Nick Power lounged back in the canvas chair, his calf-length combat boots with the thick-ridged soles propped on the corner of the trestle table. "The guy's off his rocker, Gav, we both know that."
"No, we don't. Feverish, yes, and in pain, probably drugged up to the eyeballs, but he was definitely trying to tell us something."
"Okay," Nick agreed charitably. "What, for instance?"
"I don't know," Chase said.
"Because it didn't
Chase gazed thoughtfully across the small cluttered messroom with its half-dozen late diners idling over coffee. The others had retired to the rec room along the corridor to play cards or chess, or have a game of table tennis on the battered table supported by packing cases. Some would be straining to hear whatever English-language broadcast they could pick up on shortwave--if the ionospheric storms didn't give total radio blackout, likely with the approaching winter.
It was the comfortable hour of the evening, the station battened down against the searing wind and cold and dark. Primeval man seeking the shelter of the cave, the warmth of companionship in a hostile environment.
"When are they transferring him to McMurdo?" asked Nick, hands behind his head.
"Tomorrow. The Hercules is due in at fourteen hundred hours."
Nick perked up. "Wowie! If Doug Thomas is flying her we could have a fresh supply of Red. That's made my day," he said happily.
"I won't be around to smoke it with you," Chase reminded him. "You can blast off into outer space all on your own."
Nick laughed. "The next POGO in orbit will be me."
Polar-Orbiting Geophysical satellites passed directly overhead every hour and a half, transmitting photographs of the weather situation and data on magnetic disturbances in the upper atmosphere. A satellite was being launched every three days, and at the present time there were more than three thousand spacecraft in orbit. Three quarters of all
expenditure on space development was military--China, India, and, more recently, Chile adding to the clutter in outer space.
Chase sipped the last of his lukewarm coffee. "What section of the core are you working on?" he asked Nick.
"Oh, pretty recent. About five hundred b.c."
"It always amazes me how you can date it so accurately."
"Well, it's really an estimate, give or take two or three hundred years. But in the total span of fifty thousand years, what's a couple of centuries between friends?"
"Any surprises?"
"No, not anymore. I came across a dark band the other day, which is probably the residue of volcanic ash. We dated it by carbon fourteen at about two and a half thousand years, so there must have been a huge eruption about that time."
"And the ash got this far?" Chase said curiously.
"Most airborne pollution does," Nick told him. "We can trace contamination of the atmosphere caused by the early Industrial Revolution. There's a marked darkening of the ice core from about two hundred and fifty years ago. Every year ten to twenty inches of snow falls on Antarctica, which with the accumulated pressure gets squeezed down into four to eight inches of pure ice. Trapped in it is a permanent record of the climate at any given moment, plus prevailing conditions in the atmosphere, space dust, and so on. We've even detected traces of leaded petroleum." Nick gave a bark of a laugh and shook his head, bemused. "Here am I, shut away in this bloody ice-hole on the arse-end of the globe, studying the effects of the Los Angeles freeway system."
Chase said, "And it's supposed to be the cleanest, purest air anywhere in the world down here." He locked his fingers together and rested his chin on them. In the poor light his hair had a blue-black sheen, and the whites of his eyes stood out beneath the dark bar of his eyebrows. Someone had once described his looks as "satyric," which had flattered him until he looked up the precise meaning and found that it meant a Greek wood-demon with a tail and long pointed ears. "I wonder if he is a scientist."
"Possible."
"What field?"
"Professor Boris reading Pornography."
"Highly amusing."
"Contact Mirnyy Station and ask if anyone's missing."
"Are you serious?"
"That's one way to find out."
Chase gnawed his lip. "I reckon not." He looked at Nick. "I mean, what if he was trying to get away from them? He'd hardly thank me for blowing the gaff."
"What the hell, I don't see that it matters. He'll be in the tender loving care of the Yanks soon. Let them worry about his pedigree." Nick swung his boots down, stood up, and flexed his shoulders. "Let's go to the rec room. It's Donna Summer in cabaret tonight."
