fuel arch. I told him I was just fueling the jerricans to escape. I told him I was going to take him to Vostok. He ran away from me to try to fix things with you when he learned the truth. But it's always too late to fix things. That's what I've learned.'
Lewis had a growing feeling of chill dread. 'What truth?'
'That I'm still a step ahead of you, Lewis. That I've always been a step ahead. And the fact that you've cornered me out here, brought me down like a pack of yapping mongrel dogs, means nothing. Because I've already erased all of you.'
'Did you kill Abby?' His voice was hollow. He felt sick.
'I loved Abby. She failed at loving me. So I'm giving her the quicker end. I opened some valves and the fuel level is rising in the arch, creeping up her parka where she's tied, and she'll either drown in jet fuel or ignite like a torch when it flashes into fire. Either way it's relatively quick and really quite merciful compared to freezing to death in the cold. I'm just letting her think about her rejection of me before her death comes. Believe me, you'll envy her- in your own last hours. I lied about what it would have been like if we'd left you on the stake. Freezing is a terrible way to go.'
'Bob, it's not too late,' Lewis tried. 'Tell us what you've done. Help us make it right. We can fix it.'
'The arch is filling with spilled fuel.' Norse nodded solemnly. 'The dome is becoming a bomb. If you'd left things alone you would have incinerated in the galley before you knew what was happening, which was the mercy I had planned for you. Now you can watch it from out here, your shelter vaporizing. The living will envy the dead.'
The group looked up at him in disbelief. 'But why?' Dana finally asked, her voice quavering.
'Because people don't work. Because it all falls apart on the way to Pluto.'
There was a low keening sound as the winter-overs began to comprehend what he must have done. An enveloping dread at their own fate.
'Unfortunately, you didn't give me time to stop and destroy the generator at the Hypertats so there's a chance you can linger for days, maybe weeks. So I'm really leaving you with a final choice. The dilemma is my final gift to you. You can go back into the dome and try to save Dixon and risk dying with her. Or you can retreat to the emergency camp and try to save yourselves.'
He reached in his parka and they stiffened, but it was only to pull out a sheaf of paper. 'As you're freezing to death you might read some notes I made. It explains why you'll choose to save yourselves. Why our collective failure was inevitable. Why your mistake was in trusting each other. Trusting anybody! Every one of us is selfish at the final moment. So don't pity Abby. Pity yourselves.' He glanced at his watch. 'I'm guessing the rest of you have about thirty minutes.'
'Tell us how to shut it off, dammit!' shouted Geller.
'This way,' said Norse. And with that he turned the gun, pressed its twin barrels against the roof of his mouth, and fired.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The top of the barrier that sealed off the fuel arch had been crafted enough to keep out intruders but not to keep out air. There were cracks to see through and enough of a stench of petroleum to announce the explosive danger. The surviving winter-overs had spilled down the entry ramp to the archways and were bunched at the makeshift fuel arch wall, puddles leaking ominously from its base and the barrier groaning at the weight of the rising fuel behind it. The group boosted Lewis up to a crevice so he could shine a light into the gloom beyond. He reeled from the fumes, shouting down to the others to break out the fire masks. Then he took a fresh breath, held it, and aimed his light inside.
The sight was sickening. The fuel arch had become a black combustible lake, the tanks emptying to fill the Quonset-shaped structure a third of the way up its walls. Partway down the tunnel he saw a slumped figure tied to some of the tank plumbing, the fuel lapping at her chest. Abby!
Something was bobbing in the fuel beside her. He played his light across it and recognized a half-inflated weather balloon. What the hell? Wires went every which way into the fuel and above it, and just as lines of longitude converged at the Pole, the wires converged upon some small implement hung above the rising lake. He shone his light on that, trying to figure out what it was.
With recognition came fear. The flare gun! Lewis dimly recalled Norse asking it be brought to him.
What fools they'd been.
As the fuel level rose, the balloon was rising with it. One of the wires leading into the ooze was slack but as the balloon floated upward…
Norse had turned the entire station into a time bomb.
Lewis pulled his head back, dizzy from the fumes, thinking desperately. Then he told the others to let him down.
'Did you see her?' Molotov asked.
Lewis was coughing, nauseous from the poisonous fog. One step ahead, Norse had claimed. 'She's there, and I can't tell if she's still alive. The whole arch has become a lake of fuel with gases above it. Norse wasn't lying; he opened some valves. The fuel's rising and I don't see how we could find the valves in that goop to shut the flood off.'
'Jesus,' Geller said.
'Listen, that's not the worst of it. The bastard has rigged some kind of trigger, I think. I'm not quite sure how it works, but one of Jerry's weather balloons is floating on the fuel and as it rises a wire is tightening on the trigger of the flare gun.'
'What?' Dana cried.
'When the fuel level gets high enough, I think, the flare goes off.'
'Oh my God,' Linda gasped. 'It's some kind of trap!'
'A simple one,' guessed Gage Perlin, their plumber. 'Like the way a float in a toilet tank rises high enough to trigger a valve to shut off the refilling water.' He was thinking. 'A wire from the trigger goes to a pulley at the bottom and up to the balloon…'
'However he rigged it, Norse has been thinking about this for a long time,' Lewis said. 'He wants us to abandon Abby. He wants us to abandon the dome.' He looked at the others. 'He wants us to give up.'
'What else can we do?' asked Hiro with resignation.
'I don't think we have a choice, Jed,' Mendoza added.
'Yes, we do,' spoke up Molotov. The Russian looked grimly resolute, glancing up the wall in speculation. 'There is always a choice. I made a choice when I wrongly accused Lewis here. I made a choice when I helped create this mess. Now I make another choice. You Americans go back. I will break inside and swim to her!' It was the growl of a bear angry at his own mistakes. The decision of a man eager to either make up for the past or be annihilated by it.
'Wait,' said Lewis, thinking furiously. 'Isn't that what he's counting on us to do? Treading fuel when the gun goes off? What we need is to keep the toilet tank from filling. If we can spring a leak in the arch, the fuel will start draining out as fast or faster than it's pouring in from the tanks. Right? It stabilizes, drops, and then we go get Abby.'
'Jed,' objected Longfellow, their electrician, 'a single spark…'
'It's risky as hell. Even if we get Abby we may lose the fuel, unless we can somehow pump some of it back in. But if we don't…'
'We lose the dome,' Geller said.
They hesitated.
'We lose more than that,' Dana said.
'You mean we lose another person,' said Lena. 'That is what I am thinking. That I am tired of losing people.'
'No, that's crazy,' protested Linda. 'I know it's terrible but we'll lose everyone if we stay here.'
'Damn right,' Calhoun warned. 'We go up in flames. I'd rather freeze.'
