Then it struck him with a small chilling shock. Something he'd only this moment realized. For of course the absolutely crucial question was how long could the oceans keep on absorbing the extra carbon dioxide that year by year was increasing due to man's industrial activities? Surely there must come a time when the oceans reached saturation point. What then? How would that affect the complex interweaving of atmosphere, oceans, and landmass and the life-forms that depended on them?
Watching him, Nick said, 'For God's sake, you look like somebody who's lost a quid and found a rusty nail. I've told you, Gav, stop fretting over it. It isn't your problem.'
'Perhaps it is my problem,' Chase said quietly.
'You're too damn serious for your own good.'
'Yours too.'
'Mine?' Nick snorted. 'Let me tell you what my only problem is-- whether or not Doug Thomas is on that Hercules tomorrow with a little plastic bag.'
'What the hell does Banting think he's playing at?' Chase said, suddenly angry. 'I wouldn't put him in charge of a piss-up in a brewery.'
Nick tutted. 'I do wish you wouldn't employ these vulgar northern expressions. They lower the tone of this establishment.' He gazed around with feigned rapture at the cramped, muggy room with its decrepit furniture and makeshift bar and the motley collection of scientists, most of them bearded and unkempt. It had all the charm of an East End flophouse.
'Well, thank God I'm leaving soon,' Chase said with genuine feeling. 'Back to sanity and civilization.'
'And sex,' said Nick with such lugubrious envy that Chase couldn't help bursting out laughing.
The four-engined ski-shod C-130 landed the next afternoon right on schedule, taking advantage of the paltry rays cast by a centimeter of sun peeping reluctantly over the horizon. It was a clear calm day with the wind down to 15 knots, the sky a magnificent deep magenta, and everyone not engaged with some pressing duty was on the surface to greet the aircraft. Any diversion brought a welcome break in routine.
With typical thoroughness the Americans had sent a three-man medical team equipped with a special stretcher onto which the injured man was carefully placed, made comfortable, and strapped down. Chase had to admit grudgingly that he was receiving the best possible care and attention.
He stood with Nick Power and several others watching the stretcher being taken on board through the rear drop-hatch. Professor Banting was a little way off with the American in charge of the operation, a young executive officer named Lloyd Madden, who had the alert, eagle-eyed look of a military automaton. Probably brushed his teeth the regulation number of strokes, Chase conjectured sourly, prepared to find fault at the least excuse.
When the stretcher had disappeared into the hold of the Hercules, Chase left the group he was with and wandered across. Banting paused in midsentence and gave him a fisheyed stare. Chase ignored it and stuck out his mittened hand.
'Lieutenant? I'm Gavin Chase.'
'Yes--Dr. Chase. You're the one who found him on the ice, so Professor Banting informs me.' Soft voice, hard eyes.
'That's right. I thought he'd pissed on his chips.'
The young lieutenant frowned, making his hatchet face inside the red parka hood sharper still. 'Excuse me?'
'Dead. Zilch,' Chase said. 'Nearly but not quite.'
Lieutenant Madden raised his smooth chin and brought it down in a swift, decisive nod. Chase sniffed rosewater on the wind. 'Right,' the lieutenant said, as if having deciphered a garbled message over a faulty land- line.
'Who is he? Any idea?'
'Not yet. We're hoping to find out.'
'I'll bet you are,' Chase muttered.
'I beg your pardon?'
Chase wasn't good at placing American accents but this one sounded to him to be cultured New England, very gentle, polite, with hardly any inflection. The gentle politeness, he suspected, was an exceedingly thin veneer.
'He's Russian, isn't he?'
Lieutenant Madden's eyes shifted in Banting's general direction, then snapped back. 'Yes . . . that is, we believe so.'
It would take a stick of dynamite in every orifice to make the American offer a candid opinion, Chase felt. He said, 'You seem very anxious to get hold of him, considering you've no idea who he is.'
'Anxious? In what way?'
'You've sent an aircraft two thousand miles on a special flight. You've come personally to oversee the operation. And you're moving somebody in a serious condition who ought not to be moved at all.'
'Are you a medical doctor, Dr. Chase? I understood you were a marine biologist.' Still the soft voice and gentle tone, but the demarcation between Chase's personal concern and professional standing had been clearly drawn. In other words, butt out, buster.
Professor Banting, ever the pedant, closed ranks. 'I don't have to remind you, Dr. Chase, that we've had this discussion once before. This matter has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Both Lieutenant Madden and myself are acting on instructions from a higher authority. Please understand that we are simply doing our best to carry them out.'
Chase said stubbornly, 'Even if it kills the patient.'
'Dr. Chase, we have a full range of medical facilities at McMurdo. This is for the best, believe me. He'll be well treated and looked after, you have my word.' Lieutenant Madden's eyes thawed a little. 'I'll even have the medic send you a progress report, how's that?'
They must think him stupid. He didn't like being soft-soaped. He stared levelly at the American. 'You can't seriously believe he's a security risk, not with a broken back.'
'This isn't a security matter, Dr. Chase. Leastwise, not military security.' Lieutenant Madden lowered his voice as if taking Chase into his confidence. 'Between us, we do have some information. We think --we're not sure yet--that he's a member of a Soviet oil prospecting team. We've known for some time that they've been secretly exploring the continent for oil deposits, which as you may know is in contravention of the Antarctic Treaty, ratified by sixteen nations. We've no hard evidence to support this, but if we can come up with dates, locations, even some of their findings from an eyewitness, then it might persuade the USSR to pull out before the whole thing blows up into a major international incident. Naturally we don't want the Soviets looking for oil behind our backs, but even less are we seeking an energy confrontation with them on what until now has been neutral ground.'
'I see.' Chase breathed twin plumes of steam into the blisteringly cold air. Banting stamped his feet, looking almost relieved.
Lieutenant Madden leaned forward. 'I'd appreciate it, Dr. Chase, if this didn't go any further.' One intelligent man appealing to the integrity and good sense of another. 'You understand.'
'Absolutely.'
'Good. Fine.' The American's thin lips twitched into something resembling a smile. 'I knew I could rely on you.'
He shook hands with them both, gave a courtesy salute, and walked briskly across the packed snow to the waiting aircraft, whose engines had been kept idling all the time it was on the ground. At 65 degrees below zero F. the fuel in its tanks would have frozen solid.
The C-130 taxied into the wind and took off, snow spurting from its skis in a billowing cloud, and in seconds the wing and fuselage lights were bright winking stars against a sky already darkening into the twenty-two-hour night.
Chase strolled back with Nick to the entrance ramp, not hearing his lament that Doug Thomas hadn't materialized with the little plastic bag. He was thinking instead of the perfectly sincere expression on the sharp young face of Lt. Lloyd Madden, and of his equally sincere explanation, so confidential, so plausible, so well rehearsed.
Three days later, during the changeover at McMurdo Station, Chase learned from a U.S. Army doctor that the Russian had died of a brain hemorrhage on the operating table. He wasn't a bit surprised. The poor bastard had
