by Tom Clancy
“Rick, pay attention!” Bennett yipped over their IFB line. “Ketchum’s got a bad case of eye bounce, makes him look evasive. Bring in the young one, try to nail him down on the flare’s severity. Ask what consequences it will have for earth.”
None, Woods felt like telling him. Nugatory, Todd. This segment’s not only pointless, it’s duller than dead air.
“Dr. Frye, let’s bring you into the conversation,” he said. “To use your colleague’s weather analogy, the solar storm system that’s brewing would be exactly how severe . . . ?”
“I think Jonathan was trying to explain that we can’t be exact at this stage,” Frye said. “My belief is we’re going to experience a series of X-20’s or higher, which would be very energetic. Putting it in perspective, a flare that’s categorized below an X-9 generally has few noticeable implications for us. As its power climbs the scale, though, increasing geomagnetic disturbances may result. . . .”
“And can you please tell our viewers around the world how they should expect these, uh, X-20 solar flames—”
“Flares!” Bennett said.
“—solar flares to affect them?”
“Again, it’s tough to be certain. We can only look back at what’s happened in the past, and use that as the basis for informed guesses,” Frye said. “About thirty years back, a group of flares in the X-15 range interrupted satellite transmissions, and resulted in serious power-line voltage swings in at least two of our Western and Midwestern states. It also caused the explosion of a 230,000-volt transformer in British Columbia—”
“Well, thirty years is a long time,” Woods said, wanting to be quick with his follow-up. “I’d assume that with, ah, modern technologies we won’t have to worry too much about the lights going out nowadays.”
“Unfortunately, it’s just the opposite. In the nineteen-seventies power companies hadn’t really computerized their operations. Very few computers were used by private or government offices. The Internet didn’t exist. There were no PCs. No public wireless-telephone networks. But society’s become dependent on sophisticated electronics over the past three decades. It’s integral to our economy. Our national security. While some equipment’s been shielded against high-level discharges of cosmic radiation, we can find plenty of room for improvement. As a NASA employee I’m concerned about the sensitive equipment on our orbital platforms, and more fundamentally about the exposure of astronauts aboard the International Space Station to harmful dosages of radiation. I’ve also wondered about the vulnerability of satellite communications linking us to the more remote parts of the globe. Parts of the Far East, for example. Or the poles . . .”
Where the polar bears would have to make do without their fucking cell phones and downloadable porn, Woods thought. Christ Almighty. This guy was going to start a mass panic if he went on with his horseshit about cosmic rays.
“It sounds as if you’re scripting a Doomsday scenario, which of course isn’t the case,” he said. “We should pause to reassure everyone that there’s little risk of solar flames producing the whole range of disturbances you mention—”
“Flares!” The director yowled again. “They’re called flares!”
Woods was getting aggravated. If Bennett wanted to be such a goddamn stickler for terminology, he could come out of the control room and finish the interview himself.
“By the way,” Woods said. “Aren’t solar flares accompanied by flames?”
Frye looked a bit thrown by the seeming non sequitur. “Well, sure, they’d be associated with eruptions of flaming gases in the heliosphere—”
“Thanks for making that clear, Dr. Frye,” he said.
“And fuck you for being a spiteful prick, Mr. Woods,” Bennett said out of sight.
“Returning to the point I raised a moment ago,” Woods said. “Is it fair to state that you gentlemen don’t, foresee any, uh—”
He faltered, unable to think of the word. This happened to him sometimes. Mostly when he was doing the science stuff, which was another reason he despised it. The word just got stuck in traffic somewhere between his brain and mouth. Goddamn. Goddamn. Where was Bennett when you needed him, why was he letting him dangle here, what the hell was the word . . . ?
“Catastrophes, you spiteful, unappreciative prick,” Bennett said.
Woods fought back a sigh of relief.
“Catastrophes over the horizon,” he resumed, “but are rather just sketching out the problems that should be addressed as our knowledge of flares increases? Giving us some, uh . . .”
