The simple sentence made her mouth go dry. “So what should I do? What’s coming next?”
“You’re an engineer,” he said, the distance and static making his voice robotic and impersonal. “Suppose you have a mysterious substance whose tensile strength is unknown. How do you find out how strong it is?”
“A stress test,” Cass said automatically.
“And what happens if the test doesn’t break the subject?”
A hollow feeling opened up in her chest, like a rock falling down an unplumbed well. “You keep trying until it does.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Alone, Leroy sat at one of the galley tables facing the outer wall and talked to the wind.
People passed him, trays or cups in hand, sitting or conversing within arm’s reach. No one spoke to him. Had they, he would not have heard them.
But no one did. Behavior thought of as strange back in February was taken for granted in May. Most of Shackleton’s crew had started to fade in and out, victims of the lack of light and mental stimulation. T3. The Antarctic stare. Long-eye. Whatever you called it, people recognized it and appreciated the right of others to indulge.
Hours slipped by. Someone asked Leroy to move slightly so he could wipe the table down. He lifted his arms, then put them back down on the tabletop without blinking or recognizing who had made the request. Gale-force winds on the other side of the wall surged and faded, ripping across the face of the station. They’d long since passed into winter’s full darkness and almost nothing could be seen out of any of the galley’s windows; only rarely did a gust throw snow so violently against the glass that it could be seen.
Leroy’s lips moved as he answered the wind. He did so without a sound except for an occasional whimper. From time to time, a shudder would ripple through him from the skin on the back of his head down to the muscles in the small of his back, but he was otherwise motionless.
Throughout his vigil, the wind was constant, thrashing against the walls of the station then subsiding to a low hiss. Only once did it build into such a towering wave that it seemed to actually shake the building. The few people left in the galley glanced up, then went back to their conversations, relegating the wind to nothing more than background noise.
But Leroy, rigid in his seat, listened to the keening wind with wide eyes. When it finally tapered off, he let out a long, low groan, then rose unsteadily to his feet. He stumbled over to the buffet and grabbed handfuls of crackers and dry goods before tottering out of the galley. He proceeded directly to his berth, where he threw the food in a sack, gathered a few essential things, then headed to the Beer Can and followed the stairs down, deep into the dark.
PART IV
JUNE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ron Ayres frowned at his laptop. According to his records, Leroy Buskins hadn’t refilled his bimonthly prescriptions in more than three weeks.
What was he on, again? Ron clicked through several screens, having trouble even remembering much about the man. Leroy was one of those quiet, self-effacing types who, despite his size, had seemed to be perpetually in a corner, even if he was sitting in the middle of a room.
Oh, hell. That’s right . Amoxapine and iloperidone. How’d he forgotten that ? His frown deepened and he flicked through several more screens. The automatic e-mail alert he should’ve received when Leroy was three days delinquent had been turned off.
Without taking his eyes from his laptop, he called to the front room. “Beth?”
Beth Mu?ez, the station’s nurse, poked her head around the corner, eyebrows raised.
Ron tapped his screen with a fingernail. “You haven’t been making any changes in the pharma software, have you?”
“No, of course not. Why?”
“Leroy Buskins is way overdue for a pickup, but his alert’s been toggled off.”
She came fully into the room to look over his shoulder. “Wasn’t me. Now that I think of it, though, it has been a while since he’s come in. What’s he taking again?”
Ron pointed at the screen. “Something he shouldn’t be missing.”
She grunted. “Not good.”
“Definitely suboptimal.” He pushed his chair back. “Hold down the fort for me, will you? I’m going to check up on him.”