CHAPTER 30

We all bundled up, grabbed our video gear, and headed out to record everything we saw on our way to the North Pole.

No, we didn’t see Santa Claus. Or Rudolph. Or even penguins. (Beck says that’s because penguins are found only in Antarctica and the South Pole, but you probably knew that already.)

By the way, now that Mom had confirmed that our real reason for sailing to the North Pole wasn’t to find the looted Russian art or the Enlightened Ones’ secret art-treasure storage facility, I understood why Dad had to split. He, like me, knew the North Pole wasn’t the real answer to the Enlightened Ones’ clues. It was just too easy. But he and Mom needed an official, state-approved way to travel north and document what was happening to the Arctic environment without having those armies of oil-company security guards shooting their machine guns at us. In the meantime, Dad was free to hunt down the stolen goods.

I had to hand it to Mom and Dad. They knew what they were doing, even when it didn’t seem like it!

Anyway, back aboard the Fifty Years of Victory, we spent three pretty awesome days crushing through the Arctic ice pack. We also shot some more amazingly beautiful video.

Beck and I saw polar bears and walruses. Storm memorized the songs of the seabirds soaring overhead. Sometimes, the blue glacier ice sang to us too! Unfortunately, the songs came from the glacier cracking and sloughing off sheets of ice, which made whining noises as they slid into the sea. Mom said it was evidence of global warming.

“There are no trees anywhere,” said Tommy, stating the obvious. But actually, it was pretty incredible to look out and see nothing but flat ice islands, big and small, in all directions.

Except some of the snowdrifts were glowing flamingo pink!

“It’s algae that grows only on snow,” explained Storm. “A phenomenon due, in part, to all the guillemot guano.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Bird poop.”

“And there goes some human waste,” said Mom with a sigh. “The nonbiodegradable kind. A lot of what’s wrong with the environment ends up here, guys. Trash and debris dumped into the oceans of the world get carried northward on underwater currents.”

She zoomed in her camera on a lake of bobbing plastic that, to say the least, hadn’t been properly recycled! We saw bottles, bags, and even tossed-out tub toys. Beck and I shot footage of it too.

“The amount of plastic debris and litter on the Arctic Ocean’s seafloor has doubled in the past ten years,” said Mom. “A lot is trapped in glaciers.”

“Which,” said Storm, “are melting at a record rate and unleashing a plastic avalanche.”

We passed a glacier that looked like a box of ice cream somebody forgot to pop in the freezer. After a little ice singing, chunks slid down the side and, with a thunderous splash, belly-flopped into the sea.

“This is the real treasure we need to save, guys,” said Mom as another wall of ice collapsed. “We need to record everything we see. Put it all together in a documentary.”

“Don’t worry, Mom, we’re getting some really killer footage,” I said.

“Maybe, if people get to see what’s really happening at the North Pole—ice melting, animals in danger, the balance of nature being radically disturbed, the Russians threatening to come in and mess everything up with oil spills—”

Mom did not get to finish that thought.

Three burly men in bright yellow parkas surrounded us on the ship’s bow. They looked extremely shady.

“Excuse me,” said one in a thick Russian accent. “Why do you take pictures of that? It is just ice.”

“The North Pole,” said another one, pointing forward, “is, how do you Americans say, north.”

All three of the scary men chuckled. Their foggy breath smelled like fish. Fish that had been smoking cigars.

I checked out the embroidered patch stitched to the arm of each of the three yellow parkas.

It resembled a 3 because it was the Russian letter for Z—just like we’d seen on that passing oil tanker.

Because our deck mates worked for the teenage billionaire Viktor Zolin!