Frozen Solid A Novel

45




THE LAB HALLIE HAD USED WAS NOW LOCKED, BUT MAYNARD Blaine had a key. Merritt’s key, actually, one of the two GGMs that opened all doors. Graeter had told Merritt that he was leading the SAR team out to look for Fido and taking Leland. A two-hour process, at minimum. That would be more than enough time.

Most labs at the station were similar in size and shape—rectangles twenty feet wide and twenty-five long. The equipment varied from discipline to discipline. Blaine passed through the lab’s small outer office and had no trouble finding what he was looking for. Emily had told him that they kept the extremophile tank in a freezer to replicate the cryopeg’s water temperature. It was toward the rear of the lab, flush against one wall.

Lifting the freezer’s lid, he saw the thirty-gallon glass tank that held the sample Leland had retrieved. He looked down into the water, which wasn’t clear like normal aquarium water—but then, this wasn’t a normal aquarium. The water was hypersaline, and so much salt would have an almost colloidal effect, accounting for the cloudiness.

He could see the thing down on the bottom of the tank. Leaning over the surface of the water, he sniffed and was surprised at how it smelled. Not like the cold, salt tang of the Maine ocean, nor the smoother, softer scent of warm bodies like the Caribbean. This was entirely different. The closest analogue he could pull out of memory was model airplane glue.

Then it changed. Right while he was looking down into the water, the scent altered in a matter of seconds to something much stronger and sharper, a vinegary, ammoniac smell that stung his eyes and nose. He jerked back.

What the hell? But then he understood. He had just exposed the tank to much warmer air. And much different. They had filled it with cryopeg water only the day before. The stuff hadn’t seen light or fresh air for, what, fifty million years? No wonder it reacted oddly. Maybe it was the solutional equivalent of spoilage, like cut apples turning brown when exposed to oxygen.

In one pocket of his lab coat he carried a ten-milliliter syringe with a two-inch, fifteen-gauge needle. The syringe was filled with a 10 percent solution of sodium hypochlorite—the great nemesis of microorganisms. Whatever you had that needed killing—bacteria, viruses, fungi—good old NaOCl, also known as chlorine bleach, got the job done. It terminated the worst of the worst—Ebola, smallpox, plague—with equal aplomb. He had no doubt it would work against this stuff they had fished out of the cryopeg. There was no way on earth it would ever have had contact with a modern compound like sodium hypochlorite. Easy as killing a baby.

He used a flashlight to see the specimen more clearly. Bright orange with yellow spots, texture like cauliflower, about the size and shape of a zucchini squash. How had Leland brought back so much? And why? The retrieval container Emily had shown him hadn’t been much bigger than a large cigar tube. On her trip, Leland must have wanted to make sure they had enough for multiple experiments.

He took the syringe from his pocket and pulled off the needle’s plastic tip protector. Then he leaned over the tank again. The ammonia reek was worse. He held his breath, but he had to keep his eyes open to see the extremophile, and they burned as if he had been slicing onions. He put his right hand in the water—and gasped. It wasn’t the dull, blunt pain cold water usually caused. This burned. He almost dropped the syringe. He would have to do this very quickly or his hand would become too numb to use.

He injected chlorine solution into the biomatter over and over. When he finished and pulled his hand out, he could barely feel the syringe in his slow-moving fingers. He rubbed his hands together until some feeling returned to the right one. He closed the freezer and stood for a few seconds by the inner lab door, surveying the area to make sure he was leaving no evidence of his visit.

Satisfied, he switched off the light and left, locking the door behind him.