Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

McFarlane sat back, shaking and nauseated. He did not dare look at Lloyd. Glinn, Britton, the three dozen crewmen, EES staffers, and Lloyd Industries workers who had gone down with the ship... the meteorite, plunging to the bottom, two miles below... He closed his eyes, tightening his grip on the shivering Rachel. He had never been so cold, so sick, so frightened in his life.

She murmured something unintelligible and he leaned close. "What's that?"

She was pressing something toward him. "Take it," she said. "Take it."

In her hands was her CD-ROM, containing the test data on the meteorite.

"Why?" he asked.

"I want you to keep it. Keep it always. The answers are there, Sam. Promise me you'll find them."

He slipped the disk into his pocket. It was all they had left: a few hundred megabytes of data. The meteorite was forever lost to the world; it had already buried itself deep in the abyssal silt of the ocean floor.

"Promise," Rachel said again. Her voice sounded slurred, drugged.

"I promise." And he hugged her closer to him, feeling the warm trickle of her tears upon his hands. The meteorite was gone. So many others were gone. But the two of them remained, would always remain.

"We'll find the answers together," he said.

A breaking crest slammed into the lifeboat, driving it sideways. They were thrown to the deck of the boat. McFarlane could hear Howell shouting commands as another breaking wave slammed the boat and pushed it sideways, almost flipping it over. It dropped back with a crash. "My arm!" a man cried. "I've broken my arm!"

McFarlane helped Rachel back onto the padded seat, helped her arms into the loops. The seas were roaring all around them, burying them in water, sometimes forcing the entire closed boat beneath the surface.

"How much farther?" someone shouted.

"Two miles," Howell replied, struggling to keep the boat on course. "Give or take."

Heavy water rinsed down the portholes, allowing only occasional glimpses of the black night beyond. McFarlane's elbows, knees, and shoulders grew sore from being battered against the sides and roof of the small vessel. He felt like a ping-pong ball tumbling inside a washing machine. It was so cold that he had lost all feeling in his feet. Reality began to recede. He remembered a summer spent on a lake in Michigan. He would sit on the beach for hours, bottom in the sand, feet in the shallows. But the water had never been this cold... He realized that frigid seawater was rising in the bottom of the boat. The punishing gale was pulling the lifeboat apart at the seams.

He stared out the little window. A few hundred yards away, he could see the lights of the other two boats, bucking and bouncing in the sea. A great wave would descend upon them, and they would struggle through it, corkscrewing wildly as the pilots worked to keep them from rolling over, the propellers whining madly as they rose out of the water. He stared, stupefied with exhaustion and fear, at the wildly gyrating antennas, the semi-circles of ten-gallon water tanks knocking crazily around the sterns.

And then one of the boats vanished. One moment it was there, running lights winking, diving into yet another wave; and then it was gone, buried, its lights cut out as abruptly as if shut off with a switch.

"We've lost the beacon on number three boat, sir," said the man in the bow.

McFarlane let his head sink toward his chest. Who had been in that boat? Garza? Stonecipher? His mind did not work anymore. A part of him now hoped they too would go down as swiftly; he longed for a quick ending to this agony. The water in the bottom of the boat was getting deeper. He realized, vaguely, that they were sinking.

And then the seas began to quiet. The craft was still pitching and bobbing in ferocious chop, but the endless procession of watery mountains beneath them ceased, and the wind fell.

"We're in the lee," said Howell. His hair was matted and lank, the uniform beneath the foul-weather gear soaked. Blood mingled with water in pink rivulets that ran down his face. And yet when he spoke, his hoarse voice was steady. Again he had the radio.

"I need your attention! Both boats are taking on water, fast. They won't stay afloat much longer. We've got only one choice — to transfer ourselves and as many provisions as we can carry to the ice island. Understood?"

Very few in the boat looked up; they seemed beyond caring. The feeble beacon on their boat swept the flank of ice. "There's a small ice ledge up ahead. We'll run the boats right up on it. Lewis in the bow will pass out supplies to each of you and take you out two at a time, fast. If you fall in the water, get the hell out — it'll kill you in five minutes. Now buddy up."

McFarlane drew Rachel protectively toward him, then turned to look at Lloyd. The man stared back this time, his eyes dark, hollow, haunted.

"What have I done?" he whispered hoarsely. "Oh my God, what have I done?"

Drake Passage,

July 26, 11:00 A.M.

DAWN ROSE over the ice island.

McFarlane, who had passed in and out of a fitful doze, was slow in waking. At last he raised his head, the ice crackling off his coat as he did so. Around him, a small group of survivors had huddled together for warmth. Some lay on their backs, their faces coated with ice, their eyes open, frosted over. Others were half upright, on their knees, unmoving. They must be dead, McFarlane thought in a dreamy sort of way. A hundred had begun the voyage. And now he could see barely two dozen.

Rachel lay before him, her eyes closed. He struggled to a sitting position, snow sliding from his limbs. The wind was gone, and a deathly stillness surrounded them, underlined by the thunder of surf below them, worrying the margins of the ice island.

Before him stretched a tableland of turquoise ice, cut with rivulets that deepened into canyons as they snaked off to the edges of the island. A red line, like a streak of blood, tinted the eastern horizon, dribbling color across the heaving seas. In the distance, the horizon was dotted with blue and green icebergs: hundreds of them, like jewels, stationary in the swell, their tops glistening in the morning light. It was an unending landscape of water and ice.

He felt terribly sleepy. Odd that he was no longer cold. He struggled to bring himself awake. Now, slowly, it came back to him: the landing, climbing a crevasse to the top in the blackness, the wretched attempts to light a fire, the slow slide into lethargy. There was the time before, too — before all this — but he did not want to think of that right now. Right now, his world had shrunk to the edges of this strange island.

Here, on its top, there was no feeling of motion. It was as solid as land. The great procession of rollers continued eastward, smoother now. After the black of the night and the gray of the storm, everything seemed tinted in pastels; the blue ice, the pink sea, the red-and-peach sky. It was beautiful, strange, otherworldly.

He tried to stand, but his legs ignored the command and he only rose to one knee before falling back. He felt an exhaustion so profound it took a supreme effort of will not to sink back to the ground. A dim part of his mind realized it was more than exhaustion — it was hypothermia.

They had to get up, move. He had to rouse them.

He turned to Rachel and shook her roughly. Her lidded eyes swiveled around to him. Her lips were blue and ice clung to her black hair.

"Rachel," he croaked. "Rachel, get up, please."

Her lips moved and spoke, but it was a hiss of air, without sound.

"Rachel?" He bent down. He could hear her words now, sibilant, ghostly.

"The meteorite..." she murmured.

"It went to the bottom," McFarlane said. "Don't think about it now. It's over."

She shook her head faintly. "No... not what you think..."