“I’d like to be allowed to continue our investigation without interruption,” Carol said. “I’d like to use the people I have with me to determine the extent of this problem. Then, once we know exactly what’s going on, I’d like your unconditional support to clean up this mess.”
“How can you be certain you’ll find the source?” Parsons asked. “I need some assurance.” There was more concern than doubt in his voice.
“I have to be certain,” Carol said. “So do you. Right now, we’re all you’ve got.”
9
Junko worked tirelessly to examine the fallen crewmen of the Explorer, drawing blood and taking as many notes as possible on the condition of the bodies without further disturbing the scene. Carol reminded Junko of this before she returned to the Phoenix to report their finding to the Coast Guard: learn whatever you can, but don’t touch anything else — maybe the Nolan Group could avoid a lawsuit for a change. It was now a matter for the maritime authorities, the expedition’s insurers, and the sailors’ next of kin to determine and address what had gone wrong.
Though the equipment Junko was using wasn’t sophisticated enough to define the specific ratios of the various isotopes and their daughters, the signatures she derived suggested a toxic stew steeped in cesium, strontium, highly enriched uranium, and plutonium. In everyday terms, this was highlevel reprocessed waste, most likely left over from weapons manufacturing. No wonder no one wanted to admit ownership.
As a physician, far more disconcerting to her was the suffering the men had obviously endured in the hours and days before their death. The frozen bodily fluids on every deck of the ship testified to the painful spasms and seizures they must have experienced as the radiation took hold of their internal organs.
Their skin was mottled and blistered to the consistency of runny oatmeal from the combined effects of desiccation and degeneration. So great was the apparent level of their exposure that conditions that took months to become evident in Hiroshima and Belarus had manifested themselves in these men within days.
The sight was beyond ghastly, beyond comprehension. Inside her suit, Junko resisted the urge to vomit — or shriek. What could it possibly be like to die in such a manner? How large a dose was required to weaken these healthy, young men so severely that the prospect of wresting control of the radio, of even feeding themselves, became insurmountable tasks? In her travels to the incidental or accidental hot spots of the globe, Junko had grown accustomed to seeing horrors of the flesh. She had seen birth defects in the young and rampant, lethal cancers in the elderly. She had seen blindness, scorched flesh, and sterility stretched over entire populations. Homelessness in places where entire communities had stood, famine and drought in the midst of luscious crops and abundant water, all stripped of their utility by tasteless, odorless, inescapably fatal contamination. She thought she had witnessed the fallout of the worst aspects of the human condition, but she had never seen anything like what had been found in a single cabin aboard this simple wooden ship.
She heard Zubov approaching behind her and turned around, nearly stepping into his arms. “You okay?” he asked her. In that moment there seemed to be no room for awkwardness.
“I really don’t know,” Junko said. “I guess I wasn’t ready for this today.”
“You mean there have been days when you expected this?” Zubov asked.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“There are days when I’ve had to.” She could see the sallow look on Zubov’s face as he looked upon the men of the Explorer. He was standing among ghosts of his own. Somehow that knowledge was enough to ease her fear.
“It’s good to have company this time,” she said.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world to close his arms and embrace her then.
“I was just about to say the same thing,” he said.
Forward, Garner spread Neddermeyer’s notes and charts on the main dining table.
He glanced up as Carol and Byrnes returned from the Phoenix.
“What’s the good word?” Garner asked.
“We’ve got the cavalry’s interest,” Carol said. “And when news of Neddermeyer’s conduct gets out to the media, I’m sure the circus will be coming to town in droves.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” Garner asked. “I mean, the ship the whole area is hardly secured from investigators or souvenir hunters at this point.”
“Parsons promised me a news blackout on what we’ve found, including the exact location of the ship,” Carol said. “I told him that I didn’t even want a response team here, at least until we can suggest some safe limits and procedures for dealing with the area. Fortunately, Canadian law protects the scene of marine and aircraft disasters for just this reason. Besides, if anyone else could get to the Explorer right away, we wouldn’t have been recruited in the first place.”
“Not to mention that the Phoenix has already commandeered every piece of field radiation equipment in the Northern Hemisphere,” Byrnes added, shaking his head. “So they’re inclined to let us take the lead on this.”
“Canaries in a coal mine,” Zubov mused as he and Junko joined them.
“I thought you’d be used to that by now,” Carol said. “Especially working with Brock.”
“I am,” Zubov replied. “It’s the size of the cage that’s beginning to get uncomfortable.”
The news blackout was a good thing. Junko could vividly imagine the response of the international media to the news of a major, inexplicable radiation leak in the Arctic Ocean. The remote location and relatively low population density of the area might initially keep the story off the front page, but the merest mention of the Explorer’s fate would change that soon enough. As Three Mile Island, Sellafield, and Chernobyl had shown, the reaction of a misinformed public to reports of “accidental” radiation leaks was invariably far too hysterical in the short term and far too complacent over the long term.
The public seemed to think that radiation, like a brushfire or a train wreck, required only a dedicated cleanup effort to make it go away.
Contamination like this would never go away, not in fifty thousand human generations.
First things first: identify the vector. Stem the source. ALARA.
“All the same,” Junko continued, “we can’t just leave these men here. Besides, won’t the ship just continue to drift?”
“Yes, and no,” Byrnes said. “We obviously can’t tow the Explorer with us, so I told Parsons we’d put the ship in a storm anchorage, leave the beacon on with a portable backup, and let them know when we figure out the best approach.”
“I can’t see the next of kin, much less the Norwegian government, agreeing to that arrangement for very long,” Junko said dubiously.
“Then we’ll have to hurry,” Garner said. “Short of wrapping the Explorer in a big, lead-lined Baggie and pushing it back to Oslo, there isn’t much more we can do about this mess we have to get back to our own mess.”
Carol checked her watch.
“I’m worried about your respirator units,” she said, nodding to Garner, Zubov, and Junko, who had remained aboard the Explorer almost the entire day. The devices ran on rechargeable batteries and were only intended to operate for six to eight hours at a time.
“The filter cartridges are putting in overtime as it is and we’ve still got to lock down the ship before we can leave.”