He bowed his head. Lewis did too, trying to think what Moss might have been thinking, or where he might have gone. It made no sense. Nancy Hodge was looking with sad sympathy at Cameron: she knew a tragedy like this would threaten to erase whatever professional advancement the station manager had hoped to gain by coming down here. Norse was calmly letting his eyes scan the group, as if someone was about to betray themselves. And Buck Tyson looked uncertain, as if the possibility of Moss’s death was making him reconsider his intransigence. Self-sufficiency was one thing, exclusion was another. Everyone had shifted their chairs away from his.
“Well.”
Heads came up and Cameron continued. “I’ve let NSF know our situation and that we’re doing everything we can. They’ve sent us their best and urge us to keep searching. I’m going to launch another perimeter search around the station tomorrow and go through the buildings again. I don’t...I don’t know what else to do.” He hesitated, looking gloomy. “Maybe he had a heart attack.”
“He was strong as an ox,” Pulaski said.
There was quiet.
“Strong people die too,” Hodge finally amended.
“In any event,” the station manager finally went on, “we’re getting our winter off to a stressful start and it’s at times like these that the group has to hang together. Together!” He looked at Tyson worriedly. “It’s hard to lose anybody, but especially Mickey. Damned if I know what happened. Could have been illness. Could have been an accident. Could have gotten lost. You probably have your own ideas. I pray to God he’ll just show up, but we all know how cold it is outside.”
Several faces turned to check the television monitor. The ambient temperature was sixty-one degrees below zero. A rising wind had pushed the chill factor to minus ninety-two.
“Why don’t you tell us what this really is about, Rod?” a voice demanded. It was Harrison Adams, the astronomer. “As a scientist, I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“What does that mean?”
“The rumor is that Mickey found a meteorite in the ice. Someone apparently took it. He demands an investigation. Then he disappears. I mean, come on.”
“What are you saying, Harrison?”
“That five million dollars makes this more than a simple missing person.”
There was a murmur through the crowd as speculation suddenly became baldly stated fact.
“Five million what?” Pika asked in confusion.
“Take your ear protectors off once in a while, doofus!” Geller chided.
“Now hold on,” Cameron cautioned. “We don’t know that.”
“Do the arithmetic,” Adams said. “That’s what it comes out to if this meteorite is really a chunk of Mars or the Moon, and our fingie isn’t blowing smoke. Right? So, that’s my question. What do we know? Not that Mickey had a heart attack. Only that we’re missing a stone that some people - irresponsibly, I might add - have wildly speculated might be worth a lot of money. Next thing we know, boom. Mickey’s disappeared.”
“Jed Lewis just gave a professional opinion.”
Adams swung to look at the fingie. “It’s an amateur, unscientific, seat-of-the-pants opinion and this problem started when Jed Lewis stepped off the plane.”
“That’s not fair, Doctor Adams.” It was Norse. “Our meteorologist was asked to give a geologic judgment, based on his professional background, by Doctor Moss himself.”
“That’s right,” Cameron said. “There’s no evidence that anything’s connected.”
“And no evidence it isn’t,” Adams said.
“Jed was searched,” Nancy Hodge spoke up. “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” Cameron replied.
“Several of us were searched,” Norse chimed in. “Including Mickey. Nothing was found.”
Abby, Lewis noticed, turned her face to the floor again. Something was wrong. Had something been found?
“I want to emphasize here how little we know,” the psychologist went on. “We don’t know if the meteorite really had value. We don’t know if it was lost or stolen. We don’t know what happened to Mickey. Any conclusions at this point are premature.”
Cameron looked at the psychologist with gratitude. Maybe Doctor Bob had his uses. An excited buzzing broke out among the group.
“So now what?” Gabriella finally shouted.
Cameron took a breath. “Now we decide what to do. Together. In trust.”
“The only problem being that one of us may be a thief. Or worse.” It was Pulaski.