“Cautionary advice,” Bennett said.
“Cautionary advice, that is?”
This time it was Ketchum who answered. “Yes and no. We’re certainly not trying to scare anyone watching your program. But it does look as if there’s an impressive event in store for us, and we should all do our best to prepare. That’s why we’ve come on your program to talk about it.”
“I see . . . and, uh, when did you say it’s going to happen?”
“Richard and I think we’re looking at a window of somewhere within the next two to three weeks, but we don’t have enough data to tell you precisely,” Ketchum replied. “That’s another area where my meteorological comparison might be useful. Storm systems stall or pick up speed, change course, collide with other building low-pressure centers . . . as complex as the variables can be when we’re trying to forecast movement in our own atmosphere, it’s important to remember much less is understood about the sun’s.”
Woods noticed his cue blinker. Thirty seconds until the commercial. Thank God. He was still recovering from his momentary bobble of the tongue. And had a sick feeling that Ketchum was about to start in about flying ants and Chinese toads.
“Okay,” Bennett said. “Ask them something personal, then cut to the break.”
Woods paused a tick. Did these flat tires even have personalities?
“Ah, gentlemen, our conversation’s been fascinating, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more from you in the days to come,” he said. “We’re running low on time, but in our last few moments, could you, uh, talk a little about how you earned your unusual nicknames at Goddard . . . Ketchup and Fries, is it?”
Both men nodded, smiling.
Ketchum said, “I’ll defer to Richard on that.”
Frye said, “I think somebody just cooked them up because we get along well as a team.”
Woods smiled back at them, wondered again if they were gay.
“Well, that’s it, fellows, thank you for coming together this afternoon,” he said.
“Any time,” Ketchum said.
“Our pleasure,” Frye said.
I bet, Woods thought.
And that was finally a wrap.
Victoria Land, Antarctica
They had made camp in a saddle between two immense glaciers, pitching their dome tents against the eastern slope, camouflaging their snowmobiles with the drop taken from the storage depot.
Perched on a lower ledge, a group of skuas had watched them with black unblinking eyes.
Five hours later the birds still had not moved. The team leader glanced at them as he emerged from his tent, stepping through its door flap into the cold.
They merely stared back.
He zipped the flap shut and strode away from the ledge in his insulated boots, then stopped with his binoculars raised to the southwestern sky.
He did not like what he saw. A fleet of saucer-shaped lenticular clouds had appeared in the distance, climbing over the polar plateau on a turbulent wave of air. Their bases were shaded deep blue, their curved foaming tops a lighter grayish color.
He angled the glasses toward the ground. Far down the narrow cleft through which his men had ridden, the world was vague, without contrast, its outlines melting into hazy softness.
He rubbed the steam from his breath off their lenses, but nothing changed.
Soft, he thought. Too soft.
He didn’t like it at all. Before leaving his tent, he had checked the l
atest meteorological data on his rugged handheld field computer, accessing it over the terminal’s wireless Internet connection, comparing the information from several portal sites—base forecasts, infrared maps from orbiting hemispheric satellites, NOAA synoptic charts, scattered automatic weather stations. Updated at intervals of between ten and thirty minutes, the readings were consistently ominous. A severe gale was whipping toward the coast of Victoria Land, accreting momentum as it neared the Ross Sea and ice shelf. McMurdo had already assigned it a Condition II classification: winds in excess of 50 knots, a chill factor of at least minus-60F, visibility no better than a quarter of a mile, and perhaps as low as a hundred yards.
Affairs were about to pass largely out of his control, but he would press on with the mission regardless. It was his responsibility, no more, no less.
