The Nexus Colony (18 page)

Oddly enough, Almshouse was marching right along with them. But as expected, he didn’t enter the tent. Inside, Grimes fired up the camp stoves and turned them full blast. Ruger, the last one in, was surprised to see Prall and Monroe walk away. But where the hell were they going to go anyway? Ruger sighed in disgust and stepped through the door flap.

“For God’s sake, Hilly,” Lightfoot begged, “will you give me something to drink?” He collapsed to his knees next to the stove, hoping to grab the heat rising off the burners.

Ruger grabbed him by the hood of his parka and yanked him back onto his feet. Emotionally distraught, Allison cried out, “Stop it, Mike! Please?”

“I’ll stop nothing,” Ruger snapped back, angrily. “I ought to break his neck!”

“Stop it!” she implored, and Ruger realized that Allison and Hilly both were tugging at him, trying to pull him off the groveling Lightfoot.

Ruger still held him by the parka, yelling into his face. “You just about got yourself killed, you stupid bastard! You know that?”

Lightfoot cowered, nodding fearfully. He appeared more afraid of Ruger’s wrath than of what he had just experienced.

“If it wasn’t for me your brains would be scattered all over the glacier!” Ruger yelled, all but choking him with another emphatic yank on the parka.

Grimes joined in the plea to let Lightfoot go. “For God’s sake, Mike, let him go. It’s over.”

“It’s not over!” Ruger fumed, releasing Lightfoot who dropped to his knees and scurried away. For some reason, Lightfoot took up refuge behind the distraught Allison, as if she had suddenly become his protectorate. “It’s not even close to over,” Ruger repeated, his voice toning down.

“There’s nothing more we can do, Mike,” Grimes said, trying to regain his own calm.

Ruger, hands on his hips, replied, “It’s only begun for you, John. God only knows what the U. S. Government is going to do with you when they get you back to wherever they’re going to take you. They’ll probably shoot you
then
.”

“They’re probably going to shoot
all
of us,” Allison said. “The only difference between him and us is that we were invited. He wasn’t.”

“Nobody is going to shoot anybody,” Abbott’s deep voice resounded. In his anger, Ruger hadn’t heard Abbott coming through the tent door. That made Ruger even more angry with himself that he had been caught by surprise, as inconsequential as it may have seemed to everyone else.

For a moment there was silence as Abbott stood there. Then he said to Ruger, “I want to talk to you alone.”

Gesturing with his head for Ruger to follow him outside the tent, Abbott went back out the door. Ruger followed. When they were a sufficient distance away out of earshot of everybody, Abbott turned and said, “We’re putting Lightfoot to work.”

Ruger waited for some further explanation, but when Abbott didn’t offer anything more, Ruger thought to himself that what Abbott was really telling him was,
I don’t have any choice. They’re not coming out to get him
.

What Ruger assumed correctly was what had transpired. Abbott had made a quick link-up with the orbiting satellite, passing a brief summary of the intruder incident. The response had only been:
Decision forthcoming tomorrow. Meantime capitalize on expertise.
They wanted Abbott to do exactly what Ruger suggested. Abbott knew the decision couldn’t have come from his boss, Bill Korbett, who probably still hadn’t gotten the message via the Internet. Somebody along the chain had made a quick response, that’s all. Abbott had no personal feeling one way or the other. He was trained to do a job. Carrying out orders was his job. Accomplishing the objectives of a mission was his focus. If somebody along the food chain wanted him to take along the photographer, he’d do it until ordered otherwise.

“Why the sudden change in heart?” Ruger finally asked.

“I don’t ask questions, Mike,” he replied. “I just follow orders.”

“What about Prall?” Ruger responded, unkindly. “Was he just carrying out orders, too?”

Abbott looked him straight in the eye. “Your friend, Mr. Lightfoot, was one lucky man.”

“He’s not my friend.”

“You all seemed pretty intent on saving his ass,” Abbott replied, testing Ruger’s patience.

“He’s nobody’s
friend
, Marsh, “Ruger responded. “As a matter of fact, most everybody at McMurdo despises the son-of-a-bitch. I told you that already. I was only reacting to a human in distress. That’s all.”

