On the Helvig's bridge, three listeners, one message:

Selena, if you can hear this: stay away. Repeat: stay away. I've escaped our friends from Preneen, but the U.K. authorities will be here soon. They'll take me prisoner; they'll take you, too. Please, darling, stay away--

A jarring burst of static, then nothing.

"And there it ends," Andersen said quietly. "If you could identify the speaker, Miss Miller, I would be most grateful."

"I can't identify him--"

Andersen's brows lowered. "'Can't'--? Or 'won't'?"

Selena glared at him. "I've never heard that voice before."

"He called yeh 'darlin','" Jim said.

She turned on him. "What are you implying, Jim--?"

"Why would he call you that?"

"I have no idea--" She stared at Jim as he looked away. "Don't you dare-- Damn it, Jim, don't you dare look like that--"

"Miss Miller," Andersen said, calmly, "you swear you have never before heard that voice?"

"I swear." She glanced at Jim. He wouldn't meet her eyes.

"A mystery. We will solve it when we reach the North Star."

"We're still goin' there--?" Jim asked, incredulous.

"A distress call is a distress call. We must respond."

"Sure. I understand." Jim nodded, cleared his throat. "Will you-- Excuse me, Captain--"

He walked off the bridge, out into the white corridor. Selena came after him.

"Jim--" She caught up, reached, grasped his hand. "Jim, please--"

He stopped, looked down at his boots.

"This is a first," she said softly.

"What d'you mean?"

"You're jealous of someone I've never met."

"I'm not jealous--" He paused, breathed out. "I'm worried for you--"

"Are you sure?" Tenderness in her eyes, sure, but a frank edge, too. She traced his cheek with her fingertips. "If you want to fight, we can."

"I don't want t' fight. I want t' stand with you on this." He touched her cheek in return. "Forgive me, yeah?"

She hesitated, looking at him. Then she smiled. "Done."


Two hours later, just past nineteen hundred hours, the Danish frigate Helvig came up on the floating storage platform North Star.

"It's a ship," said Jim, looking up at the behemoth through the windows of the bridge. Selena was with him. Cooper and Chaney and Dalton were there, too.

"It was a ship," Andersen countered. "A single-hulled oil tanker. Originally of U.S. registry. Tethered to the ocean floor and converted to storage platform use in 1996 by Western Star."

"Western Star Oil and Gas?" Selena asked.

"Yeah." Cooper spoke. "Western Star owns most of the production and storage facilities in this sector."

Selena caught Jim's eye. "Infinity," she said, very quietly. "Infinity Base--"

Perspective was difficult at sea, sizes and distances hard to gauge. As the Helvig approached the North Star, Jim had a sense of shrinking, of being slowly and heavily pressed down. In its stillness and size, the former tanker seemed an island, something set intentionally to separate the sea from the sky. She was roughly four times the size of the Helvig, the Helvig herself being just under four hundred feet in length. The platform's deck, above the rust-red primered hull, was nearly a hundred feet above the water.

"How do we get aboard?" Jim asked.

"Normally, we would chopper aboard. There is a helipad just there, aft of the superstructure." Andersen pointed. Above them, on the deck at the near end of the ship, was the blockish white structure that once had been the wheelroom, the crew quarters, the galley, engineering, small storage; attached at its back edge was a round platform, suspended over the water. "But, as our borrowed Bell is not yet recovered from its rough landing, we will have to find alternate means--"

"Sir--" --as the Helvig passed the North Star's stern, a sailor called back from the observation window opposite-- "-- their landing tower is in place."

"Such as that," Andersen murmured. "Very good. Thank you, Mr. Jaegersen."

Bolted to the North Star's side within squared steel caging, reaching from the platform's deck to the ocean, was a zig-zagging run of steel stairs, painted yellow, ten steps to a set. The blue-gray sea washed over a gridded platform at the structure's base.

"We will send a Zodiac," said Andersen. "Mr. Skjol, pick your landing party."


The Helvig held off from the North Star at a distance of roughly nine hundred feet, the ship standing dwarfed at the edge of a massive parallelogram of shadow the lowering sun cast across the water from the storage platform. The landing party gathered near the helipad at the ship's stern. A steep and rigid run of steel steps terminating in a small square platform ran to a gray-and-black inflatable Zodiac bobbing at the Helvig's side. Skjol had picked two sailors from the Helvig's security complement; he asked Cooper, Dalton, and Chaney if they would come, bringing with them their understanding of petrochemical structures and operations. And Selena would go, Skjol noting wryly but with serious dark eyes that she, of all of them, had the nearest thing to an invitation. He noted also that arms seemed appropriate; however, the North Star being essentially a giant floating gas can, firearms were unadvisable. Skjol requested a brace of three-foot pry-bars from the Helvig's cargo area. He handed them out to the landing party with a straight-faced instruction: "Use these at your discretion." He also handed around Motorola radio handsets. "And please: stay in touch. These are on a public channel," he added, wryly. "So mind your language, gentlemen-- and Miss Miller."

Jim stood with Selena while sailors finished prepping the Zodiac; he said, "You don't have t' go, Miss Miller."

"I'll be fine."

