The Ice Limit

by Douglas Preston

  An officer in the bow of the boat was securing the provisions and security gear. Debris was wallowing and rolling in the water beneath their feet. They were all sick, and some were retching uncontrollably. None of the crew spoke, going silently through their duties. The tightly enclosed hull of the lifeboat sheltered them from the elements. But McFarlane could feel the terrible seas were battering the boat mercilessly.

  Howell finally spoke, his voice hoarse over the sound of wind and water. He was holding a radio to his mouth, but he spoke so that everyone in the boat could hear.

  "All boats, listen up! Our only chance is to head for an ice island to the southeast, and ride out the storm in its lee. Maintain a heading of one two zero at ten knots and keep in visual contact at all times. Keep channel three open. Activate emergency beacons."

  It was hard to tell they were going anywhere, but the moon had come back out—and now and then, through the narrow oblong windows, McFarlane caught the faint lights of the other two lifeboats driving down the foam-webbed seas, struggling to keep in sight. At the heights of the terrible waves, he could still make out the Rolvaag, half a mile back, wallowing back and forth as if in slow motion, its emergency lights winking on and off. No more boats had been launched since their pack of three started out minutes before. He could not take his eyes from the sight of the gigantic vessel, held in the death grip of the storm.

  A fresh roller tried to raise the tanker, but this time the Rolvaag hung back, almost as if it was tethered from below. It leaned farther and farther from the face of the wave, and as the crest boiled over the ship it slowly lay down on its side. McFarlane glanced over at Lloyd. The man's haggard face was turned away from McFarlane and the Rolvaag both.

  Another bob; the seas completely submerged the lifeboat; then they struggled upward again. Although he too wanted nothing more than to avert his eyes, McFarlane found his gaze drawn once again to the great ship. It still hung sideways, motionless. Even after the crest of the wave had passed over, it sagged, dragged lower and lower by the ineluctable weight. Its stern began to peer through the retreating wave, dead screws exposed. A distant shriek, almost feminine, cut through the howl of the storm. And then, both bow and stern jerked apart and rose from the seas in a boil of white. There was a deep, intense blue light in the center of the cataclysm, so bright it seemed to light up the sea from underneath, sending an unearthly hue through the water. A huge gout of steam ripped through the surface and mushroomed upward, blanketing the doomed ship, while lightning flickered within it, breaking out its top in forks that stabbed into the night. At that moment the lifeboat sank back into a welter of water, obscuring the terrible sight. When it emerged, the seas were empty and dark. The ship was gone.

  McFarlane sat back, shaking and nauseated. He did not dare look at Lloyd. Glinn, Britton, the three dozen crewmen, EES staffers, and Lloyd Industries workers who had gone down with the ship... the meteorite, plunging to the bottom, two miles below... He closed his eyes, tightening his grip on the shivering Rachel. He had never been so cold, so sick, so frightened in his life.

  She murmured something unintelligible and he leaned close. "What's that?"

  She was pressing something toward him. "Take it," she said. "Take it."

  In her hands was her CD-ROM, containing the test data on the meteorite.

  "Why?" he asked.

  "I want you to keep it. Keep it always. The answers are there, Sam. Promise me you'll find them."

  He slipped the disk into his pocket. It was all they had left: a few hundred megabytes of data. The meteorite was forever lost to the world; it had already buried itself deep in the abyssal silt of the ocean floor.

  "Promise," Rachel said again. Her voice sounded slurred, drugged.

  "I promise." And he hugged her closer to him, feeling the warm trickle of her tears upon his hands. The meteorite was gone. So many others were gone. But the two of them remained, would always remain.

  "We'll find the answers together," he said.

  A breaking crest slammed into the lifeboat, driving it sideways. They were thrown to the deck of the boat. McFarlane could hear Howell shouting commands as another breaking wave slammed the boat and pushed it sideways, almost flipping it over. It dropped back with a crash. "My arm!" a man cried. "I've broken my arm!"

  McFarlane helped Rachel back onto the padded seat, helped her arms into the loops. The seas were roaring all around them, burying them in water, sometimes forcing the entire closed boat beneath the surface.

