Dark Winter by William Dietrich Read Free Book Online Page A

global warming, correct?"
    "As part of the weather readings."
    "And yet you're a petroleum geologist, right?"
    "I was."
    "Which contributes to global warming."
    "Maybe."
    "No maybe about it."
    "Oil also keeps us alive down here. So you can find the universe."
    "Conceded."
    "Besides which, I quit."
    "Yes, that intrigues me. Sparco told me the story when I e-mailed him about my rock. I'm sure Big Oil paid well. So you've made an interesting choice, haven't you? Everyone comes to the Pole for something."
    "I came to help out. I came to work for the good guys. If I make some small contribution toward your discovery, I'm excited."
    Moss nodded. "Fair enough. Fair enough." The idea of a fingie wanting a piece of Michael Moss's reflected glory obviously pleased him. Made sense to him. "I admire your dedication. Someday your help may be credited. In the meantime, however, the need for discretion, as you said, is paramount. No one knows of this discovery. No one will know, until I choose to tell them. Agreed?"
    Lewis nodded. It's what Sparco had told him to expect.
    "I haven't decided what to do with it," Moss explained.
    He nodded again.
    Slowly, the scientist stood up, moved to a file cabinet, and opened a drawer. "It's interesting how compelling a rock becomes in a place that doesn't have any. I've touched this thing a thousand times. Wondered where it came from. What might be inside." He lifted his arm, hefting a dull brown rock the size and shape of a large, lumpy baking potato. "It's remarkably ugly."
    Lewis took the stone, dense and heavy. Eight, ten pounds. The rock was burnt and glassy on one side. My God. "How many people know about this?" he asked.
    "No one, really. I confided in Sparco because we've spent so much time down here together. He persuaded me this might represent a life-changing opportunity. But I couldn't risk even transmitting a picture of it on the Internet. It was he who suggested finding someone like you to make an initial judgment. I think he'd already met you, at Toolik Lake. Fortuitous, no?"
    "And you found it…"
    "A few months ago, when drilling Hole 18-b. Just happened to strike it. Dumb luck, I admit. About a thousand years down as measured in layers of snowfall."
    "And thought it might be a meteorite…"
    "Because why else is there a rock in the ice cap? If there's a stone at the Pole, it has to have come from the sky."
    Lewis nodded, looking at the tarlike crust. Evidence of heat from a fall through the atmosphere. Which meant…
    He looked at Moss.
    The astronomer was watching him expectantly. "Well?"
    "Superficially, at least, it fits." Lewis set it carefully on some papers on a desk.
    "Then you think it's from space?"
    "Probably." He paused, considering what to say. "As you said, the fact that there's thousands of feet of ice between this and bedrock suggests it fell from the sky. That's why Antarctica has become a prime hunting ground for meteorites of all kinds. They stick out like a sore thumb. But all the others have been found on the surface around the Trans-Antarctic Range, where flowing ice hits the mountain barrier and breaks upward to carry buried meteorites to the surface. The wind blows the last snow away. To strike a buried one with your drilling is pretty lucky. Amazingly lucky."
    "It could have been salted by some joker, I suppose," Moss conceded. "Dropped down the hole when I wasn't looking. But why? No one has confessed and it looked like the real thing to me. We use hot water to melt holes in the ice, drilling downward with what amounts to a big shower head. A camera showed something was sticking into one side of our tube. I gave the crew a break, paused to melt a bulb of water to free it, and then hauled it up."
    "And kept quiet about your find."
    "I wanted to be sure."
    "You understand I'm no expert?"
    "You're as close as we could find, at short notice, to come down here like this."
    "Yes. And, as Sparco suspected, I don't think this is your average meteorite. Have you noticed