“Exactly,” said Norse. Heads turned to him. “So a more realistic option is to work together in temporary distrust. To scrutinize each other carefully in order to get all bad blood out of the way.”
“How do we do that?” Geller asked.
“Our real problem is lack of information,” the psychologist said. “We’re afraid because we don’t know. Accordingly, I have a proposal to make. It’s unusual, but this is an unusual situation. It has to be a group decision, not imposed from above. I was skeptical but it might be the quickest way to reinforce our belief in each other.” He paused, his eyes polling the group, seeking permission to broach an idea. Physically and in personality, he was a more commanding presence than Cameron. His shower idea hadn’t broken Tyson, but the mechanic’s defiance was cracking. Norse seemed to have a better idea what to do.
“Go ahead, Doc,” Geller prompted.
“I propose a broader search,” Norse went on. “Not of the station, where we’ve been looking for Dr. Moss, but of our rooms, to look for the meteorite. I suspect we’ll find nothing, but any discovery that would clarify this situation would help. Finding nothing, in contrast, might reassure each of us about each other.”
“Our rooms are the only bloody privacy we have,” objected Dana Andrews.
“I sympathize,” Norse said. “I propose to limit this search to two people, myself and Doctor Hodge. I’ll check the rooms of male personnel, she the female. As we’ve said, I’ve already been searched: I’m not asking anyone to undergo anything I haven’t already experienced. We’ll do it now, while the rest of you wait. If anything is locked, we ask for your keys. What we discover remains entirely confidential unless it has some bearing on the disappearance of Doctor Moss or the meteorite.” He glanced at Cameron. “Agreed?”
“No!” Tyson yelled. “I don’t want some self-appointed shrink searching me!”
“That’s because you’ve got more phallic objects in that armory of yours than a nymphomaniac in a nunnery, bathing boy,” Geller scoffed. The others laughed.
“Fuck you.” Tyson glowered, his belligerence immediately returning in response to mockery. He was always ready for a fight.
“Nobody’s afraid of a man who showers more than a teenage girl, Buck.”
“Yeah? Try me sometime.”
“My creditor friends tell me even the biggest goon can slip in the shower and not get up, if he stays in too long.”
The group stirred uneasily at this threat.
“Enough enough,” Cameron said. The station manager was trying to look stern but was fighting the start of a smile at this needling Tyson was getting. The mechanic looked uncomfortable and scowled, avoiding anyone’s gaze. It wasn’t easy being toast.
“Is this going to work?” Alexi Molotov interjected. “You would have to be stupid to steal a meteorite and hide it in your room, no?”
“Who said people were smart?” Norse replied.
“You would be even more stupid to find the meteorite and not keep it for yourself,” said Hiro. “Perhaps we should check the pockets of our two doctors at the end.” The others laughed nervously. “Perhaps they hunt for themselves.”
“You agree to a strip search, Doc?” Pulaski asked lightly.
“Only if you can hide a meteorite in there,” Norse replied. Laughter again, the tension breaking slightly. “Look, everyone can come along but the idea is not to embarrass anyone. Nancy and I are used to handling things in confidence. We’re trying to eliminate
suspicion, not create it. Trust us, this once, so you can trust each other.”
With glances, the group polled itself in uneasy silence. Tyson looked angry but said nothing. Lewis had no sympathy for anybody. I’ve already been probed, he thought. Now it’s your turn.
Adams spoke up. “I agree to this search,” the astronomer said. “I have nothing to hide. But I think we also need to start using our heads as well as our feet. Maybe Mickey left other clues. Electronic ones. If I could get his passwords I could examine his hard drive.”
Carl Mendoza wryly smiled, as if there were something more behind this idea than Adams was admitting. Cameron looked questioningly at Abby, their computer technician.
“I have them,” she said in a quiet voice. “It’s privacy, again.”
“I guess I’d draw the line at our hard drives,” Norse said uneasily. “That’s like reading our thoughts. We do need some privacy.”
