Part 20 (2/2)
Survival would depend on patience.
Sleep, the hunger bade its drones. Sleep.
Icy seawater crashed over the gunwales of the launch as it neared the sh.o.r.e. Sedath, the second-in-command of the private icebreaker Demial, took the brunt of the chilling spray but turned his head and shut his eyes until the stinging mist abated. He opened his eyes and saw the rowers smirking at him.
”Pick up the pace, men,” he said, his voice as level and professional as ever. He didn't begrudge his men a bit of amus.e.m.e.nt at his expense, but discipline had to be maintained.
At the rear of the launch sat Jestem, the Demial's athletic and weathered commanding officer, and Karai, a nervous and evasive young executive from the consortium that owned the icebreaker and employed its officers and crew. Both men were eager to be ash.o.r.e, though for different reasons. Jestem was a glory seeker, always on the lookout for another chance to grab a measure of fame and acclaim. Karai's ambition was more prosaic: He was in it for the money.
Sedath looked up at the pale sky. The sun had just peeked over the horizon, casting a golden glow on the arctic mountains. The landing party would have barely enough time to climb the slope to the lowest edge of the astounding scar that something had gouged into the primeval rock.
The scar fascinated Sedath. He had studied dozens of old topographical maps and surveyors' drawings of this peak on the Demial's months-long sea journey, and he was certain that the mult.i.tude of jagged, semi-vertical rock formations that dotted the lower slope had not been there just a few decades earlier.
It's a meteorite, he surmised. Has to be. The distribution of the debris on the slope suggests an oblique impact from above. Although the Demial's princ.i.p.al mission was to search the seabed for carbon fuel deposits, Sedath had always viewed his work aboard the arctic explorer as an opportunity to conduct scientific research far away from the meddling of the company's sponsored labs or the ideologically extreme halls of academia.
Let the commander have the glory, he mused. Karai can keep the money. I just want to run some tests on those meteorites.
The hollow sc.r.a.pe of aluminum over pebbles and sand told Sedath that the launch had reached the sh.o.r.e of the fjord. Malfomn, the s.h.i.+p's graying, square-jawed gendarme, got up from his seat next to Sedath and vaulted over the side of the launch. The older man landed with a splash in the frigid, knee-deep water, grabbed the prow of the launch, and towed it farther onto the sh.o.r.e. Sedath stood, laid a plank from the front benchboard to the bow, walked across it, and made a short hop to dry land.
Jestem and Karai were the next out of the launch, followed in short order by the rowers and the s.h.i.+p's surgeon, Dr. Marasa. To the same degree that Karai, Jestem, and Sedath himself were overcome with enthusiasm for the consortium-ordered fact-finding mission, Marasa had wanted no part of it. The weary-looking physician s.h.i.+vered as he took in his surroundings. ”Okay, we've seen it,” he grumped. ”Can we go back now?”
”Quit complaining, Doctor,” Jestem said. ”We're heading up the slope for a closer look at whatever hit this mountain.”
Marasa narrowed his eyes. ”I bet it was a rock.”
Jestem replied, ”Just put your snowshoes on, Doctor.”
Malfomn, Karai, Sedath, Jestem, and Marasa set down their backpacks, unstrapped their snowshoes, and started putting them on. Jestem was the first to finish securing his bindings. He began slide-stepping away, heading for the incline. ”Come on,” he called back. ”We're losing the light, gentlemen!”
The rest of the group was about to set out after him when Malfomn called out, ”Hold up! Everybody, stop!” All eyes turned toward the gendarme, who pointed at a nearby rocky outcropping. ”What's that, between the rocks?”
It was difficult at first for Sedath to see what Malfomn was talking about. Then he began to discern artificial-looking shapes and angles lurking beneath the deep, driven snow. ”Malfomn, come with me, we'll check it out.”
Sedath and Malfomn split away from the group and sidestepped up a gradual hillside to the rock formation. As they got closer to it, he saw pieces of metal jutting up out of the snow and catching the morning sunlight. As soon as he was close enough, Sedath reached out with one gloved hand and tugged on the narrow beam. It s.h.i.+fted a bit in the snow. ”Help me pull this up,” he said to the gendarme.
Together they took hold of the metal bar and pulled it free of the snow. It was half again as long as Sedath was tall, and its edges were twisted and jagged, as if from shearing stress.
”Do you recognize this alloy?” he asked Malfomn.
