Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  “If you have to wait for these people from the institute to come up from California, that could take hours,” said Joselyn.

  “Trust me. They will know who to contact up here.”

  “Shouldn’t the sheriff come out and get you?”

  “No. Just do as I ask. Please.”

  “I will.”

  “If I do not come back immediately, it may be because I do not want to spread further contamination. Not to worry,” he told her. “I will move away from the source and wait for help. No one should be allowed to enter or leave the dock until the decontamination team arrives. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He flipped on the flashlight and checked it. Then looked at her one more time. “If there is no problem, I will be back as quickly as I can.”

  He headed down the ramp toward the slips farther out in the harbor. In his hand he held the list of the fishing vessels’ names printed in pencil by Joselyn on a scrap of paper she found in the van during their ride to the docks: Martha’s Desire, Skip Jack, and Float Me a Loan.

  Joselyn stood on the dock, watching as he disappeared into the darkness beyond the reach of the big vapor lamp on the power pole overhead. When she could no longer see him, she began to pace the dock and wrapped her arms against her sides, hugging herself against the chill of the damp night air. Every few seconds, she would stop and strain her eyes for any glimpse of Gideon among the forest of masts and sea of boats. Less than a minute had passed since he left the gate and already it seemed like forever.

  She looked at Gideon’s van parked at the curb and tried to remember if they had left the door unlocked. If not, she would have to find a pay phone.

  She looked at her watch again. She was worried that he would get lost out on the labyrinth of floating docks. She wondered why he hadn’t put on the protective yellow suit before he headed out onto the docks.

  She tried to take refuge in the fact that he knew what he was doing, that if there was anything out there, the Geiger counter would pick it up. By now, if there was radiation on the docks, the instrument should be recording something.

  She waited a few more seconds, then looked at the van. She checked her watch. Three minutes had elapsed. She could hear nothing except the creaking of the docks, the straining of mooring lines, and the occasional clang of hardware or the gong of a small bell somewhere in the distance as the boats bobbed in their berths.

  THE DOCKS FORMED a labyrinth of dead ends out on the water. Anchored in place by old wooden pilings, they rose and fell with the tide. What light existed was cast by the few boats that were live-aboards, inhabited year-round by their occupants. For the most part, the floating docks were lost in pools of darkness.

  Gideon’s flashlight had begun to flicker; perhaps the batteries were bad. He stopped for a second and checked the Geiger counter. It was still reading only mild background radiation. He tried to get his bearings and wondered if maybe he made a wrong turn at one of the intersections where the floating docks joined. He seemed to be mired in a sea of tall masts from sailboats and large, extravagant craft, some of them more than fifty feet in length. Most of the boats were dark, though in the distance he could hear the sound of a television set and see muted light from a salon belowdecks. It gave him a sense of confidence that at least he wasn’t totally alone on the docks.

  He looked back toward the port building. Situated as he was, behind a row of boats, he couldn’t see the gate where he had left Joselyn, though he could see the halo of light from the large overhead streetlamp.

  He checked his watch. He had six minutes to find the boats or else get back to her before she called the institute. He tapped the flashlight against one of the pilings, and it flickered a little brighter.

  He slung the yellow neoprene suit with its hood over his free shoulder. He wouldn’t put it on until he had to. The hooded visor limited visibility and would quickly fog up with exertion. If he stepped off the dock in the dark, it would fill with water quickly and take him to the bottom.

  Gideon moved as fast as he could down the dock, counting boats as he went, straining his eyes and searching the distance. When he got to eighteen, the beam of his light ran out of concrete and suddenly reflected off of water. He’d come to the end. There were no sport fishing boats on this dock, and none of the vessel names he was looking for. He had to go back.

  He checked his watch. Five minutes to go. Nothing on the Geiger counter. Gideon began to run, stepping over power lines that fed heat to the boats and kept them from freezing in winter. At a dead run, he jumped the small cracks between the floating sections of dock and in less than a minute found himself at the main crossing dock.

