"In fact, aside from his rude noises, I'd call him an Antarctic Ten." She smiled slyly, head tilted judiciously. They were still making fun.
"A what?"
"An Antarctic Ten is a member of the opposite sex who'd be a Five anywhere else," Cameron explained.
"Ah. Very flattering. Great."
"We all look better and better as the months drag on."
"Terrific."
"You could be a Six." Abby winked. "The women will have to vote."
"I'll look forward to that."
"But Krill is too cruel for him, Rod. He's right. Maybe Ozone."
"Maybe Sediment. He is a rockhead."
"A what?" she asked.
"Geologist. Running from rocks."
"Rolling Stone, then."
Lewis shook his head. He'd have to find his own name. And if I could make Six, you could be an Eight, he judged, watching Abby laugh. Even a Nine after a few months at the Pole. Things were looking up.
A telephone rang and Cameron answered it. "Hello… Yeah, he's here." A pause. "Okay, Mickey… Right, I'll tell him." He hung up.
"Who was that?" Lewis asked.
"Our estimable astrophysicist, Michael M. Moss. Pooh-bah of the Pole. He'd like you to come by astronomy later today." He pointed to the other building on stilts, three-quarters of a mile away. "You can do that?"
"After lunch." His stomach growled again.
Cameron was looking at Lewis curiously. "Mickey usually isn't this welcoming. He can't remember half the names on the base. But he asked for you."
"I'm flattered."
"It's interesting that he'd want to see you so soon."
"Maybe he likes fingies."
Cameron shook his head. "No, he doesn't. He's a snob."
"Well," Lewis said, enjoying finally knowing something the others didn't, "maybe he likes geologists."
CHAPTER FOUR
Nine-tenths of the universe is missing, Lewis. My job is to find it."
Michael M. "Mickey" Moss leaned back in his desk chair in the astronomy building and waited to be asked for clarification, his hands making a tent in front of an expression both regal and watchful. Despite a Disney nickname that had dogged him from grade school- or perhaps because of it, in compensation- Moss looked nothing like a cartoon. He instead maintained an Aristotelian aura with his mane of white hair and beard, raw pink skin, and eyes both bright with intelligence and as dark as obsidian marbles. Lewis was sure the look had been cultivated: Moss was the kind of scientist who could command the lectern of an academic gathering on appearance alone.
"I wasn't aware we'd misplaced the universe," Lewis said on cue, playing straight man to the lecture. Moss would get to the point of this visit in his own good time.
"Exactly! Exactly the problem!" The scientist bounded out of his seat and theatrically pointed toward the ceiling. "People marvel at the sky. All those stars! And yet those trillions of suns represent only a tiny fraction of the matter that has to be out there, judging from the rotational speed and placement of galaxies. There should be ten times as much stuff. A hundred times, maybe. So- what else? Dim stars? Dark planets? Or something we don't even suspect? That's what we're looking for." He pointed at the floor. "Down there." He smiled as if posing a riddle.
"Sparco told me you're building a telescope in the ice."
Moss looked mildly disappointed at this shortcut in his lecture. "You're familiar with neutrinos?"
"Never seen one."
The astrophysicist nodded wryly. "Precisely. Far smaller than an atom. So small that billions are passing through our bodies right at this moment without effect. So small that a neutrino can pass through the entire planet without hitting anything. The most inconsequential objects imaginable. Chargeless. Massless. Yet what if they do have mass, however slight? There are so many of them they could represent a substantial fraction of our missing universe. If we could find and count them and tell where they come from, it would bring us a lot of information. It's the finding that's the problem."
"Which you've done."
"Which we're in the process of doing. Statistically, a very few neutrinos do collide with the particles of an atom as they streak through the earth. When this happens there's a tiny explosion of sorts, a spark, a kind of radiation- a point of light, if you will. We can't see these flashes in rock. But sensitive instruments can see them in transparent mediums such as tanks of water. Or, ice."
"Ta-da," Lewis said.
"Drill holes deep enough and the ice becomes so compressed that all the bubbles and color are squeezed out of it. Ice becomes clearer than glass. Clear as diamond. Instruments can detect these flashes for a thousand feet in all directions. We've drilled holes a mile deep to spot neutrino light. It's the best place in the world, really. If it works. If it works."
"There's been problems."
"No! Not problems. Scientific realities. Impatience by funding agencies. Because they have no idea of the conditions down here. No idea! I'm staying this winter to try to keep things on schedule. Because we might find something so unexpected that it changes all our understanding of gravity, matter, energy…"
"You did find something unexpected."
"Yes." Again, Moss resented the prompting. "As a by-product of a lifelong search. A search here, at the harshest place on earth."
"The Pole is pretty awesome."
"You're privileged to be here. Men have been trying to decipher the heavens since Babylonian priests climbed their ziggurats. Like pilgrims and holy men, they've gone to the mountaintops. Now they've come to the farthest mountaintop, the South Pole. The farthest place! After this, the next ziggurat is space!"
"And you have something from space." Lewis was trying to be polite but he was growing impatient to see what he'd been sent for.
"Yes." Moss gave up on his preamble. "You have some expertise?"
"A little from college. I'm not kidding myself about why Jim Sparco picked me. I wasn't the best, I was convenient and unemployed. I was interested in his research. And he thought I was principled, which meant he thought I could keep my mouth shut."
"Yes, I'm interested in your principles." Moss studied him. "You've signed on to look for global warming, correct?"
"As part of the weather readings."
"And yet you're a petroleum geologist, right?"
"I was."
"Which contributes to global warming."
"Maybe."
"No maybe about it."
"Oil also keeps us alive down here. So you can find the universe."
"Conceded."
"Besides which, I quit."
"Yes, that intrigues me. Sparco told me the story when I e-mailed him about my rock. I'm sure Big Oil paid well. So you've made an interesting choice, haven't you? Everyone comes to the Pole for something."
"I came to help out. I came to work for the good guys. If I make some small contribution toward your discovery, I'm excited."
Moss nodded. "Fair enough. Fair enough." The idea of a fingie wanting a piece of Michael Moss's reflected glory obviously pleased him. Made sense to him. "I admire your dedication. Someday your help may be credited. In the meantime, however, the need for discretion, as you said, is paramount. No one knows of this discovery. No one will know, until I choose to tell them. Agreed?"
Lewis nodded. It's what Sparco had told him to expect.
"I haven't decided what to do with it," Moss explained.
He nodded again.
Slowly, the scientist stood up, moved to a file cabinet, and opened a drawer. "It's interesting how compelling a rock becomes in a place that doesn't have any. I've touched this thing a thousand times. Wondered where it came from. What might be inside." He lifted his arm, hefting a dull brown rock the size and shape of a large, lumpy baking potato. "It's remarkably ugly."
Lewis took the stone, dense and heavy. Eight, ten pounds. The rock was burnt and glassy on one side. My God. "How many people know about this?" he asked.