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Page 346
yearly blanket of snow and ice, and became home to the snow hare, the arctic fox, and the shaggy winter-coated caribou. But there was death under the ice, ready to erupt into raging fire and poisoned steam.
''Look there," Morgan said, and pointed. "I think those lights are on the Trudeau." Maritime Command had named their big, costly, already obsolete icebreaker after Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The problem with the icebreaker was that she was diesel powered rather than nuclear, and therefore as much at the mercy of the polar winters as any icebreaker built in the previous century. The CCND had left its mark on the Canadian outlook, of that there could be no doubt.
Now they could see lights lining a long dock, leading into the water from the shoreline, some four thousand yards from where the Trudeau and several smaller ships clustered around her were anchored. Well back from the water Morgan could make out three clusters of inflatable arctic emergency shelters, large ones, and at least a dozen smaller ones. But of traffic on foot between the encampment and the shore, or between the shore and the ships, there was none. It looked as though all operations had come to a halt. Time, Morgan thought. They're wasting time, the one commodity in shortest supply.
The Hercules descended further, circling the anchored flotilla at a thousand feet, then turning once again north by northwest toward Eskimo Point.
Anna loaded her cameras and rose to cross to the opposite side of the plane, hoping to get a shot of the lights of the settlement at Eskimo Point. Morgan moved over into the aisle seat and glanced back at Joe Ryerson. He was surrounded by airmen and soldiers, and not enjoying their company one bit. No Ernie Pyle-type newsman is our Joe, Morgan thought sardonically. He wouldn't have been interested in slogging across Europe and the islands of the Pacific with the troops. Possibly wars seemed less righteous these days, Morgan thought. Or possibly, newspeople now thought of themselves as citizens of the world, with no sentimental bonds to one country, no

 
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