Outside, the wind was so strong that he could lean completely into it and still remain upright. He put his head down and plowed slowly ahead, clinging to the guide ropes that had been strung along all the concourses between the labs and the communal modules. Off to his left, the lights were burning bright in Ackerley’s botany lab. He hadn’t seen Ackerley lately, it occurred to him, and he thought it might be nice to drop in and say hello. Maybe even snag a fresh strawberry or two.
When he got to the wooden trellis in front of the door, he had to hang on until a particularly powerful gust of wind had passed, then he swung himself up the ramp and into the lab. Ackerley had rigged up a double sheet of thick plastic to stop the drafts from the door, and once Darryl had parted the curtains, he found himself in the familiar heat, humidity, and bright light of the lab. I should come here more often, he thought—it’s like a vacation to the South Seas.
“Hey, Ackerley,” he called, while stomping his feet on the rubber mats. “I need some salad fixings!”
But the voice that answered him wasn’t Ackerley’s—it was Lawson’s—and it came from behind some metal partitions. Darryl shrugged off his parka and hat and gloves and goggles, draping them on a rickety coatrack fashioned from a whale’s bone, and went in search of Lawson.
He found him on a stepstool, tending to a cluster of ripe red strawberries hanging from a latticework of misting pipes. All around his head there were other clumps of gleaming wet fruit, and on tables there were clear containers holding a veritable jungle of other plants—tomatoes, radishes, Bibb lettuce, roses, and, most wonderful of all, orchids. The orchids came in a dozen different colors, from white to fuchsia to golden yellow. They rose up on strangely tilting stalks that looked like the legs of cranes.
“What are you doing here?” Darryl asked. “Isn’t that Ackerley’s job?”
“Just helping out,” Lawson said, noncommittally.
“It’s like Hawaii in here,” Darryl said, putting his face up to the bright, warming lights that were mounted in the ceiling above the pipes. “No wonder Ackerley hates to leave.” Darryl eyed a particularly succulent-looking strawberry and said, “You think he’d mind if I tried one?”
Lawson glanced down from the stool. “No. Go ahead.”
Darryl reached up and plucked the lowest of the hanging berries, then popped it into his mouth. Uncle Barney turned out a lot of good food from the commons galley, but there was nothing to beat the flavor of a strawberry fresh from the vine.
“Where is he, by the way?”
Lawson shrugged. “Ask Murphy.”
That seemed odd to Darryl. Why would Murphy know? And it was also odd that anyone else was there when Ackerley wasn’t; he was a lot like Darryl in that way—he didn’t like strangers roaming around his lab when he wasn’t there.
Come to think of it, the place didn’t look right, either. Usually it was spic-and-span. But off to one side, Darryl could see a clumsy path where a couple of cabinets had been overturned, spilling dirt and lichens and moss samples onto the floor. A broom and dustpan leaned up against one of the racks, along with a black plastic garbage bag that appeared to be full of refuse. What’s going on? Has Lawson been appointed the new assistant gardener?
Darryl tried a couple more conversational gambits, but he got the distinct impression that Lawson wanted him out of the lab. Normally, the guy was pretty friendly—even, at times, positively gregarious—but not today. Maybe he wasn’t happy about his new duty and just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.
Darryl thanked him for the strawberry and put all his gear back on. Sometimes it felt like he spent half his time at pole just taking off and putting on the same layers of clothing.
Leaving the botany lab, he slogged toward the main quadrant, holding tight again to the guide ropes. The snow was so thick in the air it was hard to see more than a few yards ahead, but when he approached the administration module, he saw Murphy and Michael, their own heads down, forging their way across the concourse and toward some of the storage buildings. He’d have called out to them, but he knew his voice would be obliterated by the wind. Instead, he just followed in their path. They were heading for one of the ramshackle sheds, where they unfastened the padlock on the corrugated steel doors, then slipped inside.
Darryl’s curiosity was aroused. Never, he thought, present a scientist with a mystery that you don’t then expect him to try to solve.
Darryl sidled into the shed, and after whipping off his snowy goggles, looked around. He was in a kind of anteroom, but even it was filled with crates of kitchen and camp supplies. There was another pair of steel doors just beyond, and they were open, too—leading into what Darryl guessed had once served as a huge meat locker and storeroom.
He stepped inside, then stopped dead when he saw Murphy whirl around on him, with a gun extended. Michael was armed, too, with a speargun.
“Mother of God, what the fuck are you doing here?” Murphy said in an urgent whisper.
Darryl was still too shocked by the weaponry to reply.
Michael lowered the spear, and said, “Okay, what’s done is done. Just stay back and be quiet.”
“Why?”