Polar Quest

‘Nolan, this is Faye Olson,’ he said proudly.

Kilkenny stood and shook Olson’s hand. ‘A pleasure.’

‘For me as well. Lloyd speaks very highly of you.’

Olson then turned to Eames, who remained seated. ‘Hi, Oz.’

‘Hello, Faye,’ Eames replied politely.

Olson shed her overcoat and sat at the table as Sutton flagged down a waitress for a glass of white wine. ‘So, what are you celebrating?’

‘Just some exciting new things for these two guys to work on,’ Kilkenny replied.

‘I know how good that feels. I just brought in a big historic restoration project for my firm.’

‘You got Gordon Hall?’ Sutton asked.

Olson nodded with a smile.

‘Congratulations,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I live out that way. Given the history surrounding that old place, it deserves to be restored. What are your plans?’

‘Judge Dexter built the main house in the 1840s, so that’s our key date. We’ll make some concessions for mechanical and electrical systems, things that can be hidden in the walls,’ Olson explained, ‘but the rooms and the details will be as authentic as we can make them. Right now, the house is cut up into four apartments, so all that stuff has to go, as well as a couple of houses that were built on the property during the fifties.’

‘What about the acreage?’

Olson smiled. ‘All seventy acres are included in the National Historic designation, so no developer is getting his hands on it. This was, after all, a stop on the Underground Railroad.’

‘So that view will remain unchanged?’

‘It’ll actually be improved. When we’re done, it’ll be a pristine example of a Greek Revival mansion set on a rolling meadow.’

‘Sounds like an interesting project,’ Kilkenny said, picturing in his mind Olson’s architectural vision.

‘It is,’ Olson agreed. ‘Lloyd, do you have the tickets?’

Sutton patted his breast pocket. ‘Right here.’

‘What are you seeing?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘Natalie Merchant is playing at Hill Auditorium tonight – Faye’s a big fan. We’re sitting in the main floor center.’

‘Good seats,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I saw her a few years ago. She puts on a very good show.’

Olson glanced at her watch. ‘I hate to steal Lloyd away from you, but we have dinner reservations next door and the show starts at eight.’

‘Have a good time,’ Kilkenny replied.

‘Thanks,’ Olson said. ‘Good to see you again, Oz.’

‘You, too,’ Eames replied.

As Sutton and Olson departed, the waitress returned and they ordered dinner and another round of beer.

‘I had no idea Lloyd was dating anyone,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I thought he just worked all the time.’

‘I think he learned from me that all work and no play makes Jack a lonely man.’

‘How’d you teach him that?’

Eames took another sip of his beer. ‘Faye is my ex-wife.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. My divorce was final last year and they just started dating a few weeks ago. The three of us have known each other for a lot of years. I met Faye when we were undergrads at UCLA. Shook both our families up when we started getting serious, but they got over the black-white thing by the time we got married. We spent the summer after our wedding backpacking across Europe. Those were good times.’

‘If you don’t mind my asking, what went wrong?’

‘It started with grad school. Faye stayed at UCLA and I went to Stanford. Long-distance relationships suck.’

‘Yeah, they do,’ Kilkenny agreed.

‘I hooked up with Lloyd at Stanford and we started laying the groundwork for UGene,’ Eames continued. ‘After Faye finished up her master’s, she moved up to be with me and took a job with a big architecture firm in San Francisco. We shortened the distance, but we still weren’t spending enough time together. It was mostly my fault. I fell in love with my work, and a man can only have one true love at a time. By the time I earned my Ph.D., Faye was ready to divorce me. I managed to talk her into giving me a second chance.’

‘How’d you pull that off?’ Kilkenny asked. ‘I’m interested in second chances myself.’

‘It was the promise of a fresh start. After Lloyd and I finished up at Stanford, we both signed on with the Life Sciences Initiative here at Michigan. Faye hired on with a preservation firm in town and we bought our first house. Things were pretty good for about three months, then I disappeared into my work again. By the time Lloyd and I officially formed UGene, my marriage was dead.’

‘Is it weird that your partner is dating your ex-wife?’

Eames sipped his beer and thought for a moment. ‘When you put it like that it sounds like something off a daytime talk show. Look, Lloyd and Faye are both entitled to happiness, and if they can find it together, then who am I to stand in their way?’

