The Effort

by Claire Holroyde

“June,” Ben repeated. “As in this June?”

  The Professor wrapped his cane on the thin carpeting and yelled back.

  “Yes, this June! You must initiate your plan. Now!”

  Ben took a breath and made several mental calculations with the speed and accuracy of a pocket calculator. He told the room they needed a February 1 launch for a spacecraft with solar power. Both of the spaceport directors protested at the same time.

  “Is it even physically possible?”

  “We’ll find that out, won’t we?” Ben said. “Now set the clocks.”

  FOUR

  The Arctic West Expedition

  Seward, Alaska

  August 8

  T-minus 177 days to launch

  SLEEP GRANTED JACK a reset. Worrying was tiresome, after all, and he needed a break from it. The curtain to Gustavo’s top bunk was still fully closed, so Jack quietly grabbed his towel, toiletry bag, and a pair of flip-flops. The shower in the passageway bathroom was the size of a small closet and had a printout taped up on the wall with instructions. All passengers had to make do with a “sea shower” no more than once a day using only two bursts from the showerhead: one to get wet and one to rinse. Jack understood that heated, drinkable water on demand was still a luxury to the majority of the world’s population. On top of that, he didn’t mind getting dirty and smelling like the mammal he was; it was another form of freedom and truth.

  At 0730 hours, freshly shaved with his short, light hair gelled up in stylish tufts, Jack found the cafeteria-style galley. Crewmembers and scientists sat in the mess deck at long tables chatting and chewing. It was easy to spot which group was which: the Coasties wore navy sweatshirts or work shirts, and the scientists sported plaid button-downs, jeans, facial hair, thumb rings, and fleece vests.

  As a guest passenger, Jack was the odd man out. He helped himself to a stack of chocolate-chip pancakes and sat alone. Flipping open the welcome aboard packet, Jack read an introduction by the ship’s own Captain Weber:

  Welcome aboard Healy. Please review the enclosed materials. The inherent hazards of life at sea require that we all understand and follow the basic safety practices which are described…

  Jack skimmed the rest. Mostly, he looked for instructions on getting access to his Healy email account. Once the ship reached 75°N latitude, bandwidth would be so limited that only the bridge would be authorized to access the internet. The computer labs in the lounges would only provide email through Healy’s server onboard.

  The Coasties and scientists surrounding Jack made more haste with their breakfasts. Their mornings were booked with scheduled activities listed on the plan of the day posted throughout the ship. Safety drills occupied the crew and one unlucky man-overboard dummy named Ralph. The scientists were to split their numbers in half to inventory equipment lockers and lab spaces while also testing the cranes on deck. Jack was left to his own devices.

  The weather was warmer than he expected; high sixties, set to creep up to 73°F, according to plan of the day posts. Jack stuffed his hat and gloves into the pockets of his parka and thought it unusually warm for Alaska. Or maybe not so unusual, considering that the previous year brought the hottest global temperatures on record by the largest margin to date. The current year was already set to break more records. Jack often remembered the allegory of the frog plopped in water that was slowly brought to a boil—no cause for alarm until you’re already served up on a plate with garlic and lemon.

  The mist had burned off, and Jack could see Seward’s mountains clearly. He walked aft and back again to the bow, checking different vantage points with the viewfinder of his camera. There were more dead eagles in the water, many more, and yet the air was full of healthy, obnoxious gulls that swooped and drafted large ships in the bay.

  Jack craned his head up to the three boxlike structures rising from Healy’s hull.

  The structure closest to the bow housed living quarters: staterooms, lounges, mess deck, gym, laundry, and so on. It was the widest and tallest of the three structures with small, evenly spaced portholes dotting its sides all the way up to a crown of windows and satellite antennae at the bridge, Healy’s central command. Sprouting from the bridge, like a mast and crow’s nest, was a small lookout. No doubt those windows afforded the best panoramic view.

  Jack ducked into the closest ladder well and encountered two Coasties loping down single file.

  “Wrong way, sir,” one of them called out.

  “What?”

  “Yah have to go to the starboard side if yah want to go up.”

