The Ice Limit

with the meteorite hunter, he had been left to read his books. Until now.

But as he stared at the collection of broken bones, Brambell felt an uncharacteristic curiosity stirring within him. The silence of the medical lab was broken by the whistled strains of 'The Sprig of Shillelagh.'

More quickly now, Brambell, whistling merrily, finished laying out the skeleton. He examined the effects: buttons, bits of clothing, an old boot. Of course there was only one boot; the daft beggars had missed the other. Along with the right clavicle, a piece of the ilium, the left radius, carpals and intercarpals... He made a mental list of the missing bones. At least the skull was there, if in several pieces.

He bent closer. It, too, was webbed with perimortem fractures. The rim of the orbit was heavy; the mandible robust; definitely a male. From the state of the sutural closing he would be about thirty-five, maybe forty. A small man, no more than five foot seven, but powerfully built, with well-developed muscle attachments. Years of fieldwork, no doubt. This fit the profile of the planetary geologist Nestor Masangkay that Glinn had given him.

Many of the teeth were snapped off at the root. It looked like the poor man had convulsed so hard in his death throes that he had broken all his teeth, and even split his jaw.

Still whistling, Brambell turned his attention to the postcranial skeleton. Virtually every bone that could be broken was broken. He wondered what could have caused such massive trauma. It was apparently a blow to the front, striking simultaneously from toe to crown. He was reminded of a poor skydiver he had autopsied in medical school; the man had packed his chute wrong and fallen three thousand feet onto the middle of I-95.

Brambell caught his breath, 'The Sprig of Shillelagh' suddenly dying on his lips. He had been so caught up by the fracturing of the bones that he had not stopped to examine their other characteristics. But now, as he did so, he could see that the proximal phalanges showed flaking and crumbling characteristic of high heat — or severe burning. Almost all of the distal phalanges were missing, probably completely burned up. Toes and fingers. He bent closer. The broken teeth were scorched, the brittle enamel spalling off.

His eyes made a circuit of the remains. The parietal showed heavy burn damage, the bone soft and crumbling. He bent down, sniffed. Ah, yes: he could even smell it. And what was this? Brambell picked up a belt buckle. The bloody thing was melted. And the single boot wasn't just rotten — it too had burned. The bits of cloth were also scorched. That devil, Glinn, hadn't mentioned a word of this, although he surely must have noticed.

Then Brambell rocked back on his feet. It was with a twinge of regret that he realized there was no mystery here, after all. He now knew exactly how the prospector had died.

In the dim light of the medical spaces, 'The Sprig of Shillelagh' started up once again, the merry tune now sounding a little mournful, as Brambell carefully closed up the evidence locker and returned to his bunk.

Isla Desolacion,

10:00 A.M.

MCFARLANE STOOD at the frosted window of the communications center, melting a hole with his hand. Clouds hung heavy over the Jaws of Hanuxa, casting a pall of darkness over the Cape Horn islands. Behind him, Rochefort, more tense than usual, was typing at a Silicon Graphics workstation.

The last half hour had seen a frenzy of activity. The corrugated-metal shack that shielded the meteorite from view had been moved to one side, and the area above the rock had been freshly bladed down to dirt, a dark brown scar on the white fairyland of snow. A small army of workers swarmed about, each at some obscure task. The radio traffic had been a perfect Babel of technical incomprehension.

Outside, a deep-throated whistle blew. McFarlane felt his pulse quicken.

The door to the hut banged open and Amira entered, a wide smile on her face. Coming in behind, Glinn closed the door carefully, then went to stand behind Rochefort. 'Lift sequence ready?' he asked.

'Check.'

Glinn lifted a radio and spoke into it. 'Mr. Garza? Five minutes to lift. Please monitor this frequency.' He dropped the radio and glanced at Amira, who had taken a seat at a nearby console and was fitting an earphone. 'Servos?'

'On line,' she replied.

'So what will we see?' McFarlane asked. Already, he could anticipate Lloyd's barrage of questions during the next videoconference.

'Nothing,' said Glinn. 'We're only raising it six centimeters. There might be a little crackling of the earth above.' He nodded to Rochefort. 'Bring the jacks up to sixty tons each.'

Rochefort's hands moved across the keyboard. 'Jacks are uniformly engaging. No slippage.'

There was a faint, subaudible vibration in the ground. Glinn and Rochefort bent close to the screen, examining the data that scrolled past. They seemed perfectly calm and unconcerned. Typing, waiting, typing some more. It seemed so routine. Not exactly the kind of meteorite hunting McFarlane was used to: digging in some sheikh's backyard by moonlight, heart in mouth, muffling every bite of the shovel.

'Bring the jacks up to seventy,' said Glinn.

'Done.'

There was a long, boring wait.

'Damn,' Rochefort muttered. 'I'm getting no movement. Nothing.'

'Bring them up to eighty.'

Rochefort tapped on some keys. There was a pause, then he shook his head.

'Rachel?' Glinn asked.

'Nothing wrong with the servos.'

There was another silence, longer this time.

'We should have seen movement at sixty-seven tons per jack.' Glinn waited a moment, then spoke again. 'Raise it to one hundred.'

Rochefort tapped the keyboard. McFarlane glanced at the two faces illuminated in the gleam of Rochefort's monitor. Suddenly, the tension in the hut had risen dramatically.

'Nothing?' asked Glinn, something like concern in his voice.

'It's still sitting there.' Rochefort's face was even more pinched than usual.

Glinn straightened up. He slowly walked to the window, his fingers squeaking on the glass as he cleared a hole through the frost.

Minutes crawled by while Rochefort remained glued to the computer and Amira monitored the servos. Then Glinn turned.

'All right. Let's lower the jacks, examine the settings, and try again.'

Suddenly a strange keening seemed to fill the room, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was almost ghostly. McFarlane felt his skin crawl.

Rochefort was suddenly intent on the monitor. 'Slumping in sector six,' he said, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

The sound subsided.

'What the hell was that?' McFarlane asked.

Glinn shook his head. 'It looks like we might have lifted the meteorite just a millimeter in sector six, but then it subsided and pushed the jacks back.'

'Getting another shift,' Rochefort said suddenly, a note of alarm in his voice.

Glinn strode over and peered at the screen. 'It's asymmetrical. Lower the jacks to ninety, quickly.'

A patter of keystrokes, and Glinn stepped back, frowning. 'What's with sector six?'

'The jacks seemed to have locked at a hundred tons,' Rochefort said. 'They won't go down.'

'Your analysis?'

'The rock may be settling toward that sector. If so, a lot of weight has just shifted onto them.'

'Zero out all the jacks.'

To McFarlane, the scene seemed almost surreal. There was no sound, no dramatic subterranean rumbling; just a group of tense people gathered around flickering monitors.

Rochefort stopped typing. 'All of sector six has locked up. The jacks must have frozen under the weight.'

'Can we zero the rest?'

'If I do that, the meteorite might destabilize.'