The muted silence inside the building’s airlock was almost unnerving after the endless, shrieking wind. Cass pushed back her parka’s hood, stripped off her mask and balaclava, and savored the feeling of safety. By normal standards, the tiny room wasn’t really warm and the squall had pushed snow through the millimeters-wide gap between the door and the wall to lie in drifts on the floor, but it was a refuge after what she’d waded through.
She kicked the snow away from the inner door, then pushed it open. A blast of warmth hit her and goose bumps raced over her body at the sudden temperature shift. Beyond was a mudroom of sorts. She slammed the door shut with a boom and stripped off her parka and bear claws, the bulkiest parts of the ECW gear.
Once past the mudroom, the COBRA lab building expanded into a colossal space the size of two or three barns. Dominating the center and reaching up to a height of about sixty feet was a single massive dish antenna that she’d been told could both project and collect through the domed roof that sheltered the lab proper. The dish was on a ten-foot-tall concrete pedestal that served as a de facto wall for about ten office cubes surrounding its base; scaffolding and metal stairs led up to the pedestal from the concrete main floor. The atmosphere was hushed; COBRA provided enough shelter that the sounds of the frigid hell outside had been reduced to a soft white noise, interrupted only by electronic noises and the whirring of computer cooling fans.
She cleared her throat, but her voice came out as a croak. She wasn’t used to yelling. “Jun?”
There was no answer. She frowned. You might not hear the outer door, but no one could’ve missed the noise of the inner door slamming shut. She set off through the forest of desks and computer racks.
“Jun?” she called again, but the sound seemed swallowed by the dense equipment and mountains of scientific gear surrounding her. A large monitor caught her eye, distracting her as it frantically updated a chart. A solid blue line peaked and valleyed constantly as it recorded some kind of astrophysical data every half second.
Wandering around the antenna, she came across a workstation that seemed more lived-in than the others. A quilted winter coat hung over the back of a chair. A cup half filled with green tea sat on the desk. Deep dents on the seat of the chair indicated this was probably command-central for the lab. The rest of the workstations were only lightly used; perhaps manned only in the summer.
From her pockets, she pulled out the food she’d rescued from the cooler: a foil package of steak, a plastic container of mashed potatoes with the gravy already mixed in, and a single squashed dinner roll. Hunger tied her stomach in knots at the smells of the food, but she placed the packages on the desk noticing, as she did so, a single sheet of paper resting on top of the keyboard. Cass tilted her head. In an environment as hostile and scientific as the South Pole, seeing paper that wasn’t already in a book was almost weird. Glancing guiltily over a shoulder, she leaned forward. She only meant to skim the contents, but when she saw the opening line, she picked up the paper and started to read. It was a printed e-mail.
Jun , it began, this is a terrible thing to send you in the middle of your time down at Shackleton, but this isn’t something that can wait .
With a growing feeling of dread, she read the rest of the page, although she knew what it was going to say. Jun’s wife was leaving him. Unable to wait the five more months until he returned, she had filed for divorce. The words of the e-mail expressed regret and even some reluctance, but the intent was clear and unmistakable.
Sick for Jun’s sake, Cass carefully put the paper back. What kind of heartless bitch would drop that kind of bombshell while someone was trapped at the South Pole for nine months? She looked back at the sheet. And an e-mail ? She hadn’t had the guts to make a satellite call for something this important?
Cass raised her head, flushed with guilt. If Jun wasn’t responding, there might be a good reason for it; he didn’t want to talk to anyone after getting news like this. On the other hand, he could probably use someone to talk to. She wasn’t exactly in Keene’s league, but she knew something about getting through tough times.
She continued around the pedestal, feeling like a prowler. The stillness in the air made her jumpy, a kind of anxiety increased by the occasional surge in the distant wind as it suddenly shifted direction and went from the soft hiss she’d noticed to an audible assault on the building.