Zodiac Station

by Tom Harper

  I opened the door. You remember the scene in Alien where she blows the monster out of the airlock into outer space? It was like that. The wind roared like it was sucking the life off of the planet. Damn near carried us away before we got down the steps. Ice crystals peppered my goggles. I thought I’d covered up pretty good, but the wind cut through cracks I didn’t know I’d left. Fine snow filled the inside of my goggles and froze my eyeballs.

  We roped ourselves together and followed the flag line towards the mag hut. In theory, it was daylight; in practice, you could barely see the next marker. When I looked back to check Kennedy was still with me, I saw the lights on the Platform glowing, blurry pools that looked a million miles away.

  You’re in the Coast Guard, Captain, so maybe you’ve seen a man go overboard in a storm. That’s how it felt. The noise, the force, the feeling your body is fighting every second just to stay in place, forget moving forward. Sometimes you’d be walking across scoured ice; the next, knee-deep in a snowdrift. Without the flag line, we could have kept walking till we hit the North Pole.

  It was just as well we didn’t bring the rifles. I never saw the perimeter, just the mag hut like a dark shadow in the storm. We wrestled the door open and collapsed inside.

  ‘What do you have to do to get some privacy around here?’ I was shouting, still tuned to the storm. Not that anyone would hear.

  Kennedy pulled off his hat, and shook the snow off his suit. ‘Jesus.’

  I took the readings while he warmed his hands and stamped his feet.

  ‘One thing I don’t understand,’ said Kennedy.

  ‘That’s an understatement.’

  ‘If it’s been Quam all along, why did he ask me to find out who was telling our secrets? I mean, he might have thought I wasn’t up to much, wouldn’t get anywhere, but still. He didn’t have to say anything.’

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘What secrets?’

  ‘The climate data, the person who was spilling beans to DAR-X. Remember, I told you in Vitangelsk? It was Quam who wanted me to find out who it was.’ He clapped his hands together and winced. ‘Maybe it was just as well I didn’t. That must have been what did for Hagger.’

  I almost laughed. Fuck-a-doodle-doo. We’d all been running around chasing our tails.

  ‘I don’t think this has anything to do with DAR-X,’ I said carefully. ‘Or with our data. It’s bigger than that.’

  How much to tell him? ‘There’s a secret facility by Vitangelsk, inside Mine Eight. Some kind of Russian military radar.’

  Kennedy stared at me like I’d announced I was Jesus Christ. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘You sound like Danny.’

  ‘This isn’t some crazy conspiracy theory. That guy who chased you at Vitangelsk – did you make him up?’

  Kennedy puffed out his cheeks, then blew a long breath like a puff of smoke. It made me want a cigarette. And I quit three years ago.

  ‘I thought DAR-X were running it,’ I continued. ‘Now I’m certain there’s someone here at Zodiac.’

  ‘Francis Quam.’

  ‘That’s the way it looks,’ I agreed.

  ‘So what about Hagger?’

  ‘I haven’t figured him out yet,’ I admitted. ‘Either he was part of it and threatened to expose Quam, or he found out something he shouldn’t have. Either way, Quam got shot of him.’

  ‘That explains the notebooks,’ Kennedy said.

  ‘What notebooks?’

  ‘On Tuesday, when we went to the cabin. Do you remember that I looked in the stove? I didn’t tell you then, but what I found was the charred remains of Hagger’s notebooks. Someone took them there to get rid of them.’

  ‘Any idea who?’

  ‘I looked in the field log. Everyone comes and goes, but no one’s been to the cabin. Or admitted to it. I’m afraid that doesn’t do us much good.’

  I thought through my list of names, all the lines connecting them.

  ‘How do you think Tom Anderson fits?’

  ‘Quam didn’t want him here,’ said Kennedy thoughtfully. ‘He and Hagger had the most tremendous row about it last week.’

  I gave him a stern look. ‘Were you spying?’

  Kennedy squirmed. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing.’

  ‘Forget it. I heard it too.’ The whole base had heard it. ‘So Hagger knew something. Quam thought he might tell Anderson, so he tried to stop Anderson coming here. When that didn’t work out, he killed Hagger.’