‘Very noble. Have you gotten over her yet?’

‘What kind of question is that?’ Eames asked defensively.

‘It’s just that I recently screwed up a relationship so badly that the woman I thought I’d be going home to is training to leave the planet, and our future is one very big question mark.’ Kilkenny raised his hands up. ‘So, if I’ve crossed the line, tell me.’

‘If you’re asking whether or not I’m carrying a torch for Faye, I guess the answer is no. Our divorce wasn’t ugly and I still care for her, but I think I’ve accepted the fact that we will never be together again.’ Eames sipped on his beer. ‘So what’s your sad story?’

‘When my hitch with the navy was almost up, a friend of mine here at the U asked if I’d give her a hand with a project she was working on – an optical computer processor.’

‘Sounds like something Lloyd would like.’

‘It is. Kelsey, my friend, and I have known each other since we were kids. She was quite literally the girl next door.’

‘Your old high school sweetheart?’

‘No, back then our families were so close that it would’ve been like dating my sister. After high school, I went to the Naval Academy and was pretty much gone for about twelve years, but we kept in touch. We were just good friends up until a couple of years ago when some crazy things happened that forced us to peel back a few layers. Marriage seemed like the next logical step.’

‘There’s your mistake, mixing love and logic. Oil and water, my friend, oil and water.’

Kilkenny nodded. ‘Our problems started after the craziness was gone and things got back to normal. I know Kelsey loves me … and we both take the idea of marriage seriously.’

‘So who got cold feet?’ Eames asked.

‘She did, but it wasn’t cold feet as much as a better offer.’

‘Another guy?’

‘No, a lifelong dream. Kelsey has wanted to be an astronaut since we were kids. She’s been in the corps for a few years, and last August, she got the call. I was excited as anyone for her, until we got the bad news.’

‘What?’

‘NASA needed her to go to Houston ASAP to begin mission training with the rest of the crew. They’d work right up to launch, then she’d spend the next five months on the space station. That kind of schedule wasn’t going to leave a whole lot of time to plan a wedding, at least not the kind she had in mind.’

‘Why didn’t you two just elope?’

Kilkenny smiled grimly. ‘That’s what I suggested. Not a Vegas quickie at the Elvis chapel, but a small private ceremony. No dice.’

‘Most women have pretty strong feelings about their wedding day.’

‘So I discovered. I also learned that, according to the etiquette books, a wedding is the bride’s party and the groom is just one of the invited guests. Long story short, I misread all the signs and started a fight in which I said some truly boneheaded things to her. During the few days when she wasn’t speaking to me, she gave some serious thought to our situation and decided it would be best for both of us if we postponed our engagement until after she returned from space. After all, seventeen months is a long time to be apart.’

‘Define postponed.’

‘My current status is single and unattached. Kelsey and I parted with no conditions and no promises regarding the future.’

‘Que sera sera.’

‘Yep. Doris Day is singing the sound track to my love life.’

‘I hear you, Nolan, and if I can offer you one bit of advice, as a man whose last romantic bridge is so badly burned that there’s nothing left but ash and some tiny bits of charcoal, it’s this: Get off your ass and do something about it. Wishing won’t fix nothing between you and Kelsey, and neither will hiding from it. I wished and hid my way right out of a marriage.’

‘Any suggestions?’

Eames took a draw on his beer. ‘She’s following a dream right now, that’s good. Make damn sure she knows you support her all the way and that you’ll be waiting for her when she returns from the heavens.’

After dinner, Eames returned to his office at UGene and spent the next several hours reviewing experimental data. His radio was tuned to a campus station that was playing a Natalie Merchant retrospective in connection with the concert. Eames recalled taking Faye to see the sultry vocalist back when she fronted for 10,000 Maniacs.

Eames left his office well after midnight. As he drove toward his home, he gave into an impulse and changed direction. He entered a modest neighborhood of well-kept homes and turned onto a street called Pineview. On their first visit to Ann Arbor, Faye had fallen in love with a cute ranch house that they eventually moved into.

Passing his former home, Eames saw that it was dark and Lloyd Sutton’s car was parked in the driveway.

