So far they had been lucky, but the threat of contamination was a constant, silent danger. Radioactive water soaked the hull, drifting over all the external structures and cooking major pieces of equipment.
It was only a matter of time before it leached through the hull to the inside. The slightest kiss from a radionuclide and an object could be contaminated for centuries or hundreds of centuries. Any one of them incidentally exposed could die quickly, or worse, die very, very slowly. The isotopes Junko had described had among the longest known half-lives, so long that any effect on living systems had to be estimated from known natural sources. Anything presently alive would be long dead by the time an isotope with a half-life of thirty thousand years decayed to a “low enough” level.
Despite her placid bedside manner, Susan felt trapped and scared. She really did want to leave the ship, to put the nightmare of the pervasive, invisible killer behind her and return home. Every time they had taken a vote on the matter, her hand was poised, ready to shoot up as soon as someone else raised his or her hand first. But the others only looked at each other, waiting to see who would be the first to admit a weakness, abandon the expedition, and probably jeopardize their reputation for future Nolan Group field studies. Good-paying field tech jobs were rare enough without volunteering to go back to Seattle and sit in a cubicle.
She missed her parents back in Maryland and at night she had to resist the urge to radio her sometime boyfriend at Woods Hole. Frisch had orders too: Carol had determined that the radio be used for essential communication only — which currently meant only the Coast Guard, Brock Garner, or the Canadian NERTS. So Susan did the only thing she thought would be of any value in assuaging her own fears: she prayed, simply and resolutely, not to screw up.
She tried not to think about the dwindling number of crew the mi hers aboard the Phoenix. The attrition was surreal, destined only for the same foolish end as the men aboard the Sverdrup Explorer. Whenever she allowed herself to sleep, she was haunted by the memory of Ramsey and Dexter and how the men had looked only hours after leaving the water.
The fact that she had been the first to suspect radiation poisoning was little comfort to her now. At best, she had managed to extend the men’s survival by a few days; at worst, she had illuminated the discovery that involved all of them in this entire mess. In trying to save two lives, they might eventually kill two dozen, including herself.
Outside, Byrnes, Zubov, and a half-dozen others checked the deck equipment for exposure. The dosimeters’ readings told them when to change the exposure tags from green to some other color indicating the equipment’s relative degree of contamination. By now, practically all the regularly used outside equipment had received a red high-level contamination tag. None of this had apparently been transmitted to the film badges worn by the crew inside the ship they looked the same every day. Still, they provided a constant reminder, like some kind of foreboding mood ring, that anyone could be contaminated at any moment.
If that happened — once that happened, as it surely would, eventually — the victim would have to be spirited away, stripped naked, vigorously scrubbed, then carted off to the infirmary to wait and see just how bad the exposure had been.
Not one badge had actually changed color since they were first given out. Susan had become so preoccupied with monitoring the tiny squares of film, so distracted by the color that never changed, she wondered whether they did anything at all. They were probably ineffectual placebos that provided only peace of mind, like the “shark repellent” carried by wartime aviators over the South Pacific.
She made the midday check of the laboratory technicians, running a dosimeter over their clothing and bench spaces. They, like the hot plankton cultures in the freezer containment boxes, tested negative for leaks or residual contamination. Once they had stripped off their gloves and lab coats, she reminded them to check themselves at the wall-mounted dosimeters set just inside the hatchway to the main corridor. The internal dosimeters had also been silent since they had been installed and Susan wondered if she should check their respective power supplies.
Bored, frustrated, and a borderline nervous wreck, Susan entered one of the airlocks, stripped out of her inside clothes, and pulled on one of the external suits, tucking her film badge into one of the suit’s shielded pockets. Screw the quarantine, she thought; she needed some air, even if it was contained air. She needed to soak up some natural light. She walked the deck for a while, gazing dreamily out at the ice scape drifting past them, and eventually made her way to the foredeck.
She pulled the badge from her pocket, set it on top of a spool of cooked winch cable, then waited. Within a few minutes, the badge began to fog with a dull haze. The film changed from yellow to gray, then red, brown, and finally, black. The metamorphosis took less than thirty seconds.
Okay, so the badges were working. As long as she saw only cheerful yellow films clipped to the lapels and belt loops of the others, she was doing her job. That did little to assure her that she was any more prepared for the tasks at hand, or those to come. They were a professional crew even at the slack est of times, and in the past few days everyone had come to be extra vigilant in watching each other’s backs and procedures, but no one could be completely careful all the time. Eventually, someone would mess up.
A few minutes later, she stepped back into the airlock, peeled away her suit and respirator, then wriggled out of the cold-weather clothing inside that. She showered in the second-stage enclosure, redressed in her inside clothes, and pulled her wet hair into a ponytail. She grimaced at the feel of her dry, tight skin — the constant scrubbing was proving hell on it — and made a mental note to borrow someone’s moisturizer. Then she stepped out of the airlock, crossed the empty lab, and headed for the galley for a bite of lunch. At the corridor entrance, she stopped and waved her hands in front of the flat metal plate of the sentry dosimeter.
The sentry’s red light suddenly winked on, followed by a shrill electronic alarm.
Susan jumped back, unsure for a split second what was going on. Then the realization slammed into her and her entire body prickled with paralyzing fear.
She had been exposed. She had no idea exactly how exposed, only that she was contaminated. Contaminated. Contaminated.
Omigod, omigod, omigod. Panic rattled in her head. I’ve been exposed. I’ve been exposed and brought it inside. Now what?
The Phoenix, moored to a suitably large piece of ice, dutifully awaited the return of the Canadian Forces helicopter. As before, a fluorescent “X” had been marked on the ice to indicate the landing point, but strangely, no one from the ship was outside to greet their arrival.
The built-in anxiety of Garner’s acrophobia was amplified further still by the sight of the apparently deserted vessel far below: another ghost ship on the Arctic Ocean.
“They’re not answering our hail, sir,” the pilot called back.
“Just land. Now.” A thousand possibilities clawed at Garner’s imagination.
Even as the helicopter set down on the ice, there was no confirmation from the Phoenix. The daylight was beginning to fade and Garner sent the helicopter off with a wave of gratitude. He and Junko were halfway back to the ship from the landing pad when a single crewman a weatherbeaten winch operator by the name of Oliphant appeared on the foredeck. He lowered a ramp down to the new arrivals.