banned from global production in 1989 for its ozone-depleting qualities. Stored as a liquid in an airtight steel container, FE-13’s minus-115° Fahrenheit boiling point meant it discharged as a colorless, odorless gas that would lower the temperature of exposed areas to levels that were too cold to sustain a burn.
Inergen was a blend of argon, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide gas that quite literally strangled flames in an enclosed space by depriving them of the oxygen they fed upon, while leaving sufficient O2 for humans to breathe. Though it had been proven effective in fixed systems where a facility’s normal air ventilation could be closed off as Inergen was dispensed — the very sort installed in Cold Corners One — the base’s scientists and support personnel had been evaluating its value as a firefighting accessory that could be used on the move, both in conjunction with FE-13 and as a possible backup. The key had been to develop special ultra-high-pressure canisters that held and released the mixture in sufficient concentration to dampen a blaze where airflow
Until now their redundant firefighting technique had been successful only in controlled trial conditions.
It performed as well as anyone could have hoped to put out the dome blaze.
The fire-out team converged on the desalinization plant even as their white-clad opposition swept off into the storm, leaving them with unimpeded access to its entrance. Flameproof Nomex cowls pulled over their balaclavas, breathing masks covering their noses and mouths, oxygen tanks on their backs, they rushed into the smoke-filled space in practiced fashion, holding their extinguishant cylinders in front of them, nozzles hissing out their gaseous contents.
There were several things going in their favor as they waded across the dome’s flooded interior to the central platform. Its power generators had kicked into automatic shutdown, eliminating the threat of electric shock. And the sickly yellow-gray fumes that filled the dome had started brimming out into the cold as soon as its door was raised, sucked away in churning, convection-induced funnels. The enclosure cleared of smoke fast, allowing them to work their way over to the water-treatment unit in bare seconds.
The fire they encountered was intense but contained, and already doused in numerous spots by the water that had poured in torrents from the seared, ruptured flow lines. It took just over three minutes to get it under control, another one or two to smother the last of its hot orange blooms.
Unfortunately, it was obvious to every man present that the critical harm had been done long before they arrived.
Nimec and Waylon climbed down off their bikes and then stood in the entry to the dome, staring at the mangled desalinization equipment within as reeking dregs of smoke flitted toward them and were skimmed raggedly away into the wind.
“It’s a mess,” Waylon said. “A goddamned mess.”
Nimec looked at him.
“Where does this leave us?” Nimec said.
Waylon was silent a perceptible while. His gaze did not move at all from the drenched, smoldering equipment.
“I haven’t got any idea,” he replied at last.
Darting through the tempest on his snowmobile, leading the surviving members of his team back toward their sheltered camp, Burkhart weighed his operation’s failures against its successes and tried to determine on which side the balance fell.
His assigned goal had been met; he had ravaged the desalinization plant. Perhaps not irreparably destroyed it, but that was never the plan. His blow to the UpLink base never had been meant to be mortal, just sufficiently forceful to make its tenants concentrate on nursing their open wounds.
That was all on one side of the scale. But what about the other?
He had lost four of his best. He had exposed himself, revealed what was supposed to have looked like an accident to be a manned attack… and as a consequence assured that UpLink would have its hounds out in force once the storm relaxed its grip on the coast.
It would be acceptable to Burkhart if they only came after him — he was a professional whose occupation demanded putting his neck on the line. What was more significant, however, was that he had opened a path to their learning the truth about the whole Bull Pass endeavor.
Where did the balance of success and failure fall?
He knew the answer, knew he could not
Its opprobrious weight hung heavy as a mountain on his back.
SEVENTEEN
Pete Nimec’s face betrayed no emotion as he looked down at the five zippered white body bags laid out on the floor of the utilidor. The line of four to his right bore no name tags. A fifth, set apart from them, did.
It read:
Disturbing as it had been for the men to bring their casualties here prior to evac, it had made undeniable, practical sense. And in Antarctica practical considerations were always the last word.
Like all of the base’s subsurface tunnels, the utilidor was twice as cold as a morgue refrigerator compartment, which would be typically kept at 40° Fahrenheit. Indeed, its temperature more closely matched that of the super-freezers used in cryogenic preservation banks, making it ideal for its current purpose.
Consistent with USAP and Antarctic Treaty rules, Cold Corners’ strict waste-disposal procedures required that all refuse generated by human habitation, including byproducts of laboratory experiments, effused motor oil and gasoline, food scraps, paper wrappers, plastic and metal throwaway containers, bodily excreta, sanitary napkins, condoms, contraceptive sponges, and any other rubbish that could not be recycled on-site, was to be either compacted and baled, or sealed away in large drums for transport off the continent. Some of the retrograde — as prepped waste is called on the ice — was then repositoried near the airfield in rows of milvans, trailerlike metal storage containers manufactured for loading aboard military cargo ships.
Because the flights that carried away the discard arrived with irregular frequency during austral summer — and in winter months arrived not at all — the volume produced by CC’s inhabitants often exceeded the storage capacity of the milvans. At such times, all retro except segregated toxic chemical, medical, and biological waste was brought down into designated utilidor chambers, which allowed for its interim cold storage in conditions that prevented decomposition and posed no threat to health or the environment.
In practical terms, frozen human remains met the definition of retrograde to the letter.
Nimec turned to see the strapping figure of Ron Waylon come up beside him. They exchanged a serious glance. “How’s it going at the dome?” Nimec asked.
Waylon made an indeterminate gesture with his shoulders.
“It’ll be a while before I can tell whether we can get the pump back in action.” He offered a bleak smile. “Wish I’d known what was in store when I went and bragged about us being good at patching things up.”
“Say we can’t get it running,” Nimec said. “What then?”
“Good question,” Waylon said. “I’ve ordered a replacement unit, but the whole system’s manufactured to spec in California. The components have to be assembled, shipped, installed, and operational before our freshwater reserves run out.” He shook his head. “It cuts things awful close.”
“Maybe closer than we can stand?”
“Maybe,” Waylon said. “And that’s with crisis usage restrictions in place. No way around it, sir, we’re in a scrape.”
Nimec grunted, then stood in quiet thought.
“Okay,” he said. “What about those volunteers I wanted?”
“The men should be down here soon,” Waylon said. “They’re getting a Delta out of the garage to move the bodies out to the airstrip.”
“You hear anything from the comm tech… Huberman, that his name…?”
