With a final heave on the cable, the harness was released and the vertical tornado from above subsided as the helicopter retreated to a higher altitude.
“I hope we’ve got the placement right on this damn thing,” Byrnes shouted, stepping back to examine the ungainly structure now occupying most of the remaining open-deck space on the ship. “It’s hard to tell a four-ton gorilla where it can sit.”
“Just as long as it doesn’t go looking for bananas,” Zubov replied. He rechecked the chains fastening the tank to cleats set into the perimeter of the helipad on all sides.
“It’s not going anywhere.”
The plan was to attach a bleeder hose and a siphon pump to the tank and run the new supply of fresh water into the main lab, the showers in the airlocks, and the galley. This would shunt water use away from the Phoenix’s primary supply until the tank was empty and would give the vessel up to ten more days at sea.
In addition to Garner and Junko, Carol had selected seven nonessential crew members from the Phoenix to return to the mainland. High above them, the helicopter pilots were already beginning to raise concern about their fuel supply; the Phoenix had less than fifteen minutes to get her assigned emigrants up the hoist line and into the jump seats.
A basket filled with personal effects, laboratory gear, and Garner’s samples of Thiobacillus was lifted first. Next, a SAR technician was lowered from the helicopter along with an empty harness for the passengers. Two of the Phoenix’s junior technicians went next, then Junko, the third-watch cook, and the second-watch helmsman, with the SAR tech assisting them one at a time into the empty horse collar and shuttling them up to the helicopter. Garner and Zubov watched as two deckhands were reeled up into the waiting helo, then the empty horse collar descended to the deck on its own. Above, they could see the SAR tech pulling at his own harness, which had apparently developed some sort of problem. The tech rolled his hand in the air, indicating that Garner should take the harness and come up alone.
The notion that he would have to take the sickening ride unassisted left a cold feeling in Garner’s stomach.
“How many lives did you say I have left?” he asked Zubov.
“Seven,” Zubov said as he grabbed the swaying harness and helped Garner wriggle into it.
“Maybe six and a half,” he added, giving the line suspended from the helicopter a closer look.
“Listen: don’t go out of your way,” he added, trying to keep Garner distracted, “but if you’re passing a drive-through, bring me back a decent cheeseburger.”
“Hold the pickles and onions, right?” Garner said, studying each carabiner as it was clipped shut. The harness continued to sway slightly in response to the helicopter’s movement above.
“And ketchup for the fries,” Zubov said. “Ketchup or forget it. And a shake.”
“That stuff will kill you, you know?” Garner said.
“Sure, and this place is Club Med,” Zubov replied. Then, as the harness was finally slung around Garner’s shoulders, he added: “Hurry back.”
“Okeydoke.”
“I’m serious,” Zubov said. He gripped the straps of the harness and looked Garner directly in the eye. “Take care of yourself and hurry back. We need you here, man.”
Zubov stepped back, looked up at the hoist operator, and spun his finger in the air. The line heaved upward on Garner’s chest. Garner could feel the weight of his body press heavily against the harness, then his feet lifted off the deck.
The line that held him immediately swung out over the icy water, then returned on its pendulous movement as it was reeled in. In their anxiousness to return to base, the helicopter’s crew had already begun moving away from the ship. Garner looked down to see the deck of the Phoenix, already as small as a toy, and the trio of Carol, Zubov, and Byrnes standing just forward of the new water tank.
The distance between them began to increase rapidly. Far below Garner’s dangling feet, dozens of pieces of broken pack ice slipped past, drifting atop the forbidding black water of the Arctic Ocean. To the east, the outline of Baffin Island the fifth-largest island in the world rose up out of the sea like an enormous, snowcapped whale.
“It’s not the flying,” Garner recited in midair. “It’s the altitude. The rapidly increasing altitude.”
The familiar knot returned to the pit of Garner’s stomach as he was lifted past one hundred feet… one-fifty… two hundred feet. Then the bottom of the helicopter, as immense as a dirigible when viewed from this angle, filled his field of vision. He could see the call number of the aircraft and the two large drop tanks containing extra fuel. He could also see the seams in the aircraft’s body and the rivets that held the aluminum sheeting together, several of them ringed with black and showing wear.
Garner focused on the airman leaning out of the cargo cabin, one hand on the winch head and the other lightly guiding the line.
Instinctively, he grasped the end of the wire protruding from his harness. Don’t bother holding the line. It’s got ahold of you a lot stronger than you could ever get ahold of it. Garner remembered the words of a rock-climbing instructor he had consulted, briefly, unsuccessfully, to overcome his acrophobia. Gripping the wire did nothing to ensure Garner’s security, but it did slow the rate at which he was spinning.
Above, the airman waved his finger, no. The greatest threat to Garner’s well-being at this point was not being dropped by the wire, but losing an ill-placed finger in the pulleys of the hoist. Then, as suddenly as the heart-stopping lift had begun, it was over.
Garner was drawn up past the landing gear of the helicopter and stopped alongside the cabin. He could see the others from the Phoenix, still strapping themselves into their jump seats. The wire jerked to a stop and the firm hand of the hoist operator grasped the back of the harness, rolling Garner the rest of the way into the helicopter.
Opening his eyes, the first thing Garner saw was Junko. She smiled at him and clapped her hands together.
“Congratulations!” she said. “Sergei told me how much you don’t like to fly.”
“It’s not the flying—” Garner began again.
“Nonsense,” Junko said, waving him off. “Of course it’s the flying.”
A second airman helped Garner extricate himself from the harness, then Garner slumped into the last available jump seat. He looked straight ahead at an auxiliary fuel cell that took up most of the room in the cabin. I am strapping myself into a flying fuel bomb. Garner could not help but think. A flying fuel bomb above a radioactive slick in the most disorienting landscape in the world. What’s there to be nervous about?
As soon as the helicopter had drawn clear of the Phoenix and turned back toward the mainland, Junko withdrew a dosimeter from her backpack, quickly calibrated it despite the harsh vibration of the cabin, then waved it slowly around each of her fellow passengers.
Garner and the others watched her with their full attention, waiting for the instrument to announce that someone had been cooked. It was an hour’s flight to the next substantial human settlement, much less a medical facility equipped to handle radiation poisoning. Last of all, Junko carefully examined the metal floor of the helicopter.
“Clean as a whistle,” she finally announced. Her fellow passengers slowly let out their breath.
“Evidently the atmospheric rad levels are still low. The downdraft of the rotor blades might also have helped to blow back any airborne fallout.”