  The reasoning was immediately apparent as they squeezed past each other. Jack climbed to the bridge four levels up at the height of a six-story building. He stood and gaped at the view over the tip of Healy’s bow and onto the slate-colored horizon. A crewmember approached and introduced herself as Ensign Sokolov. Stocky, formal but helpful, she offered a tour of the bridge that Jack gladly accepted.

  The other crewmembers were all patient, and each took a moment to give their names, ranks, titles, and assigned tasks. They tried to explain various functions of a long control console with clunky buttons, lights, and radar screens. Captain Weber even walked over to give a handshake. He was tall and lean, like Jack, but with a chiseled profile that belonged on Mount Rushmore. His eyes were blue as worn denim, but unfocused with distraction. After excusing himself, the captain walked up to the windows of the bridge and lifted a pair of binoculars. He didn’t look out to the horizon but down at the dead eagles floating in the water.

  Jack’s pager sounded. He pulled it from his waistband and squinted at the display.

  “What’s this code mean?” he asked Ensign Sokolov.

  “Abandon ship.”

  “We’re still in the harbor!”

  Her eyebrows lifted as she stated that safety drills were explained in the welcome aboard packet and his assigned emergency location was listed on his new passenger card.

  “Yes, it is,” Jack agreed, pulling the card from his back pocket and using it to salute her.

  The abandon ship locker was halfway up Healy’s starboard side. A group of scientists were gathered by the doorway. Jack recognized the woman he had spoken with in the science lounge. She had light brown skin in the true light of day and barely came up to his shoulder in height.

  “Might as well introduce ourselves,” Jack said, and approached with a smile.

  He studied her oval face with rounded cheeks, nose, and chin. Her mouth had soft, mauve-colored lips, as if lightly stained by red wine. Sunglasses and gloves concealed her eyes and ring finger.

  “Maya,” she said, after a pause. “Dr. Maya Gutiérrez. And this is one of my bunkmates, Dr. Nancy Stevens.”

  She motioned to a tall woman standing beside her with paint-spatter freckles and red hair that curled and fluffed around her jawline.

  “I’m Jack,” he said, shaking their hands. “Mr. Jack. Definitely not doctor.”

  A Coastie holding a clipboard walked to the center of the group and called out above the wind.

  “Good morning, life raft number five!”

  They mumbled good morning and each raised their hands when he took attendance.

  “Gustavo Wayãpi?”

  Jack swiveled his head around but didn’t see his bunkmate.

  “Gustavo Wayãpi going once? Going twice?”

  The Coastie made a mark by Gustavo’s name. After roll call, he explained Healy’s abandon ship procedure: what supplies each individual had to bring along, what to wear, and how food would be rationed. Jack scrolled through his email, trying not to count all the new messages from his mother. He was subtle, but the Coastie was watching his audience carefully.

  “You gonna remember all this?” he asked Jack.

  “It’s okay,” Jack assured him. “I can’t die. I’m an only child.”

  The man wasn’t amused.

  “Doubt your mother can save you out here.”

  “You haven’t met my mother!” Jack said, but he tucked away
his phone and made a better show of listening.

  “Any questions before we get you all fitted for immersion suits?”

  The Coastie was quick to add that no one knew why the eagles were dying, but the EPA had been alerted days ago. Dr. Nancy Stevens raised her gloved hand.

  “What if the ship needs to turn around?” she asked. “Because of the comet?”

  The Coastie asked Nancy to repeat her question before looking at the rest of them for assistance. He hadn’t heard of any dark comet, but the scientists wouldn’t let him off the hook so easily. The Coastie finally radioed his supervisor, who joined the group ten minutes later with a reply that wasn’t an answer.

  “We hear not much is known ’cause they just spotted the thing,” the supervisor explained.

  The thing still didn’t have a name, only the label UD3.

  “And this is Healy’s last scientific mission,” he added, visibly affected, “so we’re gonna see it to the end.”

  Healy’s Arctic West expeditions had been recently defunded. Climate change wasn’t considered a factual threat by many in the administration. Those who did accept the science still understood that the Coast Guard’s budget had to be slashed where it could in order to fund a multibillion-dollar wall along the country’s southern border.

