Джон Кэмпбелл - Frozen Hell

“Suicide,” Wu said, studying his fingernails. “The Antarctic…did not agree with him.”

“No way!” Jason’s legs felt weak. He had known Nick for the better part of two decades. They’d gone to M.I.T. together, gone to class together, partied together, worked off and on together over the years. Sure, Nick liked to drink…liked it a little too much, sometimes. But suicide? It seemed impossible.

Gulping, he sank down in the chair. Nick…dead. They’d talked only a few months ago.

Then he realized what Wu had said. The Antarctic didn’t agree with him.

“Nick was here?” he asked, looking up.

“Yes. You must finish his work.”

Bloch returned to his chair, took a sheet of paper from a manilla folder, and slid it across the table. He followed it with a silver Cross pen.

“Sign at the bottom,” he said, “and we’ll get moving.”

“Black coffee,” Milos said. He set a mug—WORLD’S BEST DAD! it proclaimed in big red letters—in front of Jason, then left, closing the door.

Slowly Jason picked up the paper. It was a nondisclosure agreement. He’d signed a couple of them in the past, when he’d done corporate research, but this one struck him as exceptionally draconian. Matters of national security…prison and a multi-million-dollar fine if he so much as shared the project name.… Crazy, all of it!

He shoved the paper away. “I can’t sign this!”

“It is, of course, your choice,” Bloch said, “but I strongly recommend it.”

“Or you’ll cut my funding.”

Bloch shook his head, smiled. “I only said that to get you here.” He spread his hands apologetically. “Mining the Asteroid Belt is a good idea. It’s necessary if our space program is to thrive. But you’re still in the early planning stages, and your associates will manage until your return. You can speak to them every day by secure sat-link, if you like. We have a far bigger project, one of immediate global importance, and we need your help now . Once you have the details, I’m certain you will agree that it takes precedence over everything else. Including asteroid mining. In fact, I guarantee it.”

Jason snorted. “There must be a dozen others available who would do as good a job.”

Artemis Wu spoke for the first time. “No false modesty, Doctor. I only work with the best. And now that’s you.”

“Forget it,” Jason said. He shoved his chair back and stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a plane to catch.”

“Ah…about the plane,” Bloch said. “Bad news, I’m afraid. The one that brought you here is full for the outbound flight. We’ll get you the next available seat, of course. Unfortunately, as you know, there are no commercial flights from this base, and passengers leave as space allows. There is only one more flight scheduled this season, and I hear it’s also fully booked. A spot for you might open up in the spring…by fall at the very latest. But look on the bright side. I understand you get a medal and a certificate from the station for wintering here. And possibly a tee-shirt.”

“Or,” said Wu, “you can join my team, be well compensated for your time, and do your country a service. A vital service.”

Jason stared at him. “That’s blackmail.”

Wu smiled his shark smile. “No, Doctor. A job offer. And as a goodwill gesture, you have my word that I will continue to throw my support behind your asteroid mining project when you return to it. You will find me a valuable ally.”

Ally. Not friend. Did Wu have friends?

“Can you tell me anything about Nick’s work?” Jason asked. “What was he doing?”

“It’s classified.” Bloch said.

I can’t believe they’re doing this, Jason thought. The bottom seemed to be dropping out of his stomach. I can’t believe they’re going to strand me here, whether I want to work for them or not.

Wu leaned forward and set something the size of a walnut on the table. It was made of a silvery metal. One side had bubbled and melted; it had been exposed to very high temperatures.

“What do you think of it?” Wu asked.

Jason reached out and touched it with his fingertips. Cool and hard, it had an almost greasy texture. He picked it up—and gasped. It was feather-light, far lighter than aluminum, or any other metal he knew of.

“Where did you get this?” he demanded. He met Wu’s cool, steady gaze. “What is it?”

“You must sign the nondisclosure agreement first,” Bloch said. He twitched it forward again.

Jason took a deep breath. What would he be getting himself into? What had Nick been working on? What was this metal, and where had it come from?

For a heartbeat, he stared down at the paper, then picked it up and read it a second time, slowly and carefully. The terms hadn’t improved. But as the general said, it did specify compensation…twenty thousand per month, for the duration of his involvement with the project. It guaranteed six months of work, plus an option to extend employment for another six months by mutual agreement. It meant wintering here. But if Wu meant to keep him here, anyway…

Idly, he rubbed his thumb across the lump of strange, silvery, light-as-air metal. Metal like nothing he had ever seen or heard of before. Nick must have been working on it.

It was the discovery of a lifetime. The possible uses in aircraft—in spaceships—even for his own asteroid-mining project—stretched before him.

If it could be mass-produced, it would change the world.

He bit his lip. He had to be part of it.

He signed.

En Route to Army Corps of Engineers

Special Operations Base, Antarctica

On the two-hour helicopter trip from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to the Army base, Jason barely noticed Wu and Bloch’s presence. The general sat up front, next to the pilot. Bloch sat in the seat next to Jason, typing fast on a small laptop computer.

“Reports,” the colonel told him, voice tinny and distant in the headphones.

Jason barely nodded. He was already pawing through a satchel stuffed with Nick’s papers—scribbled notes, field reports, test results—trying to make sense of the work.

From what he could tell, Nick had made almost no progress. Clearly the Antarctic had gotten to him. His journal spent as much time complaining about migraine headaches and night-terrors as it did documenting tests on the metal fragments. The journal painted the picture of a man slowly falling apart under immense stress and close confinement. Worse, no one at the base had recognized danger signs until Nick hanged himself.

And the metal… It defied analyses on so many levels, at least with the tools available at the army base. He knew more about what it wasn’t than what it was.

Non-radioactive.

Non-conductive.

Acids had no effect.

The most interesting results came when he used a small foundry to discover its thermal properties. It melted at 1,180 degrees—roughly 300 degrees more than zinc, but 40 degrees less than aluminum. Given those properties, it shouldn’t have been harder than steel.

Then, against all logic, it burned explosively at 1,640 degrees.

He dug out a pen and scribbled a few notes in the margins of Nick’s journal, double-checking all the calculations. The energy output seemed to violate Hess’s Law governing constant heat summation. That, or Nick had made a series of gross mistakes and miscalculations. And that wasn’t like Nick.

He sat back, staring at the calculations, trying to wrap his mind around the implications. Could Hess’s Law be wrong?

He jumped when Col. Bloch’s voice broke in on his thoughts: