But he couldn't let that interfere with the experiment. Couldn't let that interfere with himself! Still, Norse allowed himself the luxury of pondering her for a while, considering their encounter. She'd been more receptive this time, he thought, as if she were thawing. Ice Cream! Getting Lewis out of the way had helped. Getting rid of him entirely would help more. Too bad there was just one more Spryte, but he needed to reserve that for himself… Norse imagined triumphing with her, he her only hope of survival, getting her to do the things he needed. Too bad she had a damn toothache.
Maybe in the end they could leave together.
He looked at what he had just written. I acted on the best plan I had at the time.
Adaptable, yes. But always a step ahead. Always a step ahead.
It really would be quite the brilliant paper. He took up his pen again.
It wasn't until later, much later, that another possibility occurred to him and he stood up from his desk, suddenly alarmed.
"Damn her!"
He wrenched open the closet door, threw down the box Abby had pawed through, and flipped frantically to his own folder, cursing as he did so. He opened it.
His dental X rays were gone.
She was taking them to Nancy Hodge.
There were red droplets on the snow between the galley and BioMed, a bright disturbing trail that announced more trouble. Abby followed them at a trot, the X rays in her mitten. The door to the sick bay was locked and she groaned inwardly. She remembered that the increasingly paranoid Nancy Hodge was locking herself in, and the need to knock was maddening. Every second seemed vital. Norse was no fool, and Abby feared he'd come storming out from his office at any moment. She needed Nancy to make the X ray comparison so they could get the others to help.
"Nancy, open up!" She pounded anxiously with the flat of her hand.
There was a pause, then a reply muffled by the door. "I'm busy."
There wasn't time to be busy! They had to learn the truth about Norse! Abby hammered on the door again, impatient and irritated. "Hurry up! It's an emergency!"
"I've got an emergency in here!"
"Nancy, please!"
She heard a muffled oath and the bang of something being shut, then the quick clump of footsteps. The door opened and Nancy looked out, her eyes looking tired and harassed. "You'll have to come back later. I'm treating Gina."
"Please, I've got to talk to you now."
"Abby, I've got blood all over the place in here."
Abby stepped up to the level of BioMed and peeked past Nancy to the examining room beyond. Clyde Skinner was lying on the lone bed, his eyes bandaged. Gina Brindisi was sitting on the table, her face white and scared looking, her pants on the floor. One of her legs was smeared with blood, a slashing wound on her calf looking partly sewn up. "My God, what happened?"
Nancy looked back over her shoulder at Gina. "She tripped over some damn pike or battleax Calhoun made. We're all going to poke each other's eyes out with those things. It's crazy. I've got to finish up these stitches to stop the bleeding."
"Can't we talk for a second first?"
"Abby, she's leaking all over the damn table! Are you hurt or sick?"
"No."
"Then come back later." She started to close the door.
"Wait!" Abby thrust her boot inside, preventing its closure. "It's about everything that's happening!"
"I'm trying to patch up everything that's happening! I'll talk to you later!"
"Please!"
Nancy was annoyed now. "Get your foot out of my door! Damn you and damn this place anyway!"
Abby was thinking furiously. How much time before Norse figured out what she was up to? She couldn't wait until later, not if she was going to try to get into Norse's room for more evidence. She needed to be in two places at once! And now Nancy was distracted.
"Listen to me!" Abby hissed urgently. "Listen, or we're all going to die!" Her determination interrupted Nancy's impatience, piercing the doctor's anger. For just a moment the medic was listening. "Norse is not Norse," Abby insisted in a low voice. "Do you understand? Bob is not Bob. He's someone else, some impostor, and that means he could be behind all this craziness that's been going on. I can't come back later, I have to find the one thing that will convince the rest of you, so I'm going to send Jed over here instead, okay? I'm going to send Lewis. He can explain."
Nancy looked wary, curious, fearful. "He's locked up."
"I'm going to let him out. It's important. Nancy, you have to trust him. You have to trust me. It's our only chance."
The doctor shook her head. "I don't trust anyone anymore."
Abby thrust the folder of X rays at her. "These are Norse's dental X rays. You've got another set here. I need you to compare the two as soon as you stitch up Gina. Hurry, before Bob comes!"
"Abby…"
"Just do it! You'll see! I'm going to send Jed to fill you in and then I'm going to come back if I find what I think I'll find. Then the three of us will go to the others."
Nancy took the folder uncertainly. "I don't understand…"
"Just look at the two sets! See if they match! Please, Nancy, I think you're our last chance!"
"Last chance?"
"To get away from the Pole alive."
Lewis darted across the snow under the dome like a wraith for what he hoped was the last time, carrying as a crude defense one of the ice axes he'd used as a grappling hook. He had descended like a spider back into the dome the night before, pausing on the roof to untie the hook from the rope and thrust it in his belt. Then he doubled the rope around one of the framing braces on the dome. Its ample length allowed him to descend back into his imprisonment on the doubled line and then retrieve the entire rope by pulling on one end, reeling it in until it slipped out of the dome brace and fell down on the snow. He hid the rope behind Comms and tucked the axes in a maintenance closet near the sauna. Then he'd waited in his cedar jail in an agony of impatience, anxious to see if Abby could figure a way to follow up on the mystery.
She'd finally come to him panting like a sprinter, gasping out the tale of her acquisition of Norse's X ray and its delivery to Nancy Hodge. The doctor had been too busy to listen, Abby said hurriedly, because she was bandaging up Gina, but now Nancy was waiting for him in BioMed and Abby was about to pursue a hunch about what she might find in Norse's room. It was all hunches now, a gamble that they could save all their lives by uncovering the truth about one. Yet what if he was wrong? Then the only alternative might be the kind of desperate escape Tyson had resorted to, stealing the other Spryte and setting off for McMurdo. Probably dying in the attempt.
Now he looked around carefully to avoid interception but, surprisingly, no one was around. Eating? Moping? Arguing? Maybe Norse had started some kind of bizarre encounter group. He slipped into the archway, surprised at how easy this was, and went to the door of the medic's module. He reached for the freezerlike door handle and stopped. It was hanging askew, its lock apparently broken. Hadn't Nancy said they didn't lock the sick bay? Why was it pried open now? Hesitantly, he knocked.
No reply. The door creaked open a quarter inch.
"Nancy?"
No answer.
He pounded harder. "Hodge? You in there?" Again, silence. "It's Lewis! We need to talk!"
Then a faint moan. "Help…"
It was Clyde Skinner.
"For God's sake, help…"
Where was Nancy? He shoved open the broken door and stepped inside, shutting it against the cold. "Clyde?"
"Who is it? Who is it?"
It was Skinner, all right, the burnt radioman. He was lying in the sick bay bed with his face swathed in bandages, blind and helpless, clutching his sheets.