“But I’ll admit, the ideal of settling down has a new appeal to it.”
His arm still around Carol, Garner gave her another squeeze.
“Think about it,” Krail persisted. “We won’t be leaving the area for a few more days, at least we’re going back to B-82 to oversee the cleanup. But let’s talk again whenever you get to D.C.” all right? Swap some war stories at the Old Ebb?”
“It’s a date,” Garner agreed.
“Meantime, keep that data in mind,” Krail added. “Consider it a thank you from Uncle Sam.”
Krail bade them all farewell and returned to the Hawkbill. Minutes later the submarine eased away and sank smoothly beneath the waters of Foxe Basin, headed back to Thebes Deep.
All around them, the remaining ships were alive with activity as their respective crews disassembled the containment area and bundled the nets, booms, and lines for proper disposal. The first of the support helicopters began to arrive from Cape Dorset to airlift the injured, the dead, and anyone who finally wanted to leave. Seeing Carol leaning on her primitive crutches, two of the search-and-rescue team members approached her with a stretcher, but she waved them off.
“The first to arrive and the last to leave,” Carol said to Garner and Zubov. “I figure I might as well enjoy my last few hours of command.”
“I always knew you were power-mad,” Garner replied.
“You’re only half right, sweetheart.”
Janey appeared utterly indifferent to all the confusion around her. She ignored the passing personnel and equipment and lay in the middle of the ice floe, gnawing on a large steak someone had given her.
“At least someone has her priorities in order,” Garner said with a grin.
“We’ll have to get her checked as well,” Carol added. “Her fur may have taken up a lot of radiation, and we don’t know what else she’s been eating.”
Finished with her decadent meal, the dog stood and stretched. She responded to Carol’s concern by letting out an immense, bored yawn and licking her lips.
“I think she’ll be just fine,” Garner said, giving the dog a pat. “She comes from pretty tough stock.”
Garner’s arm lingered around Carol’s waist. Zubov gave his friends an appraising look.
“You two make a good-looking couple,” he observed. “Ever think about hooking up?”
Carol smiled.
“Maybe.”
“Once or twice.” Garner smiled too.
Sadness crept back into Zubov’s face.
“There’s something to be said for second chances, you know,” he said softly, thoughtfully. “I’m starting to think that when you meet your soul mate in this world whoever it is and whatever problems come along it’s worth holding on to them. Savor every moment you have together.”
“We know,” Carol said. “We know that now.” She angled forward on her crutches and the three of them embraced for a long moment.
“I think we knew it all along, my friends,” she whispered.
The contact seemed to return the color to Zubov’s face. He pulled away and zipped up his parka against the chill.
“Time to get back to work,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the remains of the cleanup operation. “Maybe I’ll consider it therapy there’s about a million tons of iron out there that has to be sorted into cooked and uncooked piles.”
“Ugh,” Carol groaned. “Don’t remind me. The loss of the Phoenix alone may make the Nolan Group ask for my resignation not to mention the cost of this little unplanned excursion.”
“Relax,” Zubov said. “There are costs and then there are costs. The financial costs can wait. You two hang out here for a little while. Get caught up on things, you know?” Then he turned and trudged across the ice toward the North Sea, leaving Garner and Carol alone with the dog.
As they made their way back to the ship, Garner was haunted by Krail’s parting words: Scorpion was a freak accident. Nothing should have breached the storage well the first time and we’ve just made sure it won’t ever happen again.
Most of all, Garner wanted to believe his friend was right.
“Were you serious about settling down?” Carol asked him. Janey sat back and angled her snow-white face up at him, apparently also awaiting his response.
“Were you?” Garner asked Carol.
“As I recall, I was always serious regarding you, Mr. Garner.”
“Yes, you were,” he admitted.
“So the question is” she reached up and kissed him, softly but firmly “are you ready to make a family?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Are you sure? Even with a one-legged woman and a mildly radioactive dog?”
“Unquestionably.” He kissed her again, a deep, lingering embrace that removed any doubt.
“In fact, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
EPILOGUE
It wasn’t a Jovian moon, not exactly, but for the time being it would do nicely.
Becky Danielson pulled back her long, fine hair and studied the readouts scrolling across the monitors in front of her. Even after nearly ten straight hours, her pale green eyes still intently tracked the information being produced by the REMUS computers. As a geophysicist and engineer for the U.S. Geological Survey, Becky had long ago learned to work on a different time clock, yet even on a calendar of billions of years, the most mundane of daily reports and status checks still received her undivided attention.
Growing up in the Colorado Rockies, she lived for and amid superlative amounts of snow. Though she was only thirty-four, Becky had now spent nearly a third of her life studying ice. While still an undergraduate student, she toured the Arctic and then the Antarctic; the first time she had visited the Weddell Sea and gone scuba diving inside a floating glacier, she knew she had found her calling. After completing a double major in geology and electrical engineering, she had done her dissertation at M.I.T. on the geophysical similarities between submerged ice formations on Antarctica and the frozen landscapes of Jupiter’s moons, particularly Europa. It wasn’t surprising, then, that she should be asked to be one of the lead investigators for the Jet Propulsion Lab’s REMUS — Remote Environmental Monitoring Units prototype designed for use in Antarctica as a stepping-stone in the search for life on the outer planets. Water was essential for life and the Antarctic ice cap contained 70 percent of the earth’s fresh water.
REMUS was among the latest descendants of remotely operated vehicles, or ROVS, enjoying a renaissance in earth and space research. For years, police and fire departments had been using camera-carrying robots to combat everything from urban terrorism to chemical spills and the sarcophagus at Chernobyl. Mining companies sent reconnaissance samplers into rock crevasses far deeper and tighter than humans could tolerate. The lineage of ocean ROVS had begun with deep-sea search-and-rescue missions for downed submarines and their weapons where time and hazards precluded sending human crews on the sometimes hours-long passage to the bottom. In the 1980s, explorers like Robert Ballard introduced ROV technology to the general public with glamorous expeditions to find the Titanic and other noteworthy wrecks. Among researchers, devices like Brock Garner’s “Medusa sphere” demonstrated that not only could ROVS go where no one had gone before, but they could go there cheaper, longer, safer, and take better notes. Such forward-thinking scientists called this kind of travel through hostile or unreachable habitats “telepresence.” Now, in the barren reaches of Antarctica, telepresence was preparing to go interplanetary.