"It's a bloody trap. That much is obvious, isn't it--?"

"Jim--"

He looked out and up at the North Star's dark bulk. Darker still it was for the clear sky and the sunlight casting out over its top. "I'm asking you, let these fellas do their job. Stay here. Please."

"Maybe I'm tired of that."

"Of what, then?"

"Sitting by while others take the risks."

She said "others"; he heard "you." He saw it then in the set of her jaw: she was still stinging about his run on the beach at Preneen. Quite likely about his stunt above the falling Puffin, too.

"Fine." His jaw muscles worked. "I'm comin' with you."

"I think Dr. Hoyser would qualify this as 'heavy lifting.'"

"Care t' argue it--?"

"I will if I have to, yeah."

"Then just be careful. Be bloody careful." He saw Larry Dalton looking their way. Something in the man's face bothered him-- he couldn't say what. He caught Selena's eye, nodded toward Leo Chaney, who was standing with Virgil Cooper near the deck railing, pointing up at a row of round tanks along the North Star's edge. They looked over as Skjol called the landing party to the Zodiac. "Stick close t' Leo, will yeh? Will you do that for me?"

"Sure, Jim." She met his eyes; she smiled, squeezed his hand, and went off to the steel stairs running down to the landing boat, her pry bar gripped tight.


She wouldn't have admitted it to him, but the grip was partly out of fear. When she and the men were in the Zodiac, when they'd cast off from the Helvig and were on their rumbling, gurgling outboard way, waves slapping at the boat's rubber bow, she remembered exactly how much she hated riding so close to water. She wasn't exactly exerting a death-grip on her seat's edge, but she'd zipped herself without shame into a lifevest. As they came up on the landing platform alongside the North Star, she looked at the water washing over the horizontal heavy grid and shuddered. A dream she'd once had came back to her: she'd been driving across a bridge crossing a wide and wooded river, and the deck-- it was concrete-- was submerged in the clear water, first by inches, then by more--

She asked Leo as the Helvig's sailors tied off the landing boat: "What's the depth here?"

"'Bout eight hundred feet." He smiled a homely smile at her. "But it's pretty much redundant after the first ten."

"Thanks." She smiled a thin smile back at him and stood, cautiously.

"Don't worry, kid: I'm right behind ya."

He held her arm as Selena stepped onto the platform. She didn't mind in the least.

Up the landing tower. It creaked against the North Star's rough red hull; Dalton, puffing, said, "Y'know, I heard-- one time, one of these things let go while a group of guys were climbing it. Trapped like crappies in a livebasket. Went right to the bottom, cage and all. Thousand feet, straight down."

"Thanks for sharing, Larry," said Chaney, behind Selena. "Just like the damn Titanic, huh--?"

Selena focused on the stairs beneath her feet. She said to Chaney, tightly: "You start in with that Celine Dion song, and I'll do you a mischief."

"Hell, we'd take A Night to Remember over that Cameron crap any day. Right, Virg?"

Above them, Cooper called back: "Sure thing, Leo."

"If you please, gentlemen--" Skjol was first to the top. He stepped onto the North Star's deck, looked cautiously around, made room for the others.

It was a rectangular city of massive white tanks, gargantuan runs of piping in yellow, white, and blue. The landing party headed aft along the edge of the deck, along a three-cable railing, toward the multi-storied structure that had been the North Star's wheelhouse and bridge.

"They'd've converted it to the control room," said Cooper, walking. "Below it should be the crew quarters, the mess, the common areas. Behind and below those should be the tunnels back to engineering. That's you, Leo."

"Yep," said Chaney. "Creepin' around tunnels, that's me."

At the wheelhouse, stairs ran to the bridge. Cooper nodded toward doors straight ahead. "Should find the dorms and the mess through there, Mr. Skjol."

"Thank you, Mr. Cooper. You men--" -- to the sailors from the Helvig-- "-- check the crew quarters. Mr. Cooper, Mr. Dalton, and I will start in the bridge and work down to you. Mr. Chaney, Miss Miller--"

"We get the caves, right? Right." Chaney smiled at Selena. "You like spelunking, kid?"

"I prefer it to boating, yeah."

"Stay in touch, all of you," said Skjol. "Let's go."


AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

"Authorized enough," Chaney said. A steel door painted white: he pulled up on its heavy straight handle, opened it, looked through.

"Still got power," he said. "That's good." Selena looked past him, saw naked bulbs burning in metal cages along a low ceiling. A narrow hall, steel, painted light brown. She stepped in after Chaney, followed him.

They went along for some distance, passing doors marked with numbers. "Storage," said Chaney. Selena had an increasing sense of being underground, of the walls around them being very thick indeed. She wasn't claustrophobic, but she was hearing things: long, low creakings, deep metallic groans. She asked Chaney's back: "Is it supposed to sound like this?"

He answered amiably: "Yep. These big boats, they're always grumbling. Back in the day, these woulda been the storm tunnels. Most stable part of the ship."

A thrumming ahead. Another thirty feet, and Chaney turned to the right. Selena followed him through an open triple-wide door into a room full of large machinery, monitors, wall gauges. But for the oil and black grease that seemed to coat everything, it might have been well lit.

