Trent waited a full minute before someone returned to the line.
'Yes, hi,' Trent said. 'What?oh, I'm his brother-in-law, Michael.' There was a pause. 'Oh, no,' Trent said softly. 'Oh, my God....Yes, thank you. Good-bye.'
Trent practically slammed the phone down. He turned to Cameron. 'Holy shit.'
'What?'
'According to the United States Marine Corps Personnel Department, First Lieutenant Shane M. Schofield
Cameron frowned. 'He's dead?'
'According to them he is,' Trent said softly. 'But that doesn't necessarily mean it's true, now, does it.' Trent paused. 'The secondary team...'
'What about it?'
'There's a secondary team on its way to Wilkes Ice Station right now, right?'
'Yeah....'
'And according to the United States Marine Corps, Shane Schofield is already dead, right?'
'Yeah...'
Trent thought about that for a long moment. Then he looked up suddenly. 'Schofield's found something. They're gonna kill him.'
Cameron got Alison back on the phone.
'Quick, send it through now,' he said.
'All right. All right. Just hold on a second, honey buns,' Alison said. Cameron heard the clicking of computer keys at the other end of the line.
'OK, I'm sending it through now,' Alison said.
On the far side of the living room, Trent flicked on his computer. He clicked through several screens, came to his e-mail screen.
A small information bar at the bottom of the screen blinked:
YOU HAVE NEW MAIL.
Trent clicked on the 'Open' icon.
A list appeared immediately on the screen:
ALL-STATES LIBRARY DATABASE
SEARCH BY KEYWORD
SEARCH STRING USED:LATITUDE -66.5°
LONGITUDE 115° 20' 12'
NO. OF ENTRIES FOUND: 6
TITLE
AUTHOR
LOCATION
YEAR
DOCTORAL THESIS
LLEWELLYN, D. K.
STAMFORD, CT
1998
DOCTORAL THESIS
AUSTIN, B.K.
STAMFORD, CT
1997
POSTDOCTORAL THESIS
HENSLEIGH, S. T.
USC, CA
1997
FELLOWSHIP GRANT RESEARCH PAPER
HENSLEIGH, B. M.
HARVARD, MA
1996
THE ICE CRUSADE: REFLECTIONS ON A YEAR SPENT IN ANTARCTICA
HENSLEIGH, B. M.
HARVARD, MA
1995 AVAIL: AML
PRELIMINARY SURVEY
WAITZKIN, C. M.
LIBCONG
1978
It was the list Alison had got from the All States Database. The list of every work that referred to latitude- 66.5° and longitude 115° 20'12'.
'All right,' Pete said.
'What are you going to do with it?' Alison's voice said over the speakerphone.
'We're gonna use this list to find their addresses,' Trent said, typing quickly at the keyboard. 'The e-mail addresses of the academics down in Antarctica, so we can send a message to Schofield.'
'We figure that most university professors have e-mail,' Pete said, 'and we're hoping that Wilkes Ice Station is patched in to a satellite phone so that the message can get through.'
Suddenly Trent said, 'All right, I got one! Hensleigh, Sarah T. The e-mail address is at USC in California, but it's been routed to an external address: [email protected]. That's it!'
Trent typed some more.
'All
'Do it,' Cameron said.
Trent typed a message, then did a quick cut-and-paste. When he was finished he practically slammed his finger down on the send button.
Libby Gant stood in front of the heavy steel door set into the small ice tunnel.
It had a rusty pressure wheel attached to it. With some difficulty, Gant turned it. She rotated it three times.
And then suddenly she heard a loud clunking noise from within the great steel door, and the door creaked open a fraction.
Gant pulled the door wide and shone her flashlight beyond it.
'Whoa,' she said.
It looked like an airplane hangar. It was so big, Gant's flashlight wasn't even strong enough to see the far end. But she could see enough.
She could see walls.
Steel walls, with heavy reinforcing girders holding up a high aluminium ceiling. Huge yellow robotic arms stood silently in the gloom, covered in frost. Halogen lights lined the ceiling. Some metal girders lay at awkward angles on the floor in front of her. Gant saw that several of them had jagged marks at their ends?they had been broken clean in two. Everything was covered in a layer of ice.
