Giant petrels, the vultures of the sea, began arriving to feast upon the dead penguins. Majestic as they soared' gracefully through the air, they were merciless scavengers of meat from any source. As Pitt and the others watched in disgust, the huge birds quickly disemboweled their lifeless prey, forcing their beaks inside the penguin carcasses until their necks and heads were red with viscera and gore.
"Not exactly a sight I care to remember," said Pitt.
Van Fleet was stunned. He turned to Maeve, his eyes unbelieving. "Now that I see the tragedy with my own eyes I find it hard to accept so many of the poor creatures dying within such a concentrated space in the same time period."
"Whatever the phenomenon," said Maeve, "I'm certain it also caused the death of my two passengers and the ship's crewman who brought us ashore."
Van Fleet knelt and studied one of the penguins. "No indication of injury, no obvious signs of disease or poison. The body appears fat and healthy."
Maeve leaned over his shoulder. "The only nonconformity that I found was the slight protrusion of the eyes."
"Yes, I see what you mean. The eyeballs seem half again as large."
Pitt looked at Maeve thoughtfully. "When I was carrying you to the cave, you said the three who died did so under mysterious circumstances."
She nodded. "Some strange force assaulted our senses, unseen and nonphysical. I have no idea what it was. But I can tell you that for at least a full five minutes it felt like our brains were going to explode. The pain was excruciating."
"From the blue coloring on the bodies you showed me in the rendering shed." said Van Fleet, "the cause of death appears to be cardiac arrest."
Pitt stared over the scene of so much annihilation. "Not possible that three humans, countless thousands of penguins and fifty or more leopard seals all expired together from a heart condition."
"There must be an interrelating cause," said Maeve.
"Any connection with the huge school of dolphins we found out in the Weddell Sea or the pod of seals washed up just across the channel on Vega Island, all deader than petrified wood?" Pitt asked Van Fleet.
The marine biologist shrugged. "Too early to tell without further study. There does, however, appear to be a definite link."
"Have you examined them in your ship's laboratory?" asked Maeve.
"I've dissected two seals and three dolphins and found no hook 1 can hang a respectable theory on.
The primary consistency seems to be internal hemorrhaging."
"Dolphins, seals, birds and humans," Pitt said softly. "They're all vulnerable to this scourge."
Van Fleet nodded solemnly. "Not to mention the vast numbers of squid and sea turtles that have washed ashore throughout the Pacific and the millions of dead fish found floating off Peru and Ecuador in the past two months."
"If it continues unstopped there is no predicting how many species of life above and under the sea will become extinct." Pitt turned his gaze toward the sky at the distant sound of the helicopter. "So what do we know except that our mystery plague kills every living thing in air and liquid without discrimination?"
"All within a matter of minutes," added Maeve.
Van Fleet came to his feet. He appeared badly shaken. "If we don't determine whether the cause is from natural disturbances or human intervention of some kind, and do it damned quick, we may be looking at oceans devoid of all life."
"Not just oceans. You're forgetting this thing also kills on land," Maeve reminded him.
"I don't even want to dwell on that horror."
For a long minute no one said a word, each trying to comprehend the potential catastrophe that lay somewhere in and beyond the sea. Finally, Pitt broke the silence.
"It would appear," he said, a pensive look on his craggy face, "that we have our work cut out for us."
Pitt studied the screen of a large monitor that displayed a computer-enhanced satellite image of the Antarctic Peninsula and the surrounding islands. He leaned back, rested his eyes a moment and then stared through the tinted glass on the navigation bridge of Ice Hunter as the sun broke through the dissipating clouds. The time was eleven o'clock on a summer's evening in the Southern Hemisphere, and daylight remained almost constant.
The passengers from Polar Queen had been fed and bedded down in comfortable quarters charitably provided by the crew and scientists, who doubled up. Doc Greenberg examined each and every one and found no permanent damage or trauma. He was also relieved to find only a few cases of mild colds but no evidence of pneumonia. In the ship's biolaboratory, two decks above the ship's hospital, Van Fleet, assisted by Maeve Fletcher, was performing postmortem examinations on the penguins and seals they had airlifted from Seymour Island in the helicopter. The bodies of the three dead were packed in ice until they could be turned over to a professional pathologist.