Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

"You still don't trust me, Sam?" she asked quietly.

"I trust you."

She drew closer to him again, her eyebrows knitting in a look of consternation. "Then what's wrong? Is there somebody else? Our gallant captain, perhaps? Even Eli seems —" She stopped abruptly, her eyes cast downward, hugging her knees closely to herself.

Half a dozen responses came to McFarlane's mind, but each one seemed either frivolous or patronizing. For want of a better reply, he simply reshouldered the pack and shook his head, smiling foolishly.

"There's a good sampling spot maybe twenty feet up the slope," he said after a moment.

Rachel's eyes were still on the ground. "You go get your sample. I think I'll wait here."

It was the work of a few minutes to reach the site, hack half a dozen pieces of the darker basalt from the rock face, and return to Rachel. She stood up as he approached, and they climbed back down to the saddle in silence.

"Let's take a breather," McFarlane said at last, as casually as he could. His eyes were on Rachel. They would be working together closely for the rest of the expedition; the last thing he needed was to have an awkwardness between them. He put his hand on her elbow and she turned toward him expectantly.

"Rachel," he said. "Listen. Last night was wonderful. But let's leave it like that. At least for now."

Her look sharpened. "Meaning?"

"Meaning we have a job to do. Together. And it's complicated enough as it is. So let's not push things, okay?" She blinked quickly, then nodded, a brief smile covering the disappointment, even hurt, that had flashed across her face. "Okay," she said, looking away.

McFarlane put his arms around her. With her heavy parka, it was like embracing the Michelin man. With a gloved finger, he gently raised her face toward his.

"Is it okay?" he asked.

She nodded again. "It's not the first time I've heard it," she said. "It gets easier."

"What does that mean?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. I guess I'm just not very good at this kind of thing, that's all."

They held each other as the cold wind eddied around them. McFarlane looked down at the stray hairs curling away from the hood of Rachel's parka. And then, on impulse, he asked a question he'd been wondering about since the first night on the fly deck. "Was there ever anything between you and Glinn?"

She looked at him, then pulled away, her expression becoming guarded. Then she sighed, relaxing. "Oh, why the hell not tell you. It's true. Once upon a time, Eli and I had a thing. Just a little thing, I suppose. It was... very nice." A smile rose on her lips, then slowly faded. She turned away and sat down in the snow, legs kicked out before her, gazing out over the white vista beneath them.

McFarlane sat down beside her. "What happened?"

She glanced over. "Do I really need to spell it out? Eli broke it off." She smiled coldly. "And you know what? Everything was going great. There was nothing wrong. I'd never been happier in my life." She paused. "I guess that's what spooked him. He couldn't bear the thought that it wouldn't always stay that great. So when things couldn't get any better, he cut it off. Just like that. Because if things can't get any better, they can only get worse. That would be a failure. Right? And Eli Glinn is a man who can't fail." She laughed mirthlessly.

"But you two still think alike, in some ways," said McFarlane. "Like yesterday, in the library. I kind of figured you'd speak up. About what happened to Rochefort and Evans, I mean. But you didn't. Does that mean their deaths are okay with you, too?"

"Please, Sam. No death is okay. But almost every project I've worked on with EES has seen casualties. It's the nature of this business."

They sat a moment, looking away from each other. Then Rachel rose to her feet.

"Come on," she said quietly, dusting herself off. "Last one back has to clean the test tubes."

Almirante Ramirez,

2:45 P.M.

COMANDANTE EMILIANO Vallenar stood on the destroyer's puente volante, the flying bridge, scanning the enormous tanker with his field binoculars. Slowly, carefully, his eyes traveled from the bow, along the maindeck, on and on and on, until at last he reached the superstructure. As always, it was an interesting journey. He had lingered on it so long, and so carefully, that he felt he knew every rusted porthole, every davit, every smear of oil. There were certain things on this so-called ore carrier that he found suspicious: those antennas, hidden low, that looked distinctly as if they belonged to some passive electronic surveillance measuring device. And a very tall antenna at the top of the mast, despite its broken appearance, looked like an air-search radar.

He lowered the binoculars, reached into his coat with a gloved hand, and pulled out the letter from the geologist in Valparaiso.

Estimable Sir,

The rock which you so kindly furnished me is a somewhat unusual type of striated quartz — specifically, silicon dioxide — with microscopic inclusions of feldspar, hornblende, and mica. However, I am sorry to tell you that it is of no value whatsoever, either for commercial purposes or to mineral collectors. In response to your specific query, there are no traces of gold, silver, or any other valuable ores, minerals, or compounds present. Nor is this type of mineral found in association with deposits of oil, gas, oil shale, or other commercial hydrocarbon products.

Once again, I am humbly sorry to convey this information to you, as it must surely discourage any pursuit of your great-uncle's mining claim.

Vallenar traced the embossed seal at the top of the letter with his hand. Then, in a spasm of disgust, he balled it in his fist and shoved it into his pocket. The analysis was not worth the paper it was written on.

Once again, he raised the binoculars in the direction of the foreign vessel. No ship of its size should be moored here. In the Horn islands there was only one known anchorage, Surgidero Otter, and that was on the far side of Isla Wollaston. In the Franklin Channel, there was no decent holding ground at all, with the exception of an uncharted ledge that he, alone, had discovered. The currents were strong. Only a very ignorant captain would try to moor here. And then he would have surely run mooring cables to shore.

But this vessel had dropped anchor in bad ground, and had been sitting there for a number of days, swinging back and forth with the tide and wind, as if it had found the finest holding ground in the world. At first, Vallenar had been astonished by this. It seemed miraculous. But then he had noticed small, infrequent swirls of water at the vessel's stern, and he realized that its stern thrusters were running. Always running. They were adjusting their thrust to keep the ship stationary in the ever-changing currents of the channel, except at the change of tide, when he could see they were being used to swing the ship around.

And that could mean only one thing: the anchor cables were a deception. The ship was equipped with a dynamic positioning system. This required a link to a geopositioning satellite and a powerful computer operating the ship's engines, working together to maintain an exact position on the surface of the earth. It was the very latest technology. Vallenar had read about it, but never seen it. No ship in the Chilean navy was equipped with DPS. Even in a small vessel, it was extremely costly to install and burned a tremendous amount of fuel. And yet here it was, on this alleged shabby converted tanker.

He breathed deeply, swiveling the binoculars from the ship to the island beyond. He took in the equipment shed, the road leading inland to the mine. There was a large scar on a hillside where heavy equipment was at work, beside what might be leaching pools. But there was also a deception here. There were no hydraulic nozzles or sluicing work to indicate placer mining. Except for the pools, it was a neat operation. Too neat, in fact. He had grown up in a mining camp in the north, and he knew what they were like.