Ice Station

head. 'I don't know what they did?some fancy new laser-fusing procedure, someone told me?but they did it; they fixed his eyes. Hell, all I know is that if you can afford it?and in Scarecrow's case, the Corps could?you don't need glasses these days.

'Of course, there was still the scarring on his skin, but otherwise, they did it. Schofield could see again. Twenty-twenty.' Riley paused. 'There was only one hitch.'

'What was that?'

'The Corps wouldn't let him fly again,' Riley said. 'It's standard procedure across all the armed forces: once you've had eye trauma of any kind, you can't fly a military airplane. Hell, if you wear reading glasses, you're not allowed to fly a military kite.'

'So what did Scarecrow do?'

Riley smiled. 'He decided to become a line animal, a ground Marine. He was already an officer from his flying days, so he kept his commission. But that was all he kept. He had to start all over again. He went from flight status, Lieutenant Commander, to ground force, Lieutenant Second Class, in an instant.

'And he went back to school. Back to the Basic School at Quantico. And he did every course they had. He did tactical weapons training. He did strategic planning. Small arms, scout/sniper. You name it, he did it. He did it all. Apparently, he said he wanted to be like those men who'd come in and got him out of Bosnia. What they'd done for him he wanted to be able to do.'

Riley shrugged. 'As you can probably imagine, it didn't take long for him to get noticed. He was too clever to stay a Second Lieutenant for long. After a few months, they upped him to Full Lieutenant, and before long, they offered him a Recon Unit. He took it. That was almost two years ago now.'

Gant had never known. She had been selected for Schofield's Recon Unit only a year ago, and it had never occurred to her to wonder how Schofield himself had become the team's commander. That sort of thing was officer stuff, and Gant wasn't an officer. She was enlisted, and enlisted troops know only what they are told to know. Things like the choice of team commander are left to the higher-ups.

'I've been in his team ever since,' Riley said proudly.

Gant knew what he meant. Riley respected Schofield, trusted his judgment, trusted his appraisal of any given situation. Schofield was Riley's commander and Riley would follow him into hell.

Gant would, too. Ever since she had been in Schofield's Recon team, she had liked him. She respected him as a leader.

He was firm but fair, and he didn't mince words. And he had never treated her any differently from any of the men in the unit.

'You like him, don't you?' Riley said softly.

'I trust him,' Gant said.

There was a short silence.

Gant sighed. 'I'm twenty-six years old, Book. Did you know that?'

'No.'

'Twenty-six years old. God,' Gant said, lost in thought. She turned to Book. 'Did you know I was married once?'

'No, I didn't.'

'Got married at the ripe old age of nineteen, I did. Married the sweetest man you'd ever meet, the catch of the town. He was a new teacher at the local high school, just arrived from New York, taught English. Gentle guy, quiet. I was pregnant by the time I was twenty.'

Book just watched Gant silently as she spoke.

'And then one day,' Gant said, 'when I was two and a half months pregnant I arrived home early to find him doing it doggy-style on the living room floor with a seventeen-year-old cheerleader who'd come round for tutoring.'

Book winced inwardly.

'I miscarried three weeks later,' Gant said. 'I don't know what caused it. Stress, anxiety, who knows. I hated men after my husband did that to me. Hated them. That was when I enlisted in the Corps. Hate makes you a good soldier, you know. Makes you plant every single shot right in the middle of the other guy's head. I couldn't bring myself to trust a man after what my husband did. And then I met him.'

Gant was staring off into space. Her eyes were beginning to fill with water.

'You know, when I was accepted into this unit, the selection committee put on this big celebration lunch at Pearl. It was beautiful, one of those great Hawaiian BBQ lunches? out on the beach, in the sun. He was there. He was wearing this horrible blue Hawaiian shirt and, of course, those silver sunglasses.

'I remember that at one point during the lunch everybody else was talking, but he wasn't. I watched him. He just seemed to bow his head and go into this inner world. He seemed so lonely, so alone. He caught me looking and we talked about something inane, something about what a great place Pearl Harbor was and what our favourite holiday spots were.

'But my heart had already gone out to him. I don't know what he was thinking about that day, but whatever it was, he was thinking hard about it. My guess is it was a woman, a woman he couldn't have.

'Book, if a man ever thought about me the way he was thinking about her...' Gant shook her head. 'I would just ... Oh, I don't know. It was just so intense. It was like ... like nothing I have ever seen.'

Book didn't say anything. He just stared at Gant.

Gant seemed to sense his eyes on her and she blinked twice and the water in her eyes disappeared.

'Sorry,' she said. 'Can't go showing my emotions now, can I. If I start doing that, people'll start calling me Dorothy again.'

'You should tell him how you feel about him,' Book said gently.

'Yeah, right' Gant said. 'Like I'd do that. They'd kick me out of the unit before I could say, 'That's why you can't have women in frontline units.' Book, I'd rather be close to him and not be able to touch him than be far away and still not be able to touch him.'

Book looked hard at Gant for a moment, as if he was appraising her. Then he smiled warmly. 'You're all right... Dorothy, you know that. You're all right.'

Gant snuffed a laugh. 'Thanks.'

She bowed her head and shook it sadly. Then suddenly she looked up at Book.

'I have one more question,' she said.

'What?'

Gant cocked her head. 'How is it that you know all that stuff about him? All the stuff about Bosnia and the farmhouse and his eyes and all that?'

Riley smiled sadly.

Then he said, 'I was on the team that got him out.'

'Any sort of paleontology is a waiting game,' Sarah Hensleigh said as she trudged through the snow next to Schofield toward the outer perimeter of the station. 'But now with the new technology, you just set the computer, walk away, and do something else. Then you come back later and see if the computer has found anything.'

The new technology, Sarah had been saying, was a longwave sonic pulse that the paleontologists at Wilkes shot down into the ice to detect fossilized bones. Unlike digging, it located fossils without damaging them.

Schofield said, 'So what do you do while you wait for the sonic pulse to find your next fossil?'

'I'm not just a paleontologist, you know,' Sarah said, smiling, feigning offense. 'I was a marine biologist before I took up paleontology. And before all this happened, I was working with Ben Austin in the Bio Lab on B-deck. He was doing work on a new antivenom for Enhydrina schistosa.'

Schofield nodded. 'Sea snake.'

Sarah looked at him, surprised. 'Very good, Lieutenant.'

'Yeah, well, I'm not just a grunt with a gun, you know,' Schofield said,