Matthew Reilly: Ice Station

And in between the two Marines stood the fruits of their sweep.

One woman.

One man.

One young girl.

And one seal.

"They got here about four hours ago," Sarah Hensleigh said

Schofield and Hensleigh were standing on A-deck, out on the catwalk that looked out over the rest of the ice station.

As Hensleigh had already explained, Wilkes Ice Station was essentially a great big vertical cylinder that had been bored into the ice shelf. It dived five stories straight down, all the way to sea level.

Indented at regular intervals on the walls of the cylinder were metal catwalks that ran around the circumference of the cylinder. Each catwalk was joined to the one above it by steep, narrow rung-ladders, so that the whole structure looked kind of like a fire escape.

Branching out from each catwalk, burrowing into the icy walls of the cylinder, was a series of tunnels that formed the different levels of the station. Each level was made up of four straight tunnels that branched out from the central shaft to meet a curved outer tunnel that ran in a wide circle around the central well. The four straight tunnels roughly equated the four points on a compass, so they were simply labeled north, south, east, and west.

Each catwalk/level of Wilkes Ice Station was labeled A through E?A-deck being the highest, E-deck signifying the wide metal platform that surrounded the large pool of water at the base of the massive underground structure. On C-deck, the middle level, Sarah said, a narrow retractable bridge was able to extend across the wide central shaft of the station.

"How many?" Schofield asked.

"There were five of them at first," Sarah said. "Four stayed here with us, while the fifth guy took the others back to d'Urville on their hovercraft."

"You know them?"

Sarah said, "I know Luc and I know Henri?who I think wet himself when he saw you guys walk in?and I know of the fourth one, Jacques Latissier."

After Montana had led Hensleigh into the dining room a few minutes earlier, it hadn't taken long for Schofield to figure out that she was the person to speak to about the previous week's events at Wilkes Ice Station.

While all the others looked either dejected or tired, Sarah had appeared collected and in control. Indeed, Montana and Hollywood had said that they'd found her while she had been showing one of the French scientists the core-drilling room down on E-deck. His name had been Jacques Latissier?a tall man with a thick black beard?and he was also on Schofield's mental list.

Sarah Hensleigh stared out over the central shaft of the station, deep in thought. Schofield looked at her. She was an attractive woman, about thirty-five, with dark brown eyes, black shoulder-length hair, and high arching cheekbones. Schofield noticed that around her neck she wore a glistening silver locket on a chain.

At that moment, the little girl came out onto the catwalk. Schofield guessed that she must have been about ten. She had short blond hair, a small button nose, and she wore thick glasses that hung down awkwardly over her cheeks. She looked almost comical in the bulky pink parka that she wore?it had a terribly oversize wool-lined hood that flopped down over her face.

And behind the little girl, loping out onto the metal catwalk, came the seal.

"And who is this?" Schofield asked.

"This is my daughter, Kirsty," Sarah said, putting her hand on the little girl's shoulder. "Kirsty, this is Lieutenant Schofield."

"Hi there," Schofield said.

Kirsty Hensleigh just stood there for a moment and stared up at Schofield, taking in his armor, his helmet, and his weapons.

"Cool glasses," she said at last.

"Huh? Oh, yeah," Schofield said, touching his silver anti-flash glasses. Combined with his snow fatigues and his white-gray body armor, he knew the reflective single-lens glasses made him look particularly icy. A kid would like that. Schofield didn't take the glasses off.

"Yeah, I guess they are pretty cool," he said. "How old are you?"

"Twelve, almost thirteen."

"Yeah?"

"I'm kind of short for my age," Kirsty added matter-of-factly.

"Me, too," Schofield said, nodding.

He looked down as the seal flopped forward and started sniffing at his knee. "And your friend here. What's his name?"

" She's a girl, and her name is Wendy."

Schofield reached down and let the seal sniff his hand. She wasn't very big, about the size of a medium-sized dog, and she happily wore a cute red collar.

"Wendy. What kind of seal is she?" Schofield asked as he began to pat Wendy on the head.

" Arctocephalus gazella ," Kirsty said. "Antarctic fur seal."

Wendy started winding her head around in Schofield's hand, forcing him to pat her behind her earflap. He did, and then suddenly Wendy dropped to the ground and rolled over onto her back.

"She wants you to rub her tummy," Kirsty said, smiling. "She likes that."

Wendy lay on the catwalk, on her back, her flippers held out wide, waiting to be patted. Schofield bent down and gave her a quick rub on the stomach.

"You just won yourself a friend for life," Sarah Hensleigh said, watching Schofield closely.

"Great," Schofield said, rising.

"I didn't know Marines could be so friendly," Sarah said suddenly, taking Schofield slightly off guard.

"We're not all heartless."

"Not when there's something here that you want."

The comment made Schofield stop and look at Sarah for a long second. Clearly, she was no fool.

Schofield nodded slowly, accepting the criticism. "Ma'am, if you don't mind, if we could just get back to what we were discussing before, you know two of them, and you know of one of them, right?"

"That's right."

"What about the fourth one, Cuvier?"

"Never met him."

Schofield moved on. "And how many did they take back to d'Urville?"

"They could only fit six people in their hovercraft, so one of their guys took five of our people back there."

"Leaving the other four back here."

"That's right."

Schofield nodded to himself. Then he looked at Hensleigh. "There are a couple of other things we need to talk about. Like what you found down in the ice. And the Renshaw ... incident ."

Sarah understood what he was saying. Such matters were best discussed in the absence of a twelve-year-old.

She nodded. "No problem."

Schofield looked at the ice station around him: at the pool down at the bottom, at the catwalks set into the walls of the cylinder, at the tunnels that disappeared into the ice. There was something about it all that wasn't quite right, something that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

And then he realized, and he turned to face Sarah. "Stop me if this is a stupid question, but if this whole station is carved into the ice shelf and all the walls are made of ice, why don't they melt? Surely you must generate a lot of heat in here with your machinery and all. Shouldn't the walls be dripping constantly?"

Sarah said, "It's not a stupid question. In fact, it's a very good question. When we first arrived here, we found that the heat from the exhaust of the core-drilling machine was causing some of the ice walls to melt. So we had a cooling system installed on C-deck. It works off a thermostat that keeps the temperature steady at ?1° Celsius no matter what heat we produce. The funny thing is, since the surface temperature outside is almost thirty below, the cooling system actually warms the air in here. We love it."

"Very clever," Schofield said as he looked around the ice station.

His gaze came to rest on the dining room. Luc Champion and the other three French scientists were in there, sitting at the table with the residents of Wilkes. Schofield watched them, deep in thought.