A Spider Sat Beside Her

by K E Lanning

  Zoë said slowly, “Someone sent that file to temporarily shut down the space station as a protest or warning.” She rubbed her jaw. “We have to tell the authorities about this.”

  Lowry nodded. “You’re the one for that.” Lowry squinted at the screen. “That message came from near the mining station. I’ll contact my Uncle Nick. He’s a volunteer police officer—perhaps he can find some evidence on the ground.” She exhaled. “If the attack was from a terrorist group, they are probably already on the move.”

  Blue ice sheets collapsed, yielding to the laws of thermodynamics. The Arctic Ocean opened, and ships navigated the fabled Northwest Passage. A catastrophic shift came to the world’s ocean currents, and the warm Brazil current flowed past Antarctica. The great movement of melting ice chiseled valleys on their journey to the sea, and the southern ice cap melted away within a human lifespan. Antarctica—bare and quiet in a world gone mad.

  CHAPTER 8

  Nick’s boots crunched in the loose gravel as he walked along a stream in the valley west of the mining camp. A melting glacier had carved the bedrock into a U-shaped gorge as it glided to the sea, but now the bare rock focused the sun down its steep sides, warming the air at its base. He stopped to take a drink and took off his jacket, tying it around his waist. He checked the GPS on his watch—Lowry’s coordinates for the message transmission were just ahead. As he rested, he scanned the ground for any sign of footprints or a campfire.

  One more swallow of water and a splash along the brim of his hat, and then he continued toward the transmission site. Nick shook his head, trying to figure out who would have ventured into this rough area to send a lethal message to the space station. It just didn’t make sense, this message being transmitted by any of the miners on Antarctica. No doubt some of them who had immigrated were a rough lot, but most just wanted to make enough money to get drunk and then lose it in a card game.

  Besides a few birds flying lazily in the sky, he was utterly alone at the bottom of the world, and his thoughts wandered as he walked along this desolate area. People always considered him a simple man, but in reality, he was a deeply complex human being. Still, he had found it easier to veil his inner thoughts, especially on a thinly populated outpost such as Antarctica, where everyone knew everyone’s business.

  He followed the river downstream, and the valley sides began to open with boulders strewn about like children’s blocks. Dammed by a ridge of earth, a small lake had formed with low brush growing along the edges. Flocks of various birds gathered around the open water. He smiled—the habitation success story on Antarctica was the explosion of the bird population.

  He stopped, gazing at the arcuate shape of the mounded dirt and debris until his mouth fell open. This was the remains of what had been a glacier. Before him was a terminal moraine, marking the final descent of a great glacier, like a mammoth’s final resting place, but now just a puddle of water.

  Tears came to his eyes at the beauty and sadness of this interrupted embrace between earth and ice, a monument to all which had been lost in the floods of world—his legs shook—and to the unrequited love which had forced him to flee to Antarctica. He fell to his knees as the onslaught of memories crashed into his mind.

  ***

  He had never believed in love at first sight until it struck him between the eyes. Who could resist falling in love with a beautiful, intelligent woman whose banter filled a room with laughter—and pierced his heart? She was another man’s wife, but like a moth to a light, he could not resist her.

  After a fight with her husband one night, she had escaped from the house to walk off her anger. She was lovely and vulnerable when he stumbled upon her in a garden drenched in moonlight. Like a dream, he had pulled her to him while their eyes locked together.

  Sadness veiled her eyes, and he saw the redness of a slap on her white cheek. He caressed the mark on her skin and then kissed it gently. She closed her eyes, tilting her head back, and he kissed her warm lips. She yielded, and he pulled her to him, crushing his mouth into hers.

  Breathless, he stepped back and stared into her eyes—astonished at the passion between them. His lips met hers again, and his fingers followed the curve of her neck until he touched the thin straps of her summer dress. He slipped the straps off her shoulders, and the dress fell away from her body.

  She stared at him silently in her nakedness, her skin glowing in the moonlight like a marble sculpture. His hands trembled as he drew her into his arms, and they dropped to the cool grass. Between kisses, her hands peeled his clothes away, and their warm skin touched. On this summer night, with no guilt or thought, they made love as the moon sank behind the trees—an act of desperation where two souls converged at one time and place.

  Their needs temporarily sated, they held each other and fell into an exhausted sleep under the branches of an old oak. The first rays of the sun stole through the leaves, waking them to a new day. He pulled her to him, and they made love again. Afterward, she held his face between her hands and kissed him deeply, but a tear rolled down her face as she said, “I can’t do this.” Staring into his eyes, she caressed his cheek and then grabbed her dress, fleeing in the pale light of dawn. The affair ended with his heart broken, and he left for Antarctica, knowing that one night was all he could have with her.

  In the desolation of Antarctica, he had never found another woman to love and share his life with, especially with the poor pickings in the mining camps, where women were either married or prostitutes. He did not judge the latter, and many became wives to lonely miners, but he simply had not connected with anyone at the outpost. And so he had spent his adult life focused on geologic expeditions and coordinating negotiations between the owners of the mining company and the miners.

