Tyson scowled, the resentment in the room toward him so palpable it made the air they breathed like syrup. You could smell the sweat, the electric tension. In a moment Cameron had turned everyone against him. 'That slug?' the mechanic growled ominously.
'More brains, more work, more everything.'
'Little Hiero?' The mechanic pushed himself away from the wall and made his way around the folding chairs where the others sat, his work boots ringing on the floor as he walked. He was supposed to have taken them off, as well, before entering the galley, and they left a trail of snow and grease. The others watched him warily, resentfully, none quite daring to interfere with whatever he chose to do next. He walked up to the counter and picked up the mason jar with the gastropod. 'This slime sucker here?'
'Don't you touch him!' Lena warned.
Tyson held the jar up to the light. 'Oh yeah. I see what you mean. He's cuter than any bitch in this room.'
'Buck, put it down,' Cameron commanded. He now looked worried. Tyson's open defiance hadn't been planned.
'Cool it, Tyson.' Pulaski stood up, too, muscles tensing.
'I'm cool, Cueball.' Then the mechanic made a sudden violent swing of his arm and brought the jar down on the galley counter with a crack. The glass shattered and Lena screamed. The slug slid a short distance on the stainless steel, braked by its own slime. Tyson flicked a couple of pieces of glass off the animal and gingerly picked it up between two fingers, holding it up in front of the crowd.
'Is this what you prefer to me, Lena?'
'You put him down!' she cried.
Norse had become rigid, his gaze flicking around the room, taking it all in.
'Do you think I give a flying fuck what any of you think of me?' Tyson asked them, turning in a slow half rotation to give everyone a clear view of the slug. 'Do you think I give a diddly damn about any of you? We're all down here for bucks and glory and to punch the time card home, man. I don't give a shit about the science, I don't give a shit about the station, and I sure as hell don't give a shit if the rest of you don't get a single shower for the rest of the fucking winter. Here's the bottom line. I don't need you. I don't want you. I sure as hell don't like you. I ain't afraid of you.' He held the slug closer to his face, scrutinizing it. 'And this is what I think of this little guy here.'
He opened his mouth.
'Buck, if you do that you're bloody dead on station!' Dana Andrews cried.
'Suck my dick, Dana.' He crammed the animal in.
'No!' Lena shouted.
'Jesus Christ,' Pulaski said in disgust. The crowd groaned.
Tyson chewed twice, his look wildly defiant, and then swallowed, the gulp audible. There were flecks of slime on his beard. He deliberately belched.
'Why in the name of God did you do that?' Cameron breathed, his look one of horror. He took a shaking step toward Tyson, and Norse put a hand on the station manager's arm.
'Here's another rule for you ass-kissers,' Tyson said, wiping his mouth. 'No pets in Antarctica.'
Lena was looking at him in hatred. Pika regarded the mechanic in disbelief.
'This your idea, Bob?' Tyson asked the psychologist. 'Turn everyone against me? Well, surprise, surprise, they already were. So fuck you, too.'
Norse, composing his expression into something opaque, didn't answer.
'I'm crazier than you thought, aren't I?' Tyson persisted.
'You're setting yourself alone, Buck,' the psychologist warned quietly.
'You're right on that one.' He waited for another challenge, his look amused, but none came. 'Okay? We done here? Gotta hit the showers, man.'
The quiet was as thick and cold as the ice cap.
He left.
Lewis could hear the bubble of the juice dispenser in one corner.
'One shower,' Cameron finally said shakily.
The others looked frustrated, furious, sick.
That night, someone nailed a piece of burnt toast to Buck Tyson's door.
It was two nights later that Jed Lewis was roused from his bed once more, again in the early hours of the morning. Cameron burst into his room and flicked on the light.
'What? What?'
'Get up, we're organizing a search.'
'Now?'
'Sooner than now. Get your ass in gear.' The station manager looked sick.
'What's going on? Is it the meteorite?'
'Screw the meteorite. Now something's really wrong.'
'What?'
'I can't believe this is happening to me.'
'What, dammit?'
'Now Mickey Moss is missing.'
CHAPTER TEN
This is what it's like to be dead, Lewis thought.
The searchers had stopped on the polar plateau three miles from the dome, clambering gratefully down from the Spryte to take a break from the snow tractor's ungainly lurch and guttural growl. It was a tiring vehicle to ride in, noisy and slow, with treads like a tank and a cramped, wedge-shaped orange cab. But it could also straddle small crevices, snort its way up forty-degree slopes, and clamber over pack ice. If Mickey Moss was lost on the plateau, the tractor should spot him.
He wasn't.
There was nothing to see. Distant radio towers appearing as fine as spider silk marked Scott-Amundsen base, its dome a bump on the horizon. In all other directions the whiteness was as empty as heaven and as frozen as hell. It was amazing how far they seemed from the station. The effect was strangely dreamlike, Lewis feeling as detached as an astronaut cut from a lifeline. He didn't like being out here, unprotected and cold.
Moss's body could have been covered by drifting snow, of course. But why would the astronomer walk out here? There was nothing to walk to: no hillock, no wrinkle, no vale, no stop. They'd gone first to the tiny solar observatory buried in the snow a mile from the dome, its ramp the place where Lewis had seen Mickey's snowmobile disappear that lonely midnight. It consisted of another metal box sunken in snow, its interior housing a small solar telescope boxed for the winter. No Mickey, no meteorite, no tracks. Beyond that, all destination disappeared once you left the polar station. There was only the wind.
'This is stupid,' Tyson said.
The mechanic was their driver, pressed into reluctant service after the three hours that it took him to get their one operable Spryte in running condition and warmed up. If Moss was out here he was already dead, Tyson had reasoned, and if he was dead they'd probably never find him. The blowing snow would bury him. So what was the point?
'Do it anyway,' Cameron had said quietly. No one else had said a word. Tyson had hesitated and then finally shrugged and obeyed.
A disappearance was serious.
Pulaski had been picked to accompany Tyson because of his military background. Lewis was drafted because of his unwanted association with the whole mess. Norse had come along on the theory he might guess where Moss had gone and could help manage the volatile Tyson.
