As Garner arrived at the Phoenix on the Navy launch, Zubov glanced up.
“Don’t even ask,” he said, raising a large wrench in Garner’s direction.
Garner kept walking, entering the Phoenix’s superstructure through the last airlock remaining open. He scrubbed down, changed into his indoor clothes, and met with Carol and Junko in the ship’s ward room.
“We’ve got good news and we’ve got bad news,” Carol began. “And the bad is worse than the good is good.”
“Let’s start with the bad,” Garner said.
“There’s a Canadian Forces report out of Igloolik that an entire Inuit settlement was exposed to a sudden, severe influx of radiation,” Junko said. “A DIAND doctor found them on her regular two-week rounds.” She looked as though she was still having difficulty digesting the news, which she was.
“There were no survivors.”
Garner winced.
“Where?”
“Melville Peninsula,” Carol said.
“Northwest of where we found the Balaenoptera.”
“We still haven’t been able to determine what they mean by sudden or even severe,” Junko continued. “So far it looks to be equal to the worst we found in Foxe Basin.”
“That means the slick has reached at least one populated area.” Garner had studied enough charts by now to picture the area clearly in his mind’s eye. “With luck, it will keep moving east, offshore and away from anyone else.”
Junko looked skeptical.
“There are dozens of settlements along that coast,” she said. “Scattered, low population, but human lives nonetheless.”
“I’m only saying it could be a lot worse,” Garner replied.
Junko retreated.
“You’re right,” she admitted. “It’s a far better scenario than it could be, at least until the contamination approaches Hudson Bay or the North Atlantic.” She paused, uncertain whether to continue.
“It’s just that Melville Peninsula was is—”
“—Where Victor said his family lived,” Garner finished. “That’s right.”
“Junko,” Carol said. “We all feel bad about Victor’s case.”
“But I told him I would help him,” the doctor explained. “That I would come by the village to look at his wife and child as soon as possible.”
Carol wrapped a sympathetic arm around the petite doctor. She could identify all too readily with Junko’s frustration.
“As soon as possible’ isn’t possible yet,” Garner assured her. “For any of us. Chances are they were already dead by the time Victor stumbled on us. Even if we went directly there, with the correct medical supplies, we might still have found just what the DIAND doctor did.”
“There are survivors,” Junko said. “Other settlements where it isn’t too late.”
“We’ll get back to them as soon as the slick is contained. All right?”
Junko nodded, accepting the comfort of Garner and Carol.
“At least it gets better,” Carol explained. “When the Canadian Forces tried to clean up the incident, they needed the help of the Canadian Coast Guard. Parsons briefed them on our little junket here and the two of them managed to convince Don Szilard in Ottawa that we’re not just following some mirage. Szilard agreed to their terms and the upshot of all their bureaucratic tongue wagging is that we now have two additional icebreakers at our disposaclass="underline" the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Des Groseilliers and the CIS Sovietsky Soyuz. They’re on their way up Foxe Basin right now.”
“That is good news,” Garner agreed.
“Um-hmm.” Carol chewed her lip. “Though it’s a bit ironic that we left home with the intent of studying the effect of shipping noise on whales and now we’re practically putting on a demolition derby.
“I told them to wait outside Fury and Hecla Strait for further instructions,” she went on. “Once we see how, or if, the Ulva sponge idea works on a large scale, we can brief them on how to begin cleaning up the front end of the slick and meet us somewhere in the middle.”
“Exactly what I’d have said,” Garner said with a wink. “Damn, you’re efficient. You remind me of my first wife.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” Carol said archly. “You seem to have excellent taste in women.”
Zubov tramped into the ward room, Byrnes close behind.
“How goes things astern?” Garner asked.
“I think we’ll just be able to swing it,” Zubov grumbled. “But don’t expect it to make the cover of Better Homes and Rigging.”
“If the setup works, it looks like you’ll get the chance to explain it to a CIS icebreaker. The captain’s a guy named Kistiakowsky. How’s your Russian?”
“About as rusty as most of their navy.”
“That’s still better than the rest of us.”
“Rigging the seines isn’t the hard part,” Byrnes chimed in. “The hard part will be finding pieces of ice small enough to wrangle but large enough to have some influence on the slick.”
“Scott’s got all the latest ice cover and movement data from the weather satellites,” Garner said. “I’ll have him relay it to you and the others, then you can round up the most suitable pieces.”
“Maybe a collection of smaller pieces?” Carol offered.
“Yes,” Garner agreed. “Easier to manage and a greater surface area for the Ulva.”
“What are you going to use for seeding the algae?” Zubov asked.
“Martin Mars water bombers,” Garner said. “Once you’re under way, they’ll be skimming the Atlantic south of Greenland to fill their tanks. Alvarez figures that we’ll get enough Ulva by happenstance to provide a large enough culture.”
“The bombers will dump the water, then we’ll tow the ice over the slick and hope it takes up the Ulva and the Thiouni on the way to the containment area,” Carol continued. “Whatever escapes the sponge can be siphoned off the surface and pumped back over the ice.”
Garner caught Junko’s look of concern.
“You look a little dubious of our primitive methods. Doctor.”
“Quite the opposite,” Junko admitted. “What I’ve seen in the past forty-eight hours rivals the most fantastic technology I’ve ever seen.”
“A hole in the seafloor is ‘fantastic technology’?” Carol asked.
“Considering when it was built, yes,” Junko replied. “This supposed arsenal was built in the forties. But sub seafloor disposal of nuclear waste wasn’t proposed not seriously, anyway until the early 1970s.”
“And we’ve been fighting it ever since,” Carol said.
“No, that’s seafloor disposal,” Junko corrected her. “Barrels dumped onto the bottom. Or what they did after the tests in the Marshall Islands — forty totally cooked U.S. warships towed back to the States and sunk off the western seaboard close enough to keep an eye on. The worst of the waste is still stored aboveground until it cools enough to allow burial. But with sub seafloor disposal, all you need is a pit and as little as ten meters of good clay sediment to provide a natural barrier to the isotopes and prevent corrosion of the barrels. A pity the idea had to be dismissed so quickly.”