“Sure thing. We have its melting point now. Or rather, I should say vapor point, since it goes directly from a solid to a gas.”
Glinn raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
“One point two million degrees Kelvin.”
Glinn breathed out. “Good Lord.”
“We’ve also made some progress on its crystalline structure. It’s an extremely complicated, asymmetrical fractal pattern built from nested isosceles triangles. The patterns repeat themselves at different scales from the macroscopic all the way down to individual atoms. A textbook fractal. Which explains its extreme hardness. It appears to be elemental, not an alloy.”
“Any more information about its place on the periodic table?”
“Very high up, above one seventy-seven. A superactinide element, probably. The individual atoms appear to be gigantic, each with hundreds of protons and neutrons. It’s most definitely an element in the ‘island of stability’ we talked about earlier.”
“Anything else?”
McFarlane took a breath of frosty air. “Yes. Something very interesting. Rachel and I dated the Jaws of Hanuxa. The volcanic eruptions and lava flows date almost precisely to the time of the meteorite’s impact.”
Glinn’s eyes flickered toward him. “Your conclusion?”
“We always assumed that the meteorite landed near a volcano. But now it looks as if the meteorite made the volcano.”
Glinn waited.
“The meteorite was so heavy and dense, and traveling so fast, that it punched deep into the earth’s crust, like a bullet, triggering the volcanic eruption. That’s why Isla Desolación, alone among the Cape Horn islands, is volcanic. In his journal, Nestor talked about the ‘weird coesite’ of the region. And when I reexamined the coesite with the X-ray diffractor, I realized he was right. It is different. The meteorite’s impact was so severe that the surrounding rock that wasn’t vaporized underwent a phase change. The impact chemically changed the material into a form of coesite never seen before.”
He gestured in the direction of the Jaws of Hanuxa. “The force of the eruption, the turbulence of the magma and the explosive release of gases, carried the meteorite back up, where it froze into position several thousand feet down. Over millions of years, in the uplift and erosion of the southern Cordillera, it gradually moved closer and closer to the surface, until it finally eroded out of the island valley. At least, that’s what seems to fit the facts.”
There was a thoughtful silence. Then Glinn looked over at Garza and Stonecipher. “Let’s proceed.”
Garza shouted out orders. McFarlane watched as some of the figures in the tunnel below gingerly attached a webbing of thick Kevlar straps to the cradle and the meteorite. Others pulled more straps over the top of the sled and into position around the capstan. Then the group stood back. There was a metallic cough, then a throaty rumble, and the ground beneath McFarlane’s feet came alive with vibration. Two massive diesel generators began turning the steel capstan. As it turned, the webbing of Kevlar straps slowly began to wind up, taking out the slack, tightening around the rock. The generators stopped: the meteorite was now ready to move.
McFarlane’s eyes returned to the meteorite. The shadow of the storm fell across the staging area, and the meteorite looked duller, as if some internal fire had been quenched.
“Jesus,” Rachel said, glancing at the wall of wind and snow that was boiling toward them. “Here it comes.”
“Everything’s in position,” Garza said.
Glinn turned, the wind tugging at his parka. “We stop at the first sign of lightning,” he said. “Move it.”
There was a sudden rising darkness, a muffled howl, and pellets of snow came blasting horizontally through the air. In an instant, McFarlane’s view was reduced to monochromatic shadows. Over the fury of the wind came the roar of heavy machinery as the generators came up to speed. The ground was shaking harder now, and a low, subauditory rumble—a pressure on the ear and gut—went through him. The generators climbed, whining louder as they strained to move the rock.
“It’s a historic moment,” Rachel wailed, “and I can’t see a damn thing.”
McFarlane pulled the hood of his parka tight around his face and crouched forward. He could see the Kevlar was drawn tight now, the straps like bars of iron, singing under the strain. Creaks and strange twanging noises rose up, audible even over the wind. The rock did not move, and the tension began to mount. The twanging noises rose in pitch; the generators roared; and still the rock remained stationary. And then, at the height of the cacophony, McFarlane thought he saw the meteorite move. But with the wind shrieking in his ears and the snow obscuring his vision, he could not be sure.
