Once a stealthy warrior shrouded by top-level security, the Hawkbill had become one of the Navy’s preeminent flagships for the mapping and description of the polar ice.
As the B-82 crewmen leaned over the railings like boys on a sandlot fence, the sail of the Hawkbill cracked open and two crewmen stepped onto the bridge. They were followed a moment later by an officer — a commander Charon didn’t recognize. The man was compact and had a lean-looking face, but the depth and evenness of his tanned skin ruled out any lengthy amount of time inside a submarine. A ride-along, Charon guessed. A fucking diplomat. A visitor who, as the morning’s message had advised, felt the need to interrupt Charon’s carefully grafted routine.
The officer found his footing on B-82’s docking platform and easily climbed the rungs to the deck. Two crewmen pointed out Charon and the man stepped quickly over to him. The tanned commander saluted first. “Good morning, sir,” he said to Charon. “I was dispatched from Arlington to see if I can lend some assistance to your situation. My name is Krail. Scott Krail.”
12
Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
Junko awoke with a start. The bliss of a deep sleep cut cruelly short left her momentarily disoriented as to where she was, and why. The Phoenix. Her bunk. Some indeterminate time between midnight, when Sergei had left her, and dawn. Soon returned the numbing avalanche of things to do, precautions to take and hazards to consider. First and foremost of these was a single consideration:
Water, water everywhere, But not a drop to drink.
The potable water supply aboard the Phoenix came from a gigantic freshwater tank set deep in the hull. Byrnes said the tank had a capacity of five thousand gallons, or roughly enough water to be rationed — for drinking, bathing, and sewerage — among forty people for up to a month; slightly longer for a smaller crew. The Phoenix also had the latest desalination equipment, and under normal conditions it might purify enough seawater for cooking and showers. But these were hardly normal conditions. The ocean could not be used at all, and even though the ship’s complement had been reduced to twenty six the rinsing requirement for anyone passing through the Phoenix’s makeshift airlocks had probably maintained, if not increased, the normal levels of consumption.
Although the sea ice that floated all around them had only one-tenth the salinity of the ocean, it was still too briny to drink. The permanent fast ice along the shore was thicker and less saline, but even more likely to be a repository for any number of pollutants, from dust to radioactivity.
Subtract from the tank’s capacity the water already consumed by the crew since the vessel left port and the water remaining in the tank could be down to three thousand gallons or less. The amount of water left over for cooking, showering, and drinking might be approaching critical levels. Rationing was really in order, but a lack of proper rinsing especially in the lab and the airlocks would only increase the potential for contamination.
As Junko roused herself and dressed, she reminded herself to ask Byrnes to check the tank’s volume more often. Short of ending a pristine glacier and boiling it into meltwater, Junko would have to talk to Carol about having a replenishing supply of fresh water brought up to the Phoenix by helicopter. The remaining crew would have to skimp on personal hygiene and limit the number of in-and-out trips through the airlocks.
Junko began her daily rounds on the bridge, attending to those crew members she encountered there. She took nasal swabs to check for possible inhaled contamination, checked their detection badges, and made certain everyone was taking iodine tablets and calcium supplements. By now she had devised a short list of questions to elucidate symptoms from general lethargy to specific aches and pains or sources of bleeding. All of the crew still appeared to be in excellent condition. The safety precautions, primitive as they were, seemed to be staving off the current environmental conditions.
Stuart Frisch was her next examinee, another one of the crew members whose youthful energy and affinity for junk food seemed to eclipse any obvious need for sleep. His usual good spirits made him one of Junko’s favorites, though his overall naivete was still distressing.
“How many people would it take to operate the Phoenix?” she asked him as she swabbed his arm with alcohol and drew a blood sample. “A dozen? Eighteen?”
“I suppose that’d depend on who the people were,” Frisch shrugged. He meant not only which deck positions were retained but also the ability and resourcefulness of the individuals selected. “And that would depend on what you needed to do.” His tone suggested that he did not consider himself on the short list of essential personnel in either category.
Byrnes was far more definitive and much less receptive to the notion of further skeletonizing the ship’s crew.
“No bloody way,” he said. “You start cutting back on bodies, doubling up on watch time, and people get tired. People get tired and accidents start happening.”
The latter point was not trivial. Carelessness on the deck, a momentary lapse in attention, and someone could be swept overboard.
Even an accidental fall on the frozen steel deck was enough to break a wrist or a collarbone. A poorly spooled or overstressed line could too easily snap, recoiling with enough force to cut a man cleanly in two.
Byrnes had seen exactly that happen to one of his men aboard the Kaiku.
“You start pulling more of us off the boat and those who’ve left won’t be able to do much more than sit around and look at each other.”
The comment was straightforward enough, but it reminded Junko of the spectacle she had seen aboard the Explorer. She shivered slightly as she made her way back to the lab, donned her Tyvek laboratory suit, gloves, and boots, and began looking at the latest batch of blood samples from the crew. The act of dressing in the disposable equipment reminded her to check the remaining supplies of suits, gloves, and respirators as well. The ship needed more respirator filters and batteries, gloves, and hoods. They needed more of everything, and with each passing hour the ship’s engines pushed them deeper into the Arctic, farther away from any source of provisions.
Junko heard Garner and Zubov coming inside, slamming the hatch behind them and stamping the frost out of their bones like a pair of rambunctious teenagers.
They waved to her through the thick polyethylene partition, then began the tedious process of stripping off their outdoor suits and scrubbing down. When this was completed, they stepped into the inside portion of the enclosure and began to redress. Zubov pulled on his clothes and decided to raid the galley before getting some sleep. Garner might have done the same, but the racks of samples on the lab bench held him back. Entering the lab itself, both men paused to test themselves in front of the radiation detector mounted just inside the airlock. Garner waved his hands, arms, and torso in front of the device, which produced a green light of approval. Zubov did the same, adding a waggle of his derriere to the ritual, momentarily dancing in front of the monitor like a great, oversized duck. He gave Junko a wink, knowing she was watching him, then ambled off down the corridor to his cabin.