“Looks like breakfast,” Carol said, eyeing the fish.
“Strange that Victor would catch this food and leave leftovers to go to waste,” Garner speculated.
“What if he left it for Janey to eat until someone else came along?”
“What if the food is contaminated?” Garner cautioned.
“What if I’m really, really, really hungry?”
The fish were frozen solid, but there was enough dried wood on the sled to build a small fire. As Janey went back to her seal, Garner gutted the fish and cooked them over the fire. The flesh may have been radioactive it certainly was dry, salty, and several pieces were charred on the edges but both Carol and Garner agreed that it was the most succulent meal they could ever have hoped for.
“Beats the hell out of Cyanea,” Garner admitted as he chewed the fish.
“I can’t believe you ate a jellyfish,” Carol said, screwing up her face. “I may never kiss that face again.”
“Now what were you doing kissing jellyfish?” Garner teased as he hoisted Carol onto the komatik and set her down, he hoped, for the last time. He noted the long, polished runners and the hand-lashed joints that held the pieces of wood and bone together, an intentionally loose arrangement that let the komatik bend against the terrain without cracking.
“What do you think?” Garner asked. “Is this an Inuit medevac or what?”
“I say mush, driver,” Carol replied, stifling a giggle. “Once around the glacier and then home.”
“We’re not there yet,” he said. “But you can enjoy the ride while it lasts.”
Carol did. The cold and her injuries had become secondary nuisances.
She was in love and one night closer to home.
26
The infirmary was the first place Zubov stopped when he arrived back at the Phoenix. Junko had set up a separate area for those who had been contaminated by the monstrous wave, and that area remained filled with patients awaiting treatment. Two of the crew members Junko was monitoring had slipped into critical condition, and while the doctor had managed to stabilize their condition, the men would have to be taken to a proper treatment center as soon as possible.
Frisch stopped in and reported that a helicopter was waiting at Cape Dorset to bring in some more supplies and airlift the patients out.
“You should go with them,” Zubov told her. Junko’s face appeared flushed, and Zubov wondered if the redness might be some kind of burns from her own exposure to the radioactive water.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Besides, I’m needed here. Abandoning ship at this point would be incredibly selfish.”
“Not if it means the difference between you getting proper treatment and… something else.”
“Sergei, I’m fine,” she insisted, taking his broad face in her tiny hands. “Really. What do I have to do to convince you of that?”
“Promise me you won’t go outside anymore.”
“Ever?” she asked with a laugh. “I’ll miss the spring bloom!”
“Be serious,” he said. “Promise me you’ll stay inside until all this is over.”
She kissed him then, warmly and convincingly.
“All right, I promise. Now what about you? Will you get some sleep, or are you just going to keep working until you start to hallucinate?”
“I’m worried about Brock,” he admitted. “And there hasn’t been any word from the hovercraft.”
“What about taking a Snocat?” she asked. “Have the captain drop one off on the ice. With a full tank of gas, it must have nearly the same range as the hovercraft.”
“I thought of that,” Zubov said.
“But…” His words trailed off.
“But you’re worried about me,” she finished.
“Yes.” He looked down at his hands. “Of course I am.”
“Then go. You have no reason not to. It’ll be hours before anyone is ready to continue the containment. Thanks to you and Carol, things are humming along smoothly here. The icebreakers have rebuilt the containment pen and the slick is being channeled right up the strait. The only thing we don’t know is what’s happened out there on the ice. Let’s hope it’s just a weather delay or mechanical breakdown. If it’s something bad, I can’t imagine a better person to set things right.”
“No,” he said stubbornly. “I’m needed here.”
“You may be needed more out there,” she pressed. “Send someone else, if you think he would do a better job of finding them.” She knew he wouldn’t be able to name a substitute he would feel comfortable putting in charge.
Zubov embraced her again, then went up to the bridge. He designated the Phoenix’s mate as a point of contact to relay information to the Villager, then he asked the crew to fuel up a Snocat as soon as they could dig one out of the hold.
The quartz halogen headlights mounted on the machine’s engine cowling did little to infiltrate the dense fog that still refused to lift from large areas of Melville Peninsula. Stooped forward behind the blunt Plexiglas windshield, Zubov advanced steadily to the south, one eye on the fractured ground beneath him, the other on the terrain around him, looking for any sign of the helicopter or the hovercraft.
He had long ago come to ignore the discomfort of the wind as it sliced through the chinks in his cold-weather gear, goggles, and face mask. The walkie-talkie unit he had brought with him failed within an hour of leaving the ship as the cold quickly compromised its battery’s performance. Zubov’s attention was on keeping a sensible search in the vicinity of the hovercraft’s last reported position. He could only hope that Byrnes and Carol had backtracked toward the ship on foot after the hovercraft had become disabled assuming that was what had happened.
This was to say nothing of Garner’s whereabouts. At the time Zubov had left the Phoenix, there was still no report on what had happened to the helicopter. Zubov knew only that if the helicopter did go down, it was probably beyond the range of the Snocat’s supply of fuel. He would have to remain focused on finding the hovercraft on this trip, then, if still necessary, have the Phoenix organize a larger search party and head farther west to find the Sikorsky.
Running against a stiff headwind with its throttle almost fully open, the Snocat guzzled its initial tank of fuel at an alarming rate. When the fuel gauge showed half a tank, Zubov stopped and topped it up from the jerry cans he had brought along. When the gauge reached half a second time before any sign of the hovercraft any sign of anything had been located, Zubov cursed loudly and pounded the Snocat’s steering wheel. Too quickly, he had reached his point of no return and would have to abandon his search. Going any farther afield, he would not have enough fuel to get the Snocat back to the Phoenix.
He thought about his predicament for a moment longer, squinting against the bleak visibility that showed signs of clearing as the last vestiges of the storm passed overhead. By dawn they might even be able to mount a proper search-and-rescue mission, but in a few more hours the lives they were looking for could be lost. He kept going. He could not allow himself to abandon the search.
As the fuel level continued to drop, now past a quarter tank, there was also the risk of the fuel line freezing or the engine stalling completely. Then six of them would be missing in action. Zubov switched off the engine one last time, tried the radio again, unsuccessfully, opened the fuel tank and poured in the dregs of his jerry cans. He barely scrounged half a tank. Zubov knew his desperate foolishness had probably cost him not only his own return to the Phoenix, but the lives of his friends as well.