Abbott paused, then replied, “Then you’re a good human, Mike.”

Neither man spoke for a moment, then Ruger asked, “Where do we go from here?”

There was another moment of silence as Abbott gazed out over the glacial field, his white breath filling the frigid air. “Let’s get everybody together and I’ll brief them on what we’ve found. Then I’ll decide on how we’re going to proceed. I didn’t anticipate this kind of delay.”

“This is Antarctica. That’s the way things happen out here. Let’s just not overdo it,” Ruger warned. “This cold drains a lot of energy real fast. We can’t exhaust everybody the first time out.”

“I know,” Abbott answered. “But I think even you’ll agree that we’ve got to go back down there now.”

“I presume we’re taking Lightfoot?”

A momentary pause. “Yes.”

“I need to contact McMurdo,” Ruger reminded him.

“One more thing,” Abbott said. “Tell
your
people this guy is under government detainment. They might be looking for him, anyway.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Let’s get moving,” Abbott said.

As they moved toward Abbott’s tent, Ruger said, “Still, I’m sorry about what’s happened. I should have seen it coming. All the signs were there.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Abbott replied. “It’s over and done.”

“Still…,” Ruger said, apologetic.

Abbott waved him off. “I said forget about it, Mike. Let’s concentrate on what we’ve found down there.”

“Sure. I need to get a closer look at it from the bottom of the crevasse,” Ruger said. “I hope we can touch down at the bottom.”

“How are you fixed for carbide lamps?”

“Plenty,” Ruger said. “If we plan to be down there for a long time, what I’ll do is take down the two Coleman lanterns I brought along. That’ll give us plenty of cheap lighting and the fuel lasts a long time.”

“We may have to bring in more equipment if this thing turns out to be something big like I suspect it is.”

Ruger hesitated. “Big like what?”

Abbott responded, “Nothing you or I have ever seen before.”

“Who’s going down with us?”

“Right now, I want Peter, Hilly, and this Lightfoot character. At least for this descent. Can those two rappel?”

Ruger snickered. “I know Grimes has done it. I don’t know about Lightfoot, though,” he contemplated. “I imagine he has. He’s been on all kinds of assignments.”

Abbott snickered himself. “He’ll take the rope, Mike. I’ll tell him Prall will throw him down if he doesn’t.”

“You’re leaving Lisk topside?”

“For now.” Abbott hesitated, as if he had something else to say. He thought for a moment. “Al’s my technical expert, Mike. He’s the best computer and gadgetry whiz we’ve got. He’s not expendable. Depending on whether we find anything…interesting…I may need him to come down right away.”

“What do you
really
expect to find down there, Marsh?” the tone of his voice skeptical.

“We live in a technical universe, Mike,” Abbott replied. “Maybe you’ll learn a few things out of the ordinary.” Abbott stopped. “Look around you, Mike. It isn’t
all
ice, you know.”

Ruger smiled, still skeptical. “Who’s going to watch the watchers?” he asked, referring to Prall and Monroe.

Abbott responded, seriously, “They have a job to do, Mike. They do it very well. Before we leave this place, you may find yourself being thankful they’ve been around.”

Ruger didn’t respond, his disdain for these two men still quite apparent.

“By the way,” Abbott said. “The fact that Dr. Bryson is female has nothing to do with the decision to take Grimes and not her. I want Grimes for one simple reason. The nature of his expertise.”

“I wouldn’t have questioned that,” Ruger responded, but deep down he was damn glad that Allison wasn’t going to be descending into the crevasse. One less thing to worry about, not that he would have been any less attentive to the others.

Ruger asked, “What’s Peter’s area of expertise?”

“He’s got several, actually. Archaeo-astronomy…,” Abbott hesitatingly responded, not sure even if Ruger knew what that was. “…and exobiology.”

“What’s that?” Ruger asked.

Abbott answered, “Study of unknown life forms.”

Abbott gestured to his tent where the communication link was hopefully still in place. “Better get McMurdo before we lose coms. I’ll get everybody assembled in a minute.”