  "How much farther?" someone shouted.

  "Two miles," Howell replied, struggling to keep the boat on course. "Give or take."

  Heavy water rinsed down the portholes, allowing only occasional glimpses of the black night beyond. McFarlane's elbows, knees, and shoulders grew sore from being battered against the sides and roof of the small vessel. He felt like a ping-pong ball tumbling inside a washing machine. It was so cold that he had lost all feeling in his feet. Reality began to recede. He remembered a summer spent on a lake in Michigan. He would sit on the beach for hours, bottom in the sand, feet in the shallows. But the water had never been this cold... He realized that frigid seawater was rising in the bottom of the boat. The punishing gale was pulling the lifeboat apart at the seams.

  He stared out the little window. A few hundred yards away, he could see the lights of the other two boats, bucking and bouncing in the sea. A great wave would descend upon them, and they would struggle through it, corkscrewing wildly as the pilots worked to keep them from rolling over, the propellers whining madly as they rose out of the water. He stared, stupefied with exhaustion and fear, at the wildly gyrating antennas, the semi-circles of ten-gallon water tanks knocking crazily around the sterns.

  And then one of the boats vanished. One moment it was there, running lights winking, diving into yet another wave; and then it was gone, buried, its lights cut out as abruptly as if shut off with a switch.

  "We've lost the beacon on number three boat, sir," said the man in the bow.

  McFarlane let his head sink toward his chest. Who had been in that boat? Garza? Stonecipher? His mind did not work anymore. A part of him now hoped they too would go down as swiftly; he longed for a quick ending to this agony. The water in the bottom of the boat was getting deeper. He realized, vaguely, that they were sinking.

  And then the seas began to quiet. The craft was still pitching and bobbing in ferocious chop, but the endless procession of watery mountains beneath them ceased, and the wind fell.

  "We're in the lee," said Howell. His hair was matted and lank, the uniform beneath the foul-weather gear soaked. Blood mingled with water in pink rivulets that ran down his face. And yet when he spoke, his hoarse voice was steady. Again he had the radio.

  "I need your attention! Both boats are taking on water, fast. They won't stay afloat much longer. We've got only one choice—to transfer ourselves and as many provisions as we can carry to the ice island. Understood?"

  Very few in the boat looked up; they seemed beyond caring. The feeble beacon on their boat swept the flank of ice. "There's a small ice ledge up ahead. We'll run the boats right up on it. Lewis in the bow will pass out supplies to each of you and take you out two at a time, fast. If you fall in the water, get the hell out—it'll kill you in five minutes. Now buddy up."

  McFarlane drew Rachel protectively toward him, then turned to look at Lloyd. The man stared back this time, his eyes dark, hollow, haunted.

  "What have I done?" he whispered hoarsely. "Oh my God, what have I done?"

  85: Drake Passage

  July 26, 11:00 A.M.

  DAWN ROSE over the ice island.

  McFarlane, who had passed in and out of a fitful doze, was slow in waking. At last he raised his head, the ice crackling off his coat as he did so. Around him, a small group of survivors had huddled together for warmth. Some lay on their backs, their faces coated with ice, their eyes open, frosted over. Others were half upright, on their knees, unmoving. They must be dead, McFarlane thought in a dre
amy sort of way. A hundred had begun the voyage. And now he could see barely two dozen.

  Rachel lay before him, her eyes closed. He struggled to a sitting position, snow sliding from his limbs. The wind was gone, and a deathly stillness surrounded them, underlined by the thunder of surf below them, worrying the margins of the ice island.

  Before him stretched a tableland of turquoise ice, cut with rivulets that deepened into canyons as they snaked off to the edges of the island. A red line, like a streak of blood, tinted the eastern horizon, dribbling color across the heaving seas. In the distance, the horizon was dotted with blue and green icebergs: hundreds of them, like jewels, stationary in the swell, their tops glistening in the morning light. It was an unending landscape of water and ice.

