Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

"We'll give that a moment to get tacky," she explained "We don't want even the slightest speck of meteorite dust escaping into the air." She fumbled in her parka, extracted the cigar tube, glanced at the expressions on Glinn's and McFarlane's faces, sighed, and began cracking peanuts instead.

McFarlane shook his head. "Peanuts, candy, cigars. What else do you do that your mother would disapprove of?"

She looked at him. "Hot monkey sex, rock and roll, extreme skiing, and high-stakes blackjack."

McFarlane laughed. Then he asked, "Are you nervous?"

"Not so much nervous as incredibly excited. You?"

McFarlane thought about this for a moment. It was almost as if he was allowing himself to become excited; to grow used to the idea that this was, after all, the very thing he had hunted for all those years.

"Yeah," he said. "Excited."

Glinn pulled out his gold pocket watch, flicked open its cover, and glanced at its face. "It's time."

Amira returned to the drill and adjusted a dial. A low rumble began to fill the close air of the shack. She checked the position of the bit, then took a step back, making an adjustment with the remote. The rumble rose to a whine. She maneuvered a small hat switch on the remote, and the whirling bit obediently descended, then retracted.

"Five by five," she said, glancing at Glinn.

Glinn reached into the open case, pulled out three respirators, and tossed two of them to McFarlane and Amira. "We'll step outside now and work from the remote."

McFarlane snugged the respirator onto his head, seating the cold rubber around his jaws, and stepped outside. Without a hood, the wind cut cruelly around his ears and the nape of his neck. From inside, the angry, hornetlike whine of the idling drill was still clearly audible.

"Farther," Glinn said. "Minimum distance one hundred feet."

They stepped back from the building. Snow was tumbling into the air, turning the site into a filmy sea of white.

"If this turns out to be a spaceship," Amira said, her voice muffled, "somebody inside's gonna be mighty pissed when Mr. Diamond Head pokes through."

The shack was barely visible through the snow, the open door a dim rectangle of white in the swirling gray. "All ready."

"Good," Glinn replied. "Cut through the sealant. We'll pause at one millimeter below the surface of the meteorite to scan for outgassing."

Amira nodded and aimed the remote, fingering the hat switch. The whine grew louder for a moment, then suddenly became muffled. A few seconds went by.

"Funny, I'm not making any progress," said Amira.

"Raise the drill."

Amira pulled back on the hat, and the whine grew louder again, settling down quickly to a steady pitch. "Seems fine."

"RPM?"

"Twelve thousand."

"Raise it to sixteen and lower again."

The whine increased in pitch. As McFarlane listened, it grew muffled once again. There was a sharp grinding noise, then nothing.

Amira glanced at a small LED readout on the remote, its red numbers stark against the black casing. "It stopped," she said.

"Any idea why?"

"Seems to be running hot, maybe there's something wrong with the motor. But the internals all checked out."

"Retract and let it cool. Then double the torque, and lower again."

They waited while Amira fiddled with the remote. McFarlane kept his eyes on the open door of the shack. After a few moments, Amira grunted to herself and nosed the hat switch forward. The whine returned, throatier now. Suddenly, the note grew lower as the drill labored.

"Heating up again," Amira said. "Damn this thing." Her jaw set, and she gave the hat switch a jab.

The pitch changed abruptly. There was a sharp ripping sound, and a dull flicker of orange light burst from the doorway. It was followed by a loud crackle, then another, much quieter. And then all was silent.

"What happened?" Glinn asked sharply.

Amira peered out, frowning through her respirator. "I don't know."

She took an impulsive step toward the shack, but Glinn put out a hand to stop her. "No. Rachel, determine what happened first."

With a heavy sigh, Amira turned back to the remote. "There's a lot of gibberish I've never seen before," she said, scrolling back through the LED readout. "Wait, here's something. It says `Failure Code 47.'" She looked up and snorted. "That's just great. And the manual's probably back in Montana."

A small booklet appeared, as if by sleight of hand, in Glinn's right glove. He turned the pages. Then he stopped short. "Failure Code 47, you said?"

"Yup."

"Impossible."

There was a pause. "Eli, I don't think I've ever heard you use that word before," Amira replied.

Glinn looked up from the manual, alien in his parka and goonlike respirator. "The drill's burned out."

"Burned out? With the kind of horsepower that thing's sporting? I don't believe it."

Glinn slipped the manual back into the folds of his parka. "Believe it."

They looked at each other as the snowflakes curled around them.

"But that could only happen if the meteorite was harder than diamond," Amira said.

In answer, Glinn simply moved toward the hut.

Inside, the air was thick with the smell of burnt rubber. The drill was half obscured by smoke, the LED lights along its flank dark, its underside scorched. "It's not responding at all," Amira said, manipulating its controls by hand.

"Probably tripped the circuit breakers," said Glinn. "Retract the bit manually."

McFarlane watched as, inch by inch, the huge bit rose out of the acrid smoke. When the tip at last came into view, he saw that its serrated end was now an ugly, circular scar of metal, fused and burnt.

"Jesus," said Amira. "That was a five-thousand-dollar diamond-carborundum bit."

McFarlane looked over at Glinn, half hidden by the curls of smoke. The man's eyes were not on the drill bit; instead, they seemed to be contemplating something in the distance.

As McFarlane watched, he unclipped his respirator and pulled it free.

The wind rose suddenly, slamming the door shut, rattling its hinges and worrying the knob.

"What now?" Amira asked.

"We take the bit back to the Rolvaag for a thorough examination," Glinn said.

Amira turned to the drill, but Glinn's expression had lost none of its distance. "And it's time we took something else back with us as well," he added quietly.

Isla Desolación,

3:05 P.M.

OUTSIDE THE shack, McFarlane pulled off the respirator and snugged the hood of his parka tightly around his face. Wind gusted through the staging area, sending skeins of snow whirling across the frozen ground. By now, Lloyd must be well on his way back to New York. Already, what little light the heavy clouds permitted was fading from the sky. It would be dark in half an hour.

There was a crunch of snow, and Glinn and Amira appeared, returning from the stores hut. Amira held a fluorescent storm lantern in each hand, and Glinn was pulling a long, low aluminum sled behind him.

"What's that?" McFarlane asked, pointing to a large blue trunk of molded plastic that lay on the sled.

"Evidence locker," Glinn said. "For the remains." McFarlane felt a mounting queasiness in his gut. "Is this absolutely necessary?"

"I know it can't be easy for you," Glinn replied. "But it's an unknown. And at EES, we dislike unknowns."

As they approached the pile of rocks that marked Masangkay's grave, the snow flurries began to draw away. The Jaws of Hanuxa came into view, dark against an even darker sky. Beyond, McFarlane caught the merest patch of storm-flecked bay. On the distant horizon, the sharp peaks of Isla Wollaston clawed their way skyward. It was incredible how quickly the weather changed down here.

Already the wind had stuffed snow and ice into the crevices of the makeshift cairn, mortaring the grave in white. Without ceremony, Glinn pulled out the cross, laid it down, and began prying frozen rocks from the pile and rolling them aside. He glanced back at McFarlane. "It's fine if you'd rather hang back a bit."