“I’m not talking about our files, I’m talking about Mickey’s,” Adams said. “I worked with the guy. Maybe he left a note. This is an emergency, dammit.”
“It’s for his own good,” Mendoza added guilelessly.
Geller rolled his eyes.
“If Mickey’s dead, so is his issue of privacy,” Adams went on.
The psychologist opened his mouth to disagree again and then closed it, considering all the ramifications. “It’s a group decision.”
Cameron looked at the group. “Well?”
No one objected.
“Let’s do it then,” the station manager said quietly.
******
Norse and Hodge left the galley to go through the berthing areas. Abby and Adams departed to open up Moss’s hard drive. The mood of the remainder was somber. Cameron tried to lead a desultory discussion about outdoor safety but no one responded. Nobody wanted to talk about rules. The clock seemed to have stopped.
“What if we never even find Mickey?” Dana abruptly wondered aloud.
“We’ll find him,” Geller said. “Ten to one he had a stroke over this meteorite bullshit and got covered up by snow. Another good wind and his parka will pop back out.”
“I’m not even willing to say he’s dead yet,” Cameron said. “But if he is, it’s a lesson to us all. Sign out, take a radio.”
“That’s the third time you’ve said that,” Pulaski groaned. “We learned that crap way back in Denver and Mickey knew it too. Look, can we continue this discussion upstairs? I need to clear my sinuses.” Upstairs was the bar.
“Yeah,” Steve Calhoun, the carpenter, chimed in. “There are times when life needs to be dealt with through an alcoholic stupor.”
“Getting drunk isn’t very professional at a time like this,” the station manager objected. He was worried how this would all look in the reports. Look back home.
“But it’s damned rational,” Dana rejoined.
“NSF wants us to keep our wits about us.”
“Your Yank bureaucrats are ten bloody thousand miles away! For god sakes, we’re going to bloody choke each other if we can’t lighten up!”
He looked gloomy. He was clearly outnumbered. “One drink each, then. That’s all.”
“Right, Dad.” They pushed past Cameron and surged upstairs, crowding the small room like frat boys in a phone booth. All but Tyson, determinedly alone. Cameron hesitated, not wanting to wait in the same room with the mechanic. “I’m going to check on Harrison!”
“We won’t miss you!” Dana sang back.
Music came on. A few of the winter-overs began jumping up and down to its beat, relieving some of the tension. It was creepy being searched. It was creepy having their station manager be so morose. Creepy having Moss disappear.
Lewis got a beer. The elbow-to-elbow jostling made him feel less isolated and he began to cheer up a little. The music was cranked higher. He wished he could talk to Abby but she was off with Adams. He was curious about her now. There was something she wasn’t telling.
Molotov came over instead, his water glass half-full of vodka. “Now Lewis,” he said, clasping the American on the shoulder. “From you I need to know how to sell this rock. In America, where all the money is. Just in case I ever find it. Yes?”
“Too late, buddy. Secret’s out. If we ever find it I’m afraid it’s going to stay with Uncle Sam.”
“Well then let’s spend the winter looking for another one!” The Russian grinned, showing a steel flash of old Soviet dentistry. “The jewel of Mars, no?”
Everyone was joking about what Norse and Hodge would find in their rooms. Lingerie. Sex toys. Marijuana grow lights. Offshore bank accounts. Jimmy Hoffa.
“It’s like going nekkid,” said Steve Calhoun, the station carpenter.
“Except the docs are the only ones to see us in our birthday suits,” his companion woodworker, Hank Anderson, said. “And praise God for that. I see the crack of your ass too much already, every time you bend over to drive a nail.”
“Didn’t know you were lookin’, Henry.”
With nothing else to do while they waited, some people began dancing, awkward in the press of bodies. Lewis, still feeling isolated by his own clumsy investigation, maneuvered himself against a wall. He thought the bar was a good idea to break the tension but he wasn’t really in a mood to talk. He felt like bad luck himself.
