The Ice Limit

'It's a mass of contradictions,' McFarlane said, keeping his voice neutral. 'We haven't discovered anything specifically dangerous. But then again, we haven't shown it to be completely safe, either. We've got a second set of tests running now, and if that sheds any more light we'll let you know. But it will take years to really answer these questions, not twelve hours.'

'I see.' Glinn sighed, a small hissing sound that in anybody else would have been irritation. 'As it happens, we have discovered something about the meteorite that may be of interest to you.'

'What's that?'

'We'd originally estimated it to be about twelve hundred cubic meters in size, or about forty-two feet in diameter. Garza and his crew have been mapping the external contours of the meteorite as they prepare these tunnels. It turns out the meteorite is a lot smaller than we believed. It's only about twenty feet in diameter.'

McFarlane's mind tried to fit this fact in. In an odd way, he felt disappointment. It wasn't much bigger than the Ahnighito, at the museum in New York.

'It's difficult to measure its mass at this point,' Glinn said. 'But all indications are that the meteorite still weighs at least ten thousand tons.'

McFarlane suddenly forgot his disappointment. 'That means it has a specific gravity of —'

'Jesus, at least seventy-five,' said Amira.

Glinn raised an eyebrow. 'And what does that signify?'

'The two heaviest known elements are osmium and iridium,' Amira said. 'They each have a specific gravity of around twenty-two. With a specific gravity of seventy-five, this meteorite is more than three times denser than any known element on Earth.'

'There's your proof,' murmured McFarlane. He felt his heart pounding.

'I'm sorry?' said Glinn.

It was as if a weight was suddenly plucked from McFarlane's shoulders. He looked Glinn in the face. 'There can't be any doubt now. It's interstellar.'

Glinn remained inscrutable.

'There's no way anything that dense originated in our solar system. It must have come from somewhere else. A place in the universe very different from our own. The region of a hypernova.'

There was a very long moment of silence. McFarlane could hear workmen shouting in the distant tunnels, and the muffled sound of jackhammers and welding. Finally Glinn cleared his throat. 'Dr. McFarlane,' he began quietly. 'Sam. I apologize if I seem doubtful. Understand that we're operating outside the parameters of any conceivable model. There's no precedent to guide us. I realize you haven't had adequate time for your tests. But our window of opportunity is about to close. I want your best guess — as a scientist, and as a human being — whether it's safe to proceed, or whether we should close down the operation and go home.'

McFarlane took a deep breath. He understood what Glinn was asking. But he also knew, quite clearly, what Glinn had left unsaid. As a scientist, and as a human being ... Glinn was asking him to look at the question objectively — not as the man who betrayed his friend over this precise thing five years before. Several pictures flashed through his mind: Lloyd, pacing before his pyramid; the glittering black eyes of the destroyer comandante; the broken, weathered bones of his dead partner.

McFarlane began slowly. 'It's been lying here for thirty-two million years without apparent problems. But the truth is, we don't know. All I can say is, this is a scientific discovery of the highest importance. Are the risks worth it? Nothing truly great is ever accomplished without risk.'

Glinn's eyes seemed to go very far away. His expression was as unreadable as always, but McFarlane sensed he had articulated the man's own thoughts.

Glinn pulled out his pocket watch, opening it with a smart snap of his wrist. He had made a decision. 'We'll lift the rock in thirty minutes. Rachel, if you and Gene will test the servo connections, we'll be ready.'

McFarlane felt a sudden flood of emotion — excitement or anticipation, he couldn't be precisely sure.

'We have to be topside for those tests,' Garza said, glancing at his watch. 'Nobody is allowed down here.'

The feeling ebbed quickly. 'I thought you said it was completely safe,' McFarlane said.

'Double overage,' Glinn murmured. Then, leading the way, he walked out of the storage vault and led the way down the narrow tunnel.

Rolvaag,

9:30 A.M.

DR. PATRICK Brambell lay snug in his bunk, reading Spenser's The Faerie Queen. The tanker rode peacefully in the sound, and the mattress was delightfully soft. The temperature in the medical suite had been cranked up to eighty-six degrees: exactly the way he liked it. Everyone but a skeleton crew was ashore, preparing to lift the meteorite, and the ship was quiet. He was aware of no discomfort, no annoyance in the world — save perhaps that his arm, which had been propping up the book in front of his nose for the last half hour, had begun to fall asleep. And that was a problem easily remedied. With a sigh of contentment, he transferred the book to his other hand, turned the page, and immersed himself again in Spenser's elegant verse.

Then he stopped. There was, in fact, one other annoyance. His glance fell reluctantly through the open doorway, past the hall and into the medical laboratory beyond. On a gleaming metal gurney sat the blue evidence locker, clasps loosened but lid unopened. There was something forlorn, almost reproachful, about it. Glinn wanted the examination by the end of the day.

Brambell stared at it for a moment. Then he laid the book aside, rose regretfully from his bunk, and straightened his surgical smock. Though he rarely practiced medicine, and even more rarely performed surgery, he delighted in wearing a surgical smock and never took one off while awake. As a uniform, he found it vastly more intimidating than a policeman's and only a little less so than the grim reaper's. Surgical smocks, especially when flecked with blood, tended to hurry office visits along and speed unnecessary conversations.

He stepped out of his cabin and paused in the long hallway of the medical suite, surveying the parallel lines of open doorways. Nobody in the waiting room. Ten beds, all empty. It was most satisfactory.

Entering the medical laboratory, he washed his hands in the oversized sink, then flicked the water from his fingers while turning in a small circle, in an irreverent imitation of a priest. Nudging the hot-air dryer with his elbow, he rubbed his knobbed old hands before the gush of air. As he did so, he gazed around at the neat rows of well- worn books: overflow from his cabin. Above them he had hung two pictures: a depiction of Jesus Christ, with the fire and thorns of the sacred heart; and a small, faded photograph of two identical babies in sailor suits. The picture of Christ reminded him of many things, some self-contradictory but always interesting. The picture of himself and his twin brother, Simon, who had been murdered by a mugger in New York City, reminded him of why he had never married or had children.

He pulled on a pair of latex gloves, snapped on the ring light, and swiveled the magnifying glass into place over the gurney. Then he opened the evidence locker and stared disapprovingly at the jumble of bones. He could see right away that several were missing, and the rest had been tossed in higgledy-piggledy, with no regard for anatomy. He shook his wizened head at the general incompetence of the world.

He began removing the bones, identifying them, and arranging them in their proper places on the gurney. Not much sign of animal damage, beyond the nibblings of rodents. Then his brow furrowed. The number of perimortem breaks was unusual, even remarkable. He paused, a nugget of bone suspended halfway between locker and gurney. Then, more slowly, he placed it on the metal surface. There was a stillness in the medical suite as Brambell stepped back, folded his green-suited arms, and stared at the remains.

Ever since his Dublin childhood, his mother had entertained dreams of her twin lads growing up to be doctors. Ma Brambell had been an irresistible natural force, and so, like his brother Simon, Patrick had gone to medical school. While Simon had relished the job and gone on to great acclaim as a medical examiner in New York, Patrick found himself resenting the time away from literature. Over the years, he had gravitated to ships, most recently to large tankers, where the crews were small and the accommodations comfortable. And so far, the Rolvaag had lived up to his expectations. No parade of broken bones, raging fevers, or dripping cases of clap. Aside from a few bouts of seasickness, a sinus infection, and of course Glinn's preoccupation