  ***

  Nick knelt in the loose gravel, vaguely staring out at the mounded rim of the terminal moraine, and then brushed his hair away from his moist eyes. He had come to the bottom of the world, so far from his past—until it sucker-punched him in the gut. He drank from his canteen and staggered up, unsteady from the emotional storm that had overcome him. He breathed in the dry air, shoving his memories back into the hole where he had locked them way. He stumbled across the rocky debris of the moraine, his thoughts as scattered as the stones.

  Exhaling deeply, he shook the cobwebs away, focusing his mind as he strolled along the outer edge of the moraine. The scientist in him took control. He was in awe of the power of flowing ice to bulldoze this mass of earth into a giant ridge of soil and rocks. Nick took GPS readings and a few images so a geologic team could return to this location and map the moraine in detail.

  Nick left the moraine area, walking along the stream flowing downhill from the dammed-up lake, assuming that the perpetrators would have stayed near water. There was a roughed-up look to the sand ahead, and he slowed his pace. He reached the spot, leaning down to get a closer look at the ground. Someone had purposely brushed the sand here, hiding tracks as they walked along. He jerked up at the shrieks of seagulls flying over his head. The ocean must be near.

  His heart thumped as he stood over a darkened area in the sand. A campsite? He glanced around, listening for footsteps or movement in the brush, but there was nothing except the sporadic sounds of birds. He knelt and carefully dug into the sand where the campfire had been. He started as the wind rustled the bushes behind him, and he swallowed hard as he looked around. He hoped that whoever had been here was actually gone. A lost geologist in the wilds of Antarctica would be back-page stuff, one of those chin-scratching mysteries that no one solves and nobody really wants to.

  He turned back and dug away into the soft sand, flinching as his fingers touched a sharp object. He carefully brushed away the sand grains, uncovering what was left of the cooked and eaten carcass of a bird, probably a grouse by the size of the body. Then he saw beneath the bones what appeared to be some type of dart. He picked it up and studied it carefully. It looked like it was carved from bone or wood, but the tip had been broken, and it h
ad a singed cotton-like material—a type of seed pod—on the end.

  His forehead furrowed as he realized that this looked like an Amazonian dart, the kind used with a blowgun. Why would native tribesmen travel from South America to attack the space station? He put the dart down and continued to dig until he pulled up some blackened wood coals. He removed his gloves and felt them—they were still a little warm. They weren’t far ahead of him.

  He glanced again over his shoulder and then held the dart up, taking a series of 3D photos of it before he carefully placed it in a pocket of his knapsack. Nick took detailed panoramic shots of the area. Nature would soon destroy fragile evidence, and it was imperative to gather all he could.

  Nick found the low evergreen tree from which the trail-scrubbing branch had been cut and checked the ground closely at the base of the tree. The ground was brushed here, and he followed the light markings of the needles, videoing the trail as it led toward the coast.

  Soon he heard the ocean and the din of seabirds; the shore was just ahead. Aware that the perpetrators may still be in the vicinity, he stowed his phone and crept quietly forward to the beach. He pushed his way through the brush on the edge of the beach, stumbling on the discarded cut branch and falling face first with a grunt onto the exposed beach. He pushed himself up on his elbows and gasped at the fresh footprints in the sand in front of him. With thumping heart, he cautiously peered up and down the beach to make sure he was alone.

  Nick slowly rose, brushing himself off with shaking hands. He edged onto the beach, watching for any movement ahead, and followed the footprints down the shoreline. He came to the stream that flowed from the lake, and the tracks became clearer in the wet sand. He glanced around and then squatted down to study the footprints. There appeared to be two men, both with small feet—one barefoot and the other in hiking boots.

  He took photos of the tracks as he followed them along the brush at the edge of the beach. He stopped where the footprints became chaotic and realized that next to the prints, there were gouges in the sand. The gouges led into the low brush at the edge of the beach, and Nick pulled back a branch; the score of a boat extended under the bushes. This is where they must have hidden a small canoe.

  He took more photos and then followed the footsteps and mark of the boat as they dragged it toward the sea. The tracks disappeared at the edge of the surf.

  Shielding his eyes, he scanned the horizon. Birds wheeled overhead, their cries lost within the crashing waves on an empty beach. Whoever they were had gotten clean away.

  CHAPTER 9

  Two days after the shutdown of the space station, Lowry heard a knock on the wall of her cubicle. Irritated with the volume of gossipmongers she had been dealing with since the power outage, she growled over her shoulder, “Hold your horses!”

  She finished setting up her parameters, pushed a couple of buttons, and then asked the computer, “Are we good, Bob?”

  “All set, Lowry.”

  Lowry exhaled and turned around to see who was interrupting her work. She blinked at the sight of a drop-dead-gorgeous man standing in front of her cubby—dressed to kill in an expensive pinstriped suit and crisp white shirt, perfectly accentuated with a classic silk tie.

  His pursed his lips, studying her with penetrating blues eyes. Then a smile flashed onto his chiseled face, revealing his beautiful white teeth. “Lowry Walker?”

  Lowry cleared her throat and chuckled with embarrassment. She’d been staring at him as if he were an apparition. “Sorry, I’ve been inundated with tourists lately.”

