Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

"And that was?"

"McFarlane believed that, someday, an interstellar meteorite would be found. One that had traveled across vast interstellar distances from another star system. Everyone told him this was mathematically impossible — all known meteorites came from inside the solar system. But McFarlane was obsessed with the idea. It gave him the faint odor of quackery, and that didn't sit well with a traditionalist like Masangkay.

"In any case, about three years ago there was a major meteorite fall near Tornarssuk, Greenland. It was tracked by satellites and seismic sensors, which allowed for good triangulation of its impact site. Its trajectory was even captured on an amateur videotape. The New York Museum of Natural History, working with the Danish government, hired Masangkay to find the meteorite. Masangkay brought in McFarlane.

"They found the Tornarssuk, but it took a lot more time and cost a lot more money than they anticipated. Large debts were incurred. The New York Museum balked. To make matters worse, there was friction between Masangkay and McFarlane. McFarlane extrapolated the orbit of the Tornarssuk from the satellite data, and became convinced that the meteorite was following a hyperbolic orbit, which meant it must have come in from far beyond the solar system. He thought it was the interstellar meteorite he had been looking for all his life. Masangkay was worried sick over the funding, and this was the last thing he wanted to hear. They waited, guarding the site, for days, but no money came. At last, Masangkay went off to resupply and meet with Danish officials. He left McFarlane with the stone — and, unfortunately, a communications dish.

"As best I understand it, McFarlane had a kind of psychological break. He was there, alone, for a week. He became convinced that the New York Museum would fail to provide the extra funding, and that in the end the meteorite would be spirited off by somebody, broken up, and sold on the black market, never to be seen or studied again. So he used the satellite dish to contact a rich Japanese collector who he knew could buy it whole and keep it. In short, he betrayed his partner. When Masangkay returned with the supplies — and, as it happened, the extra funding — the Japanese were already there. They wasted no time at all. They took it away. Masangkay felt betrayed, and the scientific world was furious at McFarlane. They've never forgiven him."

Brambell nodded sleepily. It was an interesting story. Might make for a good, if somewhat sensational, novel. Jack London could have done it justice. Or better yet, Conrad...

"I worry about McFarlane," Glinn said, intruding on his thoughts. "We can't have anything like that happening here. It would ruin everything. If he was willing to betray his own brother-in-law, he would betray Lloyd and EES without a second thought."

"Why should he?" Brambell yawned. "Lloyd has deep pockets, and he seems perfectly happy to write checks." "McFarlane is mercenary, of course, but this goes beyond money. The meteorite we're after has some very peculiar properties. If McFarlane grows obsessed with it as he did with the Tornarssuk... " Glinn hesitated. "For example, if we ever have to use the dead man's switch, it would be in a time of extreme crisis. Every second would count. I don't want anybody trying to prevent it."

"And my role in this?"

"You have a background in psychiatry. I want you to review these periodic reports. If you see any cause for concern — in particular, any incipient signs of a break like his last one — please let me know."

Brambell flipped through the two files again, the old one and the new. The background file was strange. He wondered where Glinn had gotten the information — very little, if any, was standard psychiatric or medical stuff. Many of the reports had no reporting doctors' names or affiliations — indeed, some had no names at all. Whatever the source, it had a very expensive whiff about it.

He finally looked up at Glinn and slapped the folder shut. "I'll look this over, and I'll keep an eye on him. I'm not sure my take on what happened is the same as yours."

Glinn rose to leave, his gray eyes as impenetrable as slate. Brambell found it unaccountably irritating.

"And the Greenland meteorite?" Brambell asked. "Was it from interstellar space?"

"Of course not. It turned out to be an ordinary rock from the asteroid belt. McFarlane was wrong."

"And the wife?" Brambell asked after a moment.

"What wife?"

"McFarlane's wife. Malou Masangkay."

"She left him. Went back to the Philippines and remarried."

In a moment, Glinn was gone, his carefully placed footfalls fading down the corridor. For a moment, the doctor listened to the dying cadence, thinking. Then a line of Conrad's came to mind. He spoke it aloud: "No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge."

With a sigh of returning contentment, he put aside the files and went back into his private suite. The torpid equatorial climate, as well as something about Glinn himself, made the doctor think of Maugham — the short stories, to be exact. He ran his fingers over the nubbed spines — each rekindling a universe of memory and emotion as it passed by — found what he was looking for, settled into a large wing chair, and opened the cover with a shiver of delight.

Rolvaag,

July 11, 7:55 A.M.

MCFARLANE ADVANCED onto the parquet deck and looked around curiously. It was his first time on the bridge, and this was without question the most dramatic space on the Rolvaag. The bridge was as wide as the ship itself. Three sides of the room were dominated by large square windows, slanting outward from bottom to top, each equipped with its own electric wiper. On either end, doors led out to the bridge wings. Other doors to the rear were labeled CHART ROOM and RADIO ROOM in brass letters. Beneath the forward windows, a bank of equipment stretched the entire length of the bridge: consoles, rows of telephones, links to control stations throughout the ship. Beyond the windows, a predawn squall lay across stormy deserts of ocean. The only light came from the instrument panels and screens. A smaller row of windows gave a view aft, between the stacks and past the stern of the ship to the white double lines of the wake, vanishing toward the horizon.

In the center of the room stood a command-and-control station. Here, McFarlane saw the captain, a dim figure in the near-darkness. She was speaking into a telephone, occasionally leaning over to murmur to the helmsman beside her, the hollows of his eyes illuminated a cold green by his radar screen.

As McFarlane joined the silent vigil, the squall began to break up and a gray dawn crept over the horizon. A single deckhand moved antlike across the distant forecastle, bound on obscure business. Above the creamy bow-wake, a few persistent seabirds wheeled and screamed. It was a shocking contrast to the torrid tropics, which they had left behind less than a week before.

After the Rolvaag had crossed the equator, in sultry heat and heavy rains, a lassitude had fallen over the ship. McFarlane had felt it, too: yawning over games of shuffleboard; lolling in his suite, staring at the butternut walls. But as they continued south, the air had grown crisper, the ocean swells longer and heavier, and the pearlescent sky of the tropics had given way to brilliant azure, flecked with clouds. As the air freshened, he sensed that the general malaise was being replaced by amounting excitement.

The door to the bridge opened once again, and two figures entered: a third officer, taking the morning eight-to-twelve, and Eli Glinn. He came silently up to McFarlane's side.

"What's this all about?" McFarlane asked under his breath.

Before Glinn could answer, there was a soft click from behind. McFarlane glanced back to see Victor Howell step out of the radio room and look on as the watch was relieved.