The Last Gasp Author:Trevor Hoyle When British marine biologist gavin Chase stepped out into the windswept wastes at the Halley Bay Antartic research station one morning, the last thing he expected to see was a sled team coming out of nowhere carrying a half-mad, half frozen Russian scientist babbling an incomprehensible warning. But that warning would threaten the human race an... more »d force Chase to make some of the hardest decisions of his life. Months later at a Geneva environmental conference, chase meets Cherl Detrick, the daughter of Theo Detrick, the grand old man of diatom research. chase, the Dietricks, and Soviet scientist Boris Stanovnik theorize that the oxygen-producing microscopic plants of the ocean are dying and the level of atmospheric pollutants has finally exceeded the ability of the planets ecology to recycle them. There is also a good reason to believe that the superpowers are planning to wage a new type of environmental warfare. Sooner or later there will be nothing left to breath.
So begins, a race to the future. Chase and Cheryl, now lovers, struggle to avert ecological catastrophe as agents of the military- industrial complex hunt them down... and a growing belt of unbreathable gases spreads outward from the equator, uprooting millions. Their enemies are Lloyd Madden, an insane military mastermind planning to seed the earth with poison and then repopulate it with a race of mutants, and Joseph earl Gelstrom, a wealthy chemical manufactuer who has Cheryl's father killed to hide his involvement. But Gelstrom himself, falls victim to pollution sickness and he repents. To raise money to finance a reasearch team, Chase must make an unholy alliance with the dying Gelstrom, but this is too much for Cheryl, who leaves him.
As more and more of the world becomes uninhabitable, as industries and governments collapse and chaos reigns, as the oceans fill up with dioxin, as the climate changes and mutant life-forms encroach upon the last refuges of humankind, Chase leads a last desperate mission to find and rescue Cheryl and to lead his team of scientist to safety.
A thrilling doomsday novel of love and destruction, The Last Gasp carries a powerful warning within its chilling plot.« less