Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

With a sigh of irritation, he crouched by the first jack. The belly of the meteorite curved above him, ribbed as smoothly and as regularly as if worked by a machine. Evans came forward with a small cami-tool for unlocking the hydraulic valves. "Looks like a great big bowling ball, doesn't it?" he said cheerfully.

Rochefort grunted and pointed toward the valve stem of the first jack. Evans knelt beside it, gripped the stem with his cami, and began to turn it gingerly.

"Don't worry, it's not going to break," Rochefort snapped. "Let's move. We've got another twelve waiting."

"More rapidly, Evans spun the stem through a ninety-degree twist. With a small hammer, Rochefort adroitly tapped out the manual slide on the rear of the jack, exposing the safety plate. A red light went on, indicating the valve was unlocked and ready to open.

After the first jack, Evans grew less hesitant, and they began to work quickly in tandem, moving down the line, skipping the jacks numbered four and six. At the last jack, number fifteen, they stopped. Rochefort looked at his watch. It had taken only eight minutes. All that was left was to go back down the line, punching the release buttons on each valve. Although the fluid was under intense pressure, an internal regulator would ensure even drainage, slowly easing the load off the jack. Meanwhile, the controlling computer back in the communications hut would be lowering in tandem the hydraulic pressure on all the other jacks. The situation would return to normal, and then all they needed to do was set more jacks and try again. He'd do Glinn one better, set three hundred jacks. But they would need at least a day to ferry them over from the ship, get them in place, wire the servos, run diagnostics. They would need more tunnels, too... He shook his head. He should have started with three hundred the first time.

"Feels hot in here," said Evans, tugging back his hood.

Rochefort didn't answer. Heat and cold were one and the same to him. The two men turned and began walking down the line of jacks, stopping at each to raise the safety plate and push the emergency fluid release button.

Halfway down the line, a faint, mouselike sound brought Rochefort to a halt.

Although it was important to begin releasing fluid from all the jacks together, the sound was so unusual that Rochefort glanced down the row of jacks, trying to determine its source. It seemed to have come from the front of the row of jacks. As he looked in that direction, the sound came again: a kind of whispered, agonized creak. He narrowed his eyes. Jack number one didn't look right; it seemed oddly crooked.

He didn't need time to think. "Get out!" he shouted. "Now!"

He rose to his feet and sprinted for the access tube, Evans at his heels. He knew that there must be more weight on those jacks than they had guessed in even their most pessimistic assumptions: a lot more weight. Just how much more would determine whether they would get out in time.

He could hear Evans running behind him, feet thudding, grunting with each step. But even before they reached the access tube the first jack gave with a terrifying crack, followed by a second crack, and then a third, as the jacks failed in sequence. There was a pause, then a stuttering series of pops, like a burst of machine gun fire, as the rest of the jacks failed. Instantly, Rochefort was surrounded by blinding sprays of hydraulic fluid. There was a sound like a whirr of a vast sewing machine as the tunnel's struts and braces began to unravel. He ran desperately through the spray, the intense force of the pressurized fluid tearing his coat to ribbons and searing his flesh. He calculated that the probability of survival was dropping fast.

He knew it was exactly zero when the meteorite tipped toward him with a great hollow boom, buckling steel as it came, squirting dirt and mud and ice, looming into his field of vision until all he saw was a shining, inexorable, pitiless red.

Rolvaag,

Noon

WHEN MCFARLANE arrived at the Rolvaag 's library, he found a hushed group scattered among the chairs and couches. Shock and discouragement hung in the air. Garza stared, unmoving, out of the wall of windows, across the Franklin Channel toward Isla Deceit. Amira sat in a corner, knees huddled beneath her chin. Britton and First Mate Howell were speaking in low tones. Even the reclusive Dr. Brambell was on hand, drumming his fingers on the arms of his chair and glancing impatiently at his watch. Of the major players, only Glinn was absent. As McFarlane took a seat, the library door opened again and the head of EES slipped in, a slim folder beneath one arm. On his heels was John Puppup, his smile and sprightly step out of place among the somber group. McFarlane was not surprised to see him: though Puppup was disinclined to go ashore, while Glinn was on board the Rolvaag the Yaghan seemed perpetually at his side, following him around like a faithful dog.

All eyes turned to Glinn as he stepped into the middle of the room. Privately, McFarlane wondered just how hard the man was taking all this: two of his men, including his chief engineer, dead. But he seemed, as usual, calm, neutral, unaffected.

Glinn's gray eyes flickered over the group. "Gene Rochefort had been with Effective Engineering Solutions from the beginning. Frank Evans was a relatively new employee, but his death is no less regretted. This is a tragedy for all of us in this room. But I'm not here to eulogize. Neither Gene nor Frank would have wanted that. We made an important discovery, but we made it the hard way. The Desolación meteorite is a great deal heavier than any of us predicted. Careful analysis of the failure data from the jacks, along with some highly sensitive gravimetric measurements, have given us a new and more accurate estimate of mass. And that mass is twenty-five thousand tons."

Despite his lingering sense of shock, McFarlane felt himself go cold at these words. He made a quick calculation: that gave it a specific gravity of about 190. One hundred and ninety times denser than water. A cubic foot of it would weigh... Good Lord. Almost six tons.

But two men were dead. Two more men, McFarlane corrected himself, thinking of the pathetic litter of bones that had been his ex-partner.

"Double overage is our policy," Glinn was saying. "We planned as if everything would be twice our best estimate-twice the expense, twice the effort — and twice the mass. That means we already planned for a rock that weighed almost this much. So I'm here to tell you that we can proceed on schedule. We still have the means at our disposal to retrieve it, bring it to the ship, and load it into the holding tank."

It seemed to McFarlane as if, mingled among Glinn's cool tones, there was an odd note: of something almost like triumph.

"Just a minute," McFarlane said. "Two men just died. We have a responsibility —"

"You are not responsible," Glinn interrupted smoothly. "We are. And we're fully insured."

"I'm not talking about insurance. I'm talking about two people's lives. Two people were killed trying to move this meteorite."

"We took every reasonable precaution. The probability of failure was less than one percent. Nothing is free of risk, as you yourself so recently pointed out. And in terms of casualties, we're actually on schedule."

"On schedule?" McFarlane could hardly believe what he heard. He glanced at Amira, and then at Garza, failing to see in their faces the outrage he felt. "What the hell does that mean?"

"In any complex engineering situation, no matter how much care is taken, casualties occur. By this stage, we had expected two casualties."

"Jesus, that's a heartless calculation."

"On the contrary. When the Golden Gate Bridge was being designed, it was estimated that three dozen men would lose their lives during construction. That was neither coldblooded nor heartless — it was just part of the planning process. What is heartless is bringing people into danger without calculating the risk. Rochefort and Evans knew those risks, and accepted them." Glinn looked straight at McFarlane, speaking almost in a monotone. "I assure you, I'm grieving in ways you will never know. But I was hired to retrieve this meteorite, and that's what I intend to do. I can't afford to let personal feelings cloud my judgment or weaken my resolve."