Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

"Quite a machine," he yelled over to Evans.

"Oh, yeah," the man replied, his breath smoking.

The roadbed grew smoother and the Cat sped up. As they trundled along, they passed another hauler and a bulldozer headed back toward the shore, and the drivers waved cheerfully at Evans. McFarlane realized he knew nothing about the men and women wielding all the heavy equipment — who they were, what they thought about such a strange project. "You guys work for Glinn?" he asked Evans.

Evans nodded. "To a man." He seemed to wear a perpetual smile on his craggy face, overhung with two bristly eyebrows. "Not full-time, though. Some of the boys are roughnecks on oil rigs, some build bridges, you name it. We even have a crew from the Big Dig in Boston. But when you get the call from EES, you drop everything and come running.

"Why's that?"

Evans's smile widened. "The pay is five times scale, that's why."

"Guess I'm working the wrong end of the job, then."

"Oh, I'm sure you're doing all right for yourself, Dr. McFarlane." Evans throttled down to let a grader pass them, its metal blades winking in the brilliant sunshine.

"Is this the biggest job you've seen EES take on?"

"Nope." Evans goosed the engine and they lurched forward once again. "Small to middling, actually."

The snowfield fell behind them. Ahead, McFarlane could now see a broad depression, covering perhaps an acre, that had been scraped into the frozen earth. An array of four huge infrared dishes surrounded the staging area, pointing down. Nearby stood a row of graders, lined up as if at attention. Engineers and other workers were scattered around, huddled together over plans, taking measurements, speaking into radios. In the distance, a snowcat — a large, trailerlike vehicle with monstrous metal treads — was crawling toward the snowfield, wielding high-tech instruments held out on booms. Off to one side, small and forlorn, was the cairn he and Lloyd had built over Nestor Masangkay's remains.

Evans came to an idle at the edge of the staging area. McFarlane hopped off and made for the hut marked COMMISSARY. Inside, Lloyd and Glinn sat at a table near a makeshift kitchen, deep in discussion. Amira was standing by a griddle, loading a plate with food. Nearby, John Puppup was curled up, napping. The room smelled of coffee and bacon.

"About time you got here," Amira said as she returned to the table, her plate heaped with at least a dozen slices of bacon. "Wallowing in your bunk until all hours. You should be making an example for your assistant." She poured a cup of maple syrup over the mound of bacon, stirred it around, picked up a dripping piece, and folded it into her mouth.

Lloyd was warming his hands around a cup of coffee. "With your eating habits, Rachel," he said good-humoredly, "you should be dead by now."

Amira laughed. "The brain uses more calories per minute thinking than the body does jogging. How do you think I stay so svelte and sexy?" She tapped her forehead.

"How soon until we uncover the rock?" McFarlane asked.

Glinn sat back, slid out his gold pocket watch, and flicked it open. "Half an hour. We're just going to uncover enough of the surface to allow you to perform some tests.

Dr. Amira will assist you with testing and analyzing the data."

McFarlane nodded. This had already been carefully discussed, but Glinn always went over everything twice. Double overage, he thought.

"We'll have to christen it," Amira said, thrusting another piece of bacon into her mouth. "Anybody bring the champagne?"

Lloyd frowned. "Unfortunately, it's more like a Temperance meeting around here than a scientific expedition."

"Guess you'll have to break one of your thermoses of hot chocolate over the rock," McFarlane said.

Glinn reached down, drew out a satchel, removed a bottle of Perrier-Jouët and placed it carefully on the table.

"Fleur de Champagne," Lloyd whispered almost reverentially. "My favorite. Eli, you old liar, you never told me you had bottles of champagne aboard."

Glinn's only reply was a slight smile.

"If we're going to christen this thing, has anybody thought up a name?" Amira asked.

"Sam here wants to call it the Masangkay meteorite," Lloyd said. He paused. "I'm inclined to go with the usual nomenclature and call it the Desolación."

There was an awkward silence.

"We've got to have a name," Amira said.

"Nestor Masangkay made the ultimate sacrifice finding this meteorite," said McFarlane in a low voice, looking hard at Lloyd. "We wouldn't be here without him. On the other hand, you financed the expedition, so you've won the right to name the rock." He continued gazing steadily at the billionaire.

When Lloyd spoke, his voice was unusually quiet. "We don't even know if Nestor Masangkay would have wanted the honor," he said. "This isn't the time to break with tradition, Sam. We'll call it the Desolación meteorite, but we'll name the hall it's in after Nestor. We'll erect a plaque, detailing his discovery. Is that acceptable?"

McFarlane thought a moment. Then he gave the briefest of nods.

Glinn passed the bottle to Lloyd, then rose. They all went out into the brilliant morning sun. As they walked, Glinn came up to McFarlane's side. "Of course, you realize that at some point we're going to have to exhume your friend," he said, nodding in the direction of the stone cairn.

"Why?" McFarlane asked, surprised.

"We need to know the cause of death. Dr. Brambell must examine the remains."

"What for?"

"It's a loose end. I'm sorry."

McFarlane began to object, then stopped. As usual, there was no arguing with Glinn's logic.

Soon they were standing along the edge of the graded area. Nestor's old hole was gone, filled in by the graders.

"We've scraped the earth down to within about three feet of the top of the rock," Glinn said, "taking samples of each layer. We'll grade off most of the rest, and then switch to trowels and brushes for the last foot. We don't want to so much as even bruise the meteorite."

"Good man," Lloyd answered.

Garza and Rochefort were standing together by the line of graders. Now Rochefort came over to join them, his face purple with windburn.

"Ready?" Glinn asked.

Rochefort nodded. The graders were manned and idling, their exhausts sending up plumes of smoke and steam.

"No problems?" Lloyd asked.

"None."

Glinn glanced over toward the graders and gave a thumbs-up to Garza. The engineer, wearing his usual athletic warm-ups, turned, held up his fist and cranked it in a circle, and the graders rumbled to life. They moved forward slowly, diesel smoke fouling the air, lowering their blades until they bit into the ground.

Behind the lead grader, several white-jacketed workers walked, sample bags in their hands. They picked up pebbles and dirt exposed by the graders and dropped them in the bags for later examination.

The line of graders made a pass over the area, removing six inches of dirt. Lloyd grimaced as he watched. "I hate to think of those big blades passing so close to my meteorite."

"Don't worry," Glinn said. "We've factored in elbow room. There's no chance of them damaging it."

The graders made another pass. Then Amira came slowly through the center of the graded area, wheeling a proton magnetometer across the ground. At the far end, she stopped, punched some buttons on the machine's front panel, and tore off the narrow piece of paper that emerged. She came up to them, trundling the magnetometer behind her.

Glinn took the paper. "There it is," he said, handing it to Lloyd.

Lloyd grasped the paper and McFarlane leaned over to look. A faint, erratic line represented the ground. Beneath, much darker, was the top edge of a large, semicircular shape. The paper shook in Lloyd's powerful hands. McFarlane thought, God, there really is something down there. He hadn't quite believed it, not until now.