  As life raft number fivers peeled off to head toward the next station of the abandon ship drill, Jack sidled up to Maya. Here was a new person in a totally new environment, and Jack lived for assignments that dropped him like a paratrooper into unfamiliar territory that required his full focus. Nancy looked back to her bunkmate with an arched red eyebrow, but Maya gave a subtle nod for her to go on ahead. Jack was not unaware of this exchange. Men were trouble, no doubt about it. Jack was nothing if not self-aware and avoided sex with women near his apartment in Brooklyn because there could be no exit plan. (Of course, he still had occasional, messy slip-ups when alcohol or a nostalgic birthday was involved; drunken, nostalgic birthdays were always calamitous.)

  Jack meant to play it safe on this assignment. My stash of emergency condoms is exactly that: for emergencies, Jack promised Nancy in his head, because there can be no exit plan on a ship in the middle of the Arctic. While Jack loved the intensity of new friendships and infatuations, the maintenance of long-term relationships hadn’t proven worth the effort—not yet, anyway.

  “Can I take your picture?” he asked.

  Maya immediately shook her head, sweeping her black ponytail across her shoulder blades.

  “I hate cameras.”

  Jack mimed a punch to the gut. He would have made a great class clown if he had ever felt the need for attention. Maya’s upper lip curled under her teeth as they caught up with the rest of the group: a barely suppressed smile.

  Immersion suits were stored in the helicopter hangar at the top of Healy’s second boxlike structure. The hangar complex was the largest room on the ship and housed two helicopters parked by a folding metal wall leading to the flight deck. Ned Brandt, Healy’s pilot, looked like a solid bench-presser in a short-sleeved navy shirt. An even bulkier Coastie named Malcolm flanked him with large, brown biceps and raised veins like cables.

  Once the stragglers had all gathered, Malcolm held up an immersion suit that Ned called a Gumby. Malcolm demonstrated how to step into the floppy booties, pull on the big-fingered gloves, pull over the hood, and zip up the front. There was even a face flap leaving all but the eyes, nose, and brows safely sealed. Ned pointed to shelves where the immersion suits were stored and told the group to “have at it.”

  Some of the scientists donned the suits, laughed, and waddled around. Others took a more sober stance to the idea of floating in the Arctic Ocean and waiting for rescue. Jack had both feet secured in his Gumby booties when Ned ambled over and playfully poked Jack’s average biceps. He passed an open invitation to the CrossFit classes he taught with Malcolm on Saturday afternoons.

  “There are more dead eagles today,” Jack said suddenly.

  Ned nodded but said nothing.

  * * *

  JACK KNOCKED QUIETLY and entered his stateroom. Gustavo was seated at his metal desk but with the noticeable improvement of overhead lights.

  “You missed the abandon ship drill,” Jack said, with a smile he hoped was disarming. “The Coasties took attendance. You’re gonna get busted.”

  Gustavo continued to stare straight ahead.

  “Look, I know these close quarters aren’t easy,” Jack offered. “I’m sure you’re not used to having another man stuck to you like glue.”

  Gustavo blinked rapidly, like he was coming out of a dream or the daze of a head injury.

  “I am used to it,” he said. “Or, I was.” Gustavo struggled to say the simple words: “I had a twin.”

  As he leaned forward to stand, a chain spilled free of his shirt collar and dangled from his neck. Attached to the end was a crushed piece of metal: a spent bullet. Gustavo crossed the small room, climbed into his bunk, and drew the curtains closed.

  Jack couldn’t imagine the loss of a twin sibling, but he could understand the need to retreat into grief.

  In the silence that followed, tugboat engines revved as they pulled Healy away from the dock. The last Arctic West expedition was underway.