"This'd be the place." Chaney went toward what looked like a control panel on the wall to the left of the door. As he did, his handset and Selena's buzzed in unison.

Mr. Skjol? Andersen's voice, thin over the tiny speaker.

Yes, sir?

We have picked up a radar contact southeast of here, heading quickly in this direction.

Not a tanker, sir--?

We think not. As of yet, they have not returned our hails. How near are you to completing your sweep?

Nearly done, sir.

Anything to report, Mr. Skjol?

Signs of a struggle, sir, but minimal damage to the facility itself. The platform still has power. No bodies. No survivors-- yet. Mr. Chaney, have you anything to report--?

Chaney raised his handset to his mouth. "Nothing yet, Mr. Skjol. We just reached engineering. Off the top, I'd say things look okay on this end."

Thank you, Mr. Chaney. Skjol's voice, speakered. The mystery continues, Captain. How near is that contact?

Forty minutes out, at present speed.

We will complete our sweep and return then, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Skjol. Andersen out.

Chaney re-pocketed his handset and continued over to the control panel. He scanned gauges, moved along the wall. He stepped around a good-sized chunk of machinery, rumbling and dirty gray and taller than he was. Selena scanned the room, looked into the dark corners--

Then, from the hall, she heard something that wasn't grumbling metal. Actually, she heard a man's voice, calling low-- "Selena--?" The sound shuddered along her spine; she tensed. She looked back toward Chaney, but he'd moved out of sight. She gripped her pry bar more tightly, edged back into the access tunnel, looked right, looked--

A figure was walking toward her from the left, the way she and Leo had come. It must have been behind one of the numbered doors they'd passed. It seemed to step between the pools of light cast by the caged bulbs; the shadows passed it along, indistinct. Selena raised her pry bar to chest height--

The figure said again: "Selena--?"

"Leo--!" she called over her shoulder. She returned her attention to the thing approaching her. "Stay back, or I'll knock your bloody head in--"

"Selena, it's me--"

He stepped into a patch of light ten feet away. He was twentyish and dirty, dark-haired, shabbily dressed. He held out his hand--

Behind Selena, Chaney growled: "Who the hell are you?"

He paused; he lowered his hand. He smiled at them. "Tell him, sweetheart," he said to Selena.


With the Helvig's unknown contact but fifteen minutes away, the landing party returned. The mystery of the North Star had, if anything, compounded itself. Blood in the dorms and the mess, on the bridge, congealed in puddles sticky and brown. But no bodies. One man, alive. And Selena, projecting a quietly dangerous blend of confusion and anger.

"Who are you?" Andersen asked coldly. He had summoned them to the bridge, Skjol and his team and their find. Jim had tagged along; Selena was keeping close to him.

The North Star's one resident-- or one survivor-- was about Jim's age and height, handsome in a sharp-featured way, ill-shaven. Curly dark hair gone shaggy. Eyes either bog-green or bog-brown. He'd submitted to a patdown search of his shabby self. No weapons.

"Chaplin. Brian Chaplin." His accent was uncertain, his voice soft and flat. "I escaped from Infinity Base, West Yorkshire, in the company of--" -- and he nodded toward them, toward Jim and Selena-- "-- Selena, Jim, Hannah, and Mr. Kalinovich."

"Liar--!" Selena said tightly.

"You'd say that now, wouldn't you, sweetheart--? Now that things have gone ass-backward?"

Andersen looked between them neutrally. "Explain, please, Mr. Chaplin."

"He's lying--" Selena snapped. "Captain, you can't--"

"You will be civil or leave the bridge, Miss Miller." Andersen looked calmly at Chaplin. "Your explanation, please, Mr. Chaplin."

Chaplin fixed his mossy eyes on Selena. "He doesn't know, does he? Guess the gig is up now, isn't it, darling--?"

He's goading her, the bastard, Jim thought. Bad enough the "darling." He got himself between Selena and Chaplin and said, dangerously, to the peat-eyed stranger, "You're speakin' t' the captain, not t' her."

"I'm certainly not speaking to you, Jim." Chaplin smiled thinly at him and turned to Andersen. "To be brief, Captain: We escaped from Infinity Base three-- nearly four-- days ago. The five of us. Jim and Selena, they-- I'm sorry to say, Captain, we left behind casualties. We killed at least six people at the base; we-- they killed at least half a dozen soldiers before then, in Manchester. But I helped them at Infinity--" -- a nod toward Selena and Jim, glowering and incredulous-- "Miss Miller led me to believe that I-- well, that I was special to her. I'm not proud of what I did."

"It's nothin' compared t' what's comin' t' yeh--" Jim muttered. "You lyin', filthy--"

"Mr. Sullivan." Captain Andersen, softly. Quietly, still: "Continue, Mr. Chaplin."

"Mr. Kalinovich helped us escape. It seems he developed an unhealthy attachment to the girl-- to Hannah. His co-pilot wouldn't countenance it, so Kalinovich killed him. They-- we had trouble with the helicopter we'd stolen, and they abandoned me outside the village of Preneen, on the east coast of Scotland. It appears Mr. Sullivan had more sway over Miss Miller's affections--"

"I'm gonna have sway over yer fuckin' neck in a minute--" Jim said.

