So, if that hadn’t been the cause, the question remained, what was?
The sound of the negative pressure ventilation system, designed to draw air into the room thereby stopping any biological hazards from escaping, droned on in the background.
He opened his mind, his eyes staring blankly at the pale white wall. Why were hospital walls always so bland? Whose idea was it to make an isolation room entirely white? Did it add to the atmosphere of isolation?
Sam blinked, dismissing his rambling thoughts. None of it meant anything, certainly nothing he could do anything about while inside his self-inflicted medical prison. It was his own fault for removing his damned FE suit’s mask.
He sighed heavily and grinned as he recalled the woman’s last words –
Beware the floating island of pumice…
That certainly got his attention. She might have been delirious, possibly even suffering the effects of low-level carbon monoxide poisoning, but a floating island of pumice isn’t the sort of thing a disoriented and hypoxic brain tends to imagine.
No, there was some level of truth to that.
Sam’s mind wandered toward the island of pumice. How tall could it be? How well did it float? He imagined an entire island of the light, porous volcanic rock. Pumice itself floated, but how about an entire island of the stuff? Would it drift like a gigantic iceberg? He considered the geology of the stone. It was created when super-heated, highly pressurized rock is violently ejected from a volcano. The gas-rich froth of glassy lava solidifies in an instant. The unusual foamy configuration of pumice occurs because of the simultaneous rapid cooling and depressurization.
But what did this tell him about the strange island?
His lips curled upward into a large grin. It told him that wherever this island was now, it originated at the sight of a volcanic eruption. More important yet, such an eruption must have been recent, because the light stone wouldn’t remain conglomerated in an island forever. The constant wind, shifting waves, and conflicting currents would quickly cause it to disintegrate.
That meant that even if they knew where the Carpe Diem discovered the floating island of pumice, which they didn’t, it would be near impossible to retrospectively calculate its current position. It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, after never really knowing where the haystack was in the first place.
But he could contact WOVO — the World Organization of Volcano Observatories — which might be able to provide a list of recent volcanic eruptions. In doing so, they might at least be able to narrow down their window a little better than somewhere within the Pacific Ocean.
He made a mental note to get Elise, his best researcher and computer expert, to contact WOVO and request a list of known volcanic eruptions in the past six weeks. And, failing that, any that might have had the potential to erupt without anyone noticing — such as on small unoccupied islands or atolls.
Sam stopped making a mental list of his tasks, because another doctor approached the entrance to his isolation room. Unlike the rest of the medical visitors he’d had, this one was wearing a white coat, and didn’t stop to don a yellow biological hazard FE suit.
He grinned. It was a good sign.
He stood up to greet her. “Hello, Doc.”
She smiled politely. It showed emotion, a genuinely kind smile, full of teeth. “Hello, Mr. Reilly, my name is Doctor Alyssa Smyth. I’m the medical director for infectious diseases at the CDC, but my background is in Chemical, Biological, and Radiation incidents, which is why I’m here, of course.”
He took her in at a glance.
She looked far too young to be the medical director for the CDC, but he didn’t say so. She had a beautiful face, not quite in the classical sense. Her hair was cut short, and tied back, more of an afterthought than an attempt to achieve any particular look. Her brown eyes were large, and her smile beguiling. She wore no makeup over her pale white skin. Her stature was decidedly short, emphasizing a full figure that was definitely heavier than the fashion magazines tell us we should like. Somehow for all her ordinariness, there was something striking about her.
“Pleased to meet you, Doctor Smyth,” he said, shaking her hand. “Do you mind telling me which of those types of incidents this one falls under?”
Her face hardened. “Nuclear radiation, I’m afraid.”
“The Carpe Diem was exposed to high levels of uranium radiation?”
She sat down next to him, leveled her eyes with his, and said, “No. Plutonium, actually.”
“Good God.” Sam swallowed hard. “How much was my exposure?”
“Small. About the same as forty standard days’ worth of UV radiation. You’ll live.”
Sam expelled a breath. “What about the woman we found alive on the yacht?”
“Her name’s Alicia Yeager, she was a guest of the owner of the vessel, a Mr. Travis Macintyre. She is suffering from acute radiation sickness. She’s been exposed to roughly six Grays — which is a standardized measure of ionizing radiation exposure.”
Sam asked, “Will she live?”
“It’s hard to say. The dose she’s been exposed to isn’t particularly high. But it looks like it’s been somewhere between a week to two weeks since she was first exposed, which means many of the symptoms are now manifesting, culminating in her cognitive decline, delirium and coma yesterday. We’ll treat her with a drug called Prussian Blue, which binds to particles of the radioactive elements: plutonium, americium and curium. The radioactive particles then pass out of the body in urine, thereby reducing the amount of radiation absorbed.”
“If I give you my cell number, can you please contact me as soon as she’s awake? I need to talk to her, and find out what she knows.”
“Of course, although I’m not making any promises she will ever wake up.”
“I understand,” Sam said. “Hey, why did it take so long for Alicia to deteriorate, when the two men on the bridge looked like they had died more than a week ago?”
Dr. Smyth referred to the report in her folder. “According to the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsies, despite the fact they were exposed to the same amount of nuclear radiation as Ms. Yeager, both men died from carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Interesting. Why would someone try and poison them after they were exposed to high levels of radiation?”
“Why indeed?” she replied. “The most obvious guess to me is that they must have seen something they weren’t supposed to see.”
“Yeah. The question is what?” Returning to the bigger problem, Sam asked, “Are there any reports of a Broken Arrow — a misplaced or lost nuclear weapon?”
“No. I’ve made my report to the Pentagon directly. They’re denying any possibility the plutonium has come from any nuclear weapons of ours, or anybody else’s for that matter.”
Sam cocked his eyebrow. “And you believe them?”
“Yeah, I do.”
She spoke with the simple, confident, certainty of an expert in any given field. Her tone didn’t change, as though she was trying to prove a point or debate the issue. It was merely stating a fact. She wasn’t a politician hiding the truth, or lobbyist trying to promote their version of the truth, she was simply a leading expert in chemical, biological, and radiation disasters, expressing her opinion on what she had seen.
He suppressed a smile. “Why?”
“Because, we can already tell that this type of plutonium didn’t come from a nuclear weapon.”