Teresa laughed. “No, I mean really. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. It’s just something I have to do.”
The elderly physicist blinked twice and then smiled. “Of course. You worked hard studying gravitonics all the way out here. Go ahead. We’ll just be setting up the vats anyway. You won’t be needed until tomorrow morning.”
She touched his sleeve. “Thanks, Stan.” Then, impulsively, Teresa leaned over and kissed his grizzled cheek.
The Tangoparu team had set up some distance from the rest of the settlement, so she shunned the main path and set off cross-country, over the gravelly moraine. Having never approached a primary glacier before, she had no way of judging distances. There were no trees or familiar objects for comparison; by eye alone, it might be anywhere from one to ten kilometers away. But her inner sensoria told Teresa she could make it there and back before supper. Anyway, nothing out here could harm her even if she miscalculated. In her thermal suit she could even wait out the brief summer night if she had to.
No, this wasn’t a dangerous place — certainly not compared to space.
Nevertheless, her heart leaped in her chest when a shadow swept the pebbly surface, looming from behind her with startling speed. Teresa felt its sudden presence and whirled in a crouch, squinting at a blurry form like a huge ball cupped in an open fist.
She sighed, straightening and trying to pretend the abrupt appearance hadn’t scared the wits out of her. Even against the afternoon sun, she recognized one of those Magnus effect minicranes, used all over the world for utility lifting and hauling. They were to helicopters what a zep was to a stratojet. In other words, cheap, durable, and easy to run on minimal fuel. Like zeps, minicranes maintained buoyancy with inflated hydrogen. But this smaller machine moved by rotating the bag itself between vertical prongs. A queer, counterintuitive effect of physics let it maneuver agilely.
Shading her eyes, Teresa watched the operator lean out of his tiny cabin. He shouted something in Danish. She called back. “Jeg tale ikke dansk! Vil De tale engelsk?”
“Ah,” he answered quickly. “Sorry! You must be one of Stanley Goldman’s people. I’m on my way to the dig now and could use some ballast. Do you want a ride?”
Actually, she didn’t. But Teresa found it hard to say no. After all, it would be selfish to stay away from camp any longer than she had to.
“How do I board?”
As the machine drew close, the whir of the spinning bag was no longer swept away by the wind. The small control assembly hung suspended beneath by two forks from the central axis, and its engine gave off a hissing whine. In answer to her question, the pilot simply leaned down and offered his hand.
Well, she who hesitates is lost…
Teresa ran to meet the little airship. At the last moment, she leaped, his grip seized her wrist and she was hauled, gently but swiftly, inside.
“Lars Stürup,” he said as the bouncing settled down. There was a hiss of released gas and they began rising.
“I’m Ter…”
She stopped and covered her gaffe by coughing, as if from exertion. “… terribly glad to meet you, Lars. I’m… Emma Neale.” It was the name on her borrowed passport, lent by a Tangoparu scientist whose skills were less needed here than Teresa’s.
Blond and fair, Lars looked more Swedish than Danish. He wore his sleeves rolled up, displaying well-developed forearms. “Pleased to meet you, Emma, I’m sure. We don’t get many new people up here. What’s your line? Paleontology? Paleogeochemistry?”
“None of the above. I’m just here to help Stan do some seismic scans.”
“Ah.” Lars nodded. “Those will be useful. Or so Dr. Rasmussen says. She hopes they’ll help us find remnants of the meteorite.”
Looking across the crushed moraine, Teresa thought that rather optimistic. “How can anything be left, after what this land has been through since then?”
The pilot grinned. “The thing hit pretty dumpit hard. Buried lots of stuff good. Of course the ice scraped off hundreds of meters. But by using radar from space you can find plenty of buried features that are invisible up close.”
Tell me about it. Teresa had assisted in many such orbital surveys, using microwaves to trace lost tombs in Egypt, Mayan ruins in Mexico, and the tracks of ancient watercourses that had last flowed back when the Sahara bloomed and prehistoric humans hunted hippos in the lush fens of Libya.
She was tempted to demonstrate her own knowledge, but then, what would Emma Neale know of such things? “That’s very interesting,” she said. “Please go on.”
“Ah! Where to begin? To start off, it’s on Greenland we find some of the oldest rocks ever discovered — formed less than half a billion years after the planet itself!”
Lars gestured broadly as he spoke, frequently taking his hands from the controls to point out features of the terrain below. Teresa found his cavalier piloting both disturbing and somehow exciting. Of course, one could take liberties with a slow, forgiving vehicle like this. Still, the young man’s proud confidence permeated the tiny cabin. A streak of oil stained the calloused edge of his right hand, where in hurried washing he mightn’t notice it among the curling hairs. He probably did all his own maintenance, something Teresa envied since guild rules only let astronauts watch and kibitz when their craft were serviced.
“… so underneath we find remnants of a huge crater. One of several that asteroids made when they struck the Earth about sixty-five million years ago…”
He kept glancing sideways’ at her, pointing here and there across the tumbled terrain. Teresa suddenly realized, He’s preening for me! Naturally, she was used to men trying to impress her. But this time, her reaction came out more pleased than irritated. It was a dormant, unaccustomed feeling that made her suddenly nervous and oddly exhilarated. I should consider remaining a blonde, she thought idly.
The glacier loomed now — a chill mass that set her internal compass quivering. She could sense it stretching on and on toward the deep heart of this minicontinent, where it lay in layers so dense the rocky crust sagged beneath it. Layers that had been put down, snowflake by snowflake, over inconceivable time.
Now coming into view below the white cliff was the site where machines could be seen biting into the frozen ground, scientifically sifting a deep excavation for ancient clues. Still talking and pointing things out like a tour guide, Lars steered his craft toward the activity.
“Um… could I ask a favor?” Teresa interrupted the young pilot’s monologue.
“Of course. What may I do for you?”
Teresa pointed nearby. “Could you drop me off there? Near the ice?”
Lars clearly wasn’t one to let schedules interfere with gallantry. “Anything you wish, Emma.” With a sure hand on the controls he turned his machine into the wind spilling off the glacier, increasing spin and plowing through the stiff, cold current. As the buffeting grew, Teresa began regretting her request. After all, she could have walked. It would be silly to survive so many orbital missions only to meet her end in a wrecked utility craft, just because a young man wanted to impress her.
“Lars…” she began, then stopped herself, recalling how bravely and silently Jason used to watch whenever she let him sit behind her pilot’s seat during a launch.
Jason … A flux of images and feelings rose like steamy bubbles. Diverting them, Teresa inexplicably found herself instead picturing Alex Lustig! And especially the gray worry forever coloring that strange man’s eyes. Almost, she let herself recall the terrible thing he hunted.