"Silence, Mr. Sullivan," Andersen said. "Mr. Chaplin--?"

Chaplin turned from Jim's icy stare. "They abandoned me in Preneen. The town was under attack-- pirates running infected up and down the coast. They caught me; the stock boat continued south. They had a second ship, lighter and faster than the stock boat. They put me on that one, and we headed north to attack and plunder rigs--"

"You've covered some distance in those few days, Mr. Chaplin," Andersen said drily.

"Why didn't they kill you?" Selena asked.

"I offered to join up."

Jim snorted. "And they-- they just let you--?"

"No, no, no--" Selena touched Jim's shoulder. She kept her eyes like stone on Chaplin. "Makes all the sense in the world, actually. Opening on a pirate ship for a lying coward? Why not--?"

"We're both going down, darling," Chaplin countered gently. "You know that. As soon as the U.K. authorities find us--"

"How did you come to be on the North Star?" Andersen asked.

"They were foolish enough to have their landing tower in place. So the guys on the pirate boat hailed them-- this was a day ago, when that blow was coming up-- and said we were having engine trouble and pump trouble and were taking on water and could we please come aboard. They let us--"

"And--?"

"And-- what they do, Captain, is this: they send one or two men up first, armed secretly and carrying-- carrying--"

"What, Mr. Chaplin--?"

"The rage virus. On a knife blade, a razor-- They infect the crew and get clear. When the crew has pretty much wiped itself out, they wade in and clean up. That's what they did on the North Star."

"But you escaped," Selena said coldly. "How?"

"Irish patrol vessel appears out of nowhere. Someone in the North Star's crew gets out a distress call-- a quarantine call, actually, and this Irish patrol vessel, she's bearing down on the platform and our boat. So the boys get in the boat and go-- only, just before we leave the platform, I run back on board--" He looked at Selena and Jim desperately. "The thing of it is, the Irish know who we are. Us. Me, you, Piotr, Hannah. They're coming for us--"

"This is bullshit." Selena shook her head. "The Irish are after us--?"

"U.K. authority in the North Atlantic. Infinity must've alerted them. Or Leeds. They're coming for us--" He looked genuinely fearful. "That's why I hid when I saw the Helvig approaching. I thought it was them. They'll have us under martial law, Selena; that's why I told you not to come--"

"So it's back t' bein' hanged, then," Jim said sarcastically.

"Captain Andersen--" The seaman at the communications station pulled aside his headphones, looked over. "That contact south of us, heading our way: she's a midsize frigate, Irish registry--"

"Christ, they're here," Chaplin said.

"She is approaching at an inordinate rate of speed, sir," added Skjol, from the control station. "Twenty-two knots."

"As if they intend to ram us--" Andersen muttered.

"Or race with us, sir," Skjol countered drily.

"I detest racing, Mr. Skjol." Andersen pulled himself straight and barked out: "Sound general quarters. Communicate our identity--"

Jim started as a klaxon whooped out, paused, whooped out again. He and Selena shrank closer to the wall of the bridge. Cooper and Chaney and Dalton did so as well. Brian Chaplin took a step forward, his eyes locked forward and through the front windows on the approaching ship. In the distance, on the left, it looked like a smaller version of the Helvig. Jim could see the dark water breaking white against the ship's gray sharp prow.

The communications officer spoke: "They have identified us already, sir."

"Who are they?"

"Irish naval vessel Tamsyn, sir. Armed frigate."

Skjol spoke: "Some forty meters shorter than the Helvig, but quicker--"

"The Tamsyn informs the Helvig, sir," said the communications officer, "that the Helvig has on board five fugitives from Coalition justice. She wishes them transferred aboard."

"Oh, no--" Chaplin said. "I told you-- Selena, I told you--"

"Shut up, Mr. Chaplin," said Andersen.

"They're slowing, sir. Twenty-one hundred meters, still approaching." The communications office paused, spoke more sharply: "They are arming their deck guns, sir--"

"Should we arm ours, Captain?" Skjol asked.

"No, Mr. Skjol." Andersen frowned. "Firing control--"

A young woman, from the right: "Yes, sir."

"Plot a solution with the torpedoes."

"Yes, sir."

Jim heard Chaplin, under his breath: "Torpedoes--?" The stranger's dark eyes were fixed, now, on Andersen. Jim could read the tension in his back and shoulders; Jim himself tensed, waiting for Chaplin to move. But the man remained still. Poised, coiled-- but still.

"Sir--" --the communications officer-- "-- the Tamsyn awaits our response. Will we make the transfer or not?"

Andersen called over to the woman at firing control: "Miss Bergstrom--?"

"Firing solution plotted, sir."

"Thank you, Miss Bergstrom." Andersen went to the communications station. "Mr. Olssen, ask the Tamsyn for the prisoner transfer code."

"They're firing, sir--" said Skjol.

At a distance, a muffled thudding. Then, through the steel of the Helvig's superstructure, Jim heard, overhead, a thin, harsh whining. It faded, died away. No impact followed.

