The Ice Limit

tighten the topchain bolt at the summit of the meteorite. It would mean cutting through the tarp. It was a simple matter, requiring no more than six inches of hand tightening. He began climbing up the nearest chain.

'Eli, please! There's an extra lifeboat in reserve for us. Leave this thing and come with me!'

Glinn pulled himself up, Puppup following with the toolbox. He needed to focus his mind on the objective, not suffer distractions.

Reaching the crown of the meteorite, he found to his surprise a small flap already cut in the tarp. Beneath, the topchain bolt was loose, as he expected. As the ship rose out of the trough and began to heel yet again, he fitted the wrench around the nut, anchored the bolt with a second wrench, and began to tighten.

Nothing moved. He had not comprehended — could not comprehend — what tremendous, what unimaginable pressure the bolt was under.

'Hold this wrench,' he said. Puppup obliged, grabbing it with his sinewy arms.

The ship canted farther.

'Come back to the bridge with me, Eli,' Britton said. 'There may still be time to trigger the switch. Both of us might yet live.'

Glinn glanced up for an instant from his struggle with the bolt. There was no pleading in her voice — that was not Sally Britton's way. He heard patience, reason, and utter conviction. It made him sad. 'Sally,' he said, 'the only people who are going to die are the foolish ones in the lifeboats. If you stay here, you'll survive.'

'I know my ship, Eli,' was all she said.

Kneeling, hunched over the topchain bolt, he struggled with the nut. Someone else had tried this before him: there were fresh marks on the metal. As the ship heeled, he felt the meteorite shift, and he anchored himself more firmly, both feet braced against the links. He strained to the limits of extremity, but it did not move. Gasping, he refitted the wrench.

Still the ship heeled.

Britton spoke out of the darkness above, her voice rising above the sound. 'Eli, I would like to have that dinner with you. I don't know much about poetry, but what I know I could share with you. I would like to share it with you.'

The meteorite shuddered, and Glinn found himself gripping with both hands as the meteorite tipped with the ship. There were ropes up here, fastened to the frame plates of the tank, and he quickly lashed one around his waist to keep his position. He returned to the wrench. A quarter turn, that was all he needed. The yawing of the ship slowed and he once again grasped the handle of the wrench.

'And I could love you. Eli...'

Glinn stopped suddenly and stared up at Britton. She tried to speak again, but her voice was drowned out by the rising shriek of tortured metal, echoing madly in the vast space. All he could see was her small figure on the catwalk above. Her golden hair had become unpinned and lay wildly across her shoulders, glowing even in the dim light.

As he stared, he became dimly aware that the ship was not leveling out. He looked away from her, first at the bolt, then at Puppup. The man was grinning, his long thin mustaches dripping water. Glinn felt a surge of anger at himself for not focusing on the problem at hand.

'The wrench!' he called to Puppup over the screaming of metal.

The ship was very far over, the sounds of metal deafening. With a hand he wished was steadier, Glinn took out his pocket watch to once again calculate the inclination; he held it up but it swung back and forth. As he tried to steady it, the watch slipped through his fingers and shattered against the flank of the rock; he saw little glints of gold and glass skittering along the red surface and disappearing into the depths.

The yawing seemed to accelerate with a brutal suddenness. Or was it his imagination? Surely none of this could be real. Double overage had been brought to bear, the calculations run and rerun, every possible path to failure accounted for.

And then he felt the meteorite begin to move beneath him, and there was a tearing sound as the tarps rent and the web unraveled, the sudden red of the meteorite filling his field of vision like the opening of a great wound, the rock crisscrossed by tangled ropes and cables, rivets shooting and ricocheting past him. Still the ship yawed on its side, steeper and steeper. He scrambled desperately, trying to untie the rope from his waist, but the knot was so tight, so tight...

There was a sound beyond all description, as if the heavens and the gulfs below had opened up at once. The tank tore apart in a terrific shower of sparks, and the meteorite rolled into the darkness — a monstrous shambling like some deliberate beast — taking him with it. Instantly all was dark, and he felt a rush of chill air...

There was the faint tinkle of glasses, the murmur of voices. L'Ambroisie was busy on this balmy Thursday night, filled with art fanciers and wealthy Parisians. Beyond the restaurant's discreet front, the smoky autumn moon lent the Marais district a delicate shimmer. Glinn smiled at Sally Britton, who was seated across the fine white damask. 'Try this,' he said as the waiter uncorked a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and tipped a chilly stream into their glasses. He grasped his glass and raised it. She smiled and spoke:

...how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure

An important failure...

As his mood turned to puzzlement, the recitation was drowned by a hideous laugh from Puppup. And then the scene vaporized in a pure flash of brilliant, beautiful light.

Drake Passage,

7:55 P.M.

MCFARLANE CLUTCHED desperately at the lifeboat's safety loops, riding it through the great peaks and valleys of a confused sea, Rachel clinging tightly to his arm. The last twenty minutes had passed in a terrifying confusion: Britton's sudden departure from the bridge; Howell's taking command and ordering them to abandon ship; the muster at the lifeboat stations and the harrowing launching of the boats into the raging seas. After the tense hours of the chase, the struggle against the storm and the meteorite, this ultimate calamity had happened so quickly that it seemed unreal. He looked around the inner walls of the lifeboat for the first time. With its single-piece hull, tiny entrance port, and tinier windows, it looked like an oversize torpedo. Howell was at the helm, guiding the inboard; Lloyd and some twenty in all were inside, including half a dozen whose own lifeboat had been torn from its davits during launch and who had to be plucked from the freezing waves.

He tightened his grip as the boat dropped in free fall, crashed, and was abruptly driven upward. Instead of plowing through like the Rolvaag, the sixty-foot craft bobbed like a woodchip. The staggering falls, the wrenching climbs up the cliffs of water, were exhausting and terrifying. They were drenched in ice water, and some who had been in the sea, McFarlane could see, were unconscious. Brambell was there, thank God, attending to them as best he could.

An officer in the bow of the boat was securing the provisions and security gear. Debris was wallowing and rolling in the water beneath their feet. They were all sick, and some were retching uncontrollably. None of the crew spoke, going silently through their duties. The tightly enclosed hull of the lifeboat sheltered them from the elements. But McFarlane could feel the terrible seas were battering the boat mercilessly.

Howell finally spoke, his voice hoarse over the sound of wind and water. He was holding a radio to his mouth, but he spoke so that everyone in the boat could hear.

'All boats, listen up! Our only chance is to head for an ice island to the southeast, and ride out the storm in its lee. Maintain a heading of one two zero at ten knots and keep in visual contact at all times. Keep channel three open. Activate emergency beacons.'

It was hard to tell they were going anywhere, but the moon had come back out — and now and then, through the narrow oblong windows, McFarlane caught the faint lights of the other two lifeboats driving down the foam- webbed seas, struggling to keep in sight. At the heights of the terrible waves, he could still make out the Rolvaag, half a mile back, wallowing back and forth as if in slow motion, its emergency lights winking on and off. No more boats had been launched since their pack of three started out minutes before. He could not take his eyes from the sight of the gigantic vessel, held in the death grip of the storm.