Dark Winter (47 page)

"Norse is a good talker, but it doesn't make sense. It's him against eighteen or nineteen witnesses, and he knows we'll get the radios back up sometime, that we'll alert NSF and the Russians."

"He's crazy, Jed," Calhoun offered.

"Is he? If Norse takes that Spryte, he not only gets away with murder, but he takes away our only emergency exit in case something goes wrong. What if he's screwing up the base right now, sentencing us all?"

"He can't get to the fuel or generators," Pulaski said. "We sealed those up."

"So how is he getting to the garage to get the Spryte? When you sealed off the generator room you sealed off the garage, too, didn't you?"

That stopped them.

"Maybe he's breaking in or something," Geller said. "He'd have to. Pika is the only one who knows a way to get in. Who has a key."

Lewis let his eyes scan the room. "So where's Pika?"

Heads turned, their apathy becoming alarm. Had Norse kidnapped him, too?

"If Bob is planning to bring down the temple like some kind of deranged Samson, we need him alive to tell us how to defuse whatever he's cooked up. Don't we? We can't afford to let him set off for Vostok because then he's free to pull the plug on this place. Booby-trap it, like the batteries in Comms."

"Set a fire," Pulaski said. "Cut a cable."

"We're sitting like hams in a can, waiting for him to do it."

They looked at the galley door. What if Norse had anticipated this very conversation? What if he was outside the door, waiting for one of them to test his threat? Or was he already firing up the Spryte, the station generators about to explode?

"Maybe we need to get out of here and into emergency shelter," Dana said quietly. "Run the bloody hell to Bedrock Village."

"If it comes to that. But I'm not sure I'm willing to write off the rest of the station for this guy. Willing to sit out there, hoping for the best."

"I hear you on that," Mendoza said.

"If he's got Pika's keys, or Pika himself," Lewis reminded them, "he can go anywhere, do anything. We're letting a lunatic roam the station."

"And if we go charging out there, we're not only going to get some of us killed, but Abby, too," Linda Brown warned. "If we just wait maybe it will be over."

"Or not. Maybe his experiment hasn't stopped. Why should we believe it has?"

Everyone was looking at Lewis uneasily, suddenly restless, suddenly uncertain again. Every choice seemed risky.

"I care for Abby more than any of you. But Norse is counting on us to react, not anticipate. That's been his expectation from the beginning. He's counting on us to be a step behind him."

"He said if we go out that door- " Linda began.

"That's my whole point. He said."

"But what do you want us to do?"

Lewis stopped. What should they do? He thought a moment. "If he sees us coming, he's got more chance to hurt Abby or hurt the station. We need to take him by surprise. If he's really fleeing, then he has to already be in the garage gassing up. Right? He's got to be getting ready. So he can't see us. There's only one of him. Let's go outside, circle around to the garage doors, and jump him when he comes out."

"What about the generators?" Mendoza said. "What if he's rigged them to blow when he leaves? Blow if we come at him?"

Lewis paused. "Is that possible?"

"Who knows? He seemed awfully sure we won't survive long enough to sic the authorities on him."

"Okay, how about this? A few of us should go that way- sneak into the garage the back way in case he tries to retreat. Check for any sabotage. Take him from behind with the rest in front. We'll surround the bastard."

"How do we get in?"

"The same way Norse did, I hope. I just remembered something. Pika's been going to BioMed like a horse to a feed bag but there's no sign he's sick. When I found Nancy in the storeroom there was a cabinet askew, a panel behind it, and I'm wondering now if there's some kind of utility access there to the arches. I'd like to take Longfellow through in case there's some electrical thing Norse has rigged to booby-trap our power. You, too, Carl. See if we can find Abby before he takes off in the Spryte, and get her safe. Then the rest of you can block him."

"He's got a gun!" Linda Brown reminded.

"Homemade, we think. With two shots."

The others looked queasy, apprehensive, but with a slowly hardening resolve. They'd lost all sense of control. Maybe, following Lewis, they could somehow get it back.

"If any one of us tries it alone we'll be killed," Lewis said. "Any two of us, maybe. But with all of us, everyone distracting him…" He shrugged. "We win."

