Jon Breen: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 114, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 697 & 698, September/October 1999

Drake shook hands with both of them.

Within the next few minutes, two other members of the expedition returned from their day in the field. Harley Neil, a slight, academic-looking young man, was a glaciologist, and Emil Porter, tall and hawkish, was the team’s medical doctor. Bottles of scotch, gin, and vodka were produced and cocktails poured all around in metal cups. The first sips were barely taken when two final people came in and Drake heard a voice say, “Hello, Pat.”

He didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. The voice was one he had heard dozens of times on lazy mornings and soft rainy afternoons, and hundreds of times in subsequent dreams. Turning, he looked at a pale redhead with freckles going down the front of a scoop-necked sweatshirt, and a set of direct, tawny eyes that, as always, riveted him.

“Claire,” he said. “Hello. I had no idea you were up here.”

“Didn’t the foundation give you a background list?” she asked.

“It’s probably in my duffel,” he said. “The assignment came up so quickly, I haven’t had a chance to look at the specs.”

“Pat, this is my husband—” Claire began, but she was not quick enough and the man with her stepped forward without offering his hand and said, “I’m Owen Foster. Biology, same as you. And team leader. I’ve heard a lot about the famous Dr. Patrick Drake.”

“You have me at a disadvantage then, Dr. Foster,” Drake said evenly, lowering the hand he had half offered. “I haven’t heard of you at all.”

A moment of stony silence followed, after which Foster smirked and turned to pour drinks for himself and his wife. Then he looked back at Drake and said, “I take it you’re here to rescue us from our inefficiency?”

“I’m here to speed up the schedule if I can,” Drake said, “before the expedition funding runs out. If there’s a problem with inefficiency, I wasn’t told about it. Is there?”

“Perhaps you should determine that for yourself,” Foster said, shrugging. “Are you officially taking over the team?”

“My contract and specific assignment are in my duffel,” Drake said. “Perhaps I’d better go read it before getting into any details.” Quickly swallowing what was left of the gin in his metal cup, Drake looked at Sally Gossett and said, “Since you’ve got the duty today, how about showing me where I bunk.”

“Sure, glad to.” Sally put down her own cup, warning, “Nobody touch that.”

She and Drake dressed in thermals and she led him outside and across the frozen brown gravel to a small, single-occupancy arctic dome tent with an insulated floor, furnished with a cot, camp chair, small desk, and utility storage wall with drawers. A natural-gas camp stove was already burning.

“Heat and electricity never go off,” Sally told him. “Sleeping bag on the cot has quad-flaps, depending on how warm-blooded you are. Snacks, liquor, and other goodies are in the drawers there. Direct phone line connects you to the other tents and the blockhouse; there’s a list of numbers next to it.”

She paused, out of breath, but managed to get in, “So, where do you know Claire from?”

“University of Minnesota,” Drake replied, unzipping his parka. “We were on several projects together over about a four-year period.”

“I take it you didn’t know she was married to Foster?”

“I didn’t know she was married to anybody. She was Claire Dunn when I knew her.”

“She still goes by Dr. Claire Dunn,” Sally said. “Her husband doesn’t like that much; he wants her to be Dr. Claire Dunn-Foster, with a hyphen. I think I should warn you: He’s very possessive.”

“I appreciate the courtesy,” Drake said, “but there’s no need for it. I’m up here to do a job and get back home to Tahiti as soon as I can. I have no time for personalities.”

“Okay, you’re the boss. I think you are, anyway. I’m on duty until nine if you need anything. If not, breakfast is at six. Everybody cooks their own. Except Foster, of course. Claire cooks for him. See you when I see you.”

“Thanks, Sally.”

When he was alone, Drake opened the duffel and found his assignment packet from the foundation. With the official letter of contract and statement of what he was expected to accomplish was a list of the other members of the expedition and their education and experience backgrounds. Her name was at the top of the alphabetical list: DUNN, CLAIRE MARIE; B.S., UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN; M.S., UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA; DOCTORATE, UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING. BIOLOGIST. SPECIALTY: WILDLIFE.

Drake shook his head wryly. There was a time, he thought, when that specialty could have been two words instead of one. Wild life. He wondered if she had changed much.

At six the next morning, Drake fried himself sausage and eggs in the blockhouse, ate breakfast with the entire expedition team, then selected a place where he could face them all, and rose to address them.

“As of today, I am the team leader,” he announced, handing Owen Foster an envelope containing a letter relieving him of that responsibility and authority. “I want to make it clear that the reason for this change is not to be interpreted as a reflection of Dr. Foster’s competence or capability; rather, because he is one of the two certified ice divers on the team, it is to relieve him of planning and administrative duties to free him up for more diving.”

Pouring himself a second cup of coffee, Drake shuffled through a sheaf of papers he had brought over from his tent. “Let’s look at an overview of the expedition together and see exactly what it is we’re facing here,” he suggested. “The purpose of this expedition is to try and determine whether the section of the Antarctic ice sheet known as the Brandon Ice Shelf is, because of global warming, beginning to melt faster than previous melting measurements have indicated. If it is melting faster, then, as all of you know, because the Antarctic ice sheets hold about seventy percent of the Earth’s fresh water, the premature melting could mix that fresh water with ocean water and raise sea levels by several feet instead of several inches per year. Such an eventuality would submerge coastlines around the world.

“The governments of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Sweden, and others are not convinced that this is actually occurring, but are precautionary enough to admit that it could be. A coalition of a number of coastal countries has therefore contributed to funding this expedition through the International Science Foundation, which in turn put together a team comprised of the seven of you — and I want to interject here that last night I read all of your backgrounds and qualifications, and I’d like you to know individually and collectively that I have never encountered a better, more qualified scientific team than this one. You are an exceptional group, and if any scientists in the world can prove or disprove this premature-melting theory, it is all of you. I consider it a privilege to be working with you.”

There was a big grin from Sally Gossett, a slight sneer from Owen Foster, and an exchange of pleased smiles between the others. Drake continued.

“The problem the expedition currently faces is that of diminishing funds and, consequently, abbreviated time to complete the work and establish findings that will either prove or disprove the premature-melting theory. When the money runs out, the time runs out. So the team either speeds up, works harder, and brings its results in, as they say in the common world of business, under budget, or the team fails, the project is written off, and the world’s coastal countries, if our theories are sound, face almost certain future swamping. In the latter instance, we go back to our scientific lives with our individual reputations more than a little tarnished. On the other hand, if we succeed, and if we are correct, somewhere down this icy road may lie a shared Nobel prize for scientific achievement.”