“How do we do that?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Garner said, still grinning from ear to ear. “But I know a guy who might.”
“Who?” Junko asked.
“His name is Roland Alvarez,” Garner said. “He’s a seaweed expert at Dalhousie University.”
“In Nova Scotia.”
“Yes,” Garner said. He was practically bursting with excitement. “Halifax. Where you and I and that sponge are going as soon as the Evian truck gets here.”
Garner and Junko relayed their findings to Carol and Byrnes over breakfast.
“You want to take a culture of Thiobacillus to Halifax and do what?” Carol asked again.
“I want to see if he knows of any way we can collect the bacteria from solution, cleanly and easily,” Garner said.
Garner’s sudden confidence had caught Carol off guard. She was certainly willing to try anything at this point, or consult anyone who might be of some assistance. That Garner was talking about going there instead of bringing someone to the ship was what concerned Carol. She wasn’t yet sure whether she was reluctant because the plan meant further delays, further expenses and logistical complications, or the loss of Garner’s guidance in the midst of this situation.
“Do you really expect to accomplish anything in just a day or two?” Carol asked.
“Probably more than in the same amount of time here,” Garner said. “Serg and I were up the entire night with Medusa and she is one sick baby. Virtually all her sensors have been cooked; we’re lucky we can still track temperature and dissolved organic matter. Serg still needs another day or two to replace the sensors for which we have extras and to recalibrate her cameras. I think I could give you more bang for your buck in Halifax, and I need Junko’s expertise on Thiobacillus to let us know when we’re getting close to an answer.”
Carol remained unconvinced.
“We haven’t got time to start running lab experiments two thousand miles from here.”
“I can radio Roland before we leave,” Garner said. “He can have his cultures set up when we get there. Give us another day after that. Two at the most. If we strike out, we’ll come back.”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” Garner assured her.
Carol turned to Byrnes.
“And what do you want for Christmas? A pony?”
“We can get a thousand-gallon tank of potable water brought in from the NORAD radar site at Hall Beach,” Byrnes said. “Set it on the helipad and strap it down, then run a feed into the showers or the sewage system, or both.”
“Will that solve our water problems?” Carol asked Junko.
“It will give us some breathing room or bathing room, as it were,” Junko replied. “But it still assumes we won’t need to be at sea for much longer than another week or ten days.”
Byrnes wasn’t completely assured.
“Don’t ask me what happens if we need more water after that,” he said. “We can draw from the tank on the helipad first, but it’ll be sitting outside and eventually it will be contaminated too. Once it’s spent we can’t just throw it overboard and in the meantime we’ll lose our emergency landing pad. If we need more water after that, we’ll have to airlift the empty tank from the deck and replace it with another full one.” His glance at the others suggested that there was no way in hell that would happen, at least not in his lifetime.
“So time is working against us,” Carol said.
“We ration water and step up the search operation.” She nodded at Garner and Junko. “And you two test your sponge theory damn fast.”
“Can we take anyone else with us?” Junko asked Byrnes. She was still hoping to increase the number of nonessential personnel who could be taken off the ship.
Byrnes rubbed his eyes.
“The SAR helicopters have a payload capacity of about fifteen tons, but they’ll be stretching it with a thousand-gallon water tank plus enough fuel to reach us, even from Hall Beach,” Byrnes said. “The water alone is going to weigh four tons. When they drop that, they should have plenty of room for six passengers and whoever goes with them can take a Canadair jet south from Hall Beach.”
“Six? No more?” Junko pressed again.
“I can give up as many as four from the deck crew,” Byrnes countered. “Carol, you could probably give up two officers and as many technicians.”
“Maybe,” Carol speculated. “But eight is too many. Say six plus these two?” She nodded at Garner and Junko.
“I don’t like it, but okay,” Byrnes said.
“The bill on this little vacation is getting out of hand, isn’t it?” Carol said.
“We’re almost done shopping,” Garner said. “In a couple more days we’ll have all the resources we need up here.”
“That’s a little pointless with no one left here to use them, isn’t it, darling?” Carol feigned a smile in his direction.
“Two days,” Garner said. “C’mon. One day.”
“You’ll spend almost that amount of time in the air,” Carol said. In truth, it would be about a five-hour trip to Halifax, provided they could get a V.I.P jet on such short notice.
Carol looked at Junko.
“You agree?” she asked the doctor.
“I’m with Brock,” she said.
Carol looked to Byrnes.
“You agree? Look who I’m asking — you never agree.”
“I’m out of brighter ideas,” Byrnes admitted. “Except the one where we all go back to Seattle, find a pool hall and a fireplace, and let the friggin’ military come up here and get cooked.”
“All right,” Carol said. “Go. No Captain Bligh, I. No Malcolm Neddermeyer either.”
“We won’t return to find you barricaded in the radio room, will we?” Garner asked her.
“Of course not,” she said. “On this ship, the dry storage locker is much tougher to break into.”
By the time the Canadian Forces helicopter arrived the following morning. Garner had finished processing the rest of his wet samples and packed two cases with cultures of Thiobacillus. Junko did her rounds, inspecting the crew of the Phoenix one last time before packing up for the trip to Halifax.
Byrnes and Zubov donned light, laboratory-style containment suits and rendezvoused with the helicopter hovering above the bow of the ship.
The downdraft from the rotors of the heavily loaded helicopter was intense, forcing both men to find handholds to prevent being blown to the deck. As the massive tank was lowered onto the helipad, the next concern was releasing it from its harness. Too little tension and the tank might slide off the pad; too much tension and the cable could snap, lashing out at those on deck or, worse, pulling the helicopter into the superstructure of the Phoenix.
The rotors of the helicopter savagely pounded the cold, dry air above the ship, creating a massive buildup of static electricity that crackled against the metal edges of the deck. Before the SAR crew could drop a wire to help ground the helicopter, a charge of fifty thousand volts had built up along the helipad.
“Watch the static charge until the grounding wire is set!” Zubov shouted to Byrnes above the roar.
Zubov’s warning wasn’t heard. Struggling just to keep his footing against the savage wind, Byrnes strayed too close to the tank’s harness. A violent blue spark shot from the tank to his hand, blowing his arm back and throwing Brynes backward onto the deck. He slid nearly fifteen feet before his safety line snapped taut and stopped his fall.
“You okay?” Zubov shouted, his eyes wide.
“Yeah.” Byrnes nodded, still shaken. “The amps were too low to cause any harm. Beats the hell out of a tequila buzz, though.”
Once the grounding wire was set, the two men climbed onto the side of the tank and set to work releasing the tank’s harness from its pendant.