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Eric interrupted. “People with weaker immune systems would have died throughout the day, and, as we saw, everyone was dressed to party.”
“Same thing if a poison was applied to surfaces around the ship like handrails and doorknobs,” Murph concluded. “The killer couldn’t guarantee that they would get to everyone.”
“So you think it was the food?” Julia asked, unable to find fault in their logic.
“Has to be. Juan didn’t eat anything while he was on board, and I bet she didn’t eat tonight either.” Murphy jerked his head at the glass partition separating the lab from isolation.
“To be on the safe side,” Eric said, “we also ran some numbers in case there was an airborne toxin trapped in the engine room. Even if the air was saturated, the volume of water pouring in when Juan cut his suit would have cut the viral load or toxicity levels down from parts per million to parts per hundreds of billions.”
Murph crossed his arms. “Besides, it’s been five hours since the Chairman’s exposure. From what Eddie related about your brief interrogation of your patient aboard the ship, her friends visited her just an hour or two before they were hit. Juan and the hottie are fine.”
Julia had already come to the same conclusion concerning Juan, but she wasn’t convinced these two were right about Jannike. Diagnosis was about dogged research, checking and double-checking lab results, until you knew what you were faced with. Just because she hadn’t found a virus in Janni’s blood, spinal fluid, saliva, or urine didn’t mean it wasn’t lurking in her kidney or liver or some other tissue Julia hadn’t tested yet, waiting silently to explode out and overwhelm Janni’s immune system and then move on to its next potential victims, the Oregon’s crew.
She shook her head, “Sorry, boys, but that’s not good enough for me. I think you’re right about Juan, but Jannike stays in isolation until I am one hundred percent certain she isn’t infected.”
“You’re the doctor, Doc, but it’s a waste of time. She isn’t.”
“It’s my time to waste, Mark.” She pushed back on her wheeled lab stool and rolled across the tiled floor to an intercom mounted on the wall. She hit the button. “Juan, can you hear me?”
Inside the ward, Cabrillo jerked upright in the chair. Rather then dwell on the fact his body could be harboring a deadly infection, he’d fallen asleep. He stood and threw Julia a thumbs-up and then waved at Murph and Stone. He gathered up the spare batteries used to keep his hazmat suit functioning for so long.
“You’re cleared,” Julia said. “You can head into the air lock for a decontamination shower. Go ahead and leave the suit inside. I’ll dispose of it later.”
It took fifteen minutes to cycle the air lock to the isolation ward and for Juan to stand under a thundering shower of bleach and antiviral agents before it was safe for him to hop into the lab.
“Wow, you’re a mite gamey,” Julia said, wrinkling her nose.
“You spend that much time sweati
ng in one of those damned suits and see how you smell.”
Julia had already taken the precaution of having one of Cabrillo’s artificial limbs sent down from his cabin. She handed it over, and he settled it onto the stump below his right knee. He gave it a few experimental flexes, then lowered his trouser cuff. “There,” he said, standing. “Nothing a long shower and a good bottle of Scotch won’t cure.” He turned to Eric and Mark, who still crowded near the lab’s entrance. “How’d you make out, Murph?” With his suit’s radio damaged during the engine-room flood, the Chairman had been out of the loop since being brought aboard.
“I salvaged about thirty percent of the ship’s computer archives, including everything about her last voyage.” He held up a hand to forestall Cabrillo’s next question. “I haven’t gone through anything yet. Eric and I were helping figure out if you and that piece of eye candy in there had been infected.”
Juan nodded, although he didn’t think he and their guest should have been their top priority. “Going through those logs is now job one for you two. I want to know everything that took place aboard that ship since this voyage began. I don’t care how trivial.”
“I saw you talking to our patient earlier,” Julia interrupted. “How is she doing?”
“Tired and scared,” Juan replied. “She has no idea what happened to everyone, and I didn’t really want to press the issue. Her emotional state is pretty fragile. She did tell me something that might be pertinent. The ship was on a charter for a group called the Responsivists.”
“What’s this about Responsivists?” This came from Max Hanley. He strode into the lab like a bull in a china shop. Before anyone could answer, he crossed to Juan and shook his hand. “Scuttlebutt around the ship says you were out of isolation. How are you doing?”
It never ceased to amaze Cabrillo how quickly information passed through the crew, even at—he glanced at his watch—four-thirty in the morning. “Glad to be alive,” he said warmly.
“That was a hell of a thing.” Max grinned. “Never seen anything like it in my life. You came out of that funnel like a cork out of a bottle of cheap champagne.”
“I managed to climb almost to the top,” Juan said. “But then I got jammed up. I couldn’t budge, and the water was rising faster and faster. Rather than deflate my suit, I inflated it as far is it would go, to completely block the exhaust stack. Air forced up the funnel by the flooding in the engine room did the rest.”
“Looked like one wild ride.”
“How high did I go anyway?”
“At least twenty feet, and you cleared the rail by fifteen.” Max then seemed to remember his original question. “You said something about Responsivists?”
“Yeah, Miss Dahl mentioned the ship was on a charter for them. From the Philippines to Athens.”
“Piraeus, actually,” Eric corrected automatically. “Athens is inland. Its port is the city of Piraeus.”
