SUNDAY, MARCH 26
The slick has spread to 100 square miles. Exxon crews have recovered only 3,000 of the 240,000 barrels spilled. Governor Steve Cowper declares Prince, William Sound a disaster area. An investigation team from the National Transportation Safety Board is on its way.

The population of Valdez, normally 3,000, is about to double. The sky over the town has begun to swarm; looking out her dining room window, 13-year-old Gina Queddeng counts 12 helicopters in a matter of minutes. Teams from publications and networks arrive hourly. All the hotels are full, so local residents start renting out rooms at $50 a bed.

The four men from Cordova have rendezvoused in the closed-for-the­-winter bunkhouse of Sea Hawk Seafoods, just outside town at the east end of the bay. They've been drinking coffee far into the night, and when Exxon schedules its next press conference at the civic center, they head for it in no mood to trifle.

They'll be even more sour an hour later. Frank Iarossi, president of the Exxon Shipping Company, admits that the spill is now beyond control, at least by mechanical means. His firm, he announces, now plans to use a combination of laser-ignited fires and chemical dispersants.

"What bothers me so much is the violation of trust," says Valdez Mayor John Devens. "I remember them telling us over and over when they wanted to locate the terminal here that they would be ready for any contingency."

"We don't have that problem," says Guard. "We never trusted the sons of bitches in the first place."

Steiner is concerned about the use of fire and dispersants. Smoke from test burns yesterday inflicted severe nausea and headaches on the 100 residents of the native village of Tatitlek. And the soaplike dispersants themselves are toxic, he says—maybe as damaging to the environment as the oil itself. What's more, says Steiner, "the dispersants don't get rid of oil, they just break it down into droplets. To the environment, it's the same dose of poison in a smaller pill, which means that smaller critters die first. For some people it's out of sight, out of mind. But the reality is that if the oil gets into shrimp, it gets into whales."

As they leave the conference, Lamb stops abruptly on the sidewalk. "I'm not going to go back and tell our people that they just have to sit back and watch the show again," he says. "It's time we did something."

The foursome, along with Sea Hawk Seafoods boss Ray Cesarini, return to the seafood plant. They talk among themselves and telephone their fellows in Cordova. Some want to blockade the Valdez Narrows with their boats to stop all tanker traffic to the pipeline. Others are more concerned with trying to save three hatcheries in the path of the slick. If the oil coats the spawning estuaries and destroys the natural salmon run, the hatchery stock will be all the fishermen have left to reseed.

Out in the sound there is no moon. Photographer Roy Corral stands on the deck of the Pagan. While the fishermen are ashore politicking, Steiner has asked him to be their eyes, to help document the spill. It is his first night out and he hasn't yet seen the oil, but he can smell it, feel it sliding past the throbbing hull. Skipper John Herschleb and his crew feel it, too. When they left Valdez, the water hissed and lapped, and the wake swirled with the biophosphoresence of blooming plankton. But now they have sailed into what looks like a black hole. It neither emits nor reflects light. Corral, the crew, and the boat's only other passenger, National Geographic photographer Natalie Fobes, stand silent, as if listening for life,but the oil slides by dead against the hull.

After a while the sky begins to dance a slow dance of green and blue­-green swirls, fringed with a violet reflection that ripples over the snows of the 5,000-foot peaks rising sheer from the waters of the sound. Her­schleb anchors the Pagan in a small cove off Disc Island. Corral sleeps on deck; when he awakens, he sees the oil. It is thick and sludgy. Two red snappers ride belly-up on the surface. Corral sees no other dead wildlife, but as the Pagan leaves the cove he watches a small flock of murres trying to lift off ahead of the hull. They flap and flounder, and beyond them, five sea otters are frantic. Oil-soaked, they are having trouble staying on top. They pop up through the oil, swimming violently, rolling, trying to scrape their thick coats clean. Then they sink.