Icebound

alone.”

Pete blinked in surprise.

Not even breaking stride as he spoke, barely glancing at the engineer, Harry put his goggles in place and pulled up his snow mask and walked out of the cave. He bent into the wind, switched on his flashlight, and trudged past the rumbling snowmobiles.

He doubted that much fuel remained in their tanks. The engines would conk out soon. No more light. No more heat.

Past the snowmobiles, the area that they had used for the temporary-camp lavatory lay on the far side of a U-shaped, ten-foot-high ridge of broken ice and drifted snow, twenty yards beyond the inflatable igloos that now lay in ruins. Harry actually had no need to relieve himself, but the call of nature provided the most convenient and least suspicious excuse for getting out of the cave and away from the others. He reached the opening in the crescent ridge that formed the windbreak, shuffled through drifted snow to the rear of that pocket of relative calm, and stood with his back to the ridge wall.

He supposed he might be making a big mistake with Pete Johnson. As he'd told Brian, no one could ever be entirely sure what might lie within the mind of another human being. Even a friend or loved one, well known and trusted, might harbor some unspeakable dark urge and despicable desire. Everyone was a mystery within a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. In his lifelong quest for adventure, Harry had settled by chance into a line of work that brought him into contact with fewer people on a daily basis than he would have met in virtually any other profession, and each time he took on a new challenge, the adversary was never another person but always Mother Nature herself. Nature could be hard but never treacherous, powerful and uncaring but never consciously cruel; in any contest with her, he didn't have to worry about losing because of deceit or betrayal. Nevertheless, he had decided to risk confronting Pete Johnson alone.

He wished that he had a gun.

Considering the assault on Brian, it seemed criminally stupid of Harry to have come to the icecap without a large-caliber personal weapon holstered under his parka at all times. Of course, in his experience, geological research had never before required him to shoot anyone.

In a minute, Pete arrived and joined him at the back wall of the U-shaped, roofless shelter.

They faced each other, snow masks pulled down and goggles up on their foreheads, flashlights aimed at their boots. The light bounced back up at them, and Pete's face glowed as if irradiated. Harry knew that his own countenance looked much the same: brightest around the chin and mouth, darker toward the forehead, eyes glittering from the depths of what appeared to be dark holes in his skull — as spooky as any Halloween mask.

Pete said, “Are we here to gossip about someone? Or have you suddenly taken a romantic interest in me?”

“This is serious, Pete.”

“Damn right it is. If Rita finds out, she'll beat the crap out of me.”

“Let's get right to the point. I want to know… why did you try to kill Brian Dougherty?”

“I don't like the way he parts his hair.”

“Pete, I'm not joking.”

“Well, okay, it was because he called me a darky.”

Harry stared at him but said nothing.

Above their heads, at the crest of the sheltering ridge, the storm wind whistled and huffed through the natural crenellations in the tumbled-together slabs of ice.

Pete's grin faded. “Man, you are serious.”

“Cut the bullshit, Pete.”

“Harry, for God's sake, what's going on here?”

Harry watched him for long seconds, using silence to disconcert him, waiting either to be attacked — or not. Finally, he said, “Maybe I believe you.”

“Believe me about what?” The bafflement on the big man's broad, black face seemed as genuine as any lamb's sweet look of innocence; the only hint of evil was entirely the theatrical effect from the upwash of the flashlight beams. “Are you saying somebody actually did try to kill him? When? Back at the third blasting site, when he got left behind? But he fell, you said. He said. He told us that he fell and hit his head. Didn't he?”

Harry sighed, and some of the tension went out of his neck and shoulders. “Damn. If you are the one, you're good. I believe you really don't know.”

“Hey, I know I really don't know.”

“Brian didn't fall and knock himself unconscious, and he wasn't left behind by accident. Someone struck him on the back of the head. Twice.”

Pete was speechless. His line of work didn't usually require him to carry a sidearm, either.

As quickly as he could, Harry recounted the conversation that he'd had with Brian in the snowmobile cabin a few hours ago.

“Jesus!” Pete said. “And you thought I might be the one.”

“Yeah. Although I didn't suspect you as much as I do some of the others.”

“You thought I might go for your throat a minute ago.”

“I'm sorry. I like you a hell of a lot, Pete. But I've known you only eight or nine months, after all. There could be things you've hidden from me, certain attitudes, prejudices—”

Pete shook his head. “Hey, you don't have to explain yourself. You had no reason to trust me further than you did the others. I'm not asking for an apology. I'm just saying you've got guts. You aren't exactly a little guy, but physically I'm more than a match for you.”

Harry had to look up to see Pete's face, and suddenly his friend seemed more of a giant than ever before. Shoulders almost too broad for a conventional doorway. Massive arms. If he had accepted those offers to play pro football, he would have been a formidable presence on the field, and if a polar bear showed up now, he might be able to give it a good fight.

“If I'd been this psycho,” Pete said, “and if I'd decided to kill you here and now, you wouldn't have had much chance.”

“Yeah, but I didn't have a choice. I needed one more ally, and you were the best prospect. By the way, thanks for not tearing my head off.”

Pete coughed and spat in the snow. “I've changed my mind about you, Harry. You don't have a hero complex after all. This is just perfectly natural for you, this kind of courage. You're built this way. This is how you came into the world.”

“I only did what I had to do,” Harry said impatiently. “So long as we were stranded on this iceberg, so long as it appeared that we were all going to die at midnight, I thought Rita and I could watch over Brian. I figured our would-be killer might take advantage of any opening we gave him at the boy, but I didn't think he'd bother to engineer any opportunities. But with this submarine on the way… Well, if he thinks Brian will be rescued, he might do something bold. He might make another attempt on the boy's life, even if he has to reveal himself to do it. And I need someone besides Rita and me to help stop him when the time comes.”

“And I've been nominated.”

“Congratulations.”

A whirl of wind crested the ridge and swooped down on them. They lowered their heads while a column of spinning snow passed over them, so dense that it seemed almost like an avalanche. For a few seconds they were blinded and deafened. Then the squall-within-a-storm passed out of the open end of the crescent ridge.

Pete said, “So far as you're concerned, is there any one of them we should watch more closely than the others?”

“I ought to have asked you that question. I already know what Rita, Brian and I think. I need a fresh perspective.”

Pete didn't have to ponder the question to come up with an answer. “George Lin,” he said at once.

“That was my own first choice.”

“Not first and last? So you think he's too obvious?”

“Maybe. But that doesn't rule him out.”

“What's wrong with him, anyway? I mean, the way he acts with Brian, the anger — what's that all