  ‘That explains why Hagger was up on the glacier near Vitangelsk when he should have been working on sea ice. But what about the faked data?’

  My brain was working overtime, like I’d drunk three cups of coffee on top of a NoDoz. ‘How’s this? Hagger and Quam were in this together, working for the Russians. Hagger faked his data so he would get the funding to come to Zodiac. But he did it in a dumb way, and someone figured it out. Quam got pissed off, because Hagger had drawn suspicion on them; he went up to the Helbreen to bitch Hagger out. Someone lost their temper, there was shoving, and Hagger bit the dust.’

  ‘So what do we do now? Confront Quam?’

  ‘We don’t have enough evidence.’

  ‘But Jensen—’

  ‘Proves nothing. Quam can bluff that out. You have any idea how dangerous he is? If he thinks we’ve figured him out, he’ll disappear us down the nearest ravine.’ I flexed my fingers. Even inside the mittens, they’d begun to go numb. ‘We need proof.’

  ‘How?’

  I grinned. ‘I’ll break into his office tonight.’

  Kennedy looked unhappy, but it was only a mild case of morals. Hell, it’s not even breaking in if there isn’t a lock.

  ‘And you keep an eye on Anderson. Either he’s one unlucky son of a bitch – or he’s more dangerous than we can imagine.’

  I turned for the door. ‘Let’s get back to the Platform. It’s too fucking cold out here.’

  Outside, the storm hadn’t died down any. The second I opened the door, I got a face full of ice. We were straight into the wind now, and it cut right through to the bone. Forget the flag line, or the lights on the Platform. The visibility was so bad I could barely see Doc six feet in front of me. I had to hope like hell he could see where he was going.

  It felt like it took for ever. At first, I assumed it was the wind and the cold and hating every second. But even then, we should have made it eventually. Looking ahead, I couldn’t even see the Platform lights.

  I tugged on the rope. Doc stopped and waited for me to catch him up.

  ‘Are we going the right way?’ I had to pull aside his hood and put my mouth almost against his ear so he could hear me over the roar of the wind.

  He shrugged, and pointed to the marker post just in front of him. Still on track.

  OK. We went on, heads down, faces frozen, not even bothering to wipe off the snow that gathered in the creases on our coats. I started to think about all the guys who went out in the snow and nearly died, Victorian explorers who thought a tweed suit and a pocket watch were all you needed for polar expeditions. Was this how they died? Walking on, bent lower and lower, until finally they collapsed face first and never got up? Not one of my life’s ambitions.

  The rope went tight so fast it almost knocked me on my ass. Before I could wonder what the hell Doc was playing at, I was being pulled forward, jogging over the ice in a crab run I couldn’t control.

  I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew I had to stop it before we both got killed. I kicked my heels into the snow, trying to get a hold. Couldn’t. The rope pulled me on, my feet skidding over the snow like I was skiing. Ahead, through the chaos in the air, I could see a dark scar cutting across the ground, and the rope dropping into it.

  The gulch. The crack at the edge of the glacier. I could just about see some of the warning poles whipping about in the storm. How the hell did we get here?

  It was too close. The rope wasn’t long enough, and I was going t
oo fast. I pulled off my mittens and reached for the knot around my waist, scrabbling to undo it. Kennedy was screwed either way, but maybe I could save myself.

  With so much tension, the knot was never going to come undone. Normally, I carry a penknife in my pants pocket, but I’d taken it out to go to the mag hut. I was fucked. I wondered whether if I landed on top of Kennedy, he’d break my fall.

  You know what saved me? The wind. An Arctic storm blowing fifty knots in your face is one hell of a brake. It slowed me down enough that I could dig my heels into the snow. I leaned back almost forty-five degrees. The wind, Kennedy’s weight on the rope, friction and gravity came into perfect equilibrium. I was weightless.

  I’d stopped.

  Then the hard work began. Inch by inch, I hauled myself back. The first three steps almost broke my back; each time I lifted my foot, I thought I’d lose it completely and go right over the edge. But it got easier. Once he stopped falling, Kennedy’d managed to get his feet against the ice wall to brace himself. As I pulled, he was able to walk up, taking some of the weight. The wind kept pushing me, so hard that when Kennedy finally made it up I lost my balance and sat down hard on a bare sheet of ice.