  Now he could look back up the dock and see Joselyn. She was still at the gate, though now she was pacing, not looking in his direction. He tried to catch her attention with the flashlight, but it was flickering, the batteries quickly dying. He turned it off to save power, then looked in the other direction out into the dark distance. The docks seemed to stretch forever before disappearing into inky blackness. Beyond, he could see the lights of houses on Brown Island, tiny and flickering in the cold night like stars in the heavens.

  For a moment he hesitated, wondering if it wouldn’t be wise to return to Joselyn up on the docks. He could get batteries for the flashlight and tell her to give him more time. The thought died in his mind as he transferred the strap of the Geiger counter from one shoulder to the other. The instrument suddenly picked up a slow rhythmic click as it cleared his body. The reading was coming from somewhere out in the darkness, toward the end of the dock.

  BY NOW JOSELYN was freezing. She kept a constant eye on her watch. If he didn’t return in four minutes, she would make the call. She assumed Gideon was looking at his own watch, that he knew how much time had elapsed and that if he didn’t find anything he would come back before ten minutes were up. That was a big assumption, and Joselyn knew it.

  She looked at the gate leading down the ramp and toyed with the latch. Maybe she should join him on the docks? She hesitated. He had told her to wait. The tall Dutchman seemed to know what he was doing. If she went out there, she would only end up putting both of them in danger. She was torn. Joselyn wanted to help but couldn’t. She was getting more angry with herself by the minute. Why hadn’t she seen through Belden? He was the kind of man every woman should be able to read like a book: full of hype, full of himself, full of lies. God knows she’d had enough clients who had lied to her over the years. She should have seen Belden coming in a minute. He was too good to be true.

  Suddenly Joselyn realized what it was that she liked so much about the tall Dutchman. She had known him for little more than twenty-four hours, but the difference was like day and night. Gideon van Ry was the very antithesis of Dean Belden: self-confident without being arrogant. He took the time to explain to her what he was doing and why. He didn’t tell her what to do and try to manipulate in the way that many men do but reasoned with quiet persuasion, the kind of logic that could not be denied. It was not his looks so much as the way he treated her that made her suddenly wish he was standing back here on the docks next to her again.

  She strained her eyes for any glimpse of the moving flashlight out on the docks. “Where is he?” Without thinking she spoke the words out loud to herself and heard the echo of her voice off the wooden siding of the port building. It was followed an instant later by what sounded like leather scraping gravel. She turned and looked toward the building, but couldn’t see a thing. She was bathed in light from the vapor lamp, and the building was lost in shadows. She shaded her eyes but still couldn’t see anything.

  “Hello.” She waited an instant. Nothing. “Is somebody there?”

  No one responded. She was like a child in the dark; her imagination was now playing tricks.

  She turned and looked back down the dock for Gideon. He was out there somewhere. She checked her watch; two more minutes and she would make the call.

  THE REGISTER ON the Geiger cou
nter was now giving up a steady stream of clicks, getting louder and more constant as Gideon moved down the dock toward open water. There were sleek pleasure craft, gleaming Grand Banks and Island Gypsies, a large Ocean Alexander that rested at the dock and looked like the Queen Mary. There were private yachts that Gideon could not even dream of owning. As he moved farther out on the docks, they gave way to small craft, working boats with wooden hulls stained by rusted bolts and aging fittings. The floating docks changed from concrete to wood, some of the planks split and stained by oil. The neatly coiled power cables disappeared, as electric power was no longer present to fuel the boats’ heaters. Most of the vessels were small, under forty feet in length, many of them with open cockpits and large live-bait tanks centered in the stern.

  The meter on the Geiger counter was now registering a virtual constant flow of ionizing radiation. Gideon had to turn the volume down to hear himself think.

  He was in little danger, at least for the moment. There were three principal means of protecting himself: time, distance, and shielding. He had the protective C-suit, which would provide shielding if he needed it, so now he had to factor in the other two—time and distance. Looking at the gauge on the Geiger counter, Gideon estimated that he should spend no more than four, possibly five, minutes in the area.

