Big Miracle by Tom Rose Page A

tired, the desperate animal lay motionless. The pathetic creature seemed to appeal to the camera for help, as if it somehow knew its message would soon be transmitted to creatures of an alien but caring species. The audio came across the bleak landscape perfectly, but Oran wasn’t paying attention to the sound. He was spellbound by the immense power of the pictures he was shooting. Billy and Marie called and shouted his name several times before they got a response. They were trying to tell him they were finished.
    â€œWhat do you mean you’re done?” Oran bristled. “Just keep talking, I don’t care what y’all say,” he bellowed. “Just keep talking. Nobody will listen to what you say; it’s the pictures they want to see and the pictures need some audio. This is just too incredible.” Everyone was astonished. They never saw Oran so insistent. How could he possibly be so interested in hearing what they already said three times? Oran beseeched them to keep up the charade. Marie asked Billy the same questions over and over.
    Watching these whales was like being on a drug so good it had to be illegal. As much video as Oran got, he had to have more. He had long since forgotten about the cold. Was it cold out here? When he finally ran out of tape, the others convinced him it was a good time to head back to town. By the way, yes, it was cold. In the four hours they spent out on the ice, the shelf of what appeared to be solid ice had grown an amazing twenty-five feet or so out toward the whale hole. If the cold kept up, they would be able to walk all the way out to the whales by tomorrow. But that begged the central question: just how long could the breathing holes stay open? In any case, it was time for these shivering humans to get back to town.
    The return trip on the back of the snowmobiles was even colder than the ride out. But after all the excitement, enough adrenaline was circulating to keep their blood warm enough to manage the ride back without too much discomfort. After a chance to warm up and grab a bite to eat, Craig used Geoff’s office to notify the Coast Guard about the trapped whales and to see if they wanted to send someone out to see if they could think of any way to help them. The closest permanently manned Coast Guard office was 1,200 miles to the south in Anchorage. He and Geoff thought the whales could easily be freed if there were a ship in the area to break a path through the soft slushy ice. Maybe the Anchorage office could authorize one of its North Slope vessels to cut a quick channel from open water into the whales, which at that point was still less than a mile. They didn’t need a big ship; certainly nothing like an icebreaker. The ice was still slushy enough for any medium-size ship to do the job.
    The biologists hoped their request would not be considered a big deal. Wednesday afternoon, they left a message with the Coast Guard duty officer who promised to pass it on. Later that night, a reporter named Susan Gallagher called the Coast Guard to see if anything newsworthy was going on. Gallagher was an Alaska night-beat reporter for the Associated Press. It was part of her job to phone the Coast Guard every night to find out if there were any late-breaking stories. The Coast Guard was constantly mounting search-and-rescue efforts to find lost or stranded hunters, whalers, adventurers, and who knows who else—especially late in the fall. But, a rescue effort for whales? That was a first. And within hours, the biggest rescue by humans of nonhumans in Alaska history—who knew, maybe even in all history—would be underway.
    Gallagher dutifully took down the details as they were relayed to her by the Coast Guard duty officer and turned it into a nondescript, quick wire-service story. She couldn’t spend that much time on it as there were other, seemingly more important news—involving people—that had to get turned into copy before