She slammed the drawer shut. 'There's nothing on this station I can use!'
'If we launched the shuttle tomorrow -- if we got the hormones up to you -- '
'They won't launch! And even if you could send up a whole damn pharmacy, it'd still take three days to get to me!' In three days, she would most likely be dead.
She clung to the blood-splattered locker, her breaths coming hard and fast, every muscle taut with frustration. With despair.
'Then we have to approach this from another angle,' said Jack.
'Emma, stay with me on this! I need you to help me think.' She released a sharp breath. 'I'm not going anywhere.'
'Why would hormones work? What's the mechanism? We know they're chemical signals -- an internal communication system at the cellular level. They work by activating or repressing gene expression. By changing the cell's programming ... ' He was rambling now, letting his stream of consciousness lead him toward solution. 'In order for a hormone to work, it has to bind to a specific receptor on the target cell. It's like a key, in search the right lock in which to fit. Maybe if we studied the data from SeaScience -- if we could find out what other DNA Dr. Koenig grafted onto this organism's genome -- we might know how to shut off Chimera's reproduction.'
'What do you know about Dr. Koenig? What other research has she worked on? That might be a clue.'
'We have her curriculum vitae. We've seen her published papers on Archaeons. Other than that, she's something of a mystery to us. So is SeaScience. We're still trying to dig up information.' That will take precious time, she thought. I don't have much of it left.
Her hands ached from gripping Diana's locker. She relaxed her hold and drifted away, as though swept along on a tide of despair.
Loose items from Diana's locker floated around her in the air, evidence of Diana's sweet tooth. Chocolate bars. M&M's. A cellophane package of crystallized ginger candy. It was that last that Emma suddenly focused on. Crystallized ginger.
Crystals.
'Jack,' she said. 'I have an idea.' Her heart was racing as she swam out of the Russian service module and headed back into the U.S. Lab. There she turned on payload computer. The monitor glowed an eerie amber in the darkened module. She called up the operations data files and clicked on 'ESA.' European Space Agency. Here were all the procedures and reference materials required to operate the ESA payload experiments.
'What are you thinking, Emma?' came Jack's voice over her comm unit.
'Diana was working on protein crystal growth, remember? Pharmaceutical research.'
'Which proteins?' he shot back, and she knew he understood exactly what she was thinking.
'I'm scrolling down the list now. There are dozens ... ' The protein names raced up the screen in a blur. The cursor halted on the entry she'd been searching for, 'Human chorionic gonadotropin.'
'Jack,' she said softly. 'I think I've just bought myself some time.'
'What've you got?'
'HCG. Diana was growing the crystals. I'd have to do an IVA to get to it. They're in the ESA module, and that's at vacuum. If I start depress now, I could get to those crystals in four or five hours.'
'How much HCG is on board?'
'I'm checking.' She opened the experiment file and quickly scanned the mass measurement data.
'Emma?'
'Hold on, hold on! I've got the most recent mass here. I'm looking up normal HCG levels in pregnancy.'
'I can get those for you.'
'No, I've found it. Okay. Okay, if I dilute this crystal mass in normal saline ... plug in my body weight as forty-five kilograms ... ' She typed in the numbers. She was making wild assumptions here. She didn't know how quickly HCG was metabolized, or what its half-life would be.
The answer at last onscreen.
'How many doses?' said Jack.
She closed her eyes. It's not going to last long enough. It's not going to save me.
'Emma?' She released a deep breath. It came out as a sob. 'Three days.'
It was 1:45 A.M. and Jack's vision was blurred from fatigue, words on the computer screen fading in and out of focus.
'There must be more,' he said. 'Keep searching.'
Gretchen Liu, seated at the keyboard, glanced up at Jack and Gordon in frustration. She had been sound asleep when they called her to come in, and she'd arrived without her usual camera-ready makeup and contact lenses. They had never seen their normally elegant public affairs officer looking so unglamorous. Or wearing glasses, for that matter -- thick horn-rim glasses that magnified pinched eyes. 'I'm telling you guys, this is all I can find on Lexisnexis search. Almost nothing on Helen Koenig. On SeaScience, there's only the usual corporate news releases. And as for the Palmer Gabriel, well, you can see for yourself he doesn't court publicity. In the last five years, the only place his name turns up in media is on the financial pages of The Wall Street Journal articles about SeaScience and its products. There's no data. There's not even a photo of the man.'
Jack slumped back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. The three of them had spent the last two hours in the Public Affairs Office, combing every article about Helen Koenig and SeaScience they could find on Lexis-Nexis. They had turned up numerous hits for SeaScience, dozens of articles in which its products had been mentioned, from shampoos to pharmaceuticals to fertilizers. But almost nothing had turned up on Koenig or Gabriel.
'Try the name Koenig again,' said Jack.
'We've done every possible spelling variation on her name,' said Gretchen. 'There's nothing.'
'Then type in the word Archaeons.' Sighing, Gretchen typed in Archaeons and clicked on 'Search.' A numbingly long string of article citations filled the screen.
'Alien Earth Creatures. Scientists Hail Discovery of New Branch of Life.' (Washington Post)
'Archaeons to Be Subject of International Conference.' (Miami Herald)
'Deep Sea Organisms Offer Clues to Life's Origins.' (Philadelphia Inquirer)
'Guys, this is hopeless,' said Gretchen. 'It'll take us all night to read every article on this list. Why don't we just call it a night get some sleep?'
'Wait!' Gordon said. 'Scroll down to this one.' He pointed to a citation at the bottom of the screen,' Scientist Dies in Galapagos Diving Accident (New York Times).'
'The Galapagos,' said Jack. 'That's where Dr. Koenig discovered the Archaeon strain. In the Galapagos Rift.' Gretchen clicked on the article and the text appeared. The story was two years old.
COPYRIGHT, The New York Times.
SECTION, International News.
HEADLINE, 'Scientist Dies in Deep Sea Diving Accident.'
BYLINE, Julio Perez, NYT Correspondent.
BODY, An American scientist studying Archaeon marine organisms was killed yesterday when his one-man submersible became wedged in an undersea canyon of the Galapagos Rift. The body of Dr. Stephen D. Ahearn was not recovered until this morning, when cables from the research vessel Gabriella were able to haul the minisub to the surface.
'We knew he was still alive down there, but there was nothing we could do,' said a fellow scientist aboard Gabriella. 'He was trapped at nineteen thousand feet. It took us hours to free his submersible and haul it back to the surface.' Dr. Ahearn was a professor of geology at the University of California, San Diego. He resided in La Jolla, California.
Jack said, 'The ship's name was Gabriella.' He and Gordon looked at each other, both of them struck by the same startling thought, Gabriella.
Palmer Gabriel.
'I'll bet you this was a SeaScience vessel,' said Jack, 'and Helen Koenig was aboard.' Gordon's gaze shifted back to the screen. 'Now this is interesting. What do you make of the fact Ahearn was a geologist?
'So what?' said Gretchen, yawning.
'What was a geologist doing aboard a marine research vessel?'
'Checking out the rocks on the sea floor?'
'Let's do a search on his name.'
