rather than having named the continent?
“Take things as they come,” Nimec said, putting aside the thought. “Does that sound about right?”
Halloran continued to disregard the obvious pique in his tone.
“About.”
“You have a very Zen attitude for a military man,” Nimec said.
Halloran smiled, touched the circular ANG 139th TAS shoulder patch on the blouse of his flight suit. A nose-on view of a Hercules ski transport against a blue background, with the polar ice caps embroidered in white at the top and bottom, it was designed to be symbolic of a compass: the wings of the plane crossing east and west to the edges of the patch, the tail rudder similarly pointing due north, the skis lowered toward the southern cap.
“Very Zen,” Halloran said to the Guardsman beside him, a fellow lieutenant named Mathews. “Maybe we should have that stitched right here above the plane, make it our official motto. How about it?”
Mathews grinned and told him it sounded like a good idea. Then all three members of the aircrew were laughing again.
Nimec sighed, rapped the table with his fingers, listened to the engines of the plane humming outside the lounge.
Something told him he was at the hard rock bottom of what would be a steep and difficult learning curve.
Topped with fuel, the Herc finally got back under way some three hours after alighting at Williams Field. Its departure commenced with a jarring bounce as its wheels dropped to crack the ice that had melted around its skis from the friction of landing, and then had frozen over again to hold the plane steadily in position. After the wheels were retracted, it was a swift, smooth slide over the ski way to takeoff.
Cold Corners was four hundred odd miles south on the coastline, an aerial sprint of just about an hour. Nimec stuck it out in the webbing of the aft compartment, which he found much less disagreeable now that the bulk of its freight and over half its passengers — including the loud Russians and Australian adrenaline junkies — had gone on to their various destinations. The hold space freed up by their departure also gave Nimec a pretty well unrestricted choice of seating, and he grabbed a spot by a porthole that afforded good bird’s-eye views of both McMurdo and Cold Corners.
The contrast between them was striking. Seen from above, MacTown resembled an industrial park, or maybe a mining town that had sprung up without systematic planning over a span of many decades. Nimec guessed there were probably between a hundred and two hundred separate structures — multistory barracks-style units, rows of arched canvas Jamesway huts, smaller blue-skinned metal Quonsets, warehouse buildings, and upwards of a dozen massive, rust-blighted steel fuel-storage tanks strung out on the surrounding hillsides. Tucked among them were a couple of appreciably more modern complexes that Sergeant Barry identified as NSF headquarters and the Crary Science and Engineering Center, but Nimec’s overall impression of the station was one of rambling, indiscriminate sprawl and exceeding ugliness.
Very much on the other hand, Cold Corners looked like the working model for a future space colony… and by no accident. Roger Gordian’s innovative flair and penchant for cost efficiency made him an almost compulsive multitasker. Cold Corners was envisioned as an all-in-one satellite ground station, new space technology center, and human habitability and performance lab for long-term interplanetary settlements, and the heart of the base was configured of six sleek, linked rectangular pods on jack-able stilts that allowed it to be elevated above the rising snow drifts that eventually inundated most Antarctic stations. In his oversight of the installation’s security analysis, Nimec had stayed abreast of its development from conception to construction, and knew the few outlying buildings included a solar-paneled housing for its supplementary electrical generator, a desalinization plant to convert seawater beneath the ice crust into drinkable water, a garage for the vehicles, a trio of side-by-side satcom radomes, and of course the airfield facility that was its lifeline to civilization. The main energy, environmental- control, and waste-disposal systems were in utility corridors — or utilidors — beneath the permanent ice strata.
Minutes after Sergeant Barry announced the Herc was coming up on Cold Corners, Nimec felt its skis deploy with a thump. Then it made a sharp left turn, and the level white spread of the airfield swelled into his window.
On the ground at last, Nimec unbuckled, zipped into his parka, shouldered his bags, and went about exchanging farewells with the airmen.
The wind was staggering as he descended the exit ramp to the field. A downscaled version of Willy, it had a more modest complement of personnel shuttles and freight haulers waiting to meet the plane. Also present was a small welcoming committee clad in the ubiquitous cardinal-red survival gear. It seemed colder here than at McMurdo, and the party’s members wore full rubber face masks that rendered them indistinguishable from each other. Nimec saw somebody he guessed was its leader step toward the plane ahead of the rest.
Nimec had taken about two steps toward the shuttle bus when that same person rushed over and swept him into a tight, eager embrace.
“Pete.” A woman’s voice through the mask, muffled but familiar. And close against his face. “God, I’ve missed you something awful.”
Nimec’s surprise dissolved in a flash of happiness. He smiled openly for the first time in hours, ignoring the raw sting of the wind on his lips.
“Same here, Meg,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.
EIGHT
Gorrie was stopped at a rusty old pump at a little service station south of Newtonmore, working its hose toward the rear of his hatchback, when another driver pulled up on the opposite side of the island, exited his Vectra, and went around to stand alongside him.
“You’ll want to let me piss in your tank before filling it from that pump,” the man said. “Healthier for the engine, guaranteed to be more economical.”
Gorrie waved the fuel nozzle at a paper coffee cup on his trunk.
“No, thanks,” he said. “But you ought to make that bloke in the convenience shop a like offer before he puts up another pot of spew.”
“Really?” The man broke into a grin. “Well, I’ve got news, it’s already done. What else you think you’ve been sipping right there?”
Gorrie grinned back at him.
“How’ve you been, Conall?”
“You mean before or
“Och, you’re reminding me of Nan,” Gorrie said. “I’d expect you’d be grateful, consider it a holiday to be rescued from your shoebox office in Dundee.”
Conall snorted. “Got me on that,” he said.
They extended their hands, shook vigorously.
Gorrie opened his gas tank door, unscrewed its cap, inserted the fuel nozzle, and squeezed the handle, feeling in vain for a lock to hold it in the “on” position. It would have been nice if his coffee were drinkable, he thought. Conall hadn’t griped for nothing. The weather was indeed drearily foul, with occasional plops of rain and soft hail coming out of the smoky gray mist.
The pump’s sluggish dial readouts were turning behind a scuffed, grime-smeared glass panel.
“All right,” Gorrie said. “What have you brought to make me happy?”
“And violate enough of the Procurator Fiscal’s rules to get me fired from my job several times over?”
“That too.”
Conall reached into an inside pocket of his leather car coat. He took out a cardboard floppy-disc mailer.
“Here you go,” he said, passing it to Gorrie. “Preliminary lab results on your fallen peach and her husband.”