Garza looked up, smiled crookedly, and gave them a thumbs-up.
“It’s moving!” Rachel cried.
Garza and Stonecipher shouted orders to the workers below. Beneath the cradle, the steel runners squealed and smoked. Workers pumped a continuous slurry of graphite on the runners and the surface of the cart. The acrid smell of burning steel rose to McFarlane’s nostrils.
And then it was over. With a tremendous, decaying groan, the meteorite and its cradle settled onto the waiting cart. The Kevlar straps loosened, and the generators powered down.
“We did it!” Rachel pressed her index fingers to her lips and gave a piercing whistle.
McFarlane gazed down at the meteorite, now safely mounted on the cart. “Ten feet,” he said. “Ten thousand miles to go.”
Beyond the Jaws of Hanuxa, there was a brilliant flash of lightning, then another. A monstrous clap of thunder rolled past them. The wind rose in strength, tearing at the snow, sending sheets of white across the ground and into the trench.
“That’s it!” Glinn called out to the group. “Mr. Garza, please cover the tunnel.”
Garza turned toward the crane operator, one gloved hand keeping his hood secure against the wind. “Can’t do it!” he shouted back. “The wind’s too strong. It’ll topple the boom.”
Glinn nodded. “Then pull the tarps and ribbing over it until the storm passes.”
As McFarlane watched, a group of workers ran down both sides of the trench, unrolling a tarp as they went, struggling to keep it in place against the rising fury of the wind. It was streaked with mottled white and gray, camouflaged to resemble the bleak surface of the island. McFarlane was impressed once again by Glinn’s ability to anticipate every possibility, to have a contingency plan always waiting in the wings.
Another flash of lightning, closer this time, gave a strange illumination to the snow-heavy air.
Satisfied that the tarp had been properly secured, Glinn nodded to McFarlane. “Let’s get back to the huts.” He looked over at Garza. “I want the area cleared of personnel until the storm passes. Post a guard at four-hour shifts.”
Then he motioned to McFarlane and Rachel and they began to make their way across the staging area, leaning into the howling wind.
Isla Desolación,
10:40 P.M.
ADOLFO TIMMER waited behind a large snowdrift, motionless in the dark. He had lain, watching, until he was almost completely buried by the storm. Down below, he could see the faint glow of lights, fading in and out of the snow. It was now after midnight, and he had seen no activity. The cleared area was deserted, the workers no doubt sheltering in the huts. It was time to act.
Timmer raised his head against the still-intensifying blast. He rose, the wind whipping the accumulated snow from his limbs. Around him, the storm had shaped the snow into long, diagonal fins, some more than ten feet high. It was perfect cover.
He moved forward on his snowshoes, shielded by the drifts. He stopped near the edge of the cleared area. Ahead lay a pool of dirty light. Crouching behind a snowbank, he waited, then raised his head and looked around. Perhaps fifty yards away, a lone shack stood, the wind moaning through gaps in its corrugated roof. On the far side of the cleared area, across from the shack, he could make out the long row of Quonset huts, their windows small sq
uares of yellow. Beside them were other structures and some containers. As he stared, Timmer’s eyes narrowed. The leaching ponds and tailing piles across the island had proved to be a ruse, a cover for something else.
But what?
He tensed. From around the corner of the shack, a man in a heavy parka appeared. He opened the door of the shack, looked inside, closed it again. Then he walked slowly along one edge of the cleared area, rubbing his mittens together, ducking his head against the wind and snow.
Timmer watched carefully. The man was not out for an evening smoke. He was doing guard duty.
But why post a guard over an old shack and a barren patch of ground?
He crept forward, slowly, until he reached another drift. He was much closer to the shack now. He waited, motionless, as the man returned to its door, stamped warmth into his feet, then walked away again. Unless there was somebody else posted inside the shack, the guard was alone.
