She looked up to scream at Flora again and saw the entire stack of artifacts collapse and fall to the floor. The main stone almost leapt from the pile and Flora was able to snatch it midflight as the other artifacts hit the bubbling, oozing black panel. She grabbed at the scattered stones and managed to retrieve them all, albeit dripping black liquid. Then she tried to turn and run but the floor gripped the edges of her shoes as it flowed.
Adrienne took a giant, heaving backward step from the doorway. She almost fell over but shoved the edge of the tray at the wall to gain equilibrium. She was horrified to feel the wall soften beneath its edge and jerked the tray away as soon as she felt balanced. Then she yanked her other leg out of the doorway too.
“Throw them to me!” she told Flora.
Flora, still lunging slowly forward, threw the first artifact, then the next, and the next. It was so hot she wanted to vomit. She felt tears in her eyes as she saw fragments fly from the wooden artifact as Adrienne caught it. Only the petrified center was left now as the rest of it melted into the custard concrete floor.
Flora held the last artifact, the main stone, the Serpent, which was vibrating so hard she could feel the waves through her arms down to her feet. Her vision clouded, suffused with red and she thought she smelled sulfur. Vaguely she could hear Adrienne screaming at her. She took another weak step forward and with all her willpower, she let go of the Serpent in Adrienne’s direction.
The stone tumbled through the air and Adrienne dove forward and snatched it from the liquid concrete. Then the girl disappeared from the doorway. Flora heard the sound of running and suddenly realized she was hearing again. Her mind was clearing. The heat was lifting. She was gaining more control of her limbs. She lurched from the room and the floor seemed steady beneath her so she stopped, resting against a wall. She looked back at the chamber. The black panels had melted halfway down the walls. Long drips trailed from the panels on the ceiling. But the melting had stopped. The floor was still. The panels were no longer bubbling.
“Damn it!” she heard from down the hall. “We need another room!”
Adrienne was heading back down the hall in Flora’s direction, yelling. “I’ll get the rest of the panels. That deep freezer will give us fifteen minutes, max!”
CHAPTER 17
“But he’ll die!” Siem der Graaf shouted.
The taller man blocked Eric Trout’s path to the spiral stairway. They were standing nearly nose to nose in the “jam tart,” the large red module that served as Halley VI’s social hub. Eric’s mustache hung in two tendrils past his chin, and days of sharp frustration had burned his typically jovial expression to a frazzle.
“Der Graaf,” Trout huffed, “this is essentially the only situation where the title ‘base commander’ actually means something. Step aside.”
The younger man opened his mouth to speak but just shook his head.
Trout’s chin sank into the collar of his heavy turtleneck. “Der Graaf, we’re following orders strictly on this. We start the move off the ice shelf in thirty minutes.”
Trout raised a thick-fingered hand and gently pushed Siem to the side, then hurried down the stairs.
“But surely you don’t need everyone for the move,” Siem argued, following on his heels. “You will have excess personnel, in fact. Or do you plan to have them sitting around inside the modules as you tow them?”
“Anyone without a specific job will be in the trucks and bulldozers, heading to the new location.”
“Fine. Then give me two men for just that amount of time, before you need them to start hanging pictures back on the walls.”
Trout fired back a severely disapproving look.
“Two men and Ski-Doos to save a life!” Siem said, pressing the commander.
Trout turned to face him in the empty dining area.
“You cannot have them,” Trout said finally. “We have to turn off everything for the move except the hydraulics. No electronics. Communications will be off. It’s unconscionable to send out one man, let alone three, on a dangerous rescue mission with zero radio contact. I simply cannot, der Graaf. I will not.”
“Then you’re killing him.”
“He did this to himself, without orders,” Trout replied. His expression softened. “Has it not occurred to you he might want that?”
“What, to die?”
“No,” Trout said. “Not to endanger anyone else! You said he sent you back—”
“I don’t think he fully understood the danger,” Siem replied. “No,” he went on. “I think he just made the greatest discovery of his life and he wasn’t thinking clearly. He would want to live to see it brought to daylight.”
“Der Graaf, I’ve spent five winters and summers on the ice, watching people’s minds bend in the twenty-four-hour darkness or light. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s not to ascribe logic to someone behaving illogically. That’s how to get more people killed!”
“He was as sane as any of us,” Siem snapped.
“Really? You mentioned that he ran out of ice screws so he slid the rest of the way down the crevasse.”
“It was not very far.”
“Far enough that he couldn’t climb it?”
“Yes—”
“Thereby leaving himself without a way back up. He knew this, did he not?”
“He did, which is why I hammered in the screws he’ll need.”
“Did he ask you to do that?”
Siem was silent.
“Der Graaf. Did Mikel Jasso ask you if you had extra ice screws?”
After a long moment Siem answered, “No.”
“Then he was mad. Or a reckless fool. I don’t know which, and sadly, I cannot afford to care.”
“So, then, we let a mad, reckless fool die in a crevasse, because it is dangerous and inconvenient to rescue him and recover his scientific find—which, I may add, is one reason we are out here. To expand human knowledge.”
“Damn you. You’re not even a scientist! You’re maintenance!”
“That, sir, is not an argument.”
Trout waved away the rebuke. “Anyway, you know me better. We have to get the station onto grounded ice, ice that isn’t inexplicably melting, ice that isn’t subject to unpredictable seismic occurrences as our Norwegian friends have cautioned us. Now, you are wasting my—”
“We can do both,” Siem said. “We can. We must.”
“No.”
With a brusque sweeping movement, Trout made sure Siem left the module ahead of him. He also assigned the young man to assist Ivor and Dr. Bundy on all tasks, so that he couldn’t steal a Ski-Doo and try to rescue Mikel by himself.
Outside, tempers were hair-trigger and the clipped conversations were tense. It was more than just the pressure of setting up to tow the jam tart and its seven blue sisters, one by one, across almost forty miles of ice. Every person on the team felt that the outside world was filled with odd shadows that did not seem to align with the position of the sun. Over and over the workers’ eyes snapped toward things that weren’t there. No one ever took safety and security for granted here. But no one had ever feared their surroundings quite like this, either.
The weather was cooperating at least: almost no wind, and not cold enough to comment on it.
Eric Trout did the rounds, checking in by radio with each person to make sure they were a go. Then, from inside one module, he started flicking switches. First their radios died. Then the modules. Everyone felt instantly forlorn and abandoned; even Ivor, who had been singing a Scottish drinking song, stopped.