Black Ice by Matt Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

scientific edge: was there a way to measure the size of the lake? What type of life could be down there?
    â€˜We’ll go there together one day,’ he told her, ‘but first get your A levels out of the way.’
    But as Lauren revised for her exams a tragedy befell the family. Her father, who had been troubled by stomach pains for some months, finally went to have himself checked out; he was wheeled into a CT scanner on a bleak Monday morning and learned, twenty-four hours later, that he had cancer of the pancreas—the fastest and most deadly of all the intestinal cancers. It was inoperable, and five weeks later he was dead.
    His last words to Lauren were: ‘Sorry we won’t be going south together.’
    â€˜I’ll go for you,’ Lauren told him, ‘and I’ll find out more about your lake.’
    Her mother begged her to postpone her exams, certain that grief would destroy Lauren’s chances of doing well. In fact the opposite happened; she found herself fired by a fierce determination to do her father proud. She got four straight A’s and won a place at Cambridge to study Glacial Biology. Why Cambridge? Simple: the Scott Polar Research Institute was there.
    Lauren knew that the Scott Polar would, one day, be her ticket to the south, and she was right. After completing her degree, she joined the Scott Polar and was posted to Rothera, then Halley base, then seconded to the US Department of Science facility at the South Pole. She completed her postgraduate studies and moved on to her doctorate, but the lure of her father’s lake stayed with her throughout.
    One day, Lauren knew, she would raise the money to build her own base, right above the subterranean lake he had discovered.

15
    Lauren leaned into the wind, trying not to spill a drop of the coffee as she made her way to the drilling shed. Inside, drill extension number 58 was being attached to the head of the gantry. Sean was swarming all over it, tending to the massive Perkins diesel and the rig which stood in a tripod above it.
    Sean Lowery had proved to be a brilliant addition to the team, coming to Lauren’s attention after a series of sparkling recommendations by several of her colleagues. The young American engineer had spent three seasons up in Greenland working with a Scott Polar Institute team drawing cores from the ice cap, and his references were first rate.
    â€˜Sean’s your man,’ a fellow scientist had told Lauren. ‘He’s a brilliant mechanic, and he understands ice. He loves being out there in the wild too, any spare time we gave him he was out there climbing in the mountains all on his own.’
    â€˜Can he get along with a team?’
    â€˜No worries. He’s really laid-back. A little weird sometimes—like he talks to his machines—but he’s basically sound.’
    Lauren had flown Sean across from his Colorado home for an interview at her London laboratory. He was younger than she’d expected, still weatherbeaten from his most recent Greenland contract, his blond hair tied back in a ponytail that made him look more like a climber than an engineer. Lauren liked him instantly: there was something in his nomadic existence that echoed her own restless progression from one base to another.
    Sean said yes to a coffee and pulled out one of the lab stools to sit on as they got the small talk of weather, flights and the extortionate cost of London taxis out of the way. He watched her carefully as she poured steaming water out of the ancient kettle, deciding that his previous theory regarding the undesirability of female scientists was now blown firmly out of the water. Dressed in a simple white T-shirt and a pair of faded denim jeans, Lauren had the unmade-up beauty—and certainly the figure—of a model. With her dark, naturally curled hair and her earnest brown eyes, she looked a bit like a young Sigourney Weaver, Sean decided, back in the Alien days when a