  * * *

  HEALY SAILED OUT of Resurrection Bay and into the Gulf of Alaska. Keeping land in sight, Captain Weber navigated coastal waters until Healy reached the base of Alaska’s long-tail archipelago at Katmai National Park. Jack was on deck for a few hours before sunset. Coasties bustled about but were friendly about interruptions. One pointed to the view from Healy’s starboard side and said that the park drew lots of tourists with its brown bear population. Jack stood by the deck railing and trained his lens at dark volcanic rock, emerald forests, and blue-toned mountains crowned with snowcaps. He was all business with landscapes, like a jeweler inspecting a diamond. People were another matter entirely. He fell in love with everyone behind the camera: women and men, old and young. The day he didn’t love and empathize with his subjects was the day he had to quit photojournalism.

  Jack heard the eagle’s splash before he saw it. He zoomed his lens to the highest magnification and saw a bald eagle with a white tail and crown floating on the surface of the water. With its hollow bones and feathers, submergence was slow and difficult to watch. Jack thought he saw the bird blink before slipping just below the surface. Air bubbles unsettled the water. The eagle was alive but drowning, motionless instead of struggling to live.

  * * *

  JACK FOUND DR. MAYA GUTIÉRREZ in the science conference room, where more than twenty scientists were gathered. One of them stood at the front of the room. He was a stout white-haired man with a full beard that looked like a cross between a college professor and Santa Claus.

  “May we help you?” he asked Jack.

  Jack looked to Maya, who wordlessly stood and joined him in the hallway.

  “We’re kinda busy right now,” she said quietly.

  Jack regarded Maya’s black eyes, unplucked eyebrows, and full lashes. Her unwavering gaze felt open and intense at the same time.

  “You’re staring.”

  “Sorry,” Jack stuttered. “First time I’ve seen your eyes without glasses. What…What’s wrong with the eagles?” he asked. “Why are they dying like this?”

  After Jack explained what he saw, Maya’s tone changed. She looked sheepish when she shook her head.

  “But you must have some ideas?” he pressed.

  “There was a fishing town on an island in Japan…” she whispered, and continued to describe the once healthy ecosystem of Minamata Bay. In the 1950s, mullet, shad, and lobsters started to disappear. Dead fish rose to the surface one by one; birds dropped from the sky. The cats of the village began to spastically dance and bash themselves against walls. They jumped into the sea and drowned. Then the fishermen and their families—and their newborn babies—exhibited damaged nervous systems. Their bodies were racked by convulsions that left them speechless and
immobile. And then they died.

  “They called it Minamata disease,” Maya said. “It was caused by severe mercury poisoning that destroyed the brain’s cerebellum, for starters.”

  The people of Minamata all knew that wastewater from the local Chisso chemical plant was the cause. But they were poor, and—in the eyes of Chisso, the chemical industry, and the Japanese government—expendable. Evidence was suppressed while Chisso steadily increased production and the resulting poisonous wastewater. The strange Minamata disease continued to spread to an estimated ten thousand people.

  “I don’t know if they’re related,” Maya was quick to interject, “but there have been documented cases like what we’re seeing right now.”

  “Could it be the comet?” Jack whispered.

  Maya tilted her head and squinted her eyes at him. She asked how a near-Earth object farther out than Mars could be killing eagles. Jack shrugged and pouted with his lower lip. He thought of his own premonitions.

  “Maybe some things can’t be explained by science,” he said defensively.

  “All phenomena have cause and effect,” Maya stated, but had to add, “we just don’t always understand what those causes and effects are.”

  Jack sighed and shook his head once.

  “I’ll let you get back to your meeting,” he said, just as Maya was about to take a step closer.

  FIVE

  More Gateways

  Healy in the Gulf of Alaska

  August 9

  T-minus 176 days to launch

  MAYA WAS SURPRISED to see Jack waiting patiently at the front of the breakfast line at 0645. His casual-cool clothes and easy manner didn’t identify him as an early riser, but the camera hanging from his neck did. As a photographer, his agenda was dictated by the sun, and being late had consequences.

  Jack smiled when their eyes met as they filled up plates with food. Maya’s stomach and heart fluttered on reflex. She nodded hello but retreated to the small side of the mess deck, where the scientists gathered at three long tables. Jack tried to catch her eye again, but she studied her scrambled eggs and Tabasco sauce until he sat alone across the room.