  He felt terribly sleepy. Odd that he was no longer cold. He struggled to bring himself awake. Now, slowly, it came back to him: the landing, climbing a crevasse to the top in the blackness, the wretched attempts to light a fire, the slow slide into lethargy. There was the time before, too—before all this—but he did not want to think of that right now. Right now, his world had shrunk to the edges of this strange island.

  Here, on its top, there was no feeling of motion. It was as solid as land. The great procession of rollers continued eastward, smoother now. After the black of the night and the gray of the storm, everything seemed tinted in pastels; the blue ice, the pink sea, the red-and-peach sky. It was beautiful, strange, otherworldly.

  He tried to stand, but his legs ignored the command and he only rose to one knee before falling back. He felt an exhaustion so profound it took a supreme effort of will not to sink back to the ground. A dim part of his mind realized it was more than exhaustion—it was hypothermia.

  They had to get up, move. He had to rouse them.

  He turned to Rachel and shook her roughly. Her lidded eyes swiveled around to him. Her lips were blue and ice clung to her black hair.

  "Rachel," he croaked. "Rachel, get up, please."

  Her lips moved and spoke, but it was a hiss of air, without sound.

  "Rachel?" He bent down. He could hear her words now, sibilant, ghostly.

  "The meteorite..." she murmured.

  "It went to the bottom," McFarlane said. "Don't think about it now. It's over."

  She shook her head faintly. "No... not what you think..."

  She closed her eyes, and he shook her again. "So sleepy..."

  "Rachel. Don't go to sleep. What were you saying?" She was rambling, delusional, but he realized it was important to keep her talking and awake. He shook her again. "The meteorite, Rachel. What about it?" Her eyes half opened, and she glanced downward. McFarlane followed her gaze; there was nothing. Her hand stirred slightly.

  "There..." she said, looking down.

  McFarlane took her hand. He pulled off the sodden, half-frozen gloves. Her hand was freezing; her fingertips white. Now he understood: her fingers were frostbitten. He tried to massage the fingers and the hand relaxed. She was holding a peanut.

  "Are you hungry?" McFarlane asked as the nut rolled away into the snow. Rachel closed her eyes again. He tried to rouse her and could not. He pressed himself against her, and her body was heavy and cold. He turned for help and found Lloyd, lying on the ice beside them.

  "Lloyd?" he whispered.

  "Yes," came the faint, gravelly voice.

  "We've got to move." McFarlane found himself growing short of breath.

  "Not interested."

  McFarlane turned back to shake Rachel again, but he could hardly move his own arm now, let alone apply force to her. She was inert. The loss seemed more than he could fathom. He looked out over the huddled, unmoving shapes, glistening under their thin coatings of ice. There was Brambell, the doctor, with a book crooked incongruously under his arm. There was Garza, the white of his bandaged head rimed in frost. There was Howell. Two, maybe three dozen others. No one was moving. Suddenly he found he cared; cared very much. He wanted to yell, to get up and start kicking and punching people to their feet, but he couldn't even find the energy to speak. There were too many of them; he couldn't warm them all. He couldn't even warm himself.

  His head swam as a strange, inky sensation overcame him. Apathy came creeping. We're all going to die here, he thought, but it's okay. He looked over at Rachel, trying to shake the inkiness off. Her eyes were half open now, rolled up, just the whites showing. Her face was gray. He would go where she had gone. It was okay. A single snowflake drifted out of the sky and touched her lips. It took a long time to melt.

  The inkiness returned, and this time it was good, like sleeping in his mother's arms once again, and he gave in to it. As he drifted off into delicious sleep, Rachel's voice kept going through his mind: Not what you think. Not what you think.

  And then the voice changed: louder, more metallic. "South Georgia Bravo... In sight... Approaching for a high-line pickup..."

  A light appeared overhead. There was a clattering, a rhythmic beating. Voices, a radio. He struggled against it all. No, no, let me sleep! Leave me be!

  And then the pain began.

  86: South Georgia Island

  July 29, 12:20 P.M.