"Can they sink us?" Selena asked, very quietly.

Chaney edged closer. "Probably couldn't nail us below the waterline-- this thing's double-hulled-- but they get hits on engineering or control, they can cripple us--"

Andersen glanced overhead. "Warning shots," he said softly. "Mr. Olssen, has the Tamsyn provided the prisoner transfer code?"

"Sir, she has not."

Skjol asked Andersen, discreetly: "'Prisoner transfer code,' sir--?"

Jim thought he saw the barest trace of a thin smile on Andersen's lips. The captain's eyes, though, were icewater clear and cold. "Mr. Olssen, inform the Tamsyn that we consider them to be a commandeered ship sailing, furthermore, under quarantine. Should they attack, we will not take prisoners."

Olssen spoke, paused, listened. He looked worried but calm when he spoke again: "Sir, the Tamsyn replies that they have no intention of taking us prisoner."

"Captain," said Skjol, from firing control, "they are re-targeting their deck guns."

Andersen asked: "Miss Bergstrom, what is our firing status?"

"Solution plotted, weapons one and two primed, sir."

Andersen spoke as calmly as a man commenting on a sports score or the weather: "Weapons one and two: fire."

"Firing weapons one and two, sir."

Jim felt rather than heard it: two heavy concussive thumps from near the Helvig's bow. A curving launch, unseen; unheard splashes. "Torpedoes on target and arming, sir," said Bergstrom.

"They're firing again, sir," Skjol announced.

Again the harsh whistling overhead. This time closer. Jim pulled Selena back, nearer the wall. Chaney kept them from leaning against it. "Stand clear. You'll get knocked down if we're hit," he said quietly.

But they weren't hit. The Helvig went untouched. Splashes-- these they heard-- explosions beyond the hull, amidship. No hits.

"They cannot shoot worth a damn," Andersen said. "Status on the torpedoes, Miss Bergstrom--?"

"Ten seconds, sir."

Jim overcounted. Nerves. He'd reached a count of eighteen when the Helvig's weapons hit the Irish ship. The first torpedo struck the Tamsyn just behind her anchor chain; the second struck amidship. Nothing-- then her hull burst outward at the strike points. A cataclysmic explosion followed-- "Her engines going, sir," said Skjol-- and she effectively split in two. Fire whipped up from the rifts in the ship's hull; black smoke coiled upward. Jim stared-- they all did, all the civilians-- out through the Helvig's bridge windows. Along the Tamsyn's deck, he could see tiny figures running, leaping into the water. But there was no evidence of uniforms, announced Skjol, from behind a pair of binoculars. A lifeboat fouled in its davits and capsized when it hit the water. The water into which it tipped was itself on fire.

"Change course to approach, sir?" Skjol asked.

"No, Mr. Skjol." Andersen's face was grim. "No quarter. We do not pick up survivors."

"Why the fuck not--?" Jim demanded.

Andersen swung on him; before he could speak, Selena said, "Because those assholes are running with infected, and in all that bloody panic we can't tell who's infected and who's not." She looked at Andersen as coldly as he was looking at Jim. "Right, Captain?"

"Correct, Miss Miller."

"What was the code, sir?" Skjol asked quietly.

Andersen looked to his first officer. "There was no code," he said. "Captain O'Neill would have known that. Helm--"

A redheaded young man, pale but steady in his blue uniform: "Sir."

"Current course?"

"Course set for Greenland, sir. Present speed: twenty knots."

"Very good, Mr. Stover."

Jim found himself shaking. Those men struggling in the water, the burning ship. An Irish ship. He said: "They were well out of their territory, weren't they?"

Andersen turned to him. He looked at Jim, and his expression was not as harsh as it might have been. "Ireland, like Britain, had ships at sea when the infection hit. Captains decided individually whether or not to put in. Those who chose to remain at sea-- in effect, those who survived-- have coordinated their patrol efforts with ours. Under the International Relief Compact, we offer them harborage and supplies."

"So th' virus-- it reached Ireland."

"Yes, Mr. Sullivan. A ferry from Liverpool made the crossing to Dublin carrying infected."

"How far did it get? D' you know--? Could they stop it?"

"The Scandinavian/EU alliance received final messages from Ireland three weeks ago. Scattered transmissions from as far north as Belfast, as far south as Cork City. Then nothing. The Americans are surveilling the country now, sweeping for survivors. But that is not our immediate concern." Andersen swung on Chaplin: "The Tamsyn, Mr. Chaplin. The North Star. What happened to their crews?"

Brian Chaplin said, flatly, "An infected human being resists feeding. It's not impossible, though--"

"What are you saying--?"

"You asked me what happened to the crews, Captain. I just told you."

Andersen scowled, his pale eyes awful. "Explain."

"They keep-- the pirates keep so many infected as-- as weapons, I guess you'd say. Those who can run and fight. The dead are food."

"Jesus--" Selena whispered.

Brian Chaplin looked from her to the others. Andersen, Skjol. Chaney, Dalton, Cooper. He looked at Jim. Jim looked back. He could see sweat on Chaplin's forehead.

