Dark Winter (48 page)

One by one the rest of the group rose out of the snow with their crude spears and clubs, rushing to surround the rumbling machine.

Norse sounded the horn of the Spryte at Pulaski's challenge, an angry, elephantine trumpeting, and then accelerated to run the determined cook down. The diesel snorted with power, its exhaust a black cloud. The commando waited until the last second, crouching as if willing to be hit, and then darted to one side as the machine ground by, running back along its length in his heavy boots, snow kicking up in lively spouts. A flying leap threw him upon the fuel and food sled that Norse was towing and the other pursuers roared at the sight. Then Pulaski regained his footing and sprang forward like a cat, a boot dancing on the trailer hitch until his gloved hand could catch a handhold on the main cab. If he could stop the Spryte the others could help him swarm Bob. Clenching a vent opening, he swung himself firmly aboard the snow tractor and worked along the driver's side, a hammer readied in one fist. The rest of the winter-overs were pursuing now like a pack of wolves, yelling and whooping.

Because they hadn't come through the tunnel, none of this group knew that Norse's gun had already murdered Pika.

The cook got to the cab door and Norse snarled soundlessly at him, swerving the tractor in a vain attempt to throw his attacker off. Pulaski hung on and swung the hammer. Heavy glass shattered, breaking the Spryte's cocoon of warmth, and the cook reached inside to either fumble with the door lock or drag Norse bodily out through the window's splintery teeth. The others would never know for sure.

The breakage gave Norse a clear shot. There was another bang.

The bullet cuffed the cook off the cab and sent him flying. There was something graceful to his arc, like a backward dive off a board, but when the old soldier fell into the snow it was heavily, his body instantly still. Now it was Norse who howled, an animalistic cry of rage and triumph, and he gunned the machine even harder. Jouncing across the sastrugi drifts toward the summer camp, his Spryte was well on its way toward leaving the Pole.

Dana and Geller reached Pulaski first. The cook's hood had been thrown back and the crest of his head had turned molten where the bullet had hit him. Hot blood steamed like acid into the snow.

He was dead.

A few of the others threw things, the clubs and spears banging off the sides of the Spryte as harmlessly as if it were an armored car. Then it was beyond them, red taillights a taunt, driving on into the night.

Norse was getting away.

"Always a step ahead!" he roared.

Suddenly there was a different snarl, a coughing rumble that rose to a whine, and another, single headlight blazed over the rim of the snow at the entrance to the garage. Snowmobile! It burst up through the wreckage of the garage's bay doors as if catapulted, leaping a drift and coming down in a wild skid, its treads biting and its single ski pointing toward its quarry. It was Lewis, in hot pursuit. Longfellow and Mendoza came charging along after him on foot.

The others began running again, too, trying to catch the churning tractor. "He's got Abby!" Geller roared at the geologist as Lewis shot by him. "He shot Cueball! Stop him and we'll finish it!"

The blinded Skinner was dancing from leg to leg to the sounds of pursuit, howling in the cold. "Get him, get him, get him!"

The snowmobile was far faster than the Spryte and Lewis pulled up alongside the machine quickly, eyeing the cab, trying to decide what to do. Norse pointed his gun out the window and Lewis fell back. How many shots did he have? One for Pika, one for the cook, but if he'd reloaded… Lewis hefted the meteorite as he decelerated, considering. What choice did he have? He swerved around the back of the sled and came up on the machine's other side, where Abby was riding, praying she'd jump at what was coming next. Pulling alongside the galloping treads, he chose a place to aim and then, with grim deliberation, threw the rock into the gearing.

There was another bang, a squeal of metal. The rock caught in the bogie wheels of the tread and jammed it so the Spryte swerved wildly, the other cab door popping open. There was a spurt of dust as Mickey Moss's jewel was crushed into powder. Even as the meteorite disintegrated, a broken tread slithered off one side and the snow machine spun helplessly. Abby was thrown clear and flopped onto the snow, apparently stunned or killed. The Spryte's one working tread sent it wheeling in a tight circle like a dog chasing its tail, the trailer tipping over and the hitch snapping free. The machine was mortally wounded: a window shattered, a tread gone, its extra fuel lost. The others ran up as it careened, surrounding it. Norse was wrenching with the controls, cursing in frustration.

