surprise. Michael just wished he could figure out what he could say that would get him to put down the harpoon.
“We haven't come here to do you any harm,” Michael said. “Far from it. We can help you, in fact.” He wondered if he should keep on talking, or simply shut up.
“How many of you are there?” Sinclair's ragged breath fogged in the air. For the first time, Michael could see what this exertion had cost him; the man was defiant but weak on his feet.
“Four. Just four of us.”
The tip of the harpoon wavered. His eyelids slowly shuttered, then sprang back open again in alarm.
Had he just “refreshed the image,” in Ackerley's words? Michael was reminded, not that he needed to be, of what a dangerous foe he might be facing.
“We're working here at the South Pole,” Michael volunteered. “We're Americans.”
The harpoon declined farther, and Michael could swear he saw the tiniest glint of a smile cross the lieutenant's lips.
“I had a fancy, a long time ago, to see America,” Sinclair said, coughing once or twice. “It seemed ideal. I knew no one there, and no one knew me.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw movement in the rear doorway, and Sinclair must have followed his glance. He whirled around, the harpoon raised, and before Michael could do anything more than shout “Stop!” Franklin had barged through the barrels, rifle at the ready.
Sinclair hesitated for just a second, but when the muzzle of the gun came up, he let the harpoon fly. Simultaneously there was a deafening blast from the gun, and chunks of the redbrick chimney exploded in all directions. One of them stung Michael's cheek like a hornet and a smaller bit flew into his eye. He dropped his head to wipe the grit away, and when he looked up again, blearily the harpoon was quivering in the side of a barrel. Franklin was still holding the rifle up, but he was staring down at Sinclair, who was slumped over the anvil, his arms hanging loose and his fingers twitching.
Murphy was just charging in with his own pistol raised, too.
“What did you do?” Michael exclaimed. “What did you do?”
“He threw a harpoon at me!” But even Franklin looked shaken. “I didn't hit him, anyway. I hit the chimney.”
Michael knelt by Sinclair and saw blood seeping from his scalp and matting the blond hair at the back of his head. “What's this then?”
“A ricochet. I was using rubber bullets. It must have ricocheted.”
Murphy crouched on the other side of the anvil, and together they gently lowered Sinclair to the floor, then turned him over onto his back. His eyes were receding into his skull, and his lips were blue. All Michael could think of was how this would affect Eleanor.
“Let's get him back to camp,” Michael said. “We'll need Charlotte to take a look at him, fast.”
Murphy nodded and stood up. “We'll have to tie him up first-”
“He's out cold,” Michael interjected.
“For now,” Murphy shot back. “What if he comes to?” He glanced over at Franklin. “Then we'll load him onto the back of my snowmobile. At the Point, he goes straight into quarantine. Send up a flare so Lawson knows we're here and ready to go.”
As Franklin went outside to shoot off the flare, Michael remembered Ackerley in his own quarantine, laid out on a crate in the meat locker… and how well that had turned out.
“You know the drill,” Murphy said to Michael. “Until further notice, nobody but us needs to know he's there. Got it?”
“I got it.”
“And that goes double for Sleeping Beauty.”
Michael was perfectly willing to keep the secret. What was one more? He was getting to be an old hand at keeping secrets. But he wondered how long it could really be kept. Even if the others at the camp didn't find out about Sinclair, Eleanor might well be another story. For all Michael knew, there was some sort of psychic connection between them. A connection so strong that he would not have been surprised if she was already aware that Sinclair had been found… that he had been injured… and that he was on his way back to her.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
December 22, 7:30 p.m.
AS DARRYL TRANSPORTED THE FISH to the aquarium tank, it wriggled so hard in his hands that he nearly lost it.
“Hang on,” he muttered, “hang on,” then he plopped it back into the section of the tank carefully reserved for his previous specimens of Cryothenia hirschii. It swam a bit, nosing around, then settled slowly toward the bottom of the tank, to lie there-virtually motionless and all but transparent-like its companions. If the fish did prove to be an undiscovered species-and Darryl was all but sure that they would-it wouldn't be the most exciting find to a civilian observer. They weren't much to look at. But in the scientific community-where it counted-the discovery would make his name.
Quite apart from their general morphology, their blood alone would launch a thousand lab tests. The antifreeze glycoproteins the blood carried, slightly different from those in the other Antarctic fish he had studied, could one day be used for myriad purposes already under consideration, from deicing airplane wings to insulating deep-sea probes… and who knew what else.
But Darryl's present experiments had an even more bizarre focus. The moment Charlotte Barnes had mentioned that a plasma bag had gone missing from the infirmary, neither of them had doubted for an instant what happened to it. Eleanor Ames had gotten to it. But if she were ever to leave the shelter of Point Adelie to take up residence again in the outside world, she would first have to overcome her dreadful addiction. Darryl was no fool-he knew the kind of media storm she would be the center of, and there would be no way to satisfy, much less keep secret, such an insatiable need.
He had taken additional samples of Eleanor's blood and immediately begun to run assays, screens, and other tests, working on a hunch that was as outlandish as the problem. Her blood, like Ack-erley's, had a phagocytic index that was virtually off the charts, but instead of eliminating only the bacteria, foreign particles, and cell debris in the bloodstream, her phagocytes devoured the red blood cells, too-first their own, then whatever they could ingest from outside sources. But what if, Darryl thought, he was able to find a way to leave the normally toxic index level alone-clearly, it helped to sustain life under the most adverse conditions-while introducing an element that might obviate the need for foreign erythrocytes? What if, in short, Eleanor was able to borrow a trick or two from the cold-blooded, hemoglobin-free fish that filled Darryl's aquarium and holding tanks?
He'd made up a dozen different blood combinations, all of which were kept in carefully marked test tubes, under a steady temperature in the same minifridge where he kept his soft drinks, and he regularly checked them to see what had developed. He was just about to do so again when there was a loud banging on the lab door.
When he opened it, Michael clomped in, his wet boots squelching on the rubber mat.
“Want a cold drink?”
“Very funny,” Michael replied, throwing his snowy hood back.
“I wasn't joking.” Darryl went to the minifridge, popped the top of a root beer, and perched on top of his lab stool. “Where have you been?”
“Stromviken.”
Darryl knew there was only one reason to have gone there. “Did you find him?”
Michael hesitated, but that was enough to tell Darryl what he needed to know.
“Was he alive?”
Michael balked again, as he unzipped his parka and plopped down on a neighboring stool.
“Forget whatever Murphy told you,” Darryl said. “You know I'm going to have to be told eventually, anyway. Who else knows how to do a blood assay around here?”
“Yes,” Michael finally replied. “But he didn't come easy. He got hurt, and Charlotte's taking care of him right