4 JANUARY 30 LV Research Station, Antarctica

Nedra pulled the disk from her computer, labeled it, and placed it in a plastic jewel case. She had burned through a stack of CD-RWs this afternoon, downloading the final record of what she and her husband had accomplished during their time at LV Research Station. She switched off her workstation and set the box of disks into a small storage crate for the journey back to the U.S.

Years of planning, design, and testing had led them to this place, and now their work was done. She and her husband had proved it was possible to explore a world hidden beneath miles of ice, and they were now one step closer to hunting for life on Europa.

‘Are you finished yet?’ Collins called out from the galley.

Nedra closed the latch on the crate. ‘We are now officially packed and ready to go home.’

‘Great, now I can open this.’

Nedra heard a loud pop.

‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘Depends. Do you think it’s champagne?’

‘Didn’t we already drink the one bottle you smuggled in back in December?’

Collins appeared in the doorway of the research wing with two coffee mugs filled with Great Western. ‘Yes, but then I found this while I was rummaging around in the wine cellar. Of course, we can’t just let it go to waste.’

Nedra and Collins tapped mugs and sipped the effervescent liquid.

‘Mmmm,’ Nedra purred.

‘And for our final meal here at LV, I’ve prepared some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.’

Nedra forced a smile. ‘Sounds delicious.’

‘I know,’ Collins said with a sigh, ‘but when we get to New Zealand, I’m taking you out for a great meal at the finest restaurant in Christchurch.’

‘I’d settle for a long hot bath, room service, and a week of passion in a five-star suite.’

‘I’ll see what I can – ’ Collins paused. ‘Do you hear that?’

A low distant rumble started to resonate through the station: the mechanical throb of engines.

‘Yeah,’ Nedra replied. ‘It sounds like the plane.’

‘They’re early. Something must’ve changed the schedule.’

‘The last weather report I saw looked fine, but I won’t complain if they get us home sooner.’

‘Your sandwich is in the kitchen. I’m going to go out and meet our ride.’

Collins climbed down to the lower level, donned his gear, and stepped through the air lock. Outside, the wind blew down steadily from the glacial highlands, and the drone of the plane’s engines thundered all around the station.

A cloud of powdery snow and ice crystals flared from the broad skis beneath the LC-130, billowing behind the plane like the dust trail behind a car on a dirt road. The plane grew larger as it approached, sliding down the icy runway, and finally came to a stop just short of the station. The pilot taxied the aircraft closer, then turned so that the tail ramp faced the station door.

The plane’s engines slowed, but kept running – it was too cold to risk shutting them off. As Collins walked over to the plane, the side door dropped to become a stair and a man dressed in a white hooded snowsuit quickly descended from the plane.

‘Kilkenny?’ Collins asked expectantly, but he was unable to discern the man’s identity.

Duroc reached out, grasped Collins’s offered hand, and yanked him forward with a violent jerk. Collins stumbled, tripping as he tried to regain his balance. Duroc pivoted at the waist and struck him in the temple with the palm of his hand, dislodging the goggles from the engineer’s face. Collins dropped to his knees as Duroc twisted his arm behind his back.

‘Cooperate, and you and your wife will live,’ Duroc said, pressing the barrel of a Glock 9mm pistol against Collins’s cheek. ‘Do you understand, Mr Collins?’

Collins nodded groggily, still dizzy from the blow. As he lifted his head, Collins saw five more men emerge from the plane, each dressed in white camouflage suits and cradling submachine guns.

‘Secure the station,’ Duroc ordered.

The soldiers approached cautiously, even though they didn’t expect any resistance. Their intelligence reports indicated that only Collins and his wife occupied LV Station and that neither was armed.

‘Nedra!’ Collins shouted as the soldiers swept into the air lock.

Duroc struck Collins on the side of the head with his pistol and the engineer collapsed to the ice, unconscious.

Four soldiers thundered up the spiral stair to the main level, then broke into two-man teams to check the hall-ways while the fifth man covered the stairs from the air lock.

‘Philip?’ Nedra called out from the kitchen.

She had just refilled her mug with champagne when a soldier swung around the edge of the doorway, his machine gun held shoulder high, the barrel and the man’s eyes locked on her face.

‘Hands on your head! Now!’ the soldier shouted.

Nedra slowly set the bottle on the counter and placed her hands behind her head.