The older man shook his head. ”Never seen anything like it.” Nodding at the snow where they'd found it, he added, ”Maybe we ought to do a little digging here, see what we find.”
”Good idea,” Sedath said. They retrieved their entrenching tools from the back of their packs and started shoveling away the snow and ice. Within a few minutes, beneath only a thin layer of the snow cover, they had exposed more metal pieces and a large patch of tattered, metallic-looking fabric. Lifting it and eyeing it in the sunlight, Sedath speculated, ”Part of a shelter, you think?”
”Maybe,” Malfomn said. ”But I don't know anybody anywhere who makes shelters with materials like this-do you?”
Sedath bunched the shredded fabric and stuffed it into his pocket. ”No, I don't,” he said. He cast an apprehensive look up the mountainside at the raw wound in the stone and turned back to Malfomn. ”We should get back to the others,” he said. ”Jestem wants to climb that slope and make it back to the Demial before sundown.” Stepping closer to the gendarme, Sedath added in a confidential tone of voice, ”Have the rowers come up here and finish digging this out while we're gone. Whatever they find, I want it wrapped in a tarp and stowed in the launch.”
”Yes, sir,” Malfomn said. ”It'll be good for them to have work to do while we're up on the mountain.”
”My thoughts, exactly,” Sedath said.
The two men kick-stepped back down the hillside. Back on level ground, they split up; Sedath cut across the plain to rejoin the commander, and Malfomn detoured to the sh.o.r.e and relayed Sedath's orders to the rowers before regrouping with the climbing expedition at the base of the mountain.
”What'd you find?” Jestem asked Sedath.
”I'm not sure yet,” Sedath said, and it was an honest, if evasive, answer. ”Some metal and some fabric.”
Jestem frowned inside his fur-lined parka hood. ”Metal and fabric? Like you might find in a hastily concealed base camp?”
”Possibly,” Sedath said, not refuting the commander's hypothesis, even though he had a more exotic idea of his own.
Karai shot a worried glance at Jestem. ”Commander, the consortium has to defend its rights to all claims in this territory, mineral or chemical, or else we'll lose them.”
”I know that,” Jestem said.
”If another landing party has arrived ahead of us, we can't let them seize any materials or stake any-”
Jestem cut in, ”I get it!” He nodded to Malfomn. ”Keep your weapon handy, Mal. Seems like we might not be alone up here.” To the rest of the group, he declared, ”Let's go! Follow me.”
As the climb began, Sedath pulled a corner of the fabric from his pocket and stole another look at it. It was lightweight but substantial enough that no light penetrated its weave; it slipped easily between his gloved fingertips, like gear oil. Its metallic threads reflected a rainbow of colors as they caught the light. He truly had never seen anything like it before, and he had no idea how it had been made. But if his hypothesis about its origin proved to be correct, then Sedath was about to make a great discovery for science.
Of course, if we actually find an alien s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, he admitted to himself, the commander will be the one who gets famous, and Karai'll probably end up the world's richest man. The best I can hope for is to get the first look at the thing before it gets shut away in some company lab.
He grinned beneath his balaclava. I can live with that.
”Over here!” Jestem was far ahead of the rest of the group, standing near an ice fissure at the bottom of a steep cliff patched with snow. Sedath and the others hurried their pace, but only with difficulty. None of them had snowshoed in a long time, and the hike up the slope had proved exhausting for everyone-except the commander, apparently.
Malfomn and Sedath reached the fissure, where Jestem stood at the mouth of a narrow ice cave, staring into its depths. Sedath looked back and admired the view of the fjord. At its far end, near the channel, the Demial lay at anchor, silhouetted on quiet waters that reflected the dusky afternoon sky. A whistling gale sparkled the air with a dusting of ice crystals lifted from the slope around the landing party.
Karai and Marasa arrived looking wilted and sounding out of breath. The doctor said, ”I promise to rig a clean drug test for anyone willing to carry me back down.”
Before anyone could take Marasa up on his offer, Jestem turned and said to Sedath, ”Give me your palmlight, will you?”
Sedath undid the loop that held his portable light on his belt and handed the device to Jestem-who, as a privilege of his rank, usually traveled light and expected everyone else to come prepared with whatever he might need. The commander switched on the palmlight and aimed its narrow beam down the ice shaft. He squinted and said, ”Sedath, do you see that surface down there?”
Peering into the foggy gloom, Sedath replied, ”I think so.”
”What does that look like to you?”
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