Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

"Sea snake venom?" Schofield said.

"Chapter 9," Renshaw said.

Schofield found it. "Naturally Occurring Toxins?Sea Fauna."

"Look up sea snakes," Renshaw said.

Schofield did. He found the heading: "Sea Snakes?Toxins, Symptoms and Treatment."

"Read it," Renshaw said.

Schofield did.

"Out loud," Renshaw said.

Schofield read, "The common sea snake ( Enhydrina schis-tosa) has a venom with a toxicity level three times that of the king cobra, the most lethal land-based snake. One drop (0.03 mL) is enough to kill three men. Common symptoms of sea snake envenomation include aching and stiffness of muscles, thickening of the tongue, paralysis, visual loss, severe inflammation of the eye area and dilation of the pupils, and, most notably of all, lockjaw. Indeed, so severe is lockjaw in such cases, that it is not unknown for victims of sea snake envenomation to?"

Schofield cut himself off.

"Read it," Renshaw said softly.

"?to sever their own tongues with their teeth." Schofield looked up at Renshaw.

Renshaw cocked his head. "Do I look like a killer to you, Lieutenant?"

"Who's to say you didn't put sea snake venom inside that hypodermic syringe?" Schofield countered.

"Lieutenant," Renshaw said, "at Wilkes Ice Station, sea snake venoms are kept in the Biotoxins Lab, which is always? always ?locked. Only a few people have access to that room, and I'm not one of them."

Schofield remembered the Biotoxins Laboratory on B-deck, remembered the distinctive three-circled biohazard sign pasted across its door.

Strangely, though, he also found himself remembering something else.

He remembered Sarah Hensleigh telling him earlier: "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 Entrydrina schistosa ."

Schofield shook the thought away.

No. Not possible.

He turned to Renshaw. "So who do you think killed Bernie Olson?"

"Why, someone who had access to the Biotoxins Lab, of course," Renshaw said. "That could mean only Ben Austin, Harry Cox, or Sarah Hensleigh."

Sarah Hensleigh..:.

Schofield said, "Why would any of them want to kill Olson?"

"I have no idea," Renshaw said. "No idea."

"So as far as you know, not one of those people had a motive to kill Olson?"

"That's right."

"But you had a motive," Schofield said. "Olson was stealing your research."

"Which kind of makes me the ideal person to set up, doesn't it?" Renshaw said.

Schofield said, "But if someone really wanted to set you up, they would have actually used drain cleaner to kill Olson. Why go to the trouble of using sea snake venom?"

"Good point," Renshaw said. "Good point. But if you read that book, you'll find that drain cleaner has a 59% mortality rate. Sea snake venom has a 98 % mortality rate. Whoever killed Olson wanted to make sure that he died. That's why they used the sea snake venom. They did not want him to be resuscitated."

Schofield pursed his lips in thought.

Then he said, 'Tell me about Sarah Hensleigh."

"What about her?"

"Do you two get along? Do you like her; does she like you?"

"No, no, and no."

Schofield said, "Why don't you like her?"

"You really want to know?" Renshaw sighed deeply. He looked away. "It's because she married my best friend?actually, he was also my boss?and she didn't love him."

"Who was that?" Schofield asked.

"A guy named Brian Hensleigh. He was head of geophysics at Harvard before he died."

Schofield remembered Kirsty telling him about her father before. How he had taught her advanced math. And how he had died only recently.

"He died in a car accident, didn't he?"

"That's right," Renshaw said. "Drunk driver jumped the curb and killed him." Renshaw looked up at Schofield. "How come you know that?"

"Kirsty told me."

"Kirsty told you." Renshaw nodded slowly. "She's a good kid, Lieutenant. Did she tell you that she's my goddaughter?"

"No."

"When she was born, Brian asked me to be her godfather, you know, in case anything ever happened to him. Her mother, Mary Anne, died of cancer when Kirsty was seven."

Schofield said, "Wait a second. Kirsty's mother died when she was seven?"

"Yep."

"So, Sarah Hensleigh isn't Kirsty's mother?"

"That's right," Renshaw said. "Sarah Hensleigh was Brian's second wife. Sarah Hensleigh is Kirsty's stepmother."

Suddenly things began to make sense to Schofield. The way Kirsty hardly ever spoke to Sarah. The way she withdrew into herself whenever she was near Sarah. The natural response of a child to a stepmother she didn't like.

"I don't know why Brian married her," Renshaw said. "I know he was lonely, and, well, Sarah is attractive and she did show him quite a bit of attention. But she was ambitious. Boy, was she ambitious. You could see it in her eyes. She just wanted his name, wanted to meet the people he worked with. She didn't want him . And the last thing she wanted was his kid."

Renshaw laughed sadly. "And then that drunk driver skipped the curb and killed Brian and in one fell swoop Sarah lost Brian and got the kid she never wanted."

Schofield asked. "So why doesn't she like you!'

Renshaw laughed again. "Because I told Brian not to marry her."

Schofield shook his head. Obviously there had been a lot more going on at Wilkes Ice Station before he and his Marines had arrived than initially met the eye.

"You ready with those mouthpieces?" he asked.

"All set."

"This conversation is to be continued," Schofield said as he got to his feet and began to shoulder into one of the scuba tanks.

"Wait a second," Renshaw said, standing. "You're going back in there now ? What if you get killed going back in? Then there'll be nobody left who believes my story."

"Who said I believed your story?" Schofield said.

"You believed it. I know you believed it."

"Then it looks like you'd better come with me. Make sure I don't get killed," Schofield said as he walked over to the window set into the iceberg and looked out through it.

Renshaw paled. "OK, OK, let's just slow down for a second here. Have you given any thought to the fact that there is a pod of killer whales out there? Not to mention some kind of seal that kills killer whales?"

But Schofield wasn't listening. He was just staring out through the window set in the ice. In the distance to the southwest?at the top of one of the nearby ice cliffs?he saw a faint intermittent green flash. Flash-flash. Flash-flash. It was the green beacon light mounted on top of Wilkes Ice Station's radio antenna.

"Mr. Renshaw. I'm going back in there... with or without you, whatever might be in the way." Schofield turned to face him.

"Come on. It's time to retake Wilkes Ice Station."

Wrapped in two layers of oversized 1960s-era wet suits, Schofield and Renshaw swam through the icy silence, breathing with the aid of their thirty-year-old scuba gear.

They both had the same length of steel cable tied around their waists?cable that stretched all the way back to the large cylindrical spooler inside Little America IV, about a mile to the northeast of Wilkes Ice Station. It was a precaution, in case either of them got lost or separated and had to get back to the station.

Schofield held a harpoon gun that he had found inside the Little America station out in front of him.

The water around them became crystal clear as they swam underneath the coastal ice shelf and into a forest of jagged stalactites of ice.

Schofield's plan was that they would swim under the ice shelf?depending on how deep it went?and come up inside Wilkes Ice Station. Outside, he had taken his bearings from the position of the green beacon light atop the station's radio antenna. He figured that if he and Renshaw could keep swimming in the general direction of the beacon, once they went under the ice shelf they would eventually be able to spot the pool at the base of the station.