Ruger hurriedly made contact through the Internet. The message was concise:

The message was in care of Jimmy Morrison, the Base Manager. Although the station was only three hundred air miles away, the vast mountain range and their location in the glacial valley all but blocked out any radio coms. The computer link-up was a hundred times better. In an emergency, they could always use the radio to contact Vostok, Dumont d’Urville, or Admunsen-Scott, even though all of those bases were farther away as the crow flies. The other mountain ranges didn’t block out the radio transmissions, but only minimized their effectiveness.

As Ruger ended the message, the group started to file into the tent. Abbott wasted no time in giving them the briefing, which included what he and Ruger had found right before the incident with Lightfoot. Details were sketchy, partly because Ruger hadn’t the chance to get a closer look. The announcement of the discovery momentarily silenced the group, even though it was what they were out here looking for in the first place.

“You found a whole structural beam?” Allison asked, astonished, evidently not having entertained the possibility.

Lightfoot, who had been fumbling with his photographic equipment, looked up. “So,” he said. “It’s true…”

Abbott replied, “Nothing is confirmed at the moment. We’re not sure what we’ve found.”

“But it looks to be of the same construction pattern as the pieces Hilly and I found back in January,” Ruger added.

“A spaceship!” Lightfoot blurted out. “It’s a goddamn spaceship!”

Nobody responded, until Abbott finally said, “It may be nothing more than a structural beam of some sort that somehow got misplaced out here long ago and got caught up in the flow of the glacier.”

“You don’t believe that for one minute, Mr. Abbott,” Lightfoot said. “Or else you wouldn’t be out here.”

Abbott was already disliking him as a person, and knew what Ruger meant about nobody at McMurdo liking him either. He replied to Lightfoot, sarcastically, “Is your camera all ready to go, Mr. Lightfoot?”

“Sure. Always is.” He grinned.

“Good. Maybe you’ll get the chance to shoot a
spaceman
posing with his
goddamn spaceship
.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Hope you know how to rappel, Mr. Lightfoot,” Abbott added. “Because if you don’t, you’re going to have an interesting descent down the crevasse wall.”

By the look on Lightfoot’s face, Ruger knew he had been wrong about the man having any experience rappelling. Ruger had a task ahead of him. Lightfoot was going along one way or the other. Now it became Ruger’s responsibility to get him there safely. Ruger looked at Abbott, who only replied, apologetically, “Sorry, Mike.”

The last thing Abbott said as everybody began moving out of the tent was to Al Lisk. Nobody seemed to hear it but Ruger. “If something goes wrong down there, you know what to do.” Lisk nodded. Ruger wanted to ask
what
, but realized he wouldn’t have gotten an answer anyway. Besides, he really didn’t want to know.

As they were walking toward the snowmobiles, Ruger caught up to Lisk. “What kinds of gadgets you work on?”

Lisk only smiled. “The kinds you’ve never dreamed of, Mike.”

Ruger only shook his head. As everyone was mounting the machines, Ruger took one last look at the camp. Everything was secure in its proper place. The supply sleds in particular were of concern, because they had been in them getting out some of their equipment needed for the second descent. Ruger had made doubly sure the covers were cinched tight against the wind.

* * * * *

With the second descent into the crevasse, the mood turned pensive. Not so much because of the unpleasant episode that had consumed over two hours of precious time, but rather because there arose a new feeling of uncertainty, perhaps fear of the unexpected, perhaps because Abbott’s and Ruger’s revealing the existence of the beam changed everyone’s perceptions.

Allison Bryson probably felt it more than everyone else, simply because she was not trained in the least to be doing what she was doing. Neither was Almshouse, who evidently from the gist of his conversation had spent the preponderance of his career in the department engaged in analytical work, not field studies. And Allison had discovered that Almshouse wasn’t nearly the expert in the field of exobiology that Abbott thought him to be. But Abbott wasn’t really concerned with levels of expertise. He was merely concerned with assignments.

In times of uncertainty and isolation, mutual bonds are formed by the very nature of human existence. It was odd, but Almshouse and Grimes had already formed a friendship based upon their scientific interests, though their mutual agendas out on
The Ice
were worlds apart from the rest of their life. Even though Allison wasn’t a part of this newly formed friendship, she found a sudden need to attach to Almshouse now that he and Hilly were standing on the edge of the crevasse waiting to descend.