  The rope went slack. A dark figure staggered out of the storm, covered all over in snow like fucking Bigfoot. He crouched beside me.

  ‘That’s the last time I let you go first,’ I shouted at him.

  He shook his head. ‘I followed the flag line.’

  He was right. I’d seen it too, the red poles every ten feet, all the way from the mag hut.

  ‘Someone moved the poles.’ It was the only explanation. Someone had actually tried to kill us. It was a hell of a thought.

  If he thinks we’ve figured him out, he’ll disappear us down the nearest ravine. Christ, I didn’t mean it that literally.

  And if I didn’t get off my ass and out of that storm soon, he’d have succeeded. My hands were already ice, and God knows where I’d dropped my gloves. They were probably halfway to Siberia by now. Pulling out Kennedy had cost me most of my strength: even in my ECW gear, I couldn’t stop shivering. In those conditions, that gives you less than five minutes.

  I stuck my hands in my coat pockets. At least it kept the wind off of them. Kennedy put his arm around me, and together we stumbled our way back along the flag line. If it led straight from the mag hut to the gulch, I had a pretty good idea where the Platform ought to be. Soon, off to our right, I saw a dim glow. We broke towards it. The lights got brighter. Now I could see the steel legs, rigid in the chaos. Best goddam sight I ever saw in my life.

  I just managed to get up the stairs, kick the bar to open the door and fall inside the vestibule. I couldn’t even get my gear off. Kennedy had to unzip me and pull off my coat. His hands were shaking almost as bad as mine.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Did someone just try to kill us?’

  ‘Look on the bright side.’ Hunched over on the bench, I looked around the boot room. A few of the other coats were still wet with melted snow: Quam’s, Greta’s and Fridge’s. Anderson’s wasn’t there at all. A lot of people to be out on a shitty night like that.

  ‘At least if they’re trying to kill us, we have to be on the right track.’

  Thirty

  Eastman

  It fries your brain when you wake in the night and it’s daylight outside. Humans are tropical mammals; we like some darkness in our lives. Spending summer in the Arctic is like being dumped on the bright side of the moon.

  Not that there was a whole lot of daylight that morning. The storm had died down, but it was still blowing strong. I could hear it moaning through the antennas. It’s lucky I don’t believe in ghosts.

  After we came in from the mag hut, after I defrosted my hands, I’d gone in to the mess. Some of the others had gone to bed, most were still decorating for Thing Night, listening to music and drinking a few beers. Quam was in his office.

  There was no point asking if anyone had gone out while we were in the mag hut. People had been coming and going all evening. Whoever did it, I didn’t want to alert him.

  I worried Kennedy might say something. He looked as if he was about to flip out. But he went off into his medical room, and when he came back he seemed a whole lot calmer. Soon after, we both went to bed, though it took me a long time to get to sleep.

  I got out of my bed at 3 a.m. and walked down the corridor to Quam’s office. Maybe I should have felt nervous, or guilty: the truth is, I was juiced. Quam had tried to kill me – I was certain it had to be him – and I wanted to nail him. Forget the radar, the Russians, the mine and all that. This was personal.

  But I wasn’t so mad I got dumb. I got to the office, had my hand on the handle, when I heard a noise from inside. Tick, tack, tick, tack. A metallic sound, so regular I could have convinced myself it was a clock or some piece of machinery playing up.

  Except I’d seen Quam’s desk, and that executive toy he kept next to his computer monitor. Newton’s cradle: you swing a ball from one end, and the ball at the other end kicks up. The conservation of momentum, Newton’s laws, if you want the technical explanation.

  Now, I have a PhD in physics, so I can explain Newton’s laws pretty good. In a closed system, momentum is never gained or lost. In other words, if you set one of those toys off in outer space, it would keep going for ever.

  But Utgard’s not outer space. Not quite. Gravity and air resistance mean the balls eventually slow down and stop. Unless there’s someone to keep them going.

  I backed away. There was no light coming under the door. Maybe he’d gone to bed right before I got up.

  Tick, tack, tick, tack.

  I listened in the dark. The balls got slower. Tick … tack … Slower, and stopped.