"With casualties," Pulaski warned.

"But not as lame victims."

Geller was nodding, too. He stood up. "I agree. We're sitting here like sheep."

"So we give him a shot at us?" Linda asked.

"We ambush him."

Others were nodding now, too. The idea of doing something, acting together, was beginning to reenergize them.

"I just want him to go away," Linda moaned.

"No. Because if he gets away, he wins," Lewis said. "He leaves us like lab rats, pressing levers and chasing cheese. Don't you see? Norse wants to erase everything Mickey Moss built by making us give up on it ourselves."

It was disorienting listening now to Lewis, the man they'd almost killed.

So it was Clyde Skinner who ended the last hesitation. He unsteadily stood.

"I don't want him to get away with my eyes."

Lewis stepped out of the galley first, bracing for a shot despite the bland certainty about Norse's movements he'd conveyed to the others. What if he was wrong?

But no shot came. The shadowy dome seemed empty, a soft slough of wind audible through the hole at the top of the dome. He heard nothing else, saw nothing else. So he stepped down to the snow and waved the others out, watching them pour silently like a line of emerging bees, trotting across the snow to the junction of the archways where the ramp was. Still no Bob. To the left and right were the barrier walls they'd erected to seal off the fuel supply and generators. They hadn't been breached, and the door to the outside was still bolted and locked. If he was in the garage, Norse had followed Pika's way.

"Okay, there has to be some kind of tunnel or corridor," Lewis told the others. "Go outside and get in position, we'll push from behind. Stay low, but move fast once it starts. With luck, we'll surprise him."

Pulaski unlocked the dome's smaller side door and the winter-overs began filing out into the night, going up the ramp as they had before to stake out Lewis. This time, if Lewis was right, they'd stop the Spryte. If wrong, they'd retreat to the emergency camp at Bedrock and regroup. Pulaski had told them that the galley suddenly seemed like the worst kind of trap.

"Unless Bob wants us to abandon the galley," Hiro muttered.

"We Yanks had a general named Grant once whose officers were always spooked by a general named Lee," Pulaski told him. "Grant told them to stop worrying what Lee was going to do and start thinking what they were going to do."

"What happened?"

"They won the war."

Lewis turned with Longfellow and Mendoza to BioMed. The trio studied the sick bay module, which stood on stilts a foot above the snow. Crouching, Lewis could now see there was one point at the rear where a metal culvert led from the sick bay floor down into the snow. Stepping back to view its roof, he noted there was a tube of utility piping that reached to the arched ceiling above, conduits spreading like branches. Some kind of artery ran up the back of BioMed like a spine. It was here, he was certain, that Pika went in and out.

With everyone suspect, no one had been trusted to have access to their power supply. The necessary exception had been their generator mechanic. Norse must have coerced him into showing the way. Coerced him into getting the Spryte.

BioMed's door was half open; the snapped lock had made it impossible for the fugitive to secure it after himself. The three men went inside. It was much as before except that Skinner's bed was empty. Medical supplies remained scattered, drawers askew, the shelves where Lewis had been tackled were still toppled. The cold had invaded, and broken liquids had frozen into thin platters. Lewis went to the rear room. Poor Nancy Hodge lay in the wreckage of her life, her corpse stiff from cold. In the confusion that had followed the murder, her body had been shockingly forgotten. Now she'd have to wait even longer for commemoration. Lewis stepped over her to the cabinet he'd seen dragged askew.

He saw the panel in back of it was now removed. Cold air swirled into BioMed from the dark air beyond. Had Pika been forced to show this entryway to Norse?

Lewis poked his head in and looked downward. No light, but a faint glimmer from spaces beyond. He couldn't risk his own light. If he came upon Norse, he wanted it to be a surprise, which meant claustrophobic gloom again. "I hate tunnels," he murmured to Longfellow.

"Well, it can't be a very long one. I'll go first."

"No, I will, because it was my idea. Just in case he uses that gun."

