Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

At last the tower was even with the shed perched on the bluff. She watched Glinn murmur to the console operator. Instantly, the pumps ceased.

A loud crack echoed from the bluff. A cloud of smoke expanded as the metal shed blew apart. The smoke rolled away to merge with the fog, revealing the meteorite, bloodred under the sodium lights. Britton caught her breath. She was aware that all eyes on the bridge had locked on the meteorite. There was a collective gasp.

On the bluff, diesel engines roared into life and a complicated series of pulleys and capstans began to turn. A highpitched squeal sounded; diesel smoke billowed skyward to mingle with fog. Inch by inch, the meteorite began moving toward the reinforced edge of the bluff. Britton watched, transfixed, the flood of emotions inside her temporarily stilled. There was something regal about the meteorite's progress: stately, slow, regular. It crept past the edge onto the platform atop the tower. Then it stopped. Again she felt the whole ship vibrate as the computer-controlled pumps kept the ship trim, emptying precisely enough ballast to compensate for the growing weight of the meteorite.

Britton watched the process in tense silence. The meteorite would creep a little farther onto the platform, then stop, to an answering shudder from the ballast pumps. The jerky ballet continued for twenty minutes. At last, it was finished: the meteorite was centered atop the tower. She felt the Rolvaag 's top-heaviness, the destabilization caused by the meteorite's weight; but she could also sense the ballast tanks now refilling with water, the ship sinking back down into the water for stability.

Glinn spoke again to the computer operator. Then, nodding at Britton, he walked out onto the bridge wing nearest the bluff. The bridge remained silent for another minute. Then she felt Chief Mate Howell come up behind her. She did not turn as he leaned toward her ear.

"Captain," he murmured. "I want you to know that we — I mean, the officers and myself — aren't happy about this. It isn't right, the way you were treated. We're behind you a hundred percent. You just say the word and..." There was no need to finish the sentence.

Britton remained rigidly at attention. "I thank you, Mr. Howell," she replied in a quiet voice. "But that will be all."

After a moment, Howell stepped back. Britton took a deep breath. The time for action had passed. Now, they were committed. The meteorite was no longer a land-based problem. It was on the ship. And the only way to get it off was to see the Rolvaag docked safely in New York. Once again she thought of Glinn, of the way he had wooed her into commanding the Rolvaag, how he had known everything about her, how much he had trusted her in customs at Puerto Williams. They had been a good team. She wondered if she had done the right thing in yielding her command to him, however temporary. But then she had had no choice.

Through all these thoughts, Britton stood rigidly at attention.

Outside, there was another sharp cracking sound; a gleaming row of titanium struts flew away from the top rung of the tower with a dozen puffs of smoke. They spun away, coruscating into the fog, dropping lazily out of sight. The meteorite sank onto the next layer of the tower; the whole ship shuddered again; and the ballast pumps rumbled into life. Then there was another round of explosions; another narrow layer of the tower crumpled into itself, and the meteorite sank a few inches closer to the tank.

A part of Britton realized this was an awesome engineering feat; utterly original, perfectly planned, beautifully executed. But another part of her found no pleasure in it. She glanced down the length of the vessel. The fog was getting patchier, and the sleety rain was now blowing horizontally across the windows. Soon the fog would blow away. Then the game would be up. Because Vallenar was not some engineering problem Glinn could solve with a slide rule. And their only bargaining chip lay deep inside the Rolvaag — not in the brig, but in Dr. Brambell's frozen morgue.

Rolvaag ,

2:50 A.M.

LLOYD PACED his darkened study on the middle bridge deck with the restless fury of a caged beast. The wind had picked up, and every few minutes a gust would strike the ship with such force that the stern windows bowed and rattled in their frames. Lloyd barely noticed.

He paused a moment, then stared out through the open door of his private office into the sitting room beyond. Its surfaces were faintly illuminated in the dull red glow of emergency lights. The wall of television screens, black and featureless, blinked back the silent mockery of a hundred dim reflections of himself.

He spun away, trembling. His body swelled with anger inside his suit, straining the expensive fabric. It was incomprehensible. Glinn — a man he was paying three hundred million dollars — had ordered him from the bridge of his own ship. He had cut off the power to his suite, leaving him deaf, dumb, and blind. There were matters to take care of back in New York — critical matters. The enforced silence was costing him big money. And there was something else; something that hurt more than money. Glinn had humiliated him in front of the bridge officers and his own people.

Lloyd could forgive a lot of things, but that he could never forgive. Palmer Lloyd had faced down presidents, prime ministers, sheikhs, captains of industry, and mob kingpins. But this man was different.

In a paroxysm of rage he kicked out at one of the wing chairs, sending it crashing to the deck. And then suddenly he whirled around, listening intently.

The howl of the wind, the faint grinding of machinery from the bogus worksite, went on as they had before. But there had been another, more regular sound: something that Lloyd, in the full flood of his anger, had not immediately noticed. There it was again: the staccato pop of as explosion. It was very near; on the ship, in fact, because he could feel the deck shuddering faintly beneath his feet.

He waited in the faint light, muscles tense, curiosity now mingling with his outrage. There it was again: the sound, followed by the shudder.

Something was happening on the maindeck.

Quickly, he walked out through the sitting room, down the corridor, and into the central suite. Here, his secretaries and assistants sat awkwardly among the dead phones and darkened computers, talking quietly. The talk fell away as he passed through the long, low space. Noiselessly, Penfold slipped out of the shadows to pluck at his sleeve. Brushing him away, Lloyd moved past the closed elevators and opened the soundproofed door that led to his private apartment. He went through the rooms to the forward bulkhead of the superstructure. He wiped the condensation from a porthole with the cuff of his suit jacket and peered out.

Below, the deck was a hive of activity. Workers were battening down the deck equipment, checking fastenings, tightening hatches, making all the last frenzied preparations for a sea voyage. But what caught his attention was the bizarre tower that reared out of the tank. It was shorter than it had been before; much shorter, in fact. Smoke and steam encircled it, blending with the fog to create clouds that unfurled along the deck in a slow-motion ballet. As he watched, there was another rat-tat-tat of explosions. The meteorite dropped slightly and the ship shuddered again. Groups of workers scurried forward, clearing away the fresh debris before the next set of explosions.

Now he understood precisely what Glinn had meant by a controlled failure of the tower. They were blowing it apart, bit by bit. As he watched, Lloyd grasped that this was the best — probably the only — way of getting something that heavy into the tank. He caught his breath at the brilliance and the audacity of it.