Deception Point Page 42

Gabrielle saw the door and head expressive styleed for it.On my desk by eight oclock to dark, Gabrielle. Be smart. Tench tossed her the folder of photographs on her way out. tick rancid them, sweetie. Weve got plenty more.48Rachel Sexton felt a growing cool down inside as she locomote down the ice sheet into a deepening night. Disquieting images swirled in her mind-the meteorite, the phosphorescent plankton, the implications if Norah Mangor had made a slide with the ice cores.A solid matrix of freshwater ice, Norah had argued, reminding them all that she had drill cores all most the argona as well as in a flash over the meteorite. If the glacier contained saltwater interstices filled with plankton, she would have let outn them. Wouldnt she? Nonetheless, Rachels intuition kept returning to the simplest solution.Thither are plankton frozen in this glacier.Ten minutes and cardinal gleams later, Rachel and the others were approximately 250 paces from the habisphere. Without warning, Norah stopped short. This is the spot, she said, sounding like a water-witch diviner who had mystically sensed the perfect spot to drill a well.Rachel turned and glanced up the slope behind them. The habisphere had long since disappeared into the dim, moonlit night, but the line of flares was understandably visible, the farthest one twinkling reassuringly like a give out star. The flares were in a perfectly straight line, like a guardedly calculated runway. Rachel was impressed with Norahs skills.Another reason we let the sled go first, Norah called out when she saw Rachel admiring the line of flares. The runners are straight. If we let gravity race the sled and we dont interfere, were guaranteed to travel in a straight line.Neat trick, Tolland yelled. esteem thither were something like that for the open sea.This IS the open sea, Rachel thought, picturing the ocean on a lower floor them. For a split second, the most distant flame caught her attention. It had disappear ed, as if the hang had been blotted out by a passing form. A moment later, though, the bring down reappeared. Rachel felt a sudden uneasiness. Norah, she yelled over the wind, did you say there were polar bears up here?The glaciologist was preparing a final flare and both did not hear or was ignoring her.Polar bears, Tolland yelled, eat seals. They only ack-ack gun humans when we invade their space.But this is polar bear country, right? Rachel could never remember which pole had bears and which had penguins.Yeah, Tolland shouted sand. Polar bears actually give the opposite its name. Arktos is Greek for bear.Terrific. Rachel gazed nervously into the dark.Antarctica has no polar bears, Tolland said. So they call it Anti-arktos.Thanks, Mike, Rachel yelled. seemly talk of polar bears.He laughed. Right. Sorry.Norah pressed a final flare into the snow. As before, the four of them were engulfed in a reddish glow, looking bloated in their black weather suits. Beyond the circle of lig ht emanating from the flare, the rest of the area became totally invisible, a circular shroud of blackness engulfing them.As Rachel and the others looked on, Norah deep-seated her feet and used careful overhand motions to reel the sled several yards affirm up the slope to where they were standing. Then, keeping the traffic circle taut, she crouched and manually activated the sleds talon brakes-four move spikes that dug into the ice to keep the sled stationary. That done, she s as well asd up and brushed herself finish, the rope around her waist falling slack.All right, Norah shouted. Time to go to work.The glaciologist circled to the downwind end of the sled and began unfastening the butterfly eyelets holding the protective sail over the gear. Rachel, feeling like she had been a little hard on Norah, moved to help by unfastening the rear of the flap.Jesus, NO Norah yelled, her head snapping up. Dont ever do thatRachel recoiled, confused.Never unfasten the upwind side Norah sa id. Youll render a wind sock This sled would have taken off like an umbrella in a wind tunnelRachel endorse off. Im sorry. I She glared. You and space boy shouldnt be out here.None of us should, Rachel thought.Amateurs, Norah seethed, cursing the administrators insistence on sending Corky and Sexton along. These clowns are going to get someone killed out here. The last thing Norah cherished right now was to play baby-sitter.Mike, she said, I need help lifting the GPR off the sled.Tolland helped her unpack the Ground Penetrating Radar and position it on the ice. The dick looked like three miniature snowplow blades that had been affixed in twin to an aluminum frame. The entire pull was no more than a yard long and was connected by cables to a current attenuator and a marine battery on the sled.Thats radar? Corky asked, yelling over the wind.Norah nodded in silence. Ground Penetrating Radar was far more equipped to see brine ice than PODS was. The GPR transmitter sent pulses of electromagnetic energy by means of the ice, and the pulses bounced differently off substances of differing crystal structure. Pure freshwater froze in a flat, shingled lattice. However, seawater froze in more of a meshed or threefold lattice on account of its sodium content, causing the GPR pulses to bounce seat erratically, greatly diminishing the number of reflections.Norah powered up the machine. Ill be winning a kind of echo-location dog-sectional image of the ice sheet around the extraction pit, she yelled. The machines internal software exit render a cross section of the glacier and then print it out. Any sea ice will register as a shadow.Printout? Tolland looked surprised. You can print out here?Norah pointed to a cable from the GPR leading to a device still defend under the canopy. No choice but to print. Computer screens use too much valuable battery power, so field glaciologists print information to heat-transfer printers. Colors arent brilliant, but laser toner c lumps below neg twenty. Learned that the hard way in Alaska.Norah asked everyone to stand on the downhill side of the GPR as she watchful to align the transmitter such that it would scan the area of the meteorite hole, almost three football fields away. But as Norah looked back through the night in the general direction from which they had come, she couldnt see a damn thing. Mike, I need to align the GPR transmitter with the meteorite site, but this flare has me blinded. Im going back up the slope on the dot enough to get out of the light. Ill hold my arms in line with the flares, and you adjust the alignment on the GPR.Tolland nodded, kneeling down beside the radar device.Norah stamped her crampons into the ice and leaned forward against the wind as she moved up the incline toward the habisphere. The katabatic today was much stronger than shed imagined, and she sensed a storm coming in. It didnt matter. They would be done here in a matter of minutes. Theyll see Im right. Norah cl omped twenty yards back toward the habisphere. She reached the edge of the darkness just as the belay rope went taut.Norah looked back up the glacier. As her eye adjusted to the dark, the line of flares slowly came into view several degrees to her left. She shifted her position until she was perfectly lined up with them. Then she held her arms out like a compass, turning her body, indicating the exact vector. Im in line with them now she yelled.Tolland adjusted the GPR device and waved. All set