Beyond the Ice Limit

47

IT WAS NOT a quick trip from the mission control room, deep inside the ship, to the bridge at the top of the superstructure. Gideon had only been on the bridge once before. It was a spacious area, far above the maindeck, with floor-to-ceiling windows giving sweeping views of the surrounding water and the ship itself, fore and aft. There was no internal illumination save a dull-red glow from the nighttime bridge lights and from a few hooded chartplotters and monitors. A gibbous moon hung in the sky, casting a remarkably bright light over the scattered icebergs, which looked like ghosts on the dark water. Bright stars bristled in the overhead dome of night.

As he stared at the moonlit view, Gideon saw something puzzling. The sea, as far as the eye could reach, was covered with shapes, big and small. It took him a moment to realize they were thousands upon thousands of dead fish, along with much larger shapes of what looked like sharks and porpoises. And, about a quarter mile away, he made out a cluster of huge white corpses, some fifty feet or longer each, just beginning to drift to the surface: dead whales.

The ship was gaining speed. The scene on the bridge was one of tight efficiency underlain with an intense urgency. First Officer Lennart was at the conn, relaying the captain’s orders regarding heading, engine, and rudder. Captain Tulley stood next to her, a ramrod-straight fireplug of a man, murmuring his orders. Garza was nowhere in sight: he had gone off to oversee the security teams searching the ship for the missing worms.

Glinn was speaking to the officer of the watch, Warrant Officer Lund. Glinn turned and waved them over.

“Why are we under way?” asked McFarlane. “Are we running?”

Glinn looked at McFarlane. “No. We’ve been attacked, and we’re moving out of range in order to effect repairs.”

“The amplitude drops by the square of the distance,” said Gideon. “Which means we probably don’t have to go very far.”

“Correct. The calculation was four miles. Mr. Lund, please brief them on the condition of the ship.”

“Yes, sir.” Lund, pale and blond, turned his narrow face to them. “We’re taking on water. The bulkheads were sealed and the bilge pumps can handle it. The electricity generators are offline—fuel leaks—but should be fixed in an hour or so. The ship’s navigational and engine equipment survived in pretty good shape. Ringo, which was at a depth of a thousand meters at the time of the sonic attacks, is a complete loss. The other major damage was to mission control, which is full of delicate and sensitive electronics. The damage appears to be severe but not catastrophic: monitors smashed, motherboards shaken loose, contacts broken. But the stand-alone computers, laptops and desktops mostly survived intact. They were shaken up but seem to be fine.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lund,” said Glinn. The warrant officer stepped back.

“And the nuke?” asked McFarlane.

“We haven’t checked on it yet,” said Glinn.

“Don’t worry about the nuke,” said Gideon. “Nuclear weapons are designed to be robust—built to be manhandled before being dropped.”

“Please make an examination, just to be sure,” said Glinn. “Now we have a decision to make: abort, or proceed?”

Gideon knew what he was going to say, but he waited. McFarlane looked at Glinn. “Let’s hear your views first.”

At this, a bitter smile gathered on Glinn’s face. “Ah, Sam. For once, you want to hear my views. My apologies, but I’m not giving you the opportunity to disagree with me just for the sake of it. You two make the decision. If it’s a tie, I’ll break it.”

“I say, go ahead,” said McFarlane after a moment.

“Agreed,” said Gideon.

“In that case, we go ahead. We’ll repair the ship and head back to the target area, with the goal of deploying the nuke as soon as possible.”

“Is there anything that can be done to protect the ship from a future attack like that?” asked the captain, who had overheard the conversation.

“I have an engineer working on it,” Glinn told him. “He thinks we can lower a set of metal sheets into the water, to act as baffles. It won’t block the sonic attack, but it may mitigate it. We have only a day, though.”

The captain nodded. “The weather.”

“Exactly. A serious storm is approaching that will preclude any progress for at least a week. Whatever we do, it must be done in the next twenty-four hours. And in any case…” He paused a moment. “If we can’t isolate and kill the missing worms, we’re fighting a losing battle. Besides, the ship’s complement can’t go indefinitely without sleep.”

He looked at Gideon and McFarlane. “In other words, we can’t afford to waste any more time with analysis. Let’s go full speed ahead and take that thing out with the nuke.”