"Guess it's Plan B, then," Chaplin said softly.

He reached behind his right ear, as though he were going for a scratch; he ran his fingers through his curly dark hair, and when his hand came away there was something in it. Something slender and shining. He held it between his fingers and swung it at Jim--

"No--!" Cooper. He shoved Jim aside, and the shining something whisked past his left shoulder. Cooper's shoulder, not Jim's--

A second later, Chaney, moving like a cobra: Chaplin's wrist was broken; he was staggering from a shot to the jaw. The shining something clattered end over end on the deck.

It was a razor.

By now, guns were coming out of holsters. Andersen's. Skjol's. Two sailors, stepping forward. Chaplin, stunned and hurt, wasn't looking at the guns or the men holding them. In Chaney's steel grip, he was shrinking back, pulling away.

From Cooper.

The fabric of Virgil Cooper's shirt was slit to a length of six inches where the razor had hit. A straight line of red had drawn itself across the skin of the shoulder beneath. He was turning his head, trying to see the cut. Dalton reached for him--

--and Cooper doubled over, shouting in pain. He staggered, convulsing. Dalton stepped back. Cooper raised his head and looked at him with blood-red eyes--

"Shoot him--!" Selena shouted.

Another shout, from Chaney: "No--!"

Cooper turned on him and Chaplin, and Andersen barked: "Mr. Cooper--!"

He heard. Something in him heard. Beyond the burning pain and the red of his eyes, Cooper knew his name. He swung toward Andersen, snarling--

The bullet caught him in the right temple. A piece of his skull broke free, blood sprayed. The younger of the two sailors standing near him looked away too late: blood splashed the boy's cheek, his chin--

Cooper twisted, went over. They all jumped back from his falling. He landed on his back, thrashed once, and was still.

Andersen wasn't looking at him. He was looking at the boy, his blood-splattered face.

"Mr. Gregersen--!" he said sharply.

"Sir--" The young sailor looked at Andersen with terrified blue eyes.

"Did you swallow any of that? Did you--?"

"Sir, I don't know--"

Andersen leveled the pistol at the boy's forehead. "Look at me, Mr. Gregersen. Look at me--!"

"Yes, sir--" Gregersen pulled himself up, forced himself to look past the gun barrel at Andersen's face.

"Ten seconds," Skjol said quietly. The second of the sailors, an older man with a dangerous, wiry build, added his grip to the death-hold Chaney had on Chaplin.

Heartbeats. "Fifteen," said Skjol.

Andersen's pistol hand was steady.

"Twenty, sir."

When the count in Jim's head had reached thirty, Andersen said, "Very good, Mr. Skjol." He lowered the pistol. "Mr. Gregersen."

"Yes, sir." There were tears in his eyes, but those eyes were still blue, and Gregersen was holding himself steady.

Andersen smiled gently. "You pass."

"Thank you, sir."

"Mr. Skjol: security to the bridge. Biohazard team, medical. Armed protocols. Inform Dr. Hoyser that we have a man in need of decontamination."

"Yes, sir."

The bridge around them was very still. Jim had his hands on Selena's arms; he'd pulled her back just before the shooting, had put himself between her and Cooper's blood. He was staring now at the man, the sunken Puffin's toolpusher, dead there on the polished deck.

Chaplin was looking, too. He raised his eyes from the corpse, looked across at Jim. He smiled thinly. "Well, you win some--"

"Yeh bastard." Jim released Selena, his eyes meeting Chaplin's. "Yeh fuckin' bastard--"

He bowled into Chaplin. Andersen grabbed him, tried to pull him back. Four security officers, just arriving, partitioned their efforts between Jim and Chaplin. Chaplin shouted in pain when one of the men managed to wrench his broken wrist.

"Mr. Sullivan!" Andersen snapped. "STOP."

Jim froze. He looked at the faces of the security men; they were that close to securing him. He lowered his hands, stepped back. He was shaking.

"Captain Andersen," said Brian Chaplin, clearly, "I demand to be taken to the American embassy in Reykjavik."

"You what--?" Jim asked, incredulous.

"This is a ship of the Royal Danish Navy, Mr. Chaplin," Andersen said evenly. "And I am her captain. At the end of our patrol, I will see you are taken to the American embassy in Copenhagen."

"I am an American citizen, Captain Andersen, and I demand--"

Andersen's fist shot out, bony and huge, and caught Chaplin square in the jaw. The man's head snapped back; he went limp in the hands of the men holding him.

The Helvig's captain looked at him with distaste. "Search him," he said to the security men. "Thoroughly. Have him sedated first. Be careful: he may have sharp objects concealed on his person, and those objects may be contaminated with the rage virus. Then have him placed in irons and locked in the brig. Go." He watched as Chaplin was hauled out, and then he said to Skjol, quietly: "I struck a prisoner, Mr. Skjol. You may put that in your report."

Skjol's face was neutral. Unreadable. "Put what in my report, sir--?"

Andersen breathed out, his eyes troubled and sad. "Nothing, Mr. Skjol."

"Very good, sir."

"You really gonna take him to the American embassy, Captain?" Chaney asked.

