.
“You’re sure about this?” Byrnes asked. “It’s a long way to the nearest gas station.”
“Not as long as it used to be,” Victor said solemnly. He was still numbed by the possible death of his friend. “But closer to my home.”
“I will call those doctors you told me about,” Junko promised Victor, giving him a parting hug. “We’re going to find an answer to your problem as soon as possible, okay?”
“Okay,” Victor said. He’d heard such things from qablunaq scientists before. So far, that answer had gone the way of his smile.
Garner was the last to approach Victor. He dug in the pocket of his suit and pulled out a small stone.
“This is a piece of the earth near Antarctica,” Garner explained. “A place called Elephant Island.” He explained where Elephant Island was — a tiny scrub of rock in the Weddell Sea nearly at the South Pole.
Victor’s eyes grew wide as he understood this, and he accepted the gift with all the reverence of a religious icon, vigorously nodding his appreciation. The stone was carefully deposited in the pocket of his jacket, next to his renegade teeth.
Victor moved off at once, hauling his sled by its towrope and beckoning Janey to come along. His odd collection of traditional hides and store-bought goods might be practical, but they would hardly protect him from the unseen contamination of the ice he now traversed.
Good luck to you, Victor, thought Garner.
Zubov and Byrnes took advantage of the momentary lack of activity to retrieve Medusa from the water, recalibrate her sensors, and refit the device with a clean set of sampling bottles. Carol told the deck crew to shower and steal some sleep while the scientific crew tried to determine how they could analyze the fish. Over the next two hours, Garner, Junko, and Carol worked with a handful of technicians to subject the samples to radiation testing, then carefully prepare blood, skin, and tissue slides from a number of specimens.
“The radiation levels are very high, but not nearly what was contained in the whales,” Junko said. “The fish are lower on the food chain with less fatty tissue so we might expect that. Cold-blooded animals are also less susceptible to radiation uptake.”
“Then again, maybe it wasn’t the radiation that killed them in the first place,” Garner said. His gaze was firmly fixed on the eyepieces of a stereo microscope, looking at a blood sample from one of the grayling.
“What else could it be?” Junko asked.
“I think these fish were killed by heat shock,” Garner said.
“Heat shock?” Carol and Junko replied, nearly in unison.
“Some freshwater arctic fish are known to have glycoproteins in their blood,” Garner explained. “A kind of antifreeze that allows them to live in very cold water without having to expend a lot of metabolic energy.” He indicated the results of the tests performed on the fish blood.
“These fish have extremely low levels of glycoproteins, and a lot of the skin tissue shows signs of sudden or prolonged exposure to temperatures beyond what they can handle.”
“Where would there be that kind of heat source here?” Junko asked.
Even as she uttered the question, the answer came to her.
“Of course. The fission reactions of both plutonium and uranium 235 produce a lot of heat.”
Garner retrieved the temperature and salinity data from Medusa’s computers. He downloaded the information to a computer in the Phoenix’s lab and soon the monitor was showing a detailed temperature plot of that morning’s survey.
“Right here,” he said, pointing to a clearly defined spike in the temperature profile. Medusa had shown the anomaly all along, but even a well-trained eye sees only what it’s looking for.
“Looks like we’ve got a temperature anomaly along the same depth as the increased rad levels.”
“Or a temperature anomaly because of the increased radiation levels,” Junko speculated. “But that would mean—”
“That would mean we’re dealing with a massive source of contamination somewhere up the line,” Carol finished.
Garner studied the temperature plot again.
“If we can reset Medusa’s onboard computers to chart and follow the increase in temperature over distance, we can try to locate the source.”
“And that source has to be larger than anything natural,” Junko said. “Possibly even larger than any industrial or military sources ever catalogued.”
Garner agreed. “As I said, let’s hope it’s just one source.”
The lab’s intercom buzzed. It was Frisch, in the radio room.
“Call for you, Carol,” he said.