It was like a boat without a rudder.

Then the psychologist realized the inevitable and sat back suddenly, cutting the engine so the Spryte ground to a stop. Its lights dimmed. Lewis cut the snowmobile, too.

It was quiet.

Norse was trapped.

The others stayed back several yards, wary of the gun, their lungs laboring in the bitter cold, surrounding the broken Spryte like hunters around a mammoth. Lewis got off his machine and ran for Abby, fearing she'd been shot. Falling to his knees in the snow beside her, he gingerly turned her over.

It was Raggedy Ann, the CPR doll.

Norse was laughing at him.

The psychologist had climbed out of the cab of the machine and was standing on the Spryte's roof, his parka hood back and his head lit by a halo of stars. He had his crude homemade pistol pointed casually outward, well aware that the others had recollected their hurled weapons and were in a circle around him now, arms poised to throw. He might get off one shot, maybe two. Then it would finally be over.

"Where's Abby?" Lewis called as he shakily rose, trying to catch his breath.

"You didn't do as you were told," Norse replied.

It was quiet again, the only sound the hiss of lightly blown snow slithering over the drifts. Lewis took a step toward the Spryte.

"I didn't really expect to get away," the psychologist finally went on. "I knew that when I was forced to eliminate Gabriella. The game had gotten out of control. But I've made my point, haven't I?"

"Where's Abby?"

"I didn't want to kill anybody, not really." Norse turned slowly, facing each one of the surrounding group in turn, still strangely in command with the force of his personality. "I wanted to kill the pomposity. The pride. The hubris! The academic arrogance, the smugness, the indifference. It was the station that killed you people, not me! The delusion that a place like this can work."

Lewis was trembling with impatience and outrage, desperate to know what had happened to the woman who'd saved him. But he had to communicate with this man, and that meant tolerating him for a few moments longer. "It's over, Doc," he tried, his face battered, his voice hoarse. "Give it up and maybe we can get you help come spring."

Norse looked down at him, remote, lordly, distracted. "What possible help could I get from you?"

"Learning how to live."

Norse shook his head, snowflakes dancing past his brush of regrown hair. "You still don't understand, do you? I already died. Long, long ago."

They were quiet then, watching each other.

"What did you put in the tractor treads?" Norse finally asked. The quiet of the group, their will against him, was unnerving him.

"The meteorite," Lewis said.

"And it's gone?"

"Yes."

"Destroyed?"

"Yes."

"Fitting, no?"

"Good riddance," Lewis said. "I hate that rock. Everyone does."

"Where did you find it?"

"With Pika, where you murdered him."

"He betrayed you, you know. We can't know anybody, can we?"

"Where's Abby, dammit?"

"Did you know that Pika sold you out for a few pounds of space rock? Quiet little Pika, who never seemed to know what was going on? Yet when I offered him the meteorite he showed me the way past the barrier into the fuel arch. I told him I was just fueling the jerricans to escape. I told him I was going to take him to Vostok. He ran away from me to try to fix things with you when he learned the truth. But it's always too late to fix things. That's what I've learned."

Lewis had a growing feeling of chill dread. "What truth?"

"That I'm still a step ahead of you, Lewis. That I've always been a step ahead. And the fact that you've cornered me out here, brought me down like a pack of yapping mongrel dogs, means nothing. Because I've already erased all of you."

"Did you kill Abby?" His voice was hollow. He felt sick.

"I loved Abby. She failed at loving me. So I'm giving her the quicker end. I opened some valves and the fuel level is rising in the arch, creeping up her parka where she's tied, and she'll either drown in jet fuel or ignite like a torch when it flashes into fire. Either way it's relatively quick and really quite merciful compared to freezing to death in the cold. I'm just letting her think about her rejection of me before her death comes. Believe me, you'll envy her- in your own last hours. I lied about what it would have been like if we'd left you on the stake. Freezing is a terrible way to go."