"Do you think he'll live that long, Mr. Chaney?" Andersen countered.

"Couldn't say, Captain." Chaney looked numb. He opened his mouth to speak; he hesitated. "Speaking for myself, I--I wouldn't-- Virgil wouldn't want that. But I don't know how the rest of the guys'll take it, sir. The guys from the Puffin. Couldn't say."

"Noted, Mr. Chaney."

The medical team was arriving. Dr. Hoyser was there, he and an emergency tech in hazmat suits. The tech tended to the splattered Mr. Gregersen, cleaning the boy's face with something that smelled several steps stronger than bleach while the older of the security men, Gregersen's original counterpart, looked on. The older man held a pistol in his hand while the tech worked; he kept his eyes on Gregersen's.

A body bag for Cooper. A gurney. Dalton left the bridge, but Chaney stayed and watched. Jim watched him. He watched the man's eyes fill with tears. Dr. Huelsmann arrived; her face as she took in the scene was a terrible mixture of professional detachment, personal deep shock. She caught one of Chaney's hands, gripped it hard in both of hers.

"Captain Andersen--" she said. She had her eyes on Chaney.

"Yes, Doctor."

"What are your navy's protocols with regard to infected dead?"

"Immediate burial at sea, Doctor."

Chaney flinched. He made as though to speak, couldn't. Dr. Huelsmann said: "The Helvig has mortuary facilities, Captain."

"She does, Doctor."

"I would like to make a request, sir--" She paused, her face working. A tear broke onto her right cheek. "We're-- we're roughly two days along the Greenland coast, three days back to the site of the Puffin, correct--? Might we keep Mr. Cooper with us until the Helvig returns to the rig?"

"He'd like that, sir," Chaney said hollowly. He looked at Andersen. "He'd like t' be with the guys. Water's deep there."

Andersen said to Huelsmann: "You would take responsibility for his body, Doctor?"

"I would, sir."

"You would be performing any necessary preparations under armed guard. Full biohazard protocols. Do you agree to that?"

"I do, sir."

"Very well." Andersen went to them, placed one hand on Chaney's shoulder, one hand on Huelsmann's. "I am sorry for your loss."

"Here are my thoughts," Skjol said quietly. He was standing near Jim and Selena, nearer than Jim had realized. He wasn't looking at them. "The pirates. Mr. Chaplin. They took the North Star-- but they couldn't just send their own boat away. The Tamsyn might spot it. We might spot it. So they scuttled it, settled in on the rig, and sent their distress call to Captain O'Neill. They commandeered the Tamsyn when she arrived and murdered her crew. Then they left Mr. Chaplin to wait for us." He shook himself, frowning; he glanced at them almost apologetically. "But these are only my thoughts. Pardon me, Mr. Sullivan, Miss Miller--"

He touched his cap and went to join Andersen. Jim touched Selena's arm, nodded toward the door. She followed him out.

In the west, the sun had disappeared. Across the water, the light was going, too.


The Helvig lost a night, or so it seemed. The crew-- all of them, actually, crew and not-- were for the remainder of the day quiet and numb and efficient. Evening came with calm seas, a pale darkening flat-blue sky. Selena and Jim and Hannah and Piotr met Laurel and Robbie for dinner, and even Robbie was quiet at table. He related, though, where he and Laurel had been during the general quarters-- "Just there: in our quarters. Her quarters, actually. Big fellow told us to stay put, and we stayed."

"We heard th' shootin'," Laurel said quietly. She didn't say they'd heard the cries from the men on the Tamsyn as they burned or drowned. She sat stirring without eating a bowl of creamed tomato soup.

Selena excused herself and left the mess, bound for sickbay. Jim would have followed; he couldn't. Cooper was there, and Dr. Huelsmann would be tending to his dead body, and Selena was going to offer what help she could. Jim couldn't go there, couldn't bring himself to go. It shamed him. He left the dinner table ahead of the others; he went to the ship's library and looked at the web pages he'd read over Selena's shoulder the day before. But his eyes were nonporous, and the words simply drifted across them without sinking through to his brain. He didn't realize he was crying until a tear splashed onto the desktop just in front of the keyboard. He left the library and returned to their cabin. Selena wasn't back. He hesitated; he hovered; he and the world were detached from one another. He fell asleep on the bed fully clothed.

He woke, briefly, some time later. Selena, also dressed, was curled around him, stroking his hair.


The Helvig reached the eastern coast of Greenland just after oh eight hundred the next day. Green there was, but no trees: summer grasses, lichen, and flowers in distant splashes of purple and yellow and pink. A coastline of pebbled beaches, stony hills, and boulders. In the western distance rose mountains and massive white tables of glacial ice. The Helvig passed hunters paddling sealskin kayaks; it passed wet-suited tourists in fiberglass kayaks painted red and yellow. The kayakers waved at the ship, passing as it was at a safely wake-free distance. Chaney, overseeing his press gang as they touched up the iceproof paint near the hangar, soberly waved back.

Robbie paused with his gray-coated brush, glancing over his shoulder at the tiny figures in their pointed boats. "You think that water's as cold as it looks?"

"I think it's about ten times colder'n it looks," Jim replied. "Am I right, Leo?"