  I counted ten, then reached for the door handle again. But right before I touched it, the noise began again, firm and hard.

  Newton’s first law says that if something’s stopped, it stays stopped unless an external force is applied. Quam had to be in there, sitting in the dark, listening to the balls clack just like me. What else was he doing there? Waiting? For what?

  Suddenly, I heard another noise. A chair scraping back from a desk. I didn’t have time to get back to my room. I ducked across the corridor and slipped inside Fridge’s lab opposite, leaving the door open a crack so I could see.

  Quam stepped out. In the dim light, he looked a hundred years old. Shoulders slumped, face lined. He had a slip of paper in his hand.

  He walked up the corridor and stopped outside the mess door. I thought he’d go in – maybe he had the munchies – but he didn’t. He just stood there, doing something with the paper. Then he turned around and went back into his office. The chair squeaked, and a moment later the tick tack of the toy reset again. Just in case the laws of physics had changed while he was away.

  I snuck out of Fridge’s lab and headed for the mess. It was a dumb thing to do, with Quam right there. He could have come out again any moment. But I had to know if he’d done what I thought he had.

  On the door, the Daily Horrorscope had changed. Guessing who wrote those things was one of our favourite games at Zodiac, but in all those conversations I don’t think anyone ever suspected Quam. Now that I knew, I kind of wished I didn’t.

  There wasn’t much light, but I could read what he’d put up.

  The storm is just beginning.

  Thirty-one

  Eastman

  Everyone makes it to breakfast on Saturday. It’s waffle day. Somewhere along the line, someone had too much time on his hands and spent the winter making an old-fashioned, cast-iron waffle maker. Every Saturday, Danny wheels it out with little plastic cups of batter, and everyone stands in line to make their own. It even stamps a little Z for Zodiac in the centre of the waffle.

  Now, I like waffles as much as the next guy. But that morning, I hardly tasted it. Knowing someone in that room had tried to get me to walk into the gulch the night before kind of put me off my breakfast. I kept on sliding down in my chair, like
my body wanted me to keep my head down. I stared at the others: sticky fingers, syrup dribbling down their chins. Some of them caught me, gave me looks that said I was some kind of freak.

  I’m the only one here who has a clue, I said back, in my head.

  No one was happy. For some of those people, a season at Zodiac was the high point of their careers. Instead of using it, they were sat there wasting tens of thousands of dollars a day doing squat. But you know what really pissed them off, the one word you heard over and over when you listened in on their conversations? Internet. That’s what was driving them crazy: twenty-some people trapped on the Platform, and no Internet. Do you blame them? Captain Scott took a lot of shit, but he never had his web access cut off.

  Kennedy joined me at my table. He always poured his syrup so neatly over the waffle. Mine was drowning in it.

  ‘Did you find anything last night?’ he asked, looking so guilty he might as well have put it on Facebook.

  ‘Quam was in there all night.’ He hadn’t showed up at breakfast. I wondered if he was still in there, tick-tacking his Newton toy, or if he’d gone to bed.

  I looked out the window. The weather was still ugly. Snow devils whipped across the ice; clouds covered the mountain peaks. From my table, I could see the mag hut, and the flag line leading to it. Or where the flag line had been. The poles lay scattered on the ground like someone had been through with a giant lawnmower.

  ‘Terrible storm damage,’ I said sarcastically.

  ‘The Internet’s still down, too,’ Doc said.

  ‘I know.’ I swabbed up some more syrup with a piece of my waffle. Maybe it was because I was sitting under the tinfoil spaceship Greta’d hung for Thing Night – or maybe because someone had tried to kill me – but I felt kind of paranoid.

  ‘You look anxious,’ said Doc. ‘Would you like something for it?’

  I shook my head. Those pills dull your brain; I had to stay sharp. Keep my wits. I didn’t know when, but I knew for sure they’d come for me again. And I was going to be ready.

  I strolled down the corridor and knocked on Hagger’s lab. The red skull smiled at me from the door. HIGH INFECTION RISK OF UNKNOWN DNA. No one answered, so I let myself in. I dropped the key I’d taken back in one of the drawers, and buried it under some pipettes and tubing, the kind of place it might have gotten lost. Then I had a look around.