“There must be an interrelating cause,” said Maeve.
“Any connection with the huge school of dolphins we found out in the Weddell Sea or the pod of seals washed up just across the channel on Vega Island, all deader than petrified wood?” Pitt asked Van Fleet.
The marine biologist shrugged. “Too early to tell without further study. There does, however, appear to be a definite link.”
“Have you examined them in your ship’s laboratory?” asked Maeve.
“I’ve dissected two seals and three dolphins and found no hook 1 can hang a respectable theory on. The primary consistency seems to be internal hemorrhaging.”
“Dolphins, seals, birds and humans,” Pitt said softly. “They’re all vulnerable to this scourge.”
Van Fleet nodded solemnly. “Not to mention the vast numbers of squid and sea turtles that have washed ashore throughout the Pacific and the millions of dead fish found floating off Peru and Ecuador in the past two months.”
“If it continues unstopped there is no predicting how many species of life above and under the sea will become extinct.” Pitt turned his gaze toward the sky at the distant sound of the helicopter. “So what do we know except that our mystery plague kills every living thing in air and liquid without discrimination?”
“All within a matter of minutes,” added Maeve.
Van Fleet came to his feet. He appeared badly shaken. “If we don’t determine whether the cause is from natural disturbances or human intervention of some kind, and do it damned quick, we may be looking at oceans devoid of all life.”
“Not just oceans. You’re forgetting this thing also kills on land,” Maeve reminded him.
“I don’t even want to dwell on that horror.”
For a long minute no one said a word, each trying to comprehend the potential catastrophe that lay somewhere in and beyond the sea. Finally, Pitt broke the silence.
“It would appear,” he said, a pensive look on his craggy face, “that we have our work cut out for us.”
Pitt studied the screen of a large monitor that displayed a computer-enhanced satellite image of the Antarctic Peninsula and the surrounding islands. He leaned back, rested his eyes a moment and then stared through the tinted glass on the navigation bridge of Ice Hunter as the sun broke through the dissipating clouds. The time was eleven o’clock on a summer’s evening in the Southern Hemisphere, and daylight remained almost constant.
The passengers from Polar Queen had been fed and bedded down in comfortable quarters charitably provided by the crew and scientists, who doubled up. Doc Greenberg examined each and every one and found no permanent damage or trauma. He was also relieved to find only a few cases of mild colds but no evidence of pneumonia. In the ship’s biolaboratory, two decks above the ship’s hospital, Van Fleet, assisted by Maeve Fletcher, was performing postmortem examinations on the penguins and seals they had airlifted from Seymour Island in the helicopter. The bodies of the three dead were packed in ice until they could be turned over to a professional pathologist.
Pitt ran his eyes over the huge twin bows of the Ice Hunter. She was not your garden-variety research ship but one of a kind, the first scientific vessel entirely computer designed by marine engineers working with input from oceanographers. She rode high on parallel hulls that contained her big engines and auxiliary machinery. Her space-age rounded superstructure abounded with technical sophistication and futuristic innovations. The quarters for the crew and ocean scientists rivaled the staterooms of a luxury cruise ship. She was sleek and almost fragile looking, but that was a deception. She was a workhorse, born to ride smooth in choppy waves and weather the roughest sea. Her radically designed triangular hulls could cut through and crush an ice floe four meters thick.
Admiral James Sandecker, the feisty director of the National Underwater & Marine Agency, followed her construction from the first computerized design drawing to her maiden voyage around Greenland. He took great pride in every centimeter of her gleaming white superstructure and turquoise hulls. Sandecker was a master of obtaining funds from the new tightfisted Congress, and nothing had been spared in Ice Hunter’s construction nor her state-of-the-art equipment. She was without argument the finest polar research ship ever built.
Pitt turned and refocused his attention on the image beamed down from the satellite.
He felt almost no exhaustion. It had been a long and tiring day, but one filled with every emotion, happiness and satisfaction at having saved the lives of over twenty people and sorrow at seeing so many of nature’s creatures lying dead almost as far as the eye could see. This was a catastrophe beyond comprehension. Something sinister and menacing was out there. A hideous presence that defied logic.
His thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Giordino and Captain Dempsey as they stepped out of the elevator that ran from the observation wing above the navigation bridge down through fifteen decks to the bowels of the engine room.
“Any glimpse of Polar Queen from the satellite cameras?” asked Dempsey.
“Nothing I can positively identify,” Pitt replied. “The snow is blurring all imaging.”
“What about radio contact?”
Pitt shook his head. “It’s as though the ship were carried away by aliens from space. The communications room can’t raise a response. And while we’re on the subject, the radio at the Argentinean research station has also gone dead.”
“Whatever disaster struck the ship and the station,” said Dempsey, “must have come on so fast none of the poor devils could get off a distress call.”
“Have Van Fleet and Fletcher uncovered any clues leading to the cause of the deaths?” asked Pitt.
“Their preliminary examination shows that the arteries ruptured at the base of the creatures’ skulls, causing hemorrhaging. Beyond that, I can tell you nothing.”
“Looks like we have a thread leading from a mystery to an enigma to a dilemma to a puzzle with no solution in sight,” Pitt said philosophically.
“If Polar Queen isn’t floating nearby or sitting on the bottom of the Weddell Sea,” Giordino said thoughtfully, “we might be looking at a hijacking.”
Pitt smiled as he and Giordino exchanged knowing looks. “Like the Lady Flamborough?”
“Her image crossed my mind.”
Dempsey stared at the deck, recalling the incident. “The cruise ship that was captured by terrorists in the port of Punta del Este several years ago.”
Giordino nodded. “She was carrying heads of state for an economic conference. The terrorists sailed her through the Strait of Magellan into a Chilean fjord, where they moored her under a glacier. It was Dirk who tracked her down.”
“Allowing for a cruising speed of roughly eighteen knots,” Dempsey estimated, “terrorists could have sailed Polar Queen halfway to Buenos Aires by now.”
“Not a likely scenario,” Pitt said evenly. “I can’t think of one solid reason why terrorists would hijack a cruise ship in the Antarctic.”
“So what’s your guess?”
“I believe she’s either drifting or steaming in circles within two hundred kilometers of us.” Pitt said it so absolutely he left little margin for doubt.
Dempsey looked at him. “You have a prognostication we don’t know about?”
“I’m betting my money that the same phenomenon that struck down the tourists and crewman outside the cave also killed everybody on board the cruise ship.”
“Not a pretty thought,” said Giordino, “but that would explain why she never returned to pick up the excursionists.”
“And let us not forget the second group that was scheduled to be put ashore twenty kilometers farther up the coast,” Dempsey reminded them.