‘I have the woman,’ the soldier called out, the thin wire of a lip mike curled around his cheek to the corner of his mouth.

Duroc glanced down at Collins’s prone body as he listened through his earpiece to the reports of his men inside the station. He checked his watch; less than thirty seconds had passed since he’d stepped out of the plane and the station was his.

‘Fouquet, Cochin,’ Duroc said into the tiny microphone nestled at the corner of his mouth.

‘Oui, Commander,’ both men replied.

‘Come outside and collect the other prisoner. Secure both in their sleeping quarters for interrogation.’

Overhead, the second LC-130 circled LV Station and began its descent. Duroc smiled, pleased with how well the mission was proceeding. If everything continued to develop according to his plan, no one would ever know they had been here.

5 JANUARY 31 Skier-98

‘Ten-minute warning,’ the pilot announced, his voice clear over the speakers imbedded in Kilkenny’s helmet.

‘Roger,’ Kilkenny replied.

The cargo hold of the LC-130 reverberated with a low steady drone. On her wings, four massive Allison engines beat the frigid air with the combined pulling power of fifteen thousand horses in a synchronized effort to keep the sixty-ton plane aloft. Designated Skier-98 by the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing, she was one of a handful of specialized heavy-lift aircraft servicing some of the coldest and most remote places on Earth. From October to March, Skier-98 plied her trade between New Zealand and Antarctica.

The hold of the Hercules was empty save for Kilkenny and the two crewmen who now stood on either side of the personnel door. All three men were breathing from portable oxygen systems, the air in the depressurized hold far too thin and cold at this altitude to sustain them.

Kilkenny’s presence on board was the direct result of some Pentagon muscle-flexing by the man in charge of the navy’s special warfare group and Kilkenny’s former commanding officer, Rear Admiral Jack Dawson. When Dawson learned of Kilkenny’s involvement with NASA’s project at Lake Vostok, the admiral used his considerable influence to quietly add an equipment test for the navy to the project task list.

Kilkenny stripped off the NSF-issue parka and stood in the center of the empty hold to stretch his muscles. The matte gray suit that covered his body like a second skin felt thin and light. Other than his face, which was concealed by a helmet, not a square inch of Kilkenny was exposed, and vulnerable points on his body were protected with molded panels of Kevlar.

The suit – called SEALskin by the company working with the navy to develop it – incorporated the latest in combat electronics, chemical and biological warfare protection, and exceptional thermal control. Under laboratory conditions, the suit had performed well, but Kilkenny’s old C.O. wanted to see just how well it would fare in more realistic settings. Antarctica, in Dawson’s mind, was the perfect place to see if SEALskin could keep a man warm.

The two crewmen in the hold with Kilkenny stared at him with puzzled disbelief. He didn’t blame them a bit, because he was about to attempt a HAHO (High-Altitude High-Opening) jump out the side of their plane at 35,000 feet and parachute onto the glacial ice below.‘I have contact with an inbound aircraft,’ the radar operator announced.

Sumner Duroc glanced down at the image on the radarscope. ‘Range?’

‘Eighty kilometers.’

‘Keep tracking.’

What intrigued Kilkenny about this jump, and the reason he agreed to do it, was the location; Antarctica was the only continent he had never parachuted onto. Only a few people had ever attempted a jump over the southernmost continent, and three of the most recent to do so became so disoriented with altitude sickness that they never opened their chutes and plummeted to their deaths at the South Pole.

‘Sixty-five kilometers and closing,’ the radar operator called out.

‘Are all systems ready?’ Duroc asked.

‘All systems are green and ready to go.’

‘Good. Bring them in a little closer.’

‘Five minutes,’ the pilot called out.

‘Roger,’ Kilkenny answered. ‘Switch homing beacon on.’

The voice-activated computer strapped to his chest began transmitting a signal that would allow the plane to locate him in the event of an emergency.

‘We are receiving a strong signal,’ the copilot said. ‘Everything looks A-okay for the jump.’

Kilkenny ran through a final inspection of his rip cords and chute containers. He patted his thigh and found his combat knife strapped right where he wanted it – insurance in case the main chute failed and he needed to do a quick cut away before deploying the reserve.

‘Gauges on,’ Kilkenny commanded.

