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"It wasn't very large. About the size of a small garden pot."
"Then what did you do?"
She closed her eyes very tightly, then pressed her hands against them and whispered. "I was only in there for a few minutes. When I came out I found everyone on the ship dead."
"Exactly how many minutes would you say?" Pitt asked softly.
She moved her head back and forth and spoke through her hands. "Why are you asking me all these questions?"
"I don't mean to sound like a prosecuting attorney. But please, it's important."
Slowly she lowered her hands and stared vacantly at the surface of the table. "I don't know, I have no way of knowing exactly how long I was in there. All I remember is it took me a little while to wrap the ice carving in a couple of towels so I could get a good grip on it and carry it without freezing my fingers."
"You were very lucky," he said. "Yours is a classic example of being in the right place at the right time.
If you had stepped from the freezer two minutes before you did, you'd be as dead as all the others. You were doubly lucky I came on board the ship when I did."
"Are you one of the crew? You don't look familiar."
It was obvious to him she was not fully aware of the Polar Queen's near brush with the Danger Islands. "I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself. My name is Dirk Pitt. I'm with a research expedition. We found your excursion party where they had been abandoned on Seymour Island and came looking for your ship after all radio calls went unanswered."
"That would have been Maeve Fletcher's party," she said quietly. "I suppose they're all dead too."
"Two passengers and the crewman who took them ashore," he answered. "Miss Fletcher and the rest are alive and well."
For a brief instant her face took on a series of expressions that would have done a Broadway actress proud. Shock was followed by anger culminating in a slow change to happiness. Her eyes brightened and she visibly relaxed. "Thank God Maeve is all right."
The sunlight came through the windows of the lounge and shone on her hair, which was loose and flowing about her shoulders, and he caught the scent of her perfume. Pitt sensed a strange mood change in her. She was not young but a confident woman in the prime of her early thirties, with strong inner qualities. He also felt a disconcerting desire for her that angered him. Not now, he thought, not under these circumstances. He turned away so she wouldn't see the rapt expression on his face.
"Why. . .?" she asked numbly, gesturing around her. "Why did they all have to die?"
He stared at the eight friends who were enjoying a special moment before their lives were so cruelly stolen from them. "I can't be totally certain," he said in a voice solemn with rage and pity, "but I think I have a good idea."
Pitt was fighting fatigue when Ice Hunter sailed off the radar screen and loomed over the starboard bow. After searching the rest of the Polar Queen for other survivors, a lost cause as it turned out, he only allowed himself a short catnap while Deirdre Dorsett stood watch, ready to wake him lest the ship run down some poor trawler fishing for ice-water cod. There are those who feel refreshed after a brief rest.
Not Pitt. Twenty minutes in dreamland was not enough to reconstitute his mind and body after twenty-four hours' of stress and fatigue. He felt worse than when he lay down. He was getting too old to jump out of helicopters and battle raging seas, he mused. When he was twenty, he felt strong enough to leap over tall buildings with a single bound. At thirty, maybe a couple of one-story houses. How far back was that? Considering his sore muscles and aching joints, he was sure it must be eighty or ninety years ago.
He'd been working too long for the National Underwater & Marine Agency and Admiral Sandecker.
It was time for a career move, something not as rigorous, with shorter hours. Maybe weaving hats out of palm fronds on a Tahiti beach, or something that stimulated the mind, like being a d
oor-to-door contraceptive salesman. He shook off the silly thoughts brought on by weariness and set the automated control system to ALL STOP.
A quick radio transmission to Dempsey on board Ice Hunter, informing him that Pitt was closing down the engines and requesting a crew to come aboard and take over the cruise ship's operation, and then he picked up the phone and called Admiral Sandecker over a satellite link to give him an update on the situation.
The receptionist at NUMA headquarters put him straight through on Sandecker's private line. Though they were a third of the globe apart, Pitt's time zone in the Antarctic was only one hour ahead of Sandecker's in Washington, D.C.
"Good evening, Admiral.
"About time I heard from you."
"Things have been hectic."
"I had to get the story secondhand from Dempsey on how you and Giordino found and saved the cruise ship."
"I'll be happy to fill you in with the details."
"Have you rendezvoused with Ice Hunter?" Sandecker was short on greetings.
