The Ice Limit

around to absorb the charge, it might have blown the ship's electronics.'

'And afterwards, the meteorite threw off a lot of radio noise,' he said. 'Just like with Timmer.'

Rachel picked up her radio, turned it on, made a face at the roar of static, turned it off again. 'And it's still throwing it off,' she said.

They lapsed into silence again.

'I wonder if anything triggered the blast,' said Rachel, rewinding the tape. 'Maybe it was random.'

McFarlane didn't respond. It couldn't be random; something must have triggered it. And despite Garza's remark — and the increasing nervousness of the crew — he didn't believe the meteorite was some malignant thing, actively seeking to hurt them.

McFarlane wondered if perhaps Timmer and Masangkay had never touched the thing, after all. But no; he'd analyzed it too carefully. The key to the mystery had to be Palmer Lloyd. He had placed his cheek against the rock and lived to tell the story. The two others had been blown up.

What was different about their touches?

He sat up in the chair. 'Let's watch it again.'

Wordlessly, Rachel punched the controls, and the monitor flickered to life.

The surviving camera had been placed almost directly above the rock, just below the observation unit. There was Garza, standing to one side, the welding diagrams unrolled before him. The TIG welders were spaced evenly around the rock, working on various nodes. They were kneeling, their bright points of flame leaving red tracks on the screen. In the lower right corner, a time display ran rapidly through the seconds.

'Turn up the sound,' McFarlane said. He closed his eyes; the headache and nausea were getting worse. Seasickness.

Garza's voice leapt into the small enclosure. 'How's it going?' he shouted. There was an answering shout: 'Almost there.' Scratchy silence; the trickle of water; the pop of a torch flaring out. Room tone, then a flurry of creaks and groans as the vessel began to heel. He heard Garza's voice: 'Hold tight!'

And then it ended in a hiss of white noise.

McFarlane opened his eyes. 'Back ten seconds.'

They watched as it ran through again.

'It went off at the very top of the roll,' Rachel said.

'But Garza's right. That thing was manhandled all the way down to the shore.' McFarlane paused. 'Could there be another workman, hidden by the rock? Somebody we're not seeing?'

'I thought of that. Six welders came in, plus Garza. Look, you can see them all there in the last frame, clearly visible. All well back from the meteorite.'

McFarlane dropped his chin to his hands. Something about the video was nagging at him, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he was just too damn tired.

Rachel stretched, swept peanut shells from her knees. 'Here we are, trying to second-guess Garza,' she said. 'But what if everybody's right?'

McFarlane glanced at her. 'I don't understand.'

'What if nobody touched the meteorite? What if it was something else that touched the meteorite?'

'Something else?' he replied. 'But there was nothing else moving in that room —' He stopped abruptly, realizing what had been troubling him: the sound of water.

'Give me the last sixty seconds,' he said. 'Quickly.'

He lifted his head toward the screen, searching for the source of the sound he'd heard. There it was, very faintly: a thin stream at one side, falling from above, disappearing into the depths of the tank. He stared at it. As the ship began the heavy roll, the stream of water pulled away from the bulkhead and began angling closer to the meteorite.

'Water,' McFarlane said aloud.

Rachel looked at him curiously.

'There was a stream of water coming down the side of the tank. There must be a leak in the mechanical door. Look, you can still see it.' He pointed up at a narrow stream trickling down the far longitudinal bulkhead. 'The meteorite went off when that roll brought the water in contact with it.'

'That's absurd. The meteorite's been sitting in waterlogged ground for millions of years. It got rained and snowed on. It's inert. How could water possibly affect it?'

'I don't know, but take a look.' He replayed the video, demonstrating how, at the instant the water connected with the meteorite, the screen popped into snow.

'Coincidence?' she asked.

McFarlane shook his head. 'No.'

Rachel looked at him. 'Sam, how could this water be different from all the other water that's touched the meteorite?'

And then, in a moment of revelation, it became clear. 'Salt,' he said. 'It's salt water dripping into the hold.'

After a shocked moment, Rachel suddenly gasped.

'That's it,' she said. 'And that's why Timmer and Masangkay set it off with their hands — their sweaty hands. There was salt in their touch. But Lloyd put his cheek to it on a bitterly cold day. There was no sweat in his touch. It must be highly reactive to sodium chloride. But why, Sam? What's it reacting to?'

McFarlane looked at her, then beyond, to where the trickle of seawater still glistened in the gloom, swaying with the gradual motion of the ship.

The motion of the ship...

'We'll worry about that later,' he said. He reached for his radio, snapped it on, heard the hiss of static.

'God damn it!' he said, shoving the radio back in his belt.

'Sam —' Rachel began.

'We've got to get out of here,' he interrupted. 'Otherwise, when the next big roll comes, we're toast.'

He stood up just as she gripped his arm.

'We can't leave,' she said. 'Another explosion like that might break the web. If the meteorite gets loose, we'll all die.'

'Then we have to keep the water from the rock.'

For a moment, the two stared at each other. And then, as with a single thought, they sprinted down the catwalk toward the access tunnel.

Almirante Ramirez,

2:45 P.M.

VALLENAR STOOD at the bridge, looking southward over the heaving seas, an old pair of binoculars cradled in his hands. The officers around him were struggling to remain on their feet in the wildly rolling ship, their faces frozen masks of neutrality. They were terrified. But now his regime of absolute discipline was paying off: the test had come, and those who remained were with him. They would follow him to hell, if necessary — and that, he thought as he glanced at the chart, was exactly where they were heading.

The snow and sleet had stopped, and the sky was clearing. Visibility was excellent. But the wind had, if anything, picked up, and the seas were mounting ever higher. When the ship sank into the bottom of the troughs, it became enshrouded in a midnight darkness, and the walls of black water rising on either side made him feel as if the ship were at the bottom of a vast canyon. At the bottom of these troughs, the wave crests were an astonishing twenty meters above the level of the bridge. He had never seen a sea like this in his life, and the increase in visibility, while useful to his plan, made it appear all the more dreadful. The normal procedure would be to head into the wind and ride it out. That was not an option. He had to keep a heading that put the wind and sea almost on his beam; otherwise, the heavier American ship would escape.

He watched as the bow of his destroyer plowed into the sea at the bottom of the long trough and came up slowly, the castillo thunderously shedding water; the ship leaned to starboard until the