"Close enough. Water's about forty degrees, give or take." Chaney pointed at the stony coast, to an inlet opening onto the sea, to white slabs drifting there in the blue-black water. "Still have pack ice, even in July. Thing is, they say about Greenland, the water's so cold, you go in, you never come up. No gases. Nothin' decomposes."

"Ultima Thule," Robbie said softly. "We've reached the end of the world, James."


A quiet day, a sky clear but melancholy and muted in its blue. Jim missed Selena at lunch. He sat with Hannah while Robbie went off to separate Laurel from her laundry for the space of a sandwich.

"Where's Piotr?" Jim asked.

Hannah peppered a plate of goulash. "Talkin' wit' th' captain. Think he's still mad about th' chopper. Th' one we should have, not th' Bell."

"The-- It's a Lynx, yeah? Worth more'n a Bell, is it?" Jim shoveled a forkful of sauced noodles into his mouth, found it to his liking.

Hannah looked at him as though he were a minor grade of moron. "Well, yeah." She smiled a little, stirring her food. "Piotr said Andersen said it was just like tradin' th' cow for a handful o' beans."

"An' they'll be pluckin' beans from Piotr's pocket t' make up th' difference--?"

"Yeah. Don't bother 'im, though. He can handle it."

"How's th' Bell, then?" Jim reached across, gently touched a smudge on Hannah's left cheek. "Supposed t' leave some of th' oil in it, aren't yeh--?"

"Look who's talkin'." Hannah lightly tapped his forehead, traced what had to be a good-sized blot of paint. "You have t' wait for that first coat t' dry before applyin' th' second--?"

About then, Robbie arrived with his rescuee from the scullery. He and Laurel trayed up and sat down. Laurel looked at Jim in his spots of gray and said, "Christ, you look like the Tin Woodsman."

"Right, right, I'm off then." He smiled, got up.

"Aw, Jim, I didn't mean--"

"No, no. Stuff's probably well toxic. I'll get cleaned up."


He wanted Selena to be in the cabin. She wasn't. He got the paint off his hands and face, again feeling slightly disconnected, feeling slightly more alone. He wanted to talk to her; he knew he'd go absolutely silent if she were there. He thought of going to the dispensary to find her. He thought it would seem weak of him. He changed his shirt and went to get another assignment from Leo.
They met at dinner. Piotr had survived his chat with Andersen; Hannah had re-attached herself to him. She sat beside him in smudgy contentment while he and she shared a table with Robbie and Laurel. Selena found a table off to the side for herself and Jim. They both ignored their food. He could feel her trying to catch his eyes. She put her hand on the table between them, and he put his hand over it. He squeezed her slender fingers.

"Umm--" He cleared his throat. "D' you think we could--"

"Yeah." She stood up, her hand still in his. "Let's get out of here."

Not the leading back of-- had it really been only three nights ago? No tangling kisses, no clumsy, shy pulling away of clothing, no wonderful, desperate holdings. She sat beside him quietly and patiently on their bed and waited for him to speak.

"Cooper," Jim said, finally, softly. "He's dead because of me."

"He was alive because of you."

"It should've been me there on th' bridge--"

"No--!" Selena spoke so sharply that he went still to his very core. Her face worked; she struggled with the words. "I'm not-- Christ, I'm so ashamed-- Jim, I'm not strong enough for that. Mr. Cooper is dead, and I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry. But you're alive, and that means more to me. It means everything to me. You have no idea how much I love you."

"About as much as I love you, I reckon."

She laid her head on his shoulder. Not a full embrace, but contact enough. Jim tipped his head to hers.

"Think Andersen'll really take 'im to th' embassy?" he asked, after a time.

"I think Andersen spoke honestly. Mr. Chaplin's chances of survival are not good. And I'm not sorry to hear that."

Jim swallowed. She still had about her a hard something of cynicism-- he was loath to call it "bloodthirstiness"-- and it frightened him. The primacy of survival seemed to come so easily for her. His concept of staying alive, by comparison, had diluted itself with the concepts of protection and compassion. Indiscriminately, sometimes. He could think of Chaplin in the brig, drugged and strip-searched, in restraints, and feel something like pity. He was afraid to tell her that. That in itself was troubling: he was off his head mad for her, he adored her, he in no way doubted her devotion to him, and yet he could hesitate, could keep something back. He wondered if there were anything she feared to tell him.

He reached around, gently rubbed her upper arm. "Think I'm in need of a walk. Clear me head."

"Want me to come with you?"

"No-- thanks, darlin': no." He touched his forehead to hers. "I need t' think. Don't imagine I'd be th' best company."

"I understand." She leaned away, looked at him affectionately. "Think I'll hit the gym. I need to do something rough and brutal. A few hundred crunches, something like that. Not--" -- and she passed him a tousling caress, rising-- "-- rough and tender. I'll see you later, yeah?"

"Yeah." He caught her hand, pulled her in, shared a kiss with her. "Love you."

"Love you, too, Jim."


Jim prowled the ship, invisible. The last of the sunset had gone; the passageways were on night-illumination. Muted, careful lighting, