Shock Wave(45)

Do our lab geniuses have any suspects on this one'?" inquired Pitt.

"Not on this end," replied Sandecker. "We were hoping the biologists on board Ice Hunter might have come up with something."

"If they have, they're keeping it a secret from me."

"Do you have any notions on the subject?" asked Sandecker. There was a careful, almost cautious probing in his voice. Something juicy that I can give the hounds from the news media who are parked in our lobby nearly two hundred strong."

A shadow of a smile touched Pitt's eyes. There was a private understanding between them that nothing of importance was ever discussed over a satellite phone. Calls that went through the atmosphere were as vulnerable to eavesdropping as an old farm-belt party line. The mere mention of the news media meant that Pitt was to dodge the issue. "They're drooling for a good story, are they?"

"The tabloids are already touting a ship of the dead from the Antarctic triangle."

"Are you serious?"

"I'll be happy to fax you the stories."

"I'm afraid they'll be disappointed by my hypothesis."

"Care to share it with me?"

There was a pause. "I think it might be an unknown virus that is carried by air currents."

"A virus," Sandecker repeated mechanically. "Not very original, I must say."

"I realize it has a queer sound to it," said Pitt, "about as logical as counting the holes in an acoustical ceiling when you're in the dentist's chair."

If Sandecker was puzzled by Pitt's nonsensical ramblings, he didn't act it. He merely sighed in resignation as if he was used to chatter. "I think we'd better leave the investigation to the scientists. They appear to have a better grip on the situation than you do."



"Forgive me, Admiral, I'm not thinking straight."

"You sound like a man wandering in a fog. As soon as Dempsey sends a crew on board, you head for Ice Hunter and get some sleep."

Thank you for being so understanding."

"Simply a matter of appreciating the situation. We'll speak later." A click, and Admiral Sandecker was gone.



Deirdre Dorsett went out onto the bridge wing and waved wildly as she recognized Maeve Fletcher standing at the railing of Ice Hunter. Suddenly free of the torment of being the only person alive on a ship filled with cadavers, she laughed in sheer unaffected exhilaration, her voice ringing across the narrowing breach between the two ships.

"Maeve!" she cried.

Maeve stared across the water, searching the decks of the cruise ship for the female calling her name.

Then her eyes locked on the figure standing on the bridge wing, waving. For half a minute she stared, bewildered. Then as she recognized Deirdre, her face took on the expression of someone walking in a graveyard at night who was suddenly tapped on, the shoulder.

"Deirdre?" she shouted the name questioningly.

"Is that any way to greet someone close who's returned from the dead?"

"You . . . here . . . alive?"

"Oh, Maeve, you can't know how happy I am to see you alive."

"I'm shocked to see you too," said Maeve, slowly taking rein of her senses.

"Were you injured while ashore?" Deirdre asked as if concerned.

"A mild case of frostbite, nothing more." Maeve gestured to the Ice Hunter crewmen who were lowering a launch. "I'll hitch a ride and meet you at the foot of the gangway. '

"I'll be waiting." Deirdre smiled to herself and stepped back into the wheelhouse, where Pitt was talking over the radio to Dempsey. He nodded and smiled at her before signing off.

"Dempsey tells me Maeve is on her way over."

Deirdre nodded. "She was surprised to see me."

"A fortunate coincidence," said Pitt, noting for the first time that Deirdre was nearly as tall as he, "that two friends are the only members of the crew still alive."

Deirdre shrugged. "We're hardly what you'd call friends."



He stared curiously into brown eyes that glinted from the sun's rays that shone through the forward window. "You dislike each other?"

"A matter of bad blood, Mr. Pitt," she said matter-of-factly. "You see, despite our different surnames, Maeve Fletcher and I are sisters."



The sea was thankfully calm when Ice Hunter, trailed by Polar Queen, slipped under the sheltering arm of Duse Bay and dropped anchor just offshore from the British research station. From his bridge, Dempsey, instructed the skeleton crew on board the cruise ship to moor her a proper distance away so the two ships could swing on their anchors with the tides without endangering each other.

Still awake and barely steady on his feet, Pitt had not obeyed Sandecker's order that he have a peaceful sleep. There were still a hundred and one details to be attended to after he turned over operation of Polar Queen to Dempsey's crew. First he put Deirdre Dorsett in the boat with Maeve and sent them over to Ice Hunter. Then he spent the better part of the sunlit night making a thorough search of the ship, finding the dead he had missed on his brief walk-through earlier. He closed down the ship's heating system to help preserve the bodies for later examination, and only when Polar Queen was safely anchored under the protecting arm of the bay did he hand over command and return to the NUMA research ship. Giordino and Dempsey waited in the wheelhouse to greet and congratulate him. Giordino took one look at Pitt's exhausted condition and quickly poured him a cup of coffee from a nearby pot that was kept brewing at all times in the wheelhouse. Pitt gratefully accepted, sipped the steaming brew and stared over the rim of the cup toward a small craft with an outboard motor that was chugging toward the ship.