The Ice Limit

want, too?'

Lloyd hesitated. 'Of course it is.'

McFarlane was amazed at how quickly Glinn had put the man on the defensive.

'Then all I am asking is that we proceed with care.'

Lloyd licked his lips. 'It's just that everything's come to a grinding halt. Why? The meteorite's red. So I ask you, what's wrong with red? I think it's great. Has everybody forgotten about our friend in the destroyer? Time is the one thing we don't have here.'

'Mr. Lloyd!' Penfold said, holding up the radio appealingly, like a beggar might hold up an alms cup. 'The helicopter. Please!'

'God damn it!' Lloyd cried. After a moment, he spun away. 'All right, for chrissakes, take your sample. Just cap the hole so it isn't visible. And do it fast. By the time I get back to New York, I want that son of a bitch on the move.'

He stomped out of the hut, Penfold at his heels. The door banged shut behind them. For a minute, maybe two, the room was still. Then Amira rose to her feet.

'Come on, Sam,' she said. 'Let's drill this sucker.'

Isla Desolacion,

2:15 P.M.

AFTER THE warmth of the hut, the wind felt keen as a knife. McFarlane shivered as he followed Amira to tech stores, thinking longingly of the dry heat of the Kalahari.

The container was longer and wider than the rest, dingy on the outside, clean and spacious on the inside. Monitors and rack-mounted diagnostic tools, powered by the central generator in a neighboring hut, glowed in the dim light. Amira made for a large metal table, which held a collapsed tripod and a high-speed portable mining drill. If it weren't for the leather sling around the drill, McFarlane would never have suspected it of being particularly 'portable.' It looked like a twenty-first-century bazooka.

Amira patted the drill affectionately. 'Don't you just love high-tech toys that break things? Look at this mother. Ever seen one of these before?'

'Not one so big.' McFarlane watched as she expertly broke the drill down and examined its components. Satisfied, she slapped it back together, plugged the end of a heavy cord into a socket, and ran the machine through its diagnostics.

'Check this out.' She hefted a long, cruel-looking shaft of metal, one end bulbous and pocked like a club, with a hollow core. 'Ten carats of industrial diamond in the bit alone.' She pressed a button and the electronic chuck loosened with a snap. She slung the drill over her shoulder with a grunt and pressed its trigger, filling the room with a deep-throated growl. 'Time to make a hole,' she said, grinning.

They left the equipment hut and headed out into the gloom, McFarlane playing out the electrical cord behind them. A shoddy-looking maintenance shack had been erected over the exposed meteorite, concealing it from view. Inside, banks of halogen lights bathed the shallow cut in a cool glow. Glinn was already standing at the edge of the hole, peering down, radio in one hand, his small frame set into sharp relief by the light.

They joined Glinn at the edge of the hole. In the white light, the meteorite below their feet glowed almost purple, like a fresh bruise. Pulling off her gloves, Amira took the tripod from McFarlane, quickly set its legs, and fitted the drill into its housing. 'This thing has a terrific vacuum system,' she said, pointing to a narrow manifold that curved beneath the bit. 'Sucks up every particle of dust. If the metal's poisonous, it won't matter.'

'Even so, I'm evacuating the area,' said Glinn, who raised the radio and spoke rapidly into it. 'And remember, keep well back. Do not touch it.' He motioned for the workmen to leave.

McFarlane watched as Amira snapped on the power switch, checked the indicator lights along the drill's flank, and deftly positioned the bit above the meteorite. 'Looks like you've done this before,' he said.

'Damn right. Eli here put me through this a dozen times.'

McFarlane looked at Glinn. 'You rehearsed this?'

'Every step,' Amira said as she pulled a large remote from her pocket and began calibrating it. 'And not just this. Everything. He plans all our projects like an invasion. D-Day. You practice your ass off, because you only get one shot at the real thing.' She stepped back and blew on her hands. 'Man, you should've seen the big ball of iron Eli made us dig up and schlepp all over creation, again and again. We called it Big Bertha. I really learned to hate that damn rock.'

'Where did you do this?'

'Up at the Bar Cross Ranch near Bozeman, Montana. You didn't really think this was a first run, did you?'

With the remote calibrated and the drill fixed into position over the naked surface of the meteorite, Amira turned to a nearby case and snapped its hinges open. Pulling out a small metal can, she tore off its lid and — keeping well back — upended it over the meteorite. A black, gluey substance poured out, spreading over the red surface in a viscous layer. With a small brush, she applied the remainder to the end of the diamond bit. Then, reaching into the case again, she pulled out a thin sheet of rubber and gingerly pressed it down over the sealant.

'We'll give that a moment to get tacky,' she explained 'We don't want even the slightest speck of meteorite dust escaping into the air.' She fumbled in her parka, extracted the cigar tube, glanced at the expressions on Glinn's and McFarlane's faces, sighed, and began cracking peanuts instead.

McFarlane shook his head. 'Peanuts, candy, cigars. What else do you do that your mother would disapprove of?'

She looked at him. 'Hot monkey sex, rock and roll, extreme skiing, and high-stakes blackjack.'

McFarlane laughed. Then he asked, 'Are you nervous?'

'Not so much nervous as incredibly excited. You?'

McFarlane thought about this for a moment. It was almost as if he was allowing himself to become excited; to grow used to the idea that this was, after all, the very thing he had hunted for all those years.

'Yeah,' he said. 'Excited.'

Glinn pulled out his gold pocket watch, flicked open its cover, and glanced at its face. 'It's time.'

Amira returned to the drill and adjusted a dial. A low rumble began to fill the close air of the shack. She checked the position of the bit, then took a step back, making an adjustment with the remote. The rumble rose to a whine. She maneuvered a small hat switch on the remote, and the whirling bit obediently descended, then retracted.

'Five by five,' she said, glancing at Glinn.

Glinn reached into the open case, pulled out three respirators, and tossed two of them to McFarlane and Amira. 'We'll step outside now and work from the remote.'

McFarlane snugged the respirator onto his head, seating the cold rubber around his jaws, and stepped outside. Without a hood, the wind cut cruelly around his ears and the nape of his neck. From inside, the angry, hornetlike whine of the idling drill was still clearly audible.

'Farther,' Glinn said. 'Minimum distance one hundred feet.'

They stepped back from the building. Snow was tumbling into the air, turning the site into a filmy sea of white.

'If this turns out to be a spaceship,' Amira said, her voice muffled, 'somebody inside's gonna be mighty pissed when Mr. Diamond Head pokes through.'

The shack was barely visible through the snow, the open door a dim rectangle of white in the swirling gray. 'All ready.'

'Good,' Glinn replied. 'Cut through the sealant. We'll pause at one millimeter below the surface of the meteorite to scan for outgassing.'

Amira nodded and aimed the remote, fingering the hat switch. The whine grew louder for a moment, then suddenly became muffled. A few seconds went by.

'Funny, I'm not making any progress,' said Amira.

'Raise the drill.'

Amira pulled back on the hat, and the whine grew louder again, settling down quickly to a steady pitch.