He lowered his binoculars and started back toward the tents. Though he’d raised his neck gaiter to the bridge of his nose, the crescent birthmark on his cheek already burned from the extreme cold. It was a constant bother to him here, as it had been during his alpine training with the Stern unit of the Swiss Militärpolizei. For a man who had spent most of his life in places where warmth was scarce, this was an absurdity of sorts, a strange and uncommon jest that matched the rareness of his stigma. Yet he had long since come to abide it. In the Jura Mountain farming village of his boyhood, he had suffered merciless slashes of pain throughout the endless winter stretches. Only his shame over the freak blemish to his appearance had brought a harsher sting.
Kind des Mondes, his mother had called him as far back as he could remember. A child of the moon. It had not been a name kindly used. There had been precious little kindness in any of his mother’s words, but he had finally taught himself that didn’t matter. Emotions always betrayed. Better to steel the backbone and toughen the gut than be distracted by them.
At his orders now, the men were quick to break camp and stow their bedrolls and folded tents aboard their snowmobiles. The gathering of birds continued to study them from their perch, barely curious, simply watching because of their nearness. He looked at the creatures as he waited, lifted a chunk of ice off the ground, and suddenly snapped it at them with a hard overhand throw.
It struck the ledge with a crack, breaking to pieces. The birds jumped and fluttered in surprise, scolded him indignantly, but did not take flight.
He gave them a slight nod of appreciation.
“Eine gute Gesellschaft,” he said, turning from the ledge.
They had been good enough company in their way.
Minutes later he mounted his snowmobile, throttled up its engine, and went speeding on across the ice toward his goal, the rest of his band traveling close behind him.
Cold Corners Base, Antarctica
“What I need is to get down low into the pass,” Nimec was saying. Soon after returning to base from the helipad, he’d steered Russ Granger to a partitioned workstation where a downscaled, black-and-white version of Megan’s Dry Valley contour map was spread across the desk, circles drawn with colored pencils substituting for the pins she’d used to mark its key sites. “I want to see it with my own eyes.”
Granger nodded from the chair beside him.
“Understood,” he said. “I can take us pretty far in at its wider sections.”
Nimec’s forefinger bull’s-eyed the circle indicating the coordinates of Scout IV’s final transmission, and the presumable outer limit of the recovery team’s search area. “What about here?”
Granger shook his head.
“Your map doesn’t convey how rough it is around the notch,” he said. That much was absolutely true. “The terrain’s bad enough. But our real problem is katabatic wind pouring straight down the notch’s lee sides. The lower it gets, the harder gravity presses on it, and the faster it blows. You fly near ground level, it’s suicidal. Like riding a toy raft through heavy rapids.”
“What’s the best you can do, as far as that goes?”
Granger traced a path with his hand. “We’ll swing around the notch, dip into Wright Valley just to its south.”
Nimec thought a moment, then grunted his acceptance.
“A couple of things, though,” Granger said. “It’s obvious we have to work around this storm that’s on the way. I don’t think it’ll be bad enough to force evacs out of any NSF field camps. But I’ll have to make some trips over to them, check that the personnel are stockpiled to last it out.”
“Any reason why I can’t come along? We could shoot right over Bull Pass after your last hop.”
Granger had anticipated the question. He pretended to think through an answer that had been readied well beforehand.
“It’d be fine with me,” he said. “But we’d need to head out together right away, so I can have time for everything. Figure you’d be gone from here at least twenty-four hours. It’s either that or wait until the blow’s over—”
Nimec waved an abortive hand in the air.
“Then we go now,” he said. “Otherwise, we could be talking about a holdup of almost a week. We couldn’t afford that kind of delay under any circumstances. But the bad weather puts us in a vise. If our people are still alive out there, they need to be pulled out.”
Granger nodded again. That was definitely what he’d figured the UpLink security chief would say. It was also very much what he had wanted Nimec to say. The sooner they were up and out of Cold Corners, the better. He couldn’t know precisely when the sabotage squad would show, or how their progress would be affected by the storm. He was, however, positive that Burkhart wouldn’t quit on his mission. It just wasn’t in his hardwiring.