Timmer came around the side of the drift and approached the building, keeping it between him and the guard. He stayed close to the ground, letting the darkness and the storm conceal him, careful to expose only the white nylon of his snowsuit to the circle of light.
Before he left the Almirante Ramirez, the comandante had told him to take no unnecessary risks. He had said it more than once: Be very careful, Mr. Timmer. I want you back in one piece. There was no way to know if the guard was armed: Timmer would assume he was. Crouching in the shadow of the shack, he reached into his snowsuit. His hand closed around the handle of his knife and slid it out of the scabbard, making sure it had not frozen in place. Tugging off one glove, he felt the blade: ice cold and razor sharp. Excellent. Yes, my Comandante, he thought: I will be very, very careful. He clasped it tightly, ignoring the cold that bit into his fingers. He wanted the blade warm enough to cut through flesh without freezing and snagging.
He waited as the storm grew even stronger. The wind whipped around the bare sides of the shack, howling and crying. He pulled his hood from his head, listening with his naked ear. Then he heard it again: the soft swish and crush of footsteps approaching through the snow.
A faint shadow came into view around the edge of the hut, barely visible in the dim light. Timmer pressed against the shack as it approached. There was the sound of breathing, the thumping of arms as the man hugged himself against the cold.
Timmer spun around the corner, lashing out low with his foot. The figure fell facedown in the snow. In a flash Timmer was on top of him, knee digging into his back, dragging the man into shadow while wrenching back his head. The knife came forward, scoring deeply across the man’s neck. Timmer felt the blade grating against the cervical vertebrae. There was a soft gurgle, then a rush of hot blood. Timmer continued to hold the man’s head back, letting his life drain into the snow. Then he relaxed his grip and eased the body forward.
Timmer turned the man over and examined his face. He was white, not the mestizo the comandante had told him to watch for. He patted the man’s pockets quickly, finding a two-way radio and a small semiautomatic weapon. He slipped them into his pocket, then concealed the body in a nearby drift, sweeping snow over it and smoothing over the area. He cleaned his knife in the snow and carefully buried the bloody mush. The fact that he had seen only one guard did not mean there could not be another.
Moving around the rear of the shack and keeping out of the light, he crept along the edge of the cleared area, following the path the guard had walked. It was most curious: there was nothing here but snow. As he stepped forward again, the ground yielded suddenly beneath one of his snowshoes, and he scrambled backward in surprise. Exploring cautiously, on his hands and knees now, he felt something strange beneath the thin covering of snow. It was not earth, it was not a crevasse; there was a hollow beneath the ground, with some kind of cloth stretched tight across it, held up by spacers.
Carefully, Timmer made his way back to the shadows behind the shack. Before he explored further, he would have to make sure there were no surprises inside. Keeping his knife poised, he crept around to the front, opened the door a crack, and glanced within. It was deserted. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him. He pulled out a small flashlight and swept it around. The beam illuminated nothing but kegs full of nails.
Why would somebody post a guard in front of a useless, empty shack?
Then he noticed something. Quickly, he turned out his light. A faint line of light was coming from the edge of a steel plate beneath one of the kegs.
Moving it aside, Timmer saw a trapdoor of banded metal. He knelt beside it, listening intently for a moment. Then he grasped the door and lifted it gingerly.
After the hours of waiting and watching in the winter night, the fluorescence that streamed up was blinding. He closed the trapdoor again and crouched in the darkness, thinking. Then he removed his snowshoes, concealed them in the far corner of the hut, and opened the door again, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust. Then, knife in hand, he descended the ladder.
Thirty feet down, he stepped off the ladder into the tunnel. He paused. It was warmer down here, but at first Timmer barely noticed: in the glare of the light he felt exposed and vulnerable. He moved rapidly along the tunnel, keeping low. This was like no gold mine he had ever heard of. In fact, it was like no mine at all.
Reaching a junction, he paused to look around. There was nobody: no sound, no movement. He licked his lips, wondering what to do next.
Then he paused. Up ahead, the tunnel widened. There was an open space ahead, with something very large in it. He crept to the edge of the open area and shined his light around. A giant cart.
