Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

"Yes, sir," said the officer of the deck in a near whisper. The looks of the other bridge officers betrayed what they thought of this desperate plan. Vallenar ignored them. He did not care what they thought: he cared only that they obeyed. And for now, they were obeying.

Rolvaag ,

7:55 A.M.

MANUEL GARZA stood on a narrow metal catwalk, peering down at the great red rock that lay far below him. From this height it looked almost small: an exotic egg, sitting in a nest of steel and wood. The webbing surrounding it was a fine piece of work: damn fine, perhaps the best thing he had done in his life. Marrying brute strength to pinpoint precision had been remarkably difficult, a challenge that only someone like Gene Rochefort could appreciate. Garza found himself sorry that Rochefort wasn't here to see it; beautiful engineering was one of the few things that had brought a smile to the man's pinched face.

The TIG welding crew had followed him down the access tunnel and were now stepping through the hatchway onto the catwalk, making a racket in their heavy rubber boots. They were a colorful bunch: yellow suits and gloves, welding diagrams with individual jobs colored in red.

"You've got your assignments," Garza said. "You know what to do. We need to lock that son of a bitch into place and we need to do it before the seas get any rougher."

The foreman gave Garza a mock salute. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits; the meteorite was in the hold, the Chilean destroyer was out of the picture, and they were on their way home.

"Oh, and one other thing. Try not to touch it."

The men laughed at the little joke. Someone made a crack about Timmer's ass achieving escape velocity; there was a reference to being mailed home in Tupperware containers. But nobody moved toward the elevator cage leading to the bottom of the tank. Garza could see that, despite the humor and the high spirits, there was a deep nervousness. The meteorite might be safely in the Rolvaag , but it had lost none of its ability to inspire dread.

There was only one way to handle this: quickly. "Go to it," Garza said, slapping the foreman on the back with an air of heartiness.

Without further delay, the men began stepping into the cage. Garza almost stayed behind — after all, he could direct the entire operation better from the observation unit at the end of the catwalk — but decided that would be unseemly. He stepped into the cage and slid the grating shut.

"Into the belly of the beast, Mr. Garza?" one man asked.

"Gotta keep you jackasses out of trouble."

They descended to the bottom of the tank, where a series of metal beams had been laid across the keel rider, forming a floor. Buttressing members ran from the cradle in all directions, distributing the weight of the meteorite toward all corners of the ship. Following the directions on their welding diagrams, the men branched out, climbing along struts and disappearing into the complex lattice that surrounded the meteorite. Soon they were all in place, but the tank remained silent for a long moment; it was as if, down here beside the rock, nobody wanted to be the first to begin. And then the bright points of light began popping out in the dim space, casting crazy shadows as the welders fired up their equipment and went to work.

Garza checked the assignment list and the master diagram, satisfying himself that everybody was doing just what he was supposed to. There was a faint chorus of sizzling as the TIG welders bit into the metal, fusing the cradle into place at a host of critical nodes. He ran his gaze over the welders in turn. It was unlikely some cowboy would get too close to the rock, but he made sure nonetheless. Somewhere in the distance he could hear an occasional drip. Searching idly for the source, he glanced at the longitudinal bulkheads rising sixty feet to the top of the tank, ribbed and worked like a metal cathedral. Then he glanced down at the bottom girders. The hull plates were wet. No surprise there, under the circumstances. He could hear the measured boom of surf along the hull, feel the gentle, slow-motion rolling of the ship. He thought of the three membranes of metal that lay between him and the bottomless ocean. It was a disquieting thought, and he pulled his gaze away, looking now at the meteorite itself, inside its webbed prison.

Although from down here it looked more imposing, it was diminished by the vastness of the tank. Once again, he tried to comprehend how something so small could weigh so much. Five Eiffel towers packed into twenty feet of meteorite. Curved, pebbled surface. No scooped-out hollows like a normal meteorite. Stunning, almost indescribable color. He'd love to give his girlfriend a ring made out of that stuff. And then his memory flashed back to the various chunks of the man named Timmer, laid out in the command hut. Nope; no ring.

He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes. The work was estimated to take twenty-five. "How's it going?" he called to the crew foreman.

"Almost there," the foreman called back, his voice echoing and distorted in the great tank. Garza stood back and waited, feeling the ship rolling more heavily now. The smell of cooking steel, tungsten, and titanium was strong in the air.

At last the TIG welders began snapping off as the welders finished their work. Garza nodded. Twenty-two minutes: not bad. Just a few more critical welds and they'd be done.

Rochefort had designed things to keep those welds to a minimum. Whenever possible, he'd kept things simple. Less likely to fail. He may have been a prig, but he was a damn good engineer. Garza sighed as the ship began to roll again, wishing again Rochefort could have seen his plan become real here in this tank. Someone got killed on almost every job. It was a little like war; better not to make too many friends...

He realized that the vessel was still rolling. This is a big one, he thought. There was a faint flurry of creaks and groans. "Hold tight!" he called out to the crew as he turned away and grasped the lift railing for support. The ship heeled, more, and still more.

Then he found himself lying on his back, in the pitchdark, pain coursing through him. How did he get there? A minute could have passed, or an hour; there was no way to tell. His head swirled: there had been an explosion. Somewhere in the blackness, a man was screaming — hideously — and there was a strong smell of ozone and burnt metal in the air, overlaid with a whiff of woodsmoke. Something warm and sticky coated his face, and the pain throbbed in rhythm with the beat of his heart. But then it began to go away — far away — and soon he was able to sleep once again.

Rolvaag ,

8:00 A.M.

PALMER LLOYD had taken his time arriving on the bridge. He had to brace himself. He could show no lingering childish resentment.

He was received with polite, even deferential nods. There was a new feeling on the bridge, and it took him a moment to understand. The mission was almost over. He was no longer a passenger, a nuisance at a critical moment. He was Palmer Lloyd, owner of the most important meteorite ever discovered, director of the Lloyd Museum, CEO of Lloyd Holdings, the seventh richest man in the world.

He came up behind Britton. Over the gold bars on her shoulder, he could see a monitor displaying a global positioning diagram. He had seen this screen before. Their ship showed on the screen as a cross, the long axis indicating direction of travel. Its forward end was steadily approaching a red line that arced gently across the diagram. Every few seconds, the screen flickered as the chart information was updated via satellite. When they crossed that line, they would be in international waters. Home free.

"How long?" he asked.

"Eight minutes," Britton replied. Her voice, though cool as ever, had lost the tightness of those harrowing final minutes at the island.