it?'
'I haven't told them. I'm not going to ask them. We have to move now. Fait accompli. Their disappointment at losing a Spryte will be more than mitigated by their relief at losing you.'
'Thanks.'
'I'm giving it to you straight, Buck.'
The mechanic nodded glumly. 'A mob or the plateau.'
'When you don't have any friends, you have to rely on yourself.'
They waited, Tyson mulling it over. If he got a hole in the weather it should be possible. He had the skills to earn his way at Vostok…
'Or we can go face the others in the galley now,' Norse said.
The mechanic shook his head. Fuck those bastards. 'They want it to be me. That's the problem.'
'You can rely on them or rely on yourself.'
Tyson hesitated, gathering his courage. There was a certain hopelessness in his eyes, a realization of having made an irrevocable wrong turn. Then, fatalistically: 'I'm out of here.'
'It's for the best, Buck. Best if you leave soon.'
'Don't worry about that. If I'm leaving I ain't going to let the screen door hit my butt on the way out.' He unzipped his bag, suddenly anxious. 'You gonna help?'
'I've taken the liberty of doing that.' Norse backed up, removed the grate, and crawled out. The mechanic followed him. They stood in the gloom of the garage, looking at the vehicles. 'The Spryte is fueled, the sled loaded, you're ready to go. It's best to be well away before morning, just in case some self-righteous sheriff gets it in his head to chase after you with a snowmobile.'
'Agreed.' Tyson looked at him curiously. 'Why you helping me, Doc?'
'I've found myself thrust into a curious position of responsibility. My profession is people, and I know what they're capable of. You ever hear of the Swordfish?'
Tyson shook his head.
'It's classified, but word gets around in professional circles. Nuke sub on a long, secret mission under the Arctic ice. There was a quarrel, a popular ensign was killed, and there wasn't a chance to surface or return. They were sitting off a Russian base, for Christ's sake. They did a quick court-martial but there was no brig, just like here. You know what they did with the offender?'
'Do I want to know?'
'Loaded him into a torpedo tube and fired him out. He was kicking, screaming, pleading, crying, it didn't matter. He'd made no friends and everyone was around the bend with tension anyway. There was hell to pay when they got back, of course, and a few careers ended. But at the time, ejecting him into the Arctic Ocean seemed the right thing to do. That's what I'm worried about here. The right thing to do.'
Tyson nodded dumbly.
'I'm gambling on this one, Buck. Gambling on you. So punch on out of here and hope you make friends with the Russkies. Your boots and parka are in the cab.'
Tyson looked at the Spryte, resignedly determined. 'I'll make it. What are you going to tell them?'
'That I helped you go. If I get blamed for it, I'll tell them you pulled a knife on me.'
'Adding to my reputation.'
'Until winter's over and the truth comes out. I have to live here, too.'
Tyson stepped up on the treads of the Spryte and looked back at Norse. 'If I didn't do it, who did, Doc?'
'I'm not sure you didn't do it. I'm just praying it doesn't matter. Because with you gone and convicted in abstentia, any other murderer escapes suspicion. Which means he has good reason not to strike again.'
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pika Taylor always woke first to check the generators and walk the archways, surveying their safety. It was he who discovered the open garage door and the missing Spryte. So much snow had blown into the entryway that he couldn't close the bay and had to fetch help to shovel it clear. His shouts woke the survivors.
A group filed into the garage and gaped at the opening and the tread tracks going up its ramp as if it were as miraculous as Jesus' tomb. The temperature in the vehicle shed had plunged, coating the workbenches and machinery with a flocking of frost. The winter-overs worked rapidly to clear the drifting snow, melt a rim of ice, and shut the bay door against the night. Then they went outside.
The darkness was deepening. The cloudless sky was beginning to spot with stars and the horizon had only the faintest of blushes, the blue there as eerie as the glow of Cherenkov radiation in a nuclear fuel rod pool. The snow glowed silver. There was no wind but it was bitterly cold. The tractor and sled tracks steered for the horizon as straight as the wake of an autopilot boat, the Spryte's message as plain as a telegram. Tyson was pointed toward Vostok station. Their nemesis had fled.
His escape was received as deliverance. The monster was gone. No longer did they have to fear him, hold him, or prepare the runway to export him. Their water crisis was solved in an instant. His blustering hunt for the meteorite became a bad dream. He left behind only the nervous disorientation that follows a nightmare, an emotional tingle as barely contained panic gave way to mutual reassurance. They'd survived! They straddled the tracks in numb relief.
That Norse must have had a role in Tyson's disappearance was quickly assumed. Despite the excitement, the psychologist didn't emerge from his room to follow them out into the snow and he didn't join in the wildfire of announcement. It was as if he already knew what they'd find out there. Rising later, he admitted nothing, nor did anyone pronounce it. Still, he hadn't talked to their bosses at the National Science Foundation and had gone to bed late the night before as if the problem were solved. Norse's equanimity about the mechanic's escape told the rest all they needed to know. He was calm, where Rod Cameron had visibly battled depression. Robert Norse was their rock.
'I wonder if Tyson took the rock,' Geller said happily at a late breakfast, working through a celebratory stack of pancakes. 'Maybe he found it. Maybe he's the one who took it all along.'
'Good riddance if he did,' Calhoun opined, forking a sausage.
'Maybe he'll hock it. Maybe we'll meet him years from now on a beach in Hawaii, tanned and retired, still sipping mai tais from Mickey Moss's meteorite. Maybe he's smarter than any of us and got Doctor Bob to help send him to the Russians.'
'So?'
'So, it would be ironic if dumb old Buck got exactly what he wanted.'
'If I survive this freezer and get back to a beach in Hawaii to see him, do you think I'll give a flying fuck?'
'Alexi,' Geller asked with his mouth full, 'you think Vostok will take him?'
The Russian shrugged. 'Why not? He brings his own car, maybe his own food- even his survival scraps will be better than theirs. They'll radio: Who he is? We'll say a what, a… defector, just so they don't fear him and send him back. He'll work or he'll starve at that base. It will be worse for him than jail here. And he'll find some companions even scarier than he is. Only the hard-core ice-men still survive at Vostok. The real Russians.' He grinned. 'They chew leather and pound nails with their foreheads.'
'The Brits up at Faraday wear leather and paint their nails,' Dana said. 'And their women are even kinkier.' She'd rediscovered her spirit as soon as she blearily woke to find Tyson gone.
'I hear the Kiwis nail their women and leather their foreskins,' Geller remarked.
'Well, the Argentines at Esperanza- ' Calhoun began.
'Make fun of the Chileans at Bernardo O'Higgins who tell jokes about the Poles at Arctowski who long for the Chinese food at Zhongshan,' their psychologist interrupted, sliding into a seat with a cup of coffee. Norse had come into the galley quietly. 'It's a wonder any work gets done in Antarctica at all.'
'We were just wishing Tyson the worst, Doctor Bob,' Geller explained. 'We figured the Russians would give it to him.'
'He's given it to himself. The plateau at Vostok is a half mile higher than the Pole. The world record low was set there- minus 128.6 degrees.' Norse said it as if the precision gave him pleasure. 'And traveling seven hundred
