The Ice Limit

we ever have to use the dead man's switch, it would be in a time of extreme crisis. Every second would count. I don't want anybody trying to prevent it.'

'And my role in this?'

'You have a background in psychiatry. I want you to review these periodic reports. If you see any cause for concern — in particular, any incipient signs of a break like his last one — please let me know.'

Brambell flipped through the two files again, the old one and the new. The background file was strange. He wondered where Glinn had gotten the information — very little, if any, was standard psychiatric or medical stuff. Many of the reports had no reporting doctors' names or affiliations — indeed, some had no names at all. Whatever the source, it had a very expensive whiff about it.

He finally looked up at Glinn and slapped the folder shut. 'I'll look this over, and I'll keep an eye on him. I'm not sure my take on what happened is the same as yours.'

Glinn rose to leave, his gray eyes as impenetrable as slate. Brambell found it unaccountably irritating.

'And the Greenland meteorite?' Brambell asked. 'Was it from interstellar space?'

'Of course not. It turned out to be an ordinary rock from the asteroid belt. McFarlane was wrong.'

'And the wife?' Brambell asked after a moment.

'What wife?'

'McFarlane's wife. Malou Masangkay.'

'She left him. Went back to the Philippines and remarried.'

In a moment, Glinn was gone, his carefully placed footfalls fading down the corridor. For a moment, the doctor listened to the dying cadence, thinking. Then a line of Conrad's came to mind. He spoke it aloud: 'No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.'

With a sigh of returning contentment, he put aside the files and went back into his private suite. The torpid equatorial climate, as well as something about Glinn himself, made the doctor think of Maugham — the short stories, to be exact. He ran his fingers over the nubbed spines — each rekindling a universe of memory and emotion as it passed by — found what he was looking for, settled into a large wing chair, and opened the cover with a shiver of delight.

Rolvaag,

July 11, 7:55 A.M.

MCFARLANE ADVANCED onto the parquet deck and looked around curiously. It was his first time on the bridge, and this was without question the most dramatic space on the Rolvaag. The bridge was as wide as the ship itself. Three sides of the room were dominated by large square windows, slanting outward from bottom to top, each equipped with its own electric wiper. On either end, doors led out to the bridge wings. Other doors to the rear were labeled CHART ROOM and RADIO ROOM in brass letters. Beneath the forward windows, a bank of equipment stretched the entire length of the bridge: consoles, rows of telephones, links to control stations throughout the ship. Beyond the windows, a predawn squall lay across stormy deserts of ocean. The only light came from the instrument panels and screens. A smaller row of windows gave a view aft, between the stacks and past the stern of the ship to the white double lines of the wake, vanishing toward the horizon.

In the center of the room stood a command-and-control station. Here, McFarlane saw the captain, a dim figure in the near-darkness. She was speaking into a telephone, occasionally leaning over to murmur to the helmsman beside her, the hollows of his eyes illuminated a cold green by his radar screen.

As McFarlane joined the silent vigil, the squall began to break up and a gray dawn crept over the horizon. A single deckhand moved antlike across the distant forecastle, bound on obscure business. Above the creamy bow- wake, a few persistent seabirds wheeled and screamed. It was a shocking contrast to the torrid tropics, which they had left behind less than a week before.

After the Rolvaag had crossed the equator, in sultry heat and heavy rains, a lassitude had fallen over the ship. McFarlane had felt it, too: yawning over games of shuffleboard; lolling in his suite, staring at the butternut walls. But as they continued south, the air had grown crisper, the ocean swells longer and heavier, and the pearlescent sky of the tropics had given way to brilliant azure, flecked with clouds. As the air freshened, he sensed that the general malaise was being replaced by amounting excitement.

The door to the bridge opened once again, and two figures entered: a third officer, taking the morning eight- to-twelve, and Eli Glinn. He came silently up to McFarlane's side.

'What's this all about?' McFarlane asked under his breath.

Before Glinn could answer, there was a soft click from behind. McFarlane glanced back to see Victor Howell step out of the radio room and look on as the watch was relieved.

The third officer came over and murmured something in the captain's ear. In turn, she glanced at Glinn. 'Keep an eye off the starboard bow,' she said, nodding out toward the horizon, which lay like a knife edge against the sky.

As the sky lightened, the swells and hollows of the heaving sea became more clearly defined. A spear of dawn light probed through the heavy canopy of clouds off the ship's starboard bow. Stepping away from the helmsman, the captain strolled to the forward wall of windows, hands clasped behind her back. As she did so, another ray of light clipped the tops of the clouds. And then, abruptly, the entire western horizon lit up like an eruption of fire. McFarlane squinted, trying to understand what it was he was staring at. Then he made it out: a row of great snowcapped peaks, wreathed inglaciers, ablaze in the dawn.

The captain turned and faced the group. 'Land ho,' she said dryly. 'The mountains of Tierra del Fuego. Within a few hours, we'll pass through the Strait of Le Maire and into the Pacific Ocean.' She passed a pair of binoculars to McFarlane.

McFarlane stared at the range of mountains through the binoculars: distant and forbidding, like the ramparts of a lost continent, the peaks shedding long veils of snow.

Glinn straightened his shoulders, turned away from the sight, and glanced at Victor Howell. The chief mate strolled over to a technician at the far end of the bridge, who quickly stood up and disappeared out the door onto the starboard bridge wing. Howell returned to the command station. 'Give yourself fifteen for coffee,' he said to the third officer. 'I'll take the con.'

The junior officer looked from Howell to the captain, surprised by this break from procedure. 'Do you want me to enter it in the log, ma'am?' he asked.

Britton shook her head. 'Unnecessary. Just be back in a quarter of an hour.'

Once the man had disappeared from the bridge, the captain turned to Howell. 'Is Banks ready with the New York hookup?' she asked.

The chief mate nodded. 'We've got Mr. Lloyd waiting.'

'Very well. Patch him through.'

McFarlane stifled a sigh. Isn't once a day enough? he thought. He had almost grown to dread the noon videoconference calls he made daily to the Lloyd Museum. Lloyd was always talking a mile a minute, desperate to learn of the ship's progress down to the nautical mile, grilling everyone at length, hatching schemes and questioning every plan. McFarlane marveled at Glinn's patience.

There was a crackling noise in a loudspeaker bolted to a bulkhead, then McFarlane heard Lloyd's voice, loud even in the spacious bridge. 'Sam? Sam, are you there?'

'This is Captain Britton, Mr. Lloyd,' Britton said, motioning the others toward a microphone at the command station. 'The coast of Chile is in sight. We're a day out of Puerto Williams.'

'Marvelous!' Lloyd boomed.

Glinn approached the microphone. 'Mr. Lloyd, it's Eli Glinn. Tomorrow we clear Chilean customs. Dr. McFarlane, myself, and the captain will take a launch into Puerto Williams to present ship's papers.'

'Is that necessary?' Lloyd asked. 'Why must you all go?'

'Let me explain the situation. The first problem is that the customs people will probably want to come on board the ship.'

'Jesus,' came Lloyd's voice. 'That could give the whole game away.'

'Potentially. That is why our first effort will be to prevent a visit. The Chileans will be curious to meet the principals — the captain, the chief mining engineer. If we sent underlings, they will almost certainly insist on coming aboard.'

'What about me?' McFarlane asked. 'I'm persona non grata in Chile, remember? I'd just as soon keep a low