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farmers and ranchers, fishermen fed America, and he was adamant that their livelihood was essential to the health of the nation. He wouldn’t hear it when someone said they didn’t see any sails on his boat and he needed oil and gas as much as everyone else.
    Noah saw what siding with environmentalists against oil drilling one day and then against those same people when they came to protect swordfish and cod populations from overfishing had done to his grandfather, however. Both sides used the middle to get what they wanted, and the fishermen were left with a diminishing fleet, shrinking income, competition from farmed fish, and deteriorating health as they drank to relieve the pressure of being squeezed by twin behemoths. Noah, as a result, learned to just put his head down and work. He wanted no part of politics or activism. He wanted a job he enjoyed, to raise a family, and find a piece of happiness large enough for a single lifetime. Not too much to ask. At least he didn’t used to think it was too much. Times changed, circumstances changed, and he needed the work. So, when OrbitOil was hiring, he applied. It was a job, and a safer one than the fishing boats he’d worked in the Bering Sea. At least that’s what he’d been told the first time he’d been recruited to work on one. He wasn’t sure “safer” was as accurate a description as “differently hazardous.” But that was the nature of maritime work. If he wanted a safe job, he should have stayed in school and become a librarian or an architect. Staying in school, however, was not an option available to him. He accepted that his fate was to work ships like the Arctic Promise, maybe for the rest of his life.
    At the top of the ladder, he pushed through the door into the wheelhouse. It was cast in a dull white glow from the windows ringing the compartment. Sitting at the top of the superstructure, the wheelhouse was designed for a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of both the vessel itself and the sea surrounding it. At the moment, the view was a solid wall of fog, reducing visibility to nothing. The ship’s master, William Brewster, sat in one of the twin command chairs bolted to the floor, staring at a computer screen installed in the white and gray console in front of him, presumably navigating by instruments. He sipped from a cup of tepid black coffee. The bags under his deeply bloodshot eyes suggested caffeine wouldn’t have sufficient effect for much longer. Aside from him, the wheelhouse was unoccupied.
    Above the angled windows, a line of computer screens showed instrument performance and views of different areas of the deck; Noah wasn’t sure what the instrument screens were displaying. He was a deckhand—a roughneck hired to help load and unload cargo. He knew how to steer and read the controls of a commercial fishing vessel. But in the wheelhouse of the Arctic Promise, the bridge equipment was as alien to him as space shuttle controls.
    He craned his neck to peer through a window and found he couldn’t see a foot past the forecastle. Fog obscured his view of the sea and the ship’s prow. His stomach tightened as he had a feeling more like flying than seafaring. Noah would rather spend a month aboard ship than a day on a plane. If something happened, he could get into a survival suit and reach a lifeboat. If something happened on a plane, all he could do was pray. If he’d been a praying kind of man, that is.
    â€œNoah,” Brewster said, not looking up from the screen in front of him. “I didn’t call for you.” He set his cup on the console more or less on top of a brown ring dried between two keyboards.
    â€œMickle told me you want to wait until we get to the platform to call the med evac for Felix Pereira. He needs a helicopter now. He can’t wait until we get to the platform.”
    Brewster shook his head. “And when did you get your