Taking a breath, he climbed into the shaft and dropped down the short ladder inside it, finding himself in a utility culvert that led in both directions under the archways. Pipes ran here, more than he'd ever suspected existed. The station was as complex as a spaceship. He wondered if Tyson had hidden in here somewhere after Cameron was stabbed. There was enough light from the opening overhead to dimly see and he considered for a moment which way to go. In the direction of the fuel arch it was dark, with a sound like water running. Unlikely Norse would go that way: It was opposite of the garage. Back under the other archway, toward the generators and Spryte, there was a dim light of another opening. He began crawling in that direction, Longfellow and Mendoza following.

It was a tight, grubby, cold place, the thing Lewis hated most. But Pika must have come this way on his regular rounds to keep the plant running. Had Norse and Abby passed here, too? It occurred to Lewis that maybe the psychologist had known about this escape hatch all along. That maybe that's why he'd agreed to Pulaski's determination to seal up the archways, to lock them in the dome. But why would Pika tell him?

Lewis came to an opening overhead that light issued from and could hear the reassuring drum of the generators beyond. At least Norse hadn't cut their power. Cautiously he poked his head up and glanced around. As expected, he was in a corner of the generator room. No one. He pulled himself out of the tunnel and crouched near the reserve generator. The electrician and astronomer came up beside him.

"You see anything out of the ordinary?"

Longfellow crept from machine to machine. The middle one was drumming faithfully. No wires, no bombs, no monkey wrenches. "I think he's left them alone."

Lewis was surprised. Maybe Norse didn't care if he left witnesses. Maybe he was tired of killing. Maybe there was some booby trap they couldn't see.

"We have to make sure," Mendoza said.

"We do that by catching him," Lewis replied.

The three men began cautiously moving toward the gym and garage, giving the others time to circle around in the snow.

Suddenly there was the sharp pop of a gun. Lewis reflexively dropped at the bang, flinching from the expected whine of a bullet. Had Norse spotted them? The others fell with him. But there was no buzz, no thud of a projectile striking a hard surface, and he realized the bullet would have reached him before the bang anyway. The shot had been aimed at someone else. Had Norse gotten in a struggle with Abby? His stomach tightened at the thought of it. "Come on," he hissed. "Let's rush him." Determined to risk a confrontation, he moved forward. The others scuttled after him. Ahead there were footsteps and the slam of a door.

The gym was dark, the door to the garage beyond closed. Lewis trotted ahead and then tripped on something in the gloom, sprawling. Damn! Raggedy Ann, the CPR doll? He reached around. No, someone still warm and sticky. His heart hammering, he moved his hands along the head and body. Despite himself he felt a flood of relief. It wasn't Abby.

"Turn on a light," he whispered.

Longfellow felt along the wall until he found a switch, all of them blinking in the glare. The body was Pika's, they saw, sprawled as he tried to run back toward the generator room. His arm was outstretched, as if trying to score a goal, and his back was bloody. Norse had cut him down in midflight, the poor little bastard. His other arm was tucked under him and clutching something rough and heavy as tightly as a football. Lewis reached under and tugged it free.

It was the meteorite.

Then they heard the snort and roar of a revved-up Spryte.

Norse didn't open the bay doors that allowed him to exit the half-buried garage, he crashed through them as a precaution against surprise. Always a step ahead! His Spryte burst through in a blaze of light, spraying snow and plywood fragments like a tug butting a wave. The machine's headlights momentarily blinded the ring of winter-overs who'd hunched against the icy darkness to wait for their tormentor, and the violence of the breakout startled them. The machine lurched over the lip of the garage ramp and rocked back down, jerking a sled of fuel and supplies behind it. The engine's howl and the clanking of the treads made it sound like half dinosaur, half tank. When the beams finally swept by them and the cab was silhouetted against the stars, the ambushing group could see there were two people inside, Abby swaying uncertainly and Norse hunched at the wheel. It was obvious the psychologist planned to charge through the station and head toward Vostok as quickly as possible. No pause to say goodbye.

Pulaski was the first to stand up, running to take position in front of the lumbering tractor like a matador in front of a bull. The old soldier's blood was up now, his opponent finally plain and visible. "Come on!" he roared to the others. "Help me stop him!"