He watched Gabriella Reid slither through the press of people, teasing, taunting, a serial flirt, inviting attention. Eventually she came up to him, grinning at his wallflower stance, a beer in one of her hands. “You’re all alone.”
“People are learning to avoid me.”
“It’s unfair that people blame you.”
“I guess it’s because I’m new.”
“I like new people.” She rolled a long-necked bottle on her lips, eyes dancing. “Antarctic Ten, I judge.”
“I’ve heard what that is.” He was wary.
She smiled mischievously behind the bottle. “Okay. Eleven, maybe. How about me?”
He smiled, glancing beyond her. Abby hadn’t come back.
“Don’t bother with Ice Cream. She’s frigid.”
Lewis focused on the woman in front of him. “Frigid? Or careful?”
“She holds things in. Not me.” She swayed in time to the music and handed him her beer. Turning a circle, she pulled her waffle-weave long-underwear top over her head. A silk undershirt beneath showed the line of a low bra and the bump of nipples. “Getting hot in here. Hot enough for the Three Hundred Degree Club.”
“What is that, anyway?” Lewis asked.
She smiled mysteriously. “The place where you learn where you really are.”
The music cranked still higher and it became difficult to hear, the beat pounding against the walls. No one was obeying Cameron’s admonition of one drink. The winter-overs were sweating. The air was rich and dark and heavy. The mood was tribal. Lewis danced once with Gabriella and then, when the others didn’t return, did it again.
She smiled at him. The invitation was obvious.
“What are you doing down here?” he stalled, raising his voice above the music.
“I like to be at the center of things.”
“The Pole?”
“Everything comes together here. All the lines, all the numbers. It’s a place of power. I worship natural powers, you know. Nature. Instinct. Emotion.”
“What about science?”
“That’s for you beakers. What about feelings?”
“Beakers have them.”
“No they don’t. They have to be drawn out.”
She made him nervous. “I’ll bet you’re good at that.”
“I can show you the way.”
Christ. It was tempting. “Excuse me. I’ve got to check on something.”
“Don’t check too long.”
He moved away, maneuvering toward the bar. He ducked behind as if looking for something and Geller sidled over. “Looks like you made a friend.”
“She makes me nervous.”
“She’ll make more
than that, buddy. Until you lay off the meteorite and we figure out what’s up with Mickey, she might be about the only friend you have.”
Lewis looked at the maintenance man sourly. This place was too damn small. “Why does everyone assume I’m to blame?”
“I don’t.” Geller sipped a Scotch. “There’s so many people sick of Moss that I won’t be surprised if we never find him. Who wants to?”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You can bet Adams is going to use those passwords later to snare some of Mickey’s data. Clues my ass. He’s robbing the dead. And you noticed Carl Mendoza? He looks like he won the lottery. With Moss not undercutting him he might actually keep his grants.”
“That’s pretty cynical.”
“You lose money to the wrong people and you get cynical.”
“Moss said he made everyone else’s research possible.”
“As long as they sucked up. Moss was also a Class-A prick.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“That he saved his reputation by dying.”
It was after midnight. Then one, two o’clock. Everyone danced with everyone. Stocky Dana Andrews shook like a Maori, and Lena Jindrova turned an erect circle with a drink perched bizarrely on her head. Gabriella moved sinuously among the other men, her body a kind of social lubricant, erasing inhibition. Even Linda Brown, Pulaski’s plain and overweight assistant in the kitchen, lost her stiffness and began to gyrate. The steaminess brought a kind of communion that relieved the anxiety over Mickey. For a blessed respite, the chill disappeared.
By the time Norse’s head appeared at the foot of the stairs, smiling, they were drunk. He bounded upward and Nancy was right behind him, her eyes wide and dark, following with a hand on his belt. She was glowing. A ragged chorus of hoots and Bronx cheers erupted at their reappearance. “The underpants police!”
The crowd parted slightly to embrace them and pull them in, like an amoebae swallowing prey. “Who is it?” a drunken Pulaski shouted. “Which of us is the thief?”
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