Description
Zusatztext “Enjoyable...believable.” – Chicago Tribune “A taut! action-packed adventure that is both realistic and frightening.” – Abilene Reporter-News (Tex.) Informationen zum Autor James Powlik is a researcher with a PhD in biological oceanography who has been a consultant on science and education projects for government agencies such as the EPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the US Department of Commerce. In addition to writing numerous articles and research texts on global warming and other timely biological issues, he is the author of the books Sea Change and Meltdown . Dr. Powlik lives in Arlington, Virginia. Klappentext A DEADLY SECRET LIES BURIED BENEATH THE WORLD'S LAST FRONTIER Dr. Carol Harmon has taken her research vessel! the Phoenix! deep into one of the most forbidding places in the world! the ceaselessly shifting Arctic icescape. In one frightening moment! everything goes very wrong. During a routine dive! two of her crew are ravaged by what appears to be radiation poisoning. Knowing she needs help fast! Carol calls on the person she trusts most! a man leading his own expedition on the opposite pole of the globe. Brock Garner is an oceanographer! a former Naval officer! and a man who has never quite stopped loving his ex-wife! Carol. By the time Garner arrives! a frightening scenario is taking shape: Deep beneath the ice! something is leaking deadly radiation. Worse yet! it may be only part of a bigger cataclysm. A disaster of untold proportions is looming-the world's first man-made Ice Age. A life-and-death battle is about to be unleashed...not just for the Arctic! but for the very future of Earth. Chapter 1 May 6 66 degrees 36' N. Lat.; 81 degrees 30' W. Long. Foxe Basin, Arctic Ocean Below her, the ice was breathing. Carol Harmon pulled her snow goggles down around her throat, adjusted the hood of her jacket, and tried to hold the syringe steady against the bite of the wind. Her fingers trembled not from cold, fear, or the ungainly size of the syringe, but from the awe of her magnificent trespass. The forty-gauge needle in her hand was as thick as a pencil and the plunger could draw nearly a pint of blood. Carol shut her eyes for a moment, balancing, relaxing. She could hear the thin rasp of her own breath sliding through her throat in a shallow, steady rhythm, then see the vapor whisked away in air that was not quite twenty degrees Fahrenheit. In, out. In, out. A moment later, as if performing a gigantic mimic of this gesture, the ice moved with the gentle respiration of the whale beneath her. She felt like a flea on the back of some immense dog, which she very nearly was. The trapped whale had been discovered only hours earlier during an acoustical survey conducted by the U.S. research vessel Phoenix a stone's throw inside the Arctic Circle. The ice, a floe the size of two football fields, obscured the exact size of this whale, its species, or even its sex. So far, the crew had exposed only four square feet of the animal's thick, blubbery hide. Chipping down through more than three feet of solid ice, Carol and one of her technicians eventually managed to extend the opening forward, clearing a larger area around the whale's blowhole. Then, moving back and following some trial-and-error searching, other members of the research team opened another hole to expose the smallish dorsal fin at the base of the tail. An elongated ridge along the animal's spine gave the first indication that it might be a Balaenoptera musculus, a blue whale, the largest animal the earth has ever known. The prospect made Carol's heart race. From the distance between the two openings, Carol could estimate that the magnificent animal was also among the largest ever viewed in such suspended animation. The impromptu landing party had been so pre...
Product details
Authors | James Powlik |
Publisher | Dell Publishing Inc. |
Languages | English |
Product format | Paperback |
Released | 26.02.2002 |
EAN | 9780440235095 |
ISBN | 978-0-440-23509-5 |
No. of pages | 464 |
Dimensions | 107 mm x 174 mm x 24 mm |
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