"Dr. Chase, we have a full range of medical facilities at McMurdo. This is for the best, believe me. He'll be well treated and looked after, you have my word." Lieutenant Madden's eyes thawed a little. "I'll even have the medic send you a progress report, how's that?"
They must think him stupid. He didn't like being soft-soaped. He stared levelly at the American. "You can't seriously believe he's a security risk, not with a broken back."
"This isn't a security matter, Dr. Chase. Leastwise, not military security." Lieutenant Madden lowered his voice as if taking Chase into his confidence. "Between us, we do have some information. We think --we're not sure yet--that he's a member of a Soviet oil prospecting team. We've known for some time that they've been secretly exploring the continent for oil deposits, which as you may know is in contravention of the Antarctic Treaty, ratified by sixteen nations. We've no hard evidence to support this, but if we can come up with dates, locations, even some of their findings from an eyewitness, then it might persuade the USSR to pull out before the whole thing blows up into a major international incident. Naturally we don't want the Soviets looking for oil behind our backs, but even less are we seeking an energy confrontation with them on what until now has been neutral ground."
"I see." Chase breathed twin plumes of steam into the blisteringly cold air. Banting stamped his feet, looking almost relieved.
Lieutenant Madden leaned forward. "I'd appreciate it, Dr. Chase, if this didn't go any further." One intelligent man appealing to the integrity and good sense of another. "You understand."
"Absolutely."
"Good. Fine." The American's thin lips twitched into something resembling a smile. "I knew I could rely on you."
He shook hands with them both, gave a courtesy salute, and walked briskly across the packed snow to the waiting aircraft, whose engines had been kept idling all the time it was on the ground. At 65 degrees below zero F. the fuel in its tanks would have frozen solid.
The C-130 taxied into the wind and took off, snow spurting from its skis in a billowing cloud, and in seconds the wing and fuselage lights were bright winking stars against a sky already darkening into the twenty-two-hour night.
Chase strolled back with Nick to the entrance ramp, not hearing his lament that Doug Thomas hadn't materialized with the little plastic bag. He was thinking instead of the perfectly sincere expression on the sharp young face of Lt. Lloyd Madden, and of his equally sincere explanation, so confidential, so plausible, so well rehearsed.
Three days later, during the changeover at McMurdo Station, Chase learned from a U.S. Army doctor that the Russian had died of a brain hemorrhage on the operating table. He wasn't a bit surprised. The poor bastard had never stood a chance. From a bucket seat forward of the cargo compartment in the smooth silver belly of a C-121 Lockheed Super Constellation, Chase gazed down on the swathes of blue and green that marked the varying depths and different currents in the ocean. They were six hours out from Antarctica, with another four to go before landing at Christchurch.
As the aircraft droned on he thought about the dead man, about the piece of paper carefully folded in his diary, about the absorption of carbon dioxide in seawater. But none of it seemed to get him anywhere at all.
2
The research vessel Melville, two days out from San Diego, steamed at quarter speed through the gently rolling Pacific swell. On a towline one hundred yards astern, the RMT (Rectangular Mid-Water Trawl) scooped surface water to a precisely calibrated depth of two meters, capturing the tiny mesopelagic creatures on their upward migration from the middle depths.
Part of the fleet belonging to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Melville was on a shakedown cruise for the Marine Biology Research Division, testing a new type of opening-closing release gear. It was operated from the afterdeck on instructions from the monitoring room amidships, and it was Cheryl Detrick's and Gordon Mudie's task to watch and report on the trawl's performance. After nearly two hours Cheryl was bored to tears. Not so much with deck duty as with Gordon and the fact that despite nil encouragement, he kept coming on strong. He was tall, skinny, with lank mousy hair that straggled in the breeze, and a gaping loose-lipped grin that reminded her of Pluto's. She thought him unattractive and charmless, while he thought he was making a first-rate impression.
Gordon stood by the winch, happy in his ignorance, while Cheryl kept lookout through Zeiss binoculars. Both were graduate students working on a research project for Dr. Margaret Delors, who for ten years or more had been gathering data on the eastern subequatorial Pacific.
"Jeez, it's hot," Gordon complained, fanning himself and stating the obvious. "Don't you think so, Sherry?"
Cheryl continued watching the RMT. She hated being called Sherry. "Release gear open," she reported into the button mike and received the monitoring room's acknowledgment over the headset. Now another fifteen minutes of Gordon's witty repartee and inane grin. Lord deliver us . . .
Moving to the rail she did a slow sweep of the placid ocean. After a moment she removed the headset and dangled it on a metal stanchion. The breeze ruffled her cropped sun-bleached hair. All through university she'd never cut it once, until it reached her waist, and then a friend had advised her that she really ought to style it to suit her height and figure. Which Cheryl interpreted as meaning that girls of medium stature with big tits looked dumpy with waist-length hair.
Gordon leaned his bony forearms on the rail and beamed at her, full of bright, sincere, lecherous interest. She might have liked him if he hadn't been so damned obvious. He was probably too honest, she reflected. The guys she fancied were devious bastards, some of them real chauvinist pigs at that, which was a trait she didn't admire in herself. But there had to be a physical turn-on, no matter who it was, and Gordon didn't qualify.
"It was your dad, wasn't it, who wrote the book? You're the same Detrick, aren't you?" He was trying manfully to keep the conversation rolling, and Cheryl felt a slight twinge of compassion.
"That's me." Cheryl smiled. "The nutty professor's daughter."
"Somebody told me he could have been really big at Scripps--even the director if he'd wanted--and he just went off into the blue." Gordon waved his hand. "An island a zillion miles from nowhere. What made him do it?"
"He hates people," Cheryl said flippantly. She was tempted to add, "It runs in the family," but didn't. Gordon was a pain in the ass, but she didn't want to make a cheap remark for the sake of it.
"Is that right? Does he hate people?" Gordon was giving her his intense moony stare, perhaps hoping he'd discovered a topic of mutual interest.
Cheryl shrugged, scanning the ocean through the binoculars. "I don't know. To be honest, I don't know him all that well. I get a Christmas card every February and there isn't much room for a life story between the holly and the snow-covered turtles."
"Jeez, Sherry, you're his daughter. "
"So you keep reminding me, Gordy."
Gordon mused on this and then came up unaided with the thought for the day. "They do say that geniuses are very weird people. Not like the rest of us. You know--kinda inhuman, cold, no emotions."
"I'm sure he'd be thrilled to hear that."
Gordon was immune to irony. "Jeez, I'd love to meet somebody like that, Sherry. I bet he's a fascinating guy. I mean to say, the dedication it takes to go off like-that, leaving civilization and all that stuff behind, living purely and simply for your work. That's terrific."
"Is it?" Cheryl lowered the binoculars and stared at him, her tone sharper than she intended. "It's terrific to live with relatives for most of your life, being shipped around like a package. To be an orphan when one of your parents is still alive. That really is terrific, Gordy."