A bar strip of information appeared to float in front of him; the face shield of his helmet served double duty as a heads-up display. Kilkenny studied the compact image that displayed his heading, altitude, airspeed, longitude, and latitude – all gleaned from the constellation of Global Positioning Satellites orbiting the planet.

‘Fifty-five kilometers and closing,’ the radar operator said to Duroc.

‘Two minutes,’ the pilot called out. ‘Sergeant Boehmer, open the door.’

‘Door opening,’ Boehmer replied.

A blast of frigid air roared into the cargo bay and the low rumbling of the Hercules changed in pitch as the pilot slowed the aircraft down to 135 knots. Kilkenny grabbed hold of the steel anchor line cables and stepped up to the side door.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ Boehmer shouted over the wind, ‘but why are you doing this?’

Behind the tinted visor, Kilkenny smiled. ‘Do you know what NAVY stands for, Sergeant?’

‘Beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Never Again Volunteer Yourself.’

The red caution light blinked off and the jump light flashed green.

‘Those are words to live by,’ Kilkenny shouted. ‘See you on the ground.’

Kilkenny leapt into the turbulent slipstream behind the plane and felt an immediate jolt of acceleration as gravity pulled him downward. With arms and legs outstretched, he sailed through a 6,000-foot free fall. The altimeter on his heads-up display quickly counted off his descent. Beneath the altimeter, a digital readout clocked his rate of fall approaching 140 miles per hour.

His heart pounded in his chest. Adrenaline flooded his bloodstream as his body reacted instinctively to the unnatural sensation of falling. Kilkenny felt the dull sting of air-borne ice particles impacting against his body through the SEALskin, but thankfully the navy’s new miracle suit was performing as advertised.

‘Range to aircraft is twenty-five kilometers.’

‘Lock on target,’ Duroc ordered. He then scanned the light blue sky for the aircraft he could not see but knew was there.

At 29,000 feet, Kilkenny pulled his main rip cord. Looking over his right shoulder, he watched the rectangular parabolic wing unfurl and catch the air. The heads-up display showed his altitude at 27,250 feet and his airspeed nearly zero. The deafening roar of wind that accompanied his free fall was gone, and Kilkenny’s ears rang in the silence.

‘Display flight path to target.’

In response to Kilkenny’s voice command, the computer calculated the straight-line distance from his current position to the known coordinates of LV Station and projected a bright yellow line on the display that graphically showed the most direct flight path. The imaginary line, which was updated several times a second, appeared to run from the center of Kilkenny’s chest to a point several miles in the distance.

He reached up, grasped the control toggles for the right and left risers, and pulled to release the brakes. The ram-air chute surged forward in full flight mode, rapidly picking up speed. The design of the canopy allowed Kilkenny to control his flight with great precision. Given the right wind conditions, he could stay aloft for hours. Below, an undulating sheet of white spread out in each direction toward the horizon.

‘Target lock is established.’

‘Fire,’ Duroc ordered.

A new line appeared in front of Kilkenny. This one was white and arcing upward from LV Station.

‘What the hell?’ Kilkenny blurted out, recognizing the launch of a surface-to-air missile.

‘COM on,’ he commanded. ‘Ice Jump One to Skier-Nine-Eight. Take evasive action! You have a missile inbound. Repeat, you have a missile inbound! Do you copy? Over.’

Static and feedback filled his ears. Faintly, buried beneath the electronic noise, he heard the pilot of Skier-98.

‘Say again, Ice Jump One. We’re not – ‘

The missile homed in on the heat radiating from the Allison engines. It approached at supersonic speed, easily running down the lumbering Hercules. As the missile struck the number three engine, its high-explosive war-head detonated with concussive fury. Hot metal fragments shredded Skier-98‘s aluminum skin and ignited the wing tanks.

6

‘COM off,’ Kilkenny commanded angrily, the range on his communications gear too short to reach anyone but the people who’d fired the missile. The static that filled his ears immediately vanished.

A black smudge marked the spot in the sky where Skier-98 had exploded, and smoky trails followed the descent of the burning wreckage to the ground – ominous stains on an otherwise perfect expanse of blue. Tilting his head toward the ground caused the bright yellow line of his flight path to reappear on the heads-up display.