Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

Book winced inwardly.

"I miscarried three weeks later," Gant said. "I don't know what caused it. Stress, anxiety, who knows. I hated men after my husband did that to me. Hated them. That was when I enlisted in the Corps. Hate makes you a good soldier, you know. Makes you plant every single shot right in the middle of the other guy's head. I couldn't bring myself to trust a man after what my husband did. And then I met him ."

Gant was staring off into space. Her eyes were beginning to fill with water.

"You know, when I was accepted into this unit, the selection committee put on this big celebration lunch at Pearl. It was beautiful, one of those great Hawaiian BBQ lunches? out on the beach, in the sun. He was there. He was wearing this horrible blue Hawaiian shirt and, of course, those silver sunglasses.

"I remember that at one point during the lunch everybody else was talking, but he wasn't. I watched him. He just seemed to bow his head and go into this inner world. He seemed so lonely, so alone . He caught me looking and we talked about something inane, something about what a great place Pearl Harbor was and what our favourite holiday spots were.

"But my heart had already gone out to him. I don't know what he was thinking about that day, but whatever it was, he was thinking hard about it. My guess is it was a woman, a woman he couldn't have.

"Book, if a man ever thought about me the way he was thinking about her..." Gant shook her head. "I would just ... Oh, I don't know. It was just so intense . It was like ... like nothing I have ever seen."

Book didn't say anything. He just stared at Gant.

Gant seemed to sense his eyes on her and she blinked twice and the water in her eyes disappeared.

"Sorry," she said. "Can't go showing my emotions now, can I. If I start doing that, people'll start calling me Dorothy again."

"You should tell him how you feel about him," Book said gently.

"Yeah, right" Gant said. "Like I'd do that. They'd kick me out of the unit before I could say, 'That's why you can't have women in frontline units.' Book, I'd rather be close to him and not be able to touch him than be far away and still not be able to touch him."

Book looked hard at Gant for a moment, as if he was appraising her. Then he smiled warmly. "You're all right... Dorothy , you know that. You're all right."

Gant snuffed a laugh. "Thanks."

She bowed her head and shook it sadly. Then suddenly she looked up at Book.

"I have one more question," she said.

"What?"

Gant cocked her head. "How is it that you know all that stuff about him? All the stuff about Bosnia and the farmhouse and his eyes and all that?"

Riley smiled sadly.

Then he said, "I was on the team that got him out."

"Any sort of paleontology is a waiting game," Sarah Hensleigh said as she trudged through the snow next to Schofield toward the outer perimeter of the station. "But now with the new technology, you just set the computer, walk away, and do something else. Then you come back later and see if the computer has found anything."

The new technology, Sarah had been saying, was a longwave sonic pulse that the paleontologists at Wilkes shot down into the ice to detect fossilized bones. Unlike digging, it located fossils without damaging them.

Schofield said, "So what do you do while you wait for the sonic pulse to find your next fossil?"

"I'm not just a paleontologist, you know," Sarah said, smiling, feigning offense. "I was a marine biologist before I took up paleontology. And before all this happened, I was working with Ben Austin in the Bio Lab on B-deck. He was doing work on a new antivenom for Enhydrina schistosa ."

Schofield nodded. "Sea snake."

Sarah looked at him, surprised. "Very good, Lieutenant."

"Yeah, well, I'm not just a grunt with a gun, you know," Schofield said, smiling.

The two of them came to the outer perimeter of the station, where they found Montana standing on the skirt of one of the Marine hovercrafts. The hovercraft was facing out from the station complex.

It was dark?that eerie eternal twilight of winter at the poles?and through the driving snow Schofield could just make out the vast flat expanse of land stretching out in front of the stationary hovercraft. The horizon glowed dark orange

Behind Montana, on the roof of the hovercraft, Schofielc saw the hovercraft's range finder. It looked like a long-barreled gun mounted on a revolving turret, and it swept from side to side in a slow 180-degree arc. It moved slowly, taking about thirty seconds to make a complete sweep from left to right before beginning the return journey.

"I set them just like you said," Montana said, stepping down from the skirt so that he stood in front of Schofield "The other LCAC is at the southeast corner." LCAC was the official name for a Marine hovercraft. It stood for "Landing Craft?Air Cushioned." Montana was a stickler for formalities.

Schofield nodded. "Good."

Positioned as they were, the range finders on the hovercrafts now covered the entire landward approach to Wilkes Ice Station. With a range of over fifty miles, Schofield and his team would know well in advance if anybody was heading toward the station.

"Have you got a portable screen?" Schofield asked Montana.

"Right here." Montana offered Schofield a portable viewscreen that displayed the results of the range finders' sweeps.

It looked like a miniature TV with a handle on the left-hand side. On the screen, two thin green lines clocked slowly back and forth like a pair of windscreen wipers. As soon as an object crossed the range finders' beams, a blinking red dot would appear on the screen and the object's vital statistics would appear in a small box at the bottom of the screen.

"All right," Schofield said. "I think we're all set. I think it's time we found out what's down in that cave."

The trudge back to the main building took about five minutes. Schofield, Sarah, and Montana walked quickly through the falling snow. As they walked, Schofield told Sarah and Montana about his plans for the cave.

First of all, he wanted to verify the existence of the spacecraft itself. At this stage, there was no proof that anything was down there at all. All they had was the report of a single scientist from Wilkes who was himself now probably dead. Who knew what he had seen? That he had also been attacked soon after his sighting of the spacecraft?by enemies unknown?was another question that Schofield wanted answered.

There was a third reason, however, for sending a small team down to the cave. A reason that Schofield didn't mention to Sarah or Montana.

If anyone else did happen to make a play for the station?especially in the next few hours when the Marines were at their most vulnerable?and if they also managed to overcome what was left of Schofield's unit up in the station proper, then a second team stationed down in the cave might be able to provide an effective last line of defense.

For if the only entrance to the cave was by way of an underwater ice tunnel, then anybody wanting to penetrate it would have to get there by an underwater approach. Covert incursionary forces hate underwater approaches and for good reason: you never know what's waiting for you above the surface . The way Schofield saw it, a small team already stationed inside the cave would be able to pick off an enemy force, one by one, as they broke the surface.

Schofield, Sarah, and Montana came to the main entrance of the station. They trudged down the rampway and headed inside.

Schofield stepped onto the A-deck catwalk and immediately headed for the dining room. Rebound should have been back there by now?with Champion?and Schofield wanted to see if the French doctor had anything to say about Samurai's condition.