“How does it look, David?” Garner asked.
Macadam fumbled with the radio and eventually answered.
“Still too cold, I think.”
“You think?” Garner pressed, becoming annoyed at the inventor’s lack of decisiveness. “Yes or no, David?”
Macadam seemed to weight the question with exceptional consideration.
“No,” he said nervously. “No, it’s fine. Carry on.”
They had to work quickly. The sealing resin had to be applied before the base chemical began to sink into the slick. Within minutes they would know if Macadam’s formula was adapted to the conditions; the slightest miscalculation and the plastic rock would remain in its liquid form, unable to bond the radioactive debris.
For a second time, the Villager’s crew grappled with the Plasroc’s unusual behavior within the ship’s pump systems. The first attempt to spray the resin through the ship’s water cannons failed. The second attempt failed as well.
Several more minutes passed as Macadam bickered with the pump crew.
On the Phoenix, Zubov joined Garner at the rail to watch the apparent confusion.
“Come on, come on,” Zubov breathed, clenching his broad jaw.
“Better now than later, boys.” His gaze dropped to the surface of the slick. Then finally, “Ah goddammit. I’m going over there.”
Garner called a launch from the North Sea and watched as Zubov was ferried around the containment area to the side of the Villager.
Within minutes, Zubov’s assistance resulted in one of the Villager’s water cannons opening up with a strong flow of resin. As the second chemical joined the first on the surface, it began to form a slurry around the algae and bacteria contained between the booms. “Looking great, fellas,” Garner radioed to the Villager.
“Not so fast,” came Zubov’s reply. “David’s back to thinking the temperature inside the booms is still too low.”
Garner cursed to himself, then replied to the Villager.
“Please ask him what, exactly, we need to do before we use up all the resin.”
Across the water, Garner could see Zubov conferring with Macadam, who took another close look at the Plasroc’s performance within the containment area.
“Talk to me, Serg,” Garner pressed. “What do we need?”
“More heat,” came Zubov’s reply. “A lot more heat. Fast.”
Despite her exhaustion, the painkillers, and the sedatives, Carol couldn’t relax enough to sleep. Her leg ached savagely — from the knee down it was purpled from the trauma in a combination of bruising, hemorrhaging, and frostbite. Susan had put a temporary cast on her leg after suturing the tear where the broken tibia had pushed through, but resetting the bone would have to await proper attention.
Ironically, as they floated alongside all this radiation, the one thing the Phoenix was still not equipped for was taking X rays. As Carol sat up in bed, Susan entered the infirmary.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she challenged her boss.
“I need to see what’s happening out there,” Carol said, fumbling for the crude but functional crutches Byrnes’s men had fashioned for her from plastic tubing and packing foam. “Even if I have to watch it through the windows.”
“Rest,” Susan urged her. “It’s going fine. Brock says the Ulva is taking up more than 95 percent of the radiation.”
“That’s great!” Carol brightened.
“I guess,” Susan said, chewing her lip. “But it isn’t 100 percent, is it?”
“It’ll never be 100,” Carol replied. “But 95 is still incredible efficiency. Whatever we can’t get will hopefully be diluted by the currents and the levels will fall lower still.”
Susan was less enthusiastic. In every spare moment over the past two weeks, she had devoured Junko’s field reports on the recommended maximum-exposure levels for various isotopes. Her personal conclusion was that there was no such thing as “safe” exposure. Whatever didn’t kill you in this lifetime could very easily manifest itself in the genes of your children. There wasn’t a soul on earth who was completely immune from the acute effects of radiation — the ailing Inuit had unwittingly become a harbinger of what might be in store for them all, unless someone started to listen. Junko seemed to know that. She had given her life to it.
Carol saw the fear and disappointment in Susan’s face.
“What is it?”
“I want to go home,” Susan said. “I just want to go home.”
“We’re almost there. Keep it together. We — walking wounded — still need your strength. Come on, help me up to the bridge.”
Susan helped Carol up the narrow steps, where Carol plopped herself down in the captain’s chair within earshot of the radio communications.
Susan helped her prop her leg up, then found her a pair of binoculars through which to watch the final stages of the operation.
Carol quickly located Macadam and Zubov amidships on the Villager, nestled between two of the vessel’s water cannons. Listening in, she could hear Zubov saying something about needing a lot more heat and Garner quizzing Macadam for options.
A split second later, an explosion erupted from the deck of the Villager.
28
For those aboard the Villager, the explosion came as a complete surprise.
Overworked and overheated, then left unattended while Zubov and Macadam debated what to do, one of the vessel’s auxiliary pumps had silently developed an intense amount of back-pressure in one of the tanks containing the Plasroc resin. As the system failed, a thunderous bang shook the sturdy vessel to its keel.
“What the hell?” Zubov had just begun to turn around when the second explosion hit. Instinctively, he dove forward to protect Macadam, forcing both of them to the deck and dropping the radio.
It was already too late to warn the others. The recoil effect from the released pressure slammed into the second resin tank, tearing open the two-inch steel as easily as an aluminum can. The tank began to bleed the remaining resin onto the deck.
Watching from the Phoenix, Garner could not believe his eyes. Zubov wasn’t answering the radio and the only thing nearby was Victor’s komatik. Garner rifled through the sled, drawing out the flare gun from the hovercraft and its two remaining flares — one of these he fired into the night sky on the unlikely chance anyone in the vicinity had not heard the explosion on the Villager. Then a glint of metal caught Garner’s eye — the worn metal blade of Victor’s flaying knife. Taking the knife and climbing up on the fantail, Garner wrapped himself in the tension line from the ice seine apparatus and sawed at it frantically with the knife. As the nylon line parted, the tension in the rigging system hoisted Garner off the deck, rocketing him fifteen feet in the air. The weight of the quarter-mile seine sagged against its pulleys, and the cables on either end of the net were wrenched together. As Garner held tight, the line suspending him was yanked through its pulleys on the North Sea. He lunged forward to grab one of the cables as it shot across the water, slinging him nearly a hundred yards out over the radioactive slick. As his momentum carried him past the superstructure of the Villager, Garner released the cable and fell to the deck next to David Macadam.