  PALMER LLOYD lay in a plywood bunk bed in the infirmary hut of the British scientific station. He stared at the plywood ceiling: endless loops of dark and light wood, patterns his eyes had traced a thousand times over the recent days. He smelled the stale food that had been sitting by his bed since lunchtime. He heard the sound of wind outside the tiny window that peeked out over the blue snowfields, blue mountains, and blue glaciers of the island.

  It had been three days since their rescue. So many had died, on the ship, in the lifeboats, on the ice island. But one man of her crew alive, what put to sea with seventy-five... The old sea-ditty from Treasure Island ran through his head, as it had run, over and over and over, since he had first regained consciousness here in this bed.

  He had survived. Tomorrow, a helicopter would take him to the Falklands. From there he would return to New York. Distantly, he wondered how the media was going to report this one. He found that he didn't care. So little seemed important anymore. He was finished: finished with the museum, finished with business, finished with science. All his dreams—they seemed so ancient now—had gone to the bottom with the rock. All he wanted to do was go to his farm in upstate New York, mix a stiff martini, sit in the rocking chair on the porch, and watch the deer eat apples in his orchard.

  An orderly came in, removed the tray, and began to put down another.

  Lloyd shook his head.

  "It's my job, mate," the orderly said.

  "Very well."

  At that moment there was a knock on the door. McFarlane came in. His left hand and part of his face was bandaged, he was wearing dark glasses, and the man looked unsteady on his feet. In fact, he looked terrible. He sat down in the metal folding chair that occupied almost all the free space in the tiny room. The chair creaked.

  Lloyd was surprised to see him. He hadn't seen McFarlane at all these past three days. He had just assumed McFarlane was through with him—as well he should be. Hardly anyone had spoken to him. His only visitor from the expedition, in fact, had been Howell, and that had been to sign some papers. They all hated him now.

  Lloyd thought McFarlane was waiting to speak until the orderly left. But the door closed behind them, and still McFarlane remained silent. He did not say anything for a long time. And then at last he removed his dark glasses and leaned forward.

  The change startled Lloyd. It was almost as if the man's eyes were on fire. They were red and raw, with dark circles beneath. He was dirty, unkempt. The loss of the meteorite, the death of Amira, had hit him hard.

  "Listen," said McFarlane, his voice tight with tension. "I've got something to tell you."

  Lloyd waited.

  McFarlane bent even closer now, speaking directly into Lloyd's ear. "The Rolvaag went down at 61°32'14" South, 59°30'10" West."

  "Please don't speak of this with me, Sam. Not now."
/>   "Yes, now," said McFarlane with unexpected vehemence.

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew a compact disc. He held it up, winking its rainbow colors in the light.

  "On this disc—"

  Lloyd turned away and faced the plywood wall. "Sam, it's over. The meteorite's gone. Give it up."

  "On this disc is the last batch of data we gathered on the meteorite. I made a promise. I've been... studying it."

  Lloyd felt tired—so very, very tired. His eyes strayed out the little window to the mountains wreathed in glaciers, their icy tops piercing the clouds. He hated the sight of ice. He never wanted to see ice again, ever.

  "Yesterday," McFarlane continued relentlessly, "one of the scientists at the station here told me they'd been recording some very unusual, shallow seaquakes. Dozens of them, all below 3 on the Richter scale."

  Lloyd waited for McFarlane to continue. It was all so irrelevant.

  "The epicenter of those quakes is at 61°32'14" South, 59°30'10" West."

  Lloyd's eyes flickered. He slowly turned his head back to meet the young scientist's eyes.

  "I've been analyzing this data," McFarlane continued. "It mostly has to do with the shape and internal structure of the meteorite. It's very unusual."

  Lloyd did not answer, but he did not turn away either.

  "It's layered. It's almost symmetrical. It's not natural."

  Lloyd sat up. "Not natural?" He was beginning to feel alarmed. McFarlane had suffered a psychological break. He needed help.

  "I said, layered. It has an outer shell, a thick inner layer, and a tiny round inclusion right in the center. This is not an accident. Think about it. What else is like this? It's very common. It must be a universal structure."