Halfway around the circuit of the antenna pedestal, she distinctly felt as though she were alone in the building. There had been a set of ECW gear in the changing room by the door that she’d assumed was Jun’s, but it wasn’t unusual to have extra nearby as a precaution. He could’ve been so dismayed by his wife’s e-mail that he had grabbed his set of gear, suited up, and returned to Shackleton to nurse his pain before Cass had even set out for COBRA.
The idea made rational sense, but rang hollow to her. Jun was too much of a professional—everyone at Shackleton was too much of a professional—to let even the worst news interfere with his work. Had he cut out of a twelve-hour shift early to get some alone time in a different setting, he would’ve asked Anne or one of the other astrophysicists to take over. Maybe he’d lie about being sick or find another excuse, but he wouldn’t simply abandon his post.
She was standing still, considering the idea, when she raised her head to look at the concave inner face of the enormous antenna. Most of the interior lighting was on the workstation side of the building, so the greater part of the structure was in shadow, giving the dish the appearance of a waning moon. Its surface was smooth, with a dull gray finish. Beneath the dish was a steel framework superstructure that acted as a support, but Cass guessed from the sight of hydraulics that it was also used to position the antenna.
Her eyes followed the edge of the dish, running around the outside of it like a finger would trace the rim of a bowl, until her gaze stopped on the object that had drawn her gaze inexorably upward.
The simple, final horror of what she was seeing was too much for her to process in the first few seconds. The collection of scientific debris and paraphernalia made Jun appear, at first sight, like simply another piece of equipment. It wasn’t until her eyes, following his body downward, stopped at his shoes—the small, battered sneakers with a hole in the toe—that the full impact of what she was seeing hit her and she began to cry.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
She kept her cool until Taylor reached for her arm.
When, frantic and almost hysterical, she’d been unable to raise anyone on the building-to-building comm system, Cass had thrown on her parka and gear, then raced out of the COBRA building. Luck was with her—the wind had mercifully died down to a stiff breeze, allowing her to use the weak light from her headlamp, her own occasional footprints, and some dead reckoning to make her way back to the flag line.
Some sense of self-preservation was screaming at her to slow down, but the vision of Jun’s body slumped against the curved frame of the antenna overruled everything. Gasping and crying, her tears freezing to her face, she tripped and jogged as fast as she could back to Shackleton, barely maintaining a hand on the flag line and, at some points, just keeping the nylon rope in sight so she could keep up her speed.
She made it back to the base in fifteen minutes, banging open the door to Destination Zulu and shucking her parka and gear, dumping everything inside the foyer. She raced along the hall to the galley, following the noise of a party in full swing, wiping her face and pressing her hands to her face as she went.
Cass burst into the room unnoticed thanks to the carousing. The lighting was a hellish patchwork of overhead bulbs that had been removed to make a kind of mood lighting and a single tiny disco ball turning forlornly in the center of the ceiling. Hip-hop music blared tinnily from speakers in one corner. Most of the crew was on its feet, dancing or shouting conversations at one another, happy to forget the fear and anxiety of the last few days. The heat was on, the electricity worked, and life at the South Pole was back on track.
Cass scanned the room, frustrated, trying to find someone to talk to, someone to scream at. The smell of the food was nauseating now. Ruddy faces, drunk on good times or just drunk, mugged at her like fun-house distortions, the fumes of the booze on their breath making her want to vomit. Someone, Tim, maybe, made as if to steal a kiss. While bobbing away from him, she caught a glimpse of Hanratty, sober as a judge, watching the party from a corner of the galley as though observing a social science experiment.
“Hey, take it easy,” someone said as she shoved her way through the crowd. A hand plucked at her shirt as if to slow her down. She chopped down and the fingers disappeared with a curse.
There . From across the room, she could see Hanratty watching her. Something in her face must’ve alarmed him; he turned to Taylor, who had appeared almost magically at his side, then the two of them intercepted her before she’d made it halfway through the galley.
“What is it?”
“You son of a bitch,” she yelled, but the music was too loud for anyone but Hanratty and Taylor to hear her. “You and your fucking test just killed a man.”
His dark eyes shone dangerously bright, shrinking and growing as the lights flickered. “What are you talking about?”
“Jun. You know, Jun? The scientist?”
“What about him?”