“Okay,” Nimec said. “You mentioned there was something else on your mind.”
“Right.” Granger set for his payoff pitch. “Say we visit all the field camps and maybe have to deliver some canned food, meds, equipment, and so on. It would mean a few refuelings at Marble Point, plus back-and-forth loops to McMurdo for the requested supplies. That gives us a full slate right off the top. And like you said, we’re cutting it close. Working against the storm.”
“The bottom line being . . . ?”
“I can promise we’ll get to Bull Pass. But that twenty-four-hour timetable was just a guess. Depending on how many resupply drops I have to make, and when the blow hits, we might wind up having to stick around MacTown a few days before I can bring you back here. And I want to make sure you don’t have any problems with that.”
Nimec was quietly thoughtful. Megan had told him that Annie Caulfield and her small bundle of Senators had opted to cut their stay at Cold Corners to a few hours, overnight at the longest, and arrange for a return to Cheech before they found themselves snowbound. Meaning it was almost certain that he wouldn’t have the chance to see Annie again before she departed. Which was likely for the best anyway.
“No,” he said after a moment. “I’ve got no problem at all.”
THIRTEEN
COLD CORNERS BASE, ANTARCTICA
MARCH 13, 2002
THE SQUAWK CAME OVER THEIR HEADSETS JUST AS Granger was about to release the chopper’s main rotor brake.
“Abort takeoff, Macbird,” the comm tech radioed over the base freq. “I say again, it’s all fliers down. Over.”
Nimec looked at Granger from the passenger’s seat.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked.
Granger shrugged uncertainly, pushed his helmet microphone’s “talk” button. At the edge of the landing zone, a flight director was slicing his right hand across his neck in a throat-cutting motion. Granger watched him through the Plexiglas windscreen and felt a sudden crick of tension in his back.
“Rob, we got clearance from you not three minutes ago,” he said into his mouthpiece.
“I know,” the comm tech said. “And I’m sorry. This is an all-points travel advisory out of your home nest. NOAA synoptics show the storm’s accelerated on a north-easterly track. Present movement has it heading straight toward us over the Ross Shelf, and McMurdo says th
ere’s been more strengthening to the system. We’re looking at a possible upgrade from Condition II. Over.”
Both men were silent in the chopper’s cabin. Its engines kept running. After a few moments Granger reached toward the instrument panel to cut them, then leaned back in his seat staring outward as the twin-turbine whine died away.
Nimec was still looking at him with a sunken expression.
“I don’t believe this,” Nimec said. His hand was balled into a fist against the metal frame of his window. “There anything we can do?”
Granger took a deep breath. This was about the worst foul-up he could imagine. The fucking worst.
“Nothing besides wait,” he said at last, and started unbuckling his harness.
Victoria Land
They raced ahead of the storm, the wind hard at their backs, streaking cross-country over miles of snow and ice.
The sky pressed down on them, a low flat deck of clouds. Whiteout had cut visibility to thirty yards, and each rider kept his eyes on the trail of the vehicle before him to avoid separation from the group, their headlights and reflectors of no use in the stirring mist.
In the lead position, Burkhart rode with his thumb heavy on the throttle, squeezing every last bit of speed out of it, his determination a red-hot knife stabbing a passage through the soft barrier emptiness.
He leaned forward as he straddled his seat, knees locked around its leather, gloved fingers tightly gripping its handlebars. The ’mobile dipped, then nosed up, pitching with the terrain’s rise and fall. Powder sprayed from its track in flying ramps, shredding across the curved surface of his windshield. He porpoised down into a steep trench, shot along its bottom, and topped its opposite bank at a full tear, skis springing over the snow.
He could feel the storm at his neck, tumid, angry, coursing overland with unexpected swiftness. Some of his men had wished to suspend travel, find a protected spot where they could hunker down until it lifted. Their tents were designed to withstand the force of the gale. But he’d insisted they bear on at a constant pace.