Zubov and the Villager’s crew were frantically trying to regain control of the pump system and only the professor, stunned but visibly impressed, noticed Garner’s arrival at all.
Forgotten in the confusion, the resin continued to pour out of the fractured tank.
“Shut off the flow!” Garner yelled to the Villager’s crew chief. Now it was time for Zubov and the ship’s captain to be surprised at his friend’s arrival.
The chief shook his head.
“We can’t! The entire tank is busted.”
“Then shunt it to another pump! We have to get every drop we can over the booms and into the slick.”
This could be done. The first nozzle was closed, the gate between the two resin tanks was opened, and resin began flowing though a second nozzle. Though under far less pressure, the nozzle crew was still able to angle the diffuse spray high out over the containment pen. Two additional nozzles were switched over to the tank containing the Plasroc resin and opened full on the jellied surface of the slick. The resin was a darker, less syrupy fluid, and it poured easily over the surface of the large amber pool of foundation, filling in each wrinkle and crack on its surface. As the two chemicals bonded together, the resin was drawn across the base polymer by capillary action, hungrily spreading itself over the entire mass in a uniform layer.
“No!” Macadam suddenly broke his paralysis. “You’re wasting the supply! Unless we can heat up the water, the two chemicals won’t bond.” The chemist didn’t comprehend that the flow was utterly out of control; Zubov and the others were fighting only to determine the least disastrous direction.
They had no time to lose. Even at the reduced rate of flow, the remaining resin would be exhausted within minutes. Garner turned back to the crew chief.
“Do you have fuel in any of these tanks?”
The chief nodded, indicating both the Villager’s main fuel supply as well as the scrub tanks from the vessel’s oil rig work.
“How fast can you get it connected to another nozzle?” Garner demanded.
“Dunno. But why would you want to?” the chief began.
“How fast?” Zubov suddenly realized what Garner was up to. He passed off his line position and worked with the chief to rig the oil jet as quickly as possible. The resin continued to bleed into the containment pen. Each passing second could be one second too long.
“Ready!” Zubov finally shouted. On Garner’s order, the oil jet was opened and directed out over the Plasroc.
“What are you doing?” Macadam shouted, dancing quickly between Zubov and Garner.
“Oil is a hydrocarbon! You can’t just modify the composition of the liquid Plasroc like that.”
Realizing what the inventor’s comment implied chemical destruction of the Plasroc Garner whirled around and stared at Macadam.
“Why? What will it do?” he shouted, nearly shaking the smaller man.
It was Macadam’s turn to pause.
“Actually, I don’t know. It just seems “
“Fifteen seconds of flow left!” Zubov shouted over the pump.
With that, Garner turned, drew the flare gun, and fired the last flare into the surface of the fuel slick. Striking the pool of oil, the heat of the flare accelerated into a bluish flame that raced across the surface of the Plasroc.
There wasn’t enough oil to explode, but there was an ample supply to ignite the slick’s surface. Even above the cacophony on the deck of the Villager, they could hear the Plasroc sizzling inside the smoldering flame.
“I knew it!” Macadam sputtered. “The oil was too much—”
Garner silenced Macadam, then motioned for the crew of the Villager to stop full. With the Plasroc flow exhausted, they shut down the pumps. Zubov joined them at the gunwale and they paused, listening.
Though the oil had quickly exhausted itself and covered only a fraction of the entire slick, the dramatic catalyst had been enough to start a chain reaction within the mass of Plasroc. The compound continued to hiss and groan for a moment as it began to change from a liquid to a solid. A chain reaction had been catalyzed by the heat of the oil fire and the entire mass began to harden.
Garner grinned at Macadam as they both realized what had happened.
“Too much? Or too little?”
“Just right, I think,” Macadam said.
“Thank you very fucking much. Goldilocks.” Zubov sagged against the hose, breathing hard.
Moments later, the hardened Plasroc began to sink. The Plasroc vanished beneath the surface, a one-hundred-ton manmade boulder sinking directly to the bottom fifty meters below. By the time the material struck the crater dredged in the sediment, the mass of sealed and hardened polymer was virtually indistinguishable from bedrock in appearance or durability.
“Looks like we did it, David,” Garner said to Macadam, finding the obvious allusion too hard to resist. “Another Goliath has been slain.”
Macadam had waited too many years for a proven application of his invention to hide his emotions. The frustration, his long hours in the barn, the enormous debt, they now seemed… well, they still amounted to a hill of bitterness, but the hill suddenly seemed a lot smaller.
Krail and his team arrived with the Hawkbill early the following day.
Krail briefly discussed with Garner and the captain of the Villager where the sediment had been redistributed and how the new submarine mountain might best be coaxed into an avalanche, back filling the crater now containing the Plasroc. They opted for a series of programmable GF-45 mines, the most modern weapons in the Hawkbill’s reduced but nonetheless formidable array. Paradoxically, the GF-45s had drawn their design inspiration from the stunningly advanced weapons salvaged from the Russian Scorpion. However indirectly, the advanced technology of the Soviet submarine had opened the Pandora’s box at the bottom of Thebes Deep, and now the descendant of that technology would help to forever entomb that menace.
After the Hawkbill's sonar operators confirmed the position of the Plasroc inside the surrounding mounds of trenched sediment, Krail supervised the placement of the mines. The weapons were detonated one at a time, bringing avalanches of sediment down into the well in stages. Gradually the depressions left around the Plasroc were filled in and the dense clay formed a natural sarcophagus over the waste.
After the congratulations and back-slapping by all aboard the Phoenix subsided.
Garner and Zubov were struck with the magnitude of what they had just accomplished. Worse was the ominous thought: Was it really enough? Would it ever be?
“Macadam said it would take ten thousand years for an isotope to find its way out of the Plasroc,” Garner said.
“And probably another ten thousand years to percolate up through that amount of clay,” Zubov added. Then a wide smile spread across his face and he poked his friend in the chest. “Hey, by that time, you might even have your dissertation turned in.”
“That’s what I like about you, Serg,” Garner said. “You’re an optimist.”
The Des Groseilliers was unanimously selected as the vessel to host the operation’s victory party — it was the largest ship and, as a Canadian vessel, was the only one legally allowed to carry alcohol. The Vagabond, Villager, and Sovietsky Soyuz opted to leave the site as soon as the all clear was given, but the remaining crews willingly joined the boisterous festivities.