Minutes later, the device began to dutifully return a stream of data to the computers in the Phoenix’s lab. Within an hour, Medusa’s computers had returned an analysis that would have taken a team of technicians weeks to derive in the laboratory.
The preliminary results were encouraging. According to the data, Ulva was present in the surface waters of the slick in concentrations at least 40 percent higher than the minimum amount Roland Alvarez had recommended. A bio assay showed that the algae had already begun taking up impressive amounts of the contaminated Thiouni, then in turn adhering themselves to the pieces of floating ice. Assuming that the present rate of absorption continued, nearly the entire slick would be absorbed by the time the Phoenix, North Sea, and Vagabond pulled the last of the captured ice into the containment area. The rest would drift into the algae sponge as the surface currents carried the slick through the area.
Hours later, the Villager completed dredging the massive well to contain the solidified Plasroc. The exact position and dimensions of the excavation were relayed to the icebreakers and the Hawkbill, then the containment booms were slowly cinched together with agonizing slowness to avoid losing any portion of the trapped surface water. As the final capture of the leak progressed, Garner assigned team after team of technicians to record surface radiation levels upstream, downstream, and within the containment booms. These data were loaded back into the PATRIC plotter and compared to the computer generated images provided by the satellite. Eventually the plotter confirmed what those who had been watching the slick had long hoped for: virtually all of the radioactive material in solution had been taken up by the Ulva and trapped in an area of less than four square miles.
While the values inside the pen reached nearly fifteen gray — twenty thousand times the natural background level — readings in the surrounding water were nearly indistinguishable from normal conditions.
“I’ll be damned,” Garner muttered. “It’s working,”
For all the fussing that David Macadam had made over the care and condition of his Plasroc materials, he was even more disconcerted by the notion of being at sea, in the Arctic, after a ten-thousand-mile journey by assorted military transports. As the chemist stood on the Phoenix in his oversized exposure suit, borrowed boots, and several mismatched sweaters. Garner couldn’t recall the last time he had seen someone so distanced from his natural element — except perhaps when Victor stood in the very same spot.
“You’ve seen the size of the containment area,” Garner said.
“Do you have enough resin, or will we need to draw the booms in tighter?” They both knew this was possible only to a certain extent — if too much pressure was placed on the booms, there was the increased risk of bursting the structure, or forcing the water contained within it to slosh over the top, back into the general circulation.
“I think the surface area is fine,” Macadam replied. “But I’m still concerned about the water temperature inside the pen. Though the temperature anomaly is helping, the net result is much lower than I’d anticipated or calculated.” This, Garner noted, silently annoyed, despite the extensive temperature, salinity, and wind data Garner had sent to Adelaide in advance of Macadam’s trip.
Garner reviewed Macadam’s method, his tired brain struggling to step through the complex equations scratched out in Macadam’s nearly unintelligible script.
“Supercooling,” Garner finally said. “The smaller the ice pieces get, the greater their surface area. The more surface area, the more cooling you get between the pieces. That’s what’s driving down the mean temperature.” To any athlete who had packed crushed ice on an injury only to receive a surprising introduction to frostbite, the phenomenon of supercooling was painfully familiar.
“Of course,” Macadam said, checking Garner’s calculation, then cursing his own oversight. “What can we do about it at this point?”
“Can we get the Villager to pump some hot water into the boom area?” Garner asked Zubov.
“Hot’ water we’ve got; heated water is another story. I’ll check with the Villager.”
“The hotter the better,” Macadam cautioned.
“If we use less heat and dilute the compound too much, we’ll have a problem getting it to harden.”
Zubov gave Garner a frustrated look, then glared at Macadam. “
“Not too cold and not too hot. Not too dense and not too dilute.” How useful is this ‘compound’ in the field anyway? We’re not baking a fucking Bundt cake out there—”
Garner interrupted before Zubov could finish his tirade.
“Anything else, David?”
“Nothing I can think of,” replied Macadam, reluctant to say anything else that might irritate Zubov.
“Then you better get back to the Villager and get started,” Garner said.
“Now?” Macadam asked, suddenly panicked at being cast center stage. “That’s it? We’re ready?”
“We’re ready,” Garner assured him. “Now’s your chance.”
The difficulty of deploying the Plasroc’s base chemical caught the Villager’s crew off guard initially; the viscosity of the liquid behaved differently in the ship’s hoses than either water, oil, or scrubbing solution. The pumps, too, had to work much harder than expected to maintain their controlled flow. Far too soon after beginning, the Villager’s captain began cursing and complaining about possible overheating of his equipment. Only after several attempts and several of Macadam’s conniptions did the solution begin to flow evenly, spraying over the containment area in a fine aerosol. The droplets suspended in the cold air caught the light from the surrounding vessels in a glittering mist as they settled over the remnants of the Ulva-laden ice.
On the ocean’s surface, the base chemical of the Plasroc resembled thin honey, then began to congeal into thin, disk-shaped formations. The disks, in turn, merged into one another to form a single, wobbly coating that looked exactly like Jell-o.
Moving slowly along the periphery of the enclosure, the Villager continued to coat the slick with the liquid polymer. Macadam dashed from one pump to the next, hovering around the nozzle crews and offering suggestions on the disbursement of the spray. The crew might have listened to Macadam’s advisement about the Plasroc solution, but clearly no one was going to tell them how to work the nozzles, much less how to maneuver around the floating booms. As each section along the perimeter of the pen was sprayed with Plasroc, the Des Groseilliers and the Sovietsky Soyuz slowly adjusted their position to retract the slack in the booms and compress the area contained inside.
Eventually the gelatinous material around the edge of the containment area was drawn in upon itself, filling the middle expanse as well.
From his position on the Phoenix, Garner could see Macadam step down almost to the edge of the containment booms and look at an instrument dangling into the slick: a thermometer. After much discussion, Macadam and the captain of the Villager had decided not to risk diluting the slick any further with heated water, even if it meant increasing the overall temperature of the slick — the risk of diluting the Plasroc to potentially brittle concentrations was too great.