“Here’s your answer about the boats,” Zubov said, examining one of the smaller, overturned hulls. Two planks had been chopped from the hull of each one, rendering them unable to float without major repairs. The sledges were missing from their racks, either taken off the ship on foot or thrown overboard by a saboteur.
“Looks like someone didn’t want the party to break up before the ice did.”
Garner gazed up at the masts and rigging of the carefully reconstructed schooner, a brand-new vessel from the distant past. As Junko had observed at dinner, the polar regions of the earth were natural archives of those who had tried, and failed, to conquer her. Provisions and animal carcasses left on the ice froze solid, remaining edible for years. Ships were effortlessly crushed to the verge of sinking, then held suspended between the surface and the bottom for decades.
Explorers who conquered this territory never fully lost the chill from their bones, while those who failed were perfectly preserved by the cold, frozen into the ice to provide a warning for those foolish enough to follow. As if the timelessness of the landscape itself weren’t obvious enough, with the discovery of Victor and now the Explorer it seemed as though the ghosts of the past had gained more of a foothold.
“Hel-lo?” Zubov yelled, stamping his boots on the wooden deck to clear his feet of snow.
“We are from the American research vessel Phoenix,” Carol called out. “The Coast Guard asked that we board you.” She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were walking through the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle scope, a hidden observer who might mistake the landing party for high-tech pirates.
Junko crouched near the deck with a dosimeter probe in her hand.
“Forget what I said about lower levels,” she said, examining the device’s readout. “This ship is cooked. The contamination in this metal sheeting is as high as anything we’ve seen yet.”
“But still safe for these suits, right?” Carol asked automatically. “I mean, if we have to wear these damn things, they’re doing us some good, right?”
“As far as we can know,” Junko said, still studying the instrument. “Though without any shielding, I can’t say the same thing won’t happen to the Phoenix, eventually.”
“I thought you said the rad levels were lower here,” Byrnes said.
“Yes. Around here now the water isn’t as contaminated,” Junko started to explain.
“But this ship’s adrift,” Garner finished. “It passed through or along the radioactive slick somewhere upstream and retained its contamination.”
Junko agreed.
“And we have no way of knowing the duration of exposure.”
“I doubt the crew would know it, either,” Garner said. “They’d have no reason to carry radiation equipment with them.” The statement was obvious from a historical perspective, but Garner thought he would say it aloud to reassure Carol about her self-punishing shortsightedness. Carol’s glance told him she saw right through the attempt, but appreciated it nonetheless.
“All the equipment in the world might not have helped,” Junko said. “With these levels, it’s hard to imagine anyone…” Her voice trailed off, not uttering the word the others each guessed: surviving.
“Hello!” Carol yelled, turning as she moved toward the Explorer’s main hatch. “Last chance for you men to get decent before we come in.” She did not want to admit the obvious reasons why no one aboard the Explorer had responded to the commotion on deck. She did not want to think about why Dex and Ramsey weren’t sharing this mysterious discovery with them.
Stepping down into the small cockpit, she grasped the handle of the main cabin door and pulled it open.
Inside there was only dusty silence.
Garner moved past her with a large lantern flashlight and stepped down into the main cabin. The sensation of stepping into the past returned.
Primitive did not begin to describe the living conditions of the vessel, which resembled an oak-lined root cellar more than any kind of research vessel, past or present.
The room had no windows and the oil lamps that hung from the wall showed no sign of recent use. Scraps of food dotted the preparation area, but the main eating table looked unused. Garner recalled Sir John Franklin’s illfated expedition of 1845. Lost in the frozen expanse west of Melville Peninsula, many of the 128 men were likely poisoned by the lead solder used in canning their food supply. There was no sound, save for the gentle sploshing of the sea against the ice, the creaking of the thick wooden hull, and the thin hiss of the regulators on the radiation suits.
Moving forward. Garner stepped down a narrow corridor between the crew cabins.
Personal effects were strewn on the floor, the bunks were unmade, but there were no occupants in any of them. True to the last detail, there was no nylon or Gore-Tex here, only nineteenth century textiles, wool, cotton, leather, and oilskin. It looked as though many of the crew’s boots and warmest clothing were also on board, which suggested that no one had left the vessel on foot.
Now the ship was filled with noise as Byrnes and Zubov made their way aft, banging doors and lockers and bellowing greetings, to no avail.
Closer behind him, Garner could hear Carol and Junko taking rad levels from every available surface, the dutiful electronic chirp of the dosimeter, and the comparison of these to the levels measured outside.
Garner stepped forward farther still, outside once again onto the forward deck.
The space was divided roughly into thirds, with crude pens built along the gunwales with planking and chicken wire. The kennels, where Neddermeyer’s crew would have stowed the sled dogs ― they had brought along sled dogs! But not flares! ― for no other purpose than consistency with the From expedition.
It was then that Garner stepped around a small pile of wooden casks and found the dogs.
Six huskies, dead on their leashes, lay atop each other on the floor of the pen, painfully posed with their legs curled beneath them, muzzles angled back as if in some last, baleful howl. Both the water and food bowls had been licked clean and the area was wired shut, holding them back within a few yards of the crew’s food stores. From the wounds on two of the animals, Garner surmised that the dogs had resorted to cannibalism before succumbing to death. The blood from their wounds had long ago congealed, while the temperatures aboard the vessel kept the carcasses below the freezing point. Garner counted twenty-seven dogs in the twin racks of holding pens before the inhumanity of the scene stopped his census.
“Back here!” someone shouted. It was Zubov’s voice, not panicked ― never panicked ― but loud and concerned. Garner wheeled away from the kennel and ran aft, ducking his head as he navigated the low beams inside the cabin. He came up quickly behind Carol and Junko in the aft passageway.
In the rear of the vessel was another large room that could possibly have been intended for storage of dry goods but had instead been converted into a rudimentary infirmary. At a glance. Garner counted eleven human bodies lying on the floor in grim mimicry of the spectacle he had just seen. Like the dogs, the men were frozen where they sat.
Many were under thin blankets or lay curled up in the fetal position.