"Bob, it's not too late," Lewis tried. "Tell us what you've done. Help us make it right. We can fix it."

"The arch is filling with spilled fuel." Norse nodded solemnly. "The dome is becoming a bomb. If you'd left things alone you would have incinerated in the galley before you knew what was happening, which was the mercy I had planned for you. Now you can watch it from out here, your shelter vaporizing. The living will envy the dead."

The group looked up at him in disbelief. "But why?" Dana finally asked, her voice quavering.

"Because people don't work. Because it all falls apart on the way to Pluto."

There was a low keening sound as the winter-overs began to comprehend what he must have done. An enveloping dread at their own fate.

"Unfortunately, you didn't give me time to stop and destroy the generator at the Hypertats so there's a chance you can linger for days, maybe weeks. So I'm really leaving you with a final choice. The dilemma is my final gift to you. You can go back into the dome and try to save Dixon and risk dying with her. Or you can retreat to the emergency camp and try to save yourselves."

He reached in his parka and they stiffened, but it was only to pull out a sheaf of paper. "As you're freezing to death you might read some notes I made. It explains why you'll choose to save yourselves. Why our collective failure was inevitable. Why your mistake was in trusting each other. Trusting anybody! Every one of us is selfish at the final moment. So don't pity Abby. Pity yourselves." He glanced at his watch. "I'm guessing the rest of you have about thirty minutes."

"Tell us how to shut it off, dammit!" shouted Geller.

"This way," said Norse. And with that he turned the gun, pressed its twin barrels against the roof of his mouth, and fired.

The top of the barrier that sealed off the fuel arch had been crafted enough to keep out intruders but not to keep out air. There were cracks to see through and enough of a stench of petroleum to announce the explosive danger. The surviving winter-overs had spilled down the entry ramp to the archways and were bunched at the makeshift fuel arch wall, puddles leaking ominously from its base and the barrier groaning at the weight of the rising fuel behind it. The group boosted Lewis up to a crevice so he could shine a light into the gloom beyond. He reeled from the fumes, shouting down to the others to break out the fire masks. Then he took a fresh breath, held it, and aimed his light inside.

The sight was sickening. The fuel arch had become a black combustible lake, the tanks emptying to fill the Quonset-shaped structure a third of the way up its walls. Partway down the tunnel he saw a slumped figure tied to some of the tank plumbing, the fuel lapping at her chest. Abby!

Something was bobbing in the fuel beside her. He played his light across it and recognized a half-inflated weather balloon. What the hell? Wires went every which way into the fuel and above it, and just as lines of longitude converged at the Pole, the wires converged upon some small implement hung above the rising lake. He shone his light on that, trying to figure out what it was.

With recognition came fear. The flare gun! Lewis dimly recalled Norse asking it be brought to him.

What fools they'd been.

As the fuel level rose, the balloon was rising with it. One of the wires leading into the ooze was slack but as the balloon floated upward…

Norse had turned the entire station into a time bomb.

Lewis pulled his head back, dizzy from the fumes, thinking desperately. Then he told the others to let him down.

"Did you see her?" Molotov asked.

Lewis was coughing, nauseous from the poisonous fog. One step ahead, Norse had claimed. "She's there, and I can't tell if she's still alive. The whole arch has become a lake of fuel with gases above it. Norse wasn't lying; he opened some valves. The fuel's rising and I don't see how we could find the valves in that goop to shut the flood off."

"Jesus," Geller said.

"Listen, that's not the worst of it. The bastard has rigged some kind of trigger, I think. I'm not quite sure how it works, but one of Jerry's weather balloons is floating on the fuel and as it rises a wire is tightening on the trigger of the flare gun."

"What?" Dana cried.

"When the fuel level gets high enough, I think, the flare goes off."

"Oh my God," Linda gasped. "It's some kind of trap!"

"A simple one," guessed Gage Perlin, their plumber. "Like the way a float in a toilet tank rises high enough to trigger a valve to shut off the refilling water." He was thinking. "A wire from the trigger goes to a pulley at the bottom and up to the balloon…"