  The radiation seemed to get more intense as he moved toward the end of the dock. Now, even in the darkness, he could see the last four boats, each tied neatly in its slip. Across the long end of the dock on the outside, as if crossing the T, was a larger commercial fishing boat, a steel vessel that Gideon estimated to be close to fifty feet long.

  The first boat in the slip to his right caught Gideon’s eye. It was backed in and tied securely with a spring line. On its stern the name in stenciled black letters: FLOAT ME A LOAN.

  Gideon spun around and quickly looked at the small boat in the slip across from it: MARTHA’S DESIRE. And next to it a small vessel, barely twenty feet long, the name SKIP JACK lettered on the bow.

  By now the Geiger counter was clicking incessantly, its meter tripping at times off the top end of the scale as Gideon moved it around over the surface of the dock. There were significant traces of radioactive contamination of the wooden dock itself. Gideon knew that the levels of radiation being recorded on the Geiger counter were not coming from plutonium. There was something else on the boat, something emitting deadly levels of radiation, which compounded the dangers of the device. He did not want to stay here long.

  He moved the instrument toward the stern of Float Me a Loan. He was surprised when it failed to measure any increase in the count. Gideon moved along the side of the boat on the slip and the reading on the Geiger counter actually diminished.

  He moved back toward the center of the dock and tapped the flashlight on wood trying to obtain light to read the meter. He got a flicker, a weak beam of light, and moved toward the other two boats. Neither vessel seemed to register higher readings as he moved toward the slips and between them. Then the needle soared as Gideon came back onto the main dock and took a few steps toward the end. He looked up. There in front of him was the steel fishing trawler, her name in chipped and faded paint on the bow: DANCING LADY.

  JOSELYN WAS FREEZING. It had begun to drizzle, and she’d taken refuge under the eaves of the post office building. She strained for any glimpse of Gideon out on the dock but could see nothing except a forest of aluminum masts swaying in the quickening breeze, their halyard lines clanking against metal as the boats rocked. She had been here long enough to get the feel of the islands. A weather front was moving in.

  She looked at her watch. Twelve minutes had now elapsed. She had given him two extra minutes. She prayed that he would come back, that she wouldn’t have to make the call. She wanted to shout, to pull him back.

  Joselyn was beginning to feel incredible guilt. There was no way she could have known Belden was involved with nuclear weapons. Still, she had allowed him to use her name and the address of her law office, and in this way Gideon had been bound up in Belden’s web.

  Now whatever was out on that dock was Joselyn’s fault. She had, through her own stupidity and greed, brought whatever it was into the quiet tranquility of Friday Harbor.

  She checked her watch once more, then reluctantly headed toward the van and the cellular phone. She turned one last time in hopes that maybe she would see him coming up the dock. Her mind was filled with thoughts of regret. I’ll give him one more minute, she thought. Then I’ll give him a piece of my mind. He had no right to put himself in danger. There were people who were paid to do this, people who worked for the government. The thought had barely entered her mind when regret followed it. She was thinking of these as nonentities, people who worked in dangerous jobs to protect the rest of us. They had families, too, people who cared for and loved them. She could feel the pulse in her throat and the pounding in her ears. Sensory perceptions were dulled by the feelings that raged within her so that she failed to comprehend the movement of shadow behind her, just beyond her shoulder at the corner of the building.

  GIDEON STEPPED OVER the railing near the stern of the Dancing Lady and onto her deck. A huge reel of netting occupied the fantail, and overhead two large booms forked high in the air and flared to either side of the vessel.

  The meter on the Geiger counter spiked as Gideon moved forward around the wheelhouse. He took two more steps toward the forecastle area up on the bow, all the while watching the meter closely. The Geiger counter was now pulling in consistently high radiation readings. The audible clicks were rapid, constant, and loud, even with the volume turned down. Something had happened on this part of the deck that had turned it into a hot zone. If the device was armed with a beryllium-polonium core, the radiation readings he was picking up from the boat were from something else. There was something besides the nuclear core with that bomb.

