The ship appeared out of the fog at 0400 hours.
Petra was awake because she was always awake when the research vessel moved through Arctic waters — she didn't trust herself to sleep through something extraordinary, and she had been right so far.
The other ship was wooden. Old. No lights. No movement.
"Ice got to her," said the first mate, who had appeared at her shoulder. "She's been drifting for a while."
"Can we go aboard?"
A long pause. "Briefly."
The derelict was a whaling ship, the name still faintly readable on the stern: MERIDIAN. Petra found the manifest in the captain's cabin, damp but legible. Date: 1924. Final entry in the log: ice closed around us on all sides. We will wait.
They had waited a long time.
But the hold told a different story than Petra expected. No whale bones. No processing equipment.
Instead: scientific equipment. Specimen jars. Notebooks, ruined by damp, but with illustrations still visible — sea creatures, meticulously drawn, species Petra didn't recognise.
Someone on this ship, a hundred years ago, had stopped hunting and started studying.
Petra photographed everything.
Back aboard the research vessel, she sat with her photos and thought about the scientists who had never made it home. Who had changed their minds in the middle of nowhere, with no audience, for no reward.
She thought it was the bravest thing she had ever learned about.