  He continued in a low voice. “I’m sure you have—that’s one of the reasons I’m here.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and a hologram of his identification popped up. “Let me introduce myself: I’m Edward Douglas, one of the lawyers from the US Justice Department investigating the space-station shutdown, and please, call me Edward.” He grinned, gesturing toward the hallway with his hand. “Why don’t we take a walk?”

  Self-consciously, she brushed back her hair and stood up. He’s good-looking, but don’t make a fool of yourself. She straightened her back and strolled past him into the hall. At first, she wasn’t sure where to go, but she found herself heading to the Garden. They entered through the heavy glass doors, and Lowry grinned at the surprised look on Edward’s face when they moved into an Eden of lush vegetation and roosting chickens.

  “I got the hint that you wanted to get away from eavesdropping ears.”

  “Yes. This will be perfect.” Edward gazed at the menagerie of plants and animals. “This is really quite amazing.”

  They walked along the path, and Lowry explained the importance of the Garden to the space station. “It’s the lifeblood of the ISS. Without it, we could not survive.” Lowry led him to a quiet alcove off the pathway to the orchards.

  Edward motioned her to sit on a bench, and then he sat next to her, clearing his throat as he set his phone to record. He smiled and said, “What I need from you is a statement of exactly what happened the day of the station shutdown from start to finish.”

  Lowry cocked her head. “Before we begin, can you tell me why this is so hush-hush?”

  “We’re still investigating and gathering information through our interviews, so I can’t tell you much. But we are very aware that the space station might still be vulnerable.”

  Lowry recounted the events of the shutdown, and after she finished her story, she turned toward him. “So what is the next step? Do you have any possible suspects?”

  “This is one of the first major e-terrorism cases in the history of humans—believe me, it may be a while before we figure this out.” Edward looked at her intensely. “We must be on our guard at all times, and we have to expect another assault, Lowry.”

  Edward drummed his fingers on his knee and looked at her intently. “Lowry, I must ask you to not discuss this with anyone. This is deadly serious.”

  She curled her lip, annoyed at his patronizing tone. “No kidding, Sherlock. I understand the situation.”

  He chuckled, but then his smile faded. “We’ve been interviewing everyone involved, including your computer assistant, Bob. And one question still is unanswered: Lowry, why is it that you received this transmission?”

  Lowry frowned. “I don’t think it was just coincidence. My dissertation is to collect surface imagery data over Antarctica, and we were in the midst of recording a swath. The attackers must have figured out a way to transmit the OPALS message from the surface under the path of the high-definition camera.” She shrugged. “This project has been widely publicized for several years, so plenty of time to prepare, but what I don’t understand is how they were able to transmit a file through the satellite and then get it into the main computer.”

  “Why would they choose to send the OPALS message from Antarctica?”

  “The space station wouldn’t receive a laser message from everywhere, and the ISS’s data-gathering satellites were trained onto a fairly narrow region for the Antarctic mapping project.” She gestured with her hands. “And who would think to look for terrorists on the remotest spot on the Earth? And how would you trace them back to anywhere?”

  He nodded. “Then you contacted your uncle at the mining station after the space-station power came back on?”

  “Yes, after we figured out it was an actual attack on the space station, I contacted him. There aren’t very many people on Antarctica, so besides being a geologist, he’s also a member of the volunteer police and fire department, so he has authority to investigate criminal activities.”

  “I see. Do you know what he has found, if anything?”

  “No, I haven’t heard from him since I sent him the coordinates of the OPALS transmission site.” Lowry brow furrowed. “I’m frankly a bit worried—it’s not like him to not get back to me.”

  Edward shrugged. “Until we nab a suspect, communications are restricted to and from the ISS, but I’m sure he’s fine. The mining station on Antarctica is crawling with investigators from around
the world. He’s probably being peppered with a lot of questions.” He looked down at the transcript on his phone. “Well, I can’t think of anything else at the moment, but I’ll be back and forth to the space station for the next several weeks, and I’m sure there will be other questions as the investigation goes on.”

  He leaned back on the bench and grinned at the chatter of a squirrel. He exhaled and asked, “So how is it living on a space station?”

  “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind turning off the recording mode.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  ***

  Two weeks later, Lowry saw Edward again. She turned toward a knock on her cubicle wall and sucked in her breath; it was Edward, standing there with his captivating smile.

  “Can I persuade you to walk with me again?” he asked.

  Her heart skipped a beat—or three. Biting the inside of her lip, she forced her face into a smile while she inhaled deeply to calm her heart. Lowry was slightly annoyed with herself. She was quite taken with him, and the maddening part of it? Edward knew it. Clenching her fist, she blurted out, a bit louder than she meant to, “Certainly.”

  With a twinkle in his eyes, he asked, “Another garden stroll?”

  “Sounds good to me.” She rose from her desk, and her heart fluttered as she passed near him.

  Edward turned with her, and they stepped out into the corridor. Lowry hesitated for a moment, and then, for fun, she led him around to the opposite entrance to the Garden from their last visit. He chatted about a college buddy as they strolled down the corridor until the heavy glass doors swooshed close.