  Gideon backed away, turned off the flashlight and set it on the deck, then began to put on the yellow C-suit. It was arranged like a jumpsuit. Gideon stepped into the pants, then pulled the top up and slid his arms into the sleeves. After he wrestled it over his shoulders, he zipped it up the front, then finally put the hood over his head, sealing it with strips of Velcro around the neck.

  The suit was not one of the more advanced models with a self-contained air supply under pressure. Now breathing became an exercise in endurance. Every breath had to pass through the fine micron filters that were built into the face mask. Carbon dioxide had to be expelled and oxygen forced in. Gideon began to sweat, and the visor in the face mask began to fog.

  There was a single hatch cover, closed and latched on the forecastle deck. Whatever was in there, or had been in there, was the source of radiation. Gideon was sure of it.

  He looked down, searching for the flashlight he had laid on the deck. Visibility through the mask was now a problem. There was no peripheral vision at all. He stopped over and felt around with his hands on the deck and finally located the flashlight. He pressed the button to turn it on and got nothing, then tapped it hard on the stainless steel railing in an effort to revive it.

  That was when he heard it: a metallic clank that echoed his own, like something hitting against the hull of the boat. He stopped in his tracks, stood still, and looked back at the wheelhouse. He couldn’t tell the direction from which the sound came. He struck the railing with the flashlight again and within three seconds heard a reply. This time it was sharper, more pronounced, metal-on-metal coming from the aft part of the vessel somewhere belowdecks. On the back side of the wheelhouse, facing the aft deck, was a cabin door. He guessed that this led down to the engine room and whatever accommodations passed for living quarters.

  Quickly he moved to the cabin door, opened it, and shined the feeble beam of the flashlight on the Geiger counter. It was registering only half of the radiation he’d picked up on the forecastle deck. Here he was shielded by the steel structure of the wheelhouse. Inside was a ship’s ladder, leading down into the bilge and engine room.

&
nbsp; Gideon cast the beam of the light down in the direction of the ladder and peered into what seemed a bottomless pit. Between the faltering batteries of the flashlight and the fogged face mask, he was nearly blind. He gripped the railing on the ladder, stepped over the threshold, and began to climb down. He went down only one step and turned, then felt around with his hand on the inside of the bulkhead near the door. If there was a light switch, it would be here. He found it mounted on the bulkhead and turned it. Nothing.

  Someone had either turned off the gen-set, or else it had run out of fuel. Without a generator or shore power, there were no lights. Gideon knew just enough about boats to know this was trouble. If there were no lights, there was no power for the bilge pumps. Vessels always took on water somewhere, slow leaks in the packing around the drive shaft and through the hull fittings. Depending on how long the power had been out, the bilge and lower holds could be filling with water.

  Being blinded and weighted down by the suit could be a problem. He looked down the dark ladder and then proceeded slowly, a step at a time. He held the flashlight out in front of him, not that it was much use.

  A dense cloud of blue vapor danced in the beam from his light and settled just under the overhead deck. Gideon put the Geiger counter up toward it and took a reading. The needle on the gauge didn’t move. It was holding steady in the low to mid ranges, nothing as hot as the forecastle deck and the sealed hold up front.

  Tentatively Gideon broke the seal on the Velcro around his neck and lifted the lower flap of the hood. What he breathed was not fresh air, but it was more cool than the CO2 trapped under the stifling hood. It was tinged with a foul stench of diesel fumes.

  He lifted the hood off his head and directed the beam of his flashlight down the ladder. It shimmered off the surface of oily water.

  “Hello. Is anybody here?” Gideon’s voice echoed off the walls of the steel chamber.

  Instantly the reply came, again in the clang of metal against the steel hull. It emanated from somewhere behind him toward the stern.