"I'm not very religious, but I'd like to start this meeting with a prayer- not mine but our own prayers, each of us individually, from our own hearts. I don't know where Mickey is but let's acknowledge the central truth- that whatever our relationship to him, he was- is- the soul of this station. So I'd like a minute of silence to pray for his soul, which I hope is alive and which I fear is somehow, inexplicably, dead. At least none of us have seen hide nor hair of him for more than twenty-four hours. We've looked and looked and are going to keep on looking, but right now I think we need the help of a higher power. So, for just a minute, please, send our sonofabitch Old Antarctic Explorer your best thoughts."
He bowed his head. Lewis did too, trying to think what Moss might have been thinking, or where he might have gone. It made no sense. Nancy Hodge was looking with sad sympathy at Cameron: She knew a tragedy like this would threaten to erase whatever professional advancement the station manager had hoped to gain by coming down here. Norse was calmly letting his eyes scan the group, as if someone would betray themselves. And Buck Tyson looked uncertain, as if the possibility of Moss's death were making him reconsider his intransigence. Self-sufficiency was one thing, exclusion another. Tonight, everyone had shifted their chairs away from his.
"Well."
Heads came up and Cameron continued. "I've let NSF know our situation and that we're doing everything we can. They send us their best and urge us to keep searching. I'm going to launch another perimeter search around the station tomorrow and go through the buildings again. I don't… I don't know what else to do." He hesitated, looking gloomy. "Maybe he had a heart attack."
"He was strong as an ox," Pulaski said.
There was quiet.
"Strong people die, too," Nancy finally amended.
"In any event," the station manager went on, "we're getting our winter off to a stressful start and it's at times like these that the group has to hang together. Together!" He looked at Tyson worriedly. "It's hard to lose anybody, but especially Mickey. Damned if I know what happened. Could have been illness. Could have been an accident. Could have gotten lost. You probably have your own ideas. I pray to God he'll just show up, but we all know how cold it is outside."
Several faces turned to check the television monitor. The temperature was sixty-one degrees below zero. A rising wind had pushed the chill factor to minus ninety-two.
"Why don't you tell us what this is really about, Rod?" a voice demanded. It was Harrison Adams, the astronomer. "As a scientist, I don't believe in coincidences."
"What does that mean?"
"The rumor is that Mickey found a meteorite in the ice. Someone apparently took it. He demands an investigation. Then he disappears. I mean, come on."
"What are you saying, Harrison?"
"That five million dollars makes this more than a simple missing person."
There was a murmur through the crowd as speculation suddenly became baldly stated fact.
"Five million what?" Pika asked in confusion.
"Take your ear protectors off once in a while, doofus!" Geller chided.
"Now, hold on," Cameron cautioned. "We don't know that."
"Do the arithmetic," Adams said. "That's what it comes out to if this meteorite is really a chunk of Mars or the moon, and our fingie isn't blowing smoke. Right? So that's my question. What do we know? Not that Mickey had a heart attack. Only that we're missing a stone that some people- irresponsibly, I might add- have wildly speculated might be worth a lot of money. Next thing we know, boom. Mickey's gone."
"Jed Lewis just gave a professional opinion."
Adams swung to look at the fingie. "It's an amateur, unscientific, seat-of-the-pants opinion and this problem started when Jed Lewis stepped off the plane."
"That's not fair, Doctor Adams." It was Norse. "Our meteorologist was asked to give a geologic judgment, based on his professional background, by Doctor Moss himself."
"That's right," Cameron said. "There's no evidence that anything's connected."
"And no evidence it isn't," Adams said.
"Jed said he was searched," Nancy Hodge spoke up. "What did you find?"
"Nothing," Cameron replied.
"Several of us were searched," Norse chimed in. "Including Mickey. Nothing was found."
Abby, Lewis noticed, had turned her face to the floor. Something was wrong. Had something been found?
"I want to emphasize here how little we know," the psychologist went on. "We don't know if the meteorite really had value. We don't know if it was lost or stolen. We don't know what happened to Mickey. Any conclusions at this point are premature."
Cameron looked at the psychologist with gratitude. Maybe Norse had his uses. An excited buzzing broke out among the group.
"So now what?" Gabriella finally shouted.
Cameron took a breath. "Now we decide what to do. Together. In trust."
"The only problem being that one of us may be a thief. Or worse." It was Pulaski.
"Exactly," said Norse, and heads turned back to him. "So a more realistic option is to work together in temporary distrust. To scrutinize each other carefully in order to get all bad blood out of the way."
"How do we do that?" Geller asked.
"Our real problem is lack of information," the psychologist said. "We're afraid because we don't know. Accordingly, I have a proposal to make. It's unusual, but this is an unusual situation. It has to be a group decision, not imposed from above. I was skeptical when Mickey himself first proposed it but it might be the quickest way to reinforce our belief in each other." He paused, his eyes polling the group, seeking permission to broach an idea. Physically and in personality, he was a more commanding presence than Cameron. His shower idea hadn't broken Tyson, but the mechanic's defiance was cracking. Norse seemed to have a better idea what to do.
"Go ahead, Doc," Geller prompted.
"I propose a broader search," Norse went on. "Not of the station, where we've been looking for Doctor Moss, but of our rooms, to look for the meteorite. I suspect we'll find nothing, but any discovery that would clarify this situation would help. Finding nothing, in contrast, might reassure each of us about each other."
"Our rooms are the only bloody privacy we have," objected Dana Andrews.
"I sympathize," Norse said. "I propose to limit the searchers to two people, myself and Doctor Hodge. I'll check the rooms of male personnel, she the female. As we've said, I've already been searched: I'm not asking anyone to undergo anything I haven't already experienced. We'll do it now, while the rest of you wait. If anything is locked, we ask for your keys. What we discover remains entirely confidential unless it has some bearing on the disappearance of Doctor Moss or the meteorite." He glanced at Cameron. "Agreed?"
"No!" Tyson yelled. "I don't want some self-appointed shrink searching me!"
"That's because you've got more phallic objects in that armory of yours than a nymphomaniac in a nunnery, bathing boy," Geller scoffed. The others laughed.
"Fuck you." Tyson glowered, his belligerence immediately returning in response to mockery. He was always ready for a fight.
"Nobody's afraid of a man who showers more than a teenage girl, Buck."
"Yeah? Try me sometime."
"My creditor friends tell me even the biggest goon can slip in the shower and not get up, if he stays in too long."
The group stirred uneasily at this threat.
"Enough, enough," Cameron said. The station manager was trying to look stern but was fighting the start of a smile at this needling Tyson was getting. The mechanic looked uncomfortable and scowled, avoiding anyone's gaze. It wasn't easy being toast.