Timmer approached it cautiously, creeping along the wall. It was a huge steel flatbed trailer, perhaps a hundred feet long. Mounted to its underside were big tires: hundreds of them, on gleaming titanium axles. His eyes traveled slowly upward. Built on the cart was a complex pyramid of wooden struts and members. And nestled in that was something Timmer had never seen or imagined before. Something huge and red. Something that gleamed with impossible richness in the artificial light of the tunnel.
He looked around again, then approached the cart. Setting one foot on the closest tire, he pulled himself onto the platform, breathing heavily. He was quickly overheating in his heavy snowsuit, but he ignored the discomfort. Overhead, a large tarp was stretched tightly across the open roof: the tarp onto which he had stepped. But Timmer had no interest in this. His eyes were on the thing resting in the huge cradle.
Very carefully, he climbed the wooden struts toward it. There was no doubt about it: this, this was what the Americans had come for. But what was it?
There was no time to waste; there was no time even to hunt for the little mestizo. Comandante Vallenar would want to know about this right away. And yet still Timmer hesitated, balanced on the wooden cradle.
The thing was almost ethereal in its beauty. It was as if it had no surface; as if he could put his hand forward and thrust it right into its ruby depths. As he stared, he thought he could see subtle patterns within, shifting and changing, coruscating in the light. He almost imagined a coldness emanating from it, cooling his overheated face. It was the most beautiful, otherworldly thing he had ever seen.
Without taking his eyes away, Timmer slipped the knife into a pocket, pulled off his glove, and held his hand forward, slowly, almost reverently, toward the rich and shining surface.
Isla Desolación,
11:15 P.M.
SAM MCFARLANE jerked awake, heart pounding. He would have thought it a nightmare, if the sound of the explosion was not still reverberating across the landscape. He stood bolt upright, the chair falling to the floor behind him. From the corner of his eye he saw that Glinn, too, was on his feet, listening. As they met each other’s gaze, the lights in the hut winked out. There was a moment of pitch-blackness, and then an emergency light snapped on over the door, bathing the room in pale orange.
“What the hell was that?” McFarlane said. His voice was almost drowned out by a loud gust of
wind: the window had been blown out, and snow swirled into the hut, mingling with wooden splinters and shards of glass.
Glinn approached the window and gazed out into the stormy darkness. Then he glanced at Garza. He, too, was on his feet. “Who’s got duty?”
“Hill.”
Glinn raised a radio. “Hill. This is Glinn. Report.” He took his thumb from the transmit button and listened. “Hill!” he called again. Then he switched frequencies. “Forward post? Thompson?” He was answered by a loud hiss of static.
He dropped the radio. “Radio’s out, I’m not getting any responses.” He turned back to Garza, who was pulling on his snowsuit. “Where are you going?”
“To the electrical hut.”
“Negative. We’ll go together.”
Glinn’s tone had become sharper, military. “Yes, sir,” Garza replied briskly.
There was a clattering outside, then Amira tumbled in from the communications hut, snow clinging to her shoulders.
“Power’s down everywhere,” she gasped. “All we’ve got is the reserve.”
“Understood,” Glinn said. A small Glock 17 pistol had appeared in his hand. He checked the magazine, then tucked it into his belt.
McFarlane had turned to reach for his own snowsuit. As he thrust his arms into the sleeves, he saw Glinn look at him.
“Don’t even say it,” McFarlane began. “I’m coming with you.”
Glinn hesitated, and saw his resolve. He turned to Amira. “You stay here.”
“But—”
“Rachel, we need you here. Lock the door after we leave. We’ll have a guard here shortly.”
Within moments, three of Glinn’s men, Thompson, Rocco, and Sanders, appeared at the door, powerful torches in their hands and Ingram M10 submachine guns slung over their shoulders.
“Everyone accounted for except Hill, sir,” Thompson said.
“Sanders, have guards posted at every hut. Thompson, Rocco, you come with me.” Glinn strapped on snowshoes, grabbed a torch, and led the way out into the swirling dark.
The Ice Limit Page 26