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

“Man, look at this little baby,” he would say reverently, digging out a rock that had on the underside of its bland gray surface layers of splendid yellow, blue, and orange. “This little sweetheart has been kept cold and dry for a million years, Dr. Drake.”

“Call me Pat, please,” said Drake. “Good specimen?”

“One of the best I’ve found,” said Green, putting it gently into his waist pack.

On another day, out with Sally Gossett, Drake was moved by the great passion the young woman had for the remote life that was the subject of her work. Using soft tweezers to remove one tiny, curved, yellow bit of microorganism from within a few grains of sandstone, she said almost in a whisper, “Look, Dr. Drake. This tiny fragment of life may be tens of thousands of years old. Can you believe that? It’s always hungry, always cold, lives in continuous misery, yet it survives .”

“Tell me how,” Drake asked, although he already was reasonably certain.

“Well,” Sally said quietly, “it gets a little bit of natural light every day for an atom of energy, a trace of moisture from the ocean air, and is able to extract an incredibly minuscule bit of mineral from the sandstone for sustenance. And with just that it’s able to survive longer than the oldest, strongest tree in any forest in the world.”

Drake nodded quietly. This young woman, he thought, was not a four on any scale.

After a week, it was clear that the expedition results had increased by a marked percentage, and, according to Dr. Porter, had done so without any adverse health effects on any individual team member. The medical doctor had established a nightly recreation period which required cards, checkers, and trivia games rather than simply sitting around talking while consuming scotch and gin.

“More mental relaxation and less alcohol consumption results in better overall function the next day,” Porter explained. He also established a short calisthenics routine before breakfast every morning. “Wakes up the endorphins in the brain that are the foundation for feelings of good physical and mental well-being,” he said.

Team members, even Owen Foster, went along with everything the medical doctor suggested. And Drake knew why. The magic spun by Alfred Nobel loomed tantalizingly before them. That and their own professionalism. Still, it almost seemed too easy to him, too smooth. He wondered if it would last. He soon found out.

Drake was alone, working on a routine report to the foundation, when his tent phone rang one night.

“Drake here,” he answered.

“Pat, it’s Claire. Is it okay if I drop over and talk to you for a few minutes?”

He could not help hesitating before answering, and it gave her the opportunity to reinforce her request.

“It’ll be all right, Pat. All the men are in a poker game, and Sally’s watching a video movie. Just for a few minutes, Pat, please.” She seemed to force a lightness into her voice. “Listen, I promise not to even take off my thermals.”

“All right, Claire,” he said. “Come on over.”

She was there in less than five minutes, out of breath when she removed her hood and face mask, creating old desires in Drake as she shook out her red hair.

“I ran over to turn on the light in Owen’s and my tent in case he misses me and looks out the window.”

“Claire, I’m not sure this is smart,” Drake said, curbing the warm feeling in the pit of his abdomen.

“It probably isn’t, but it’s necessary, Pat. Look, I’m having a real problem with Owen. He knows about us; our past, I mean. It was stupid, but I told him. I have this thing about honesty in a marriage. I thought he would just consider the past to be the past. But he’s becoming more unreasonable and suspicious every day.”

“That’s ridiculous, Claire. There’s no basis for any suspicion. This is the first time I’ve even been alone with you since I arrived. I’ve made a point of only doing field and lab work with you when there was another team member present—”

“I know that, Pat. And you know it. But Owen doesn’t — not when he’s in the water forty or fifty feet under the ice shelf.” She put a hand on his arm. “Pat, I’m telling you this for the sake of the project. I know Owen. He’s volatile and he’s got a short fuse. He could blow up over this and ruin the entire expedition.”

With her standing close enough to touch his arm, Drake saw that perspiration had broken on her brow and upper lip.

“Take off your thermals,” he said. “If you don’t, you’ll catch pneumonia when you step back outside.”

“Thanks,” Claire said with relief, unzipping her sleeves and pant legs to shed the heat-producing outer garb. She sat on the side of the bunk and Drake immediately wished she had taken the camp chair instead. “Listen, can I have one of those little bottles of gin, Pat? I’m very nervous.”

He opened a small pantry on the utility storage wall and twisted the top off a jigger-size bottle of Bombay. He was looking around for a clean cup when she took it out of his hand.

“That’s okay,” she said, and drank it straight from the miniature bottle. When it was down, she smiled and fixed her brownish orange eyes on him in a way that still, after all the years, beguiled him. “Reminds me of when we used to lie in front of the fireplace and sip wine from the same bottle on those icy Sunday afternoons back in Minnesota.” Instantly then, her expression became dejected. “God, Pat, whatever happened to us?”

Drake shook his head dismally. “I don’t know, Claire. Time passes, people change, life paths turn in other directions.” He sat down on the bunk and put an arm around her shoulders. “But you’ve done all right, Claire. You’ve got your doctorate and you’re married to someone in your field of interest. I must tell you that I’ve found Owen to be a really exceptional scientist—”

“The only thing Owen is exceptional at,” Claire snapped, “is being a world-class son of a bitch.” She rose and quickly unbuttoned her flannel shirt. “Would you like to see my bruises, Pat? They’re all recent, since you got here. He only hits me on the body so it won’t show—”

Drake stood and put his arms around her. “Don’t, please, Claire. It’s not necessary. I believe you. What can I do to help?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head against his chest. “I’m not sure there’s anything either of us can do. What is, is. We just have to get through it.” Backing away from him, she rebuttoned her shirt and reached for her thermals. “I’d better go, Pat. I’m sorry about this. I just wanted to warn you for the sake of the project.” Her eyes softened and she lightly touched his cheek with her fingertips. “I would very much like to see you become a Nobel laureate in science, Dr. Patrick Drake. I would be so proud.”

Before he knew it, she was gone, and he was left with the fresh memory of her breasts against his chest. And the thought that they might have bruises on them from the fists of Owen Foster.

The next day, Drake worked with Ed Latham, the swaggering but smiling little geologist. They climbed up to, then out upon, one of the lower promontory glaciers that formed the high walls around the shelf. There, protected by wind panels they put up, they laboriously and methodically used hand-held razor rakes to scrape away layer after layer of ice until, about three feet down, they encountered a strain of light rust running parallel to the surface.

“Iron,” said Latham. “We’re close to something.”

Carefully, he scraped past the redness, dismissing it as scientifically worthless, and dug a few more inches until he reached a second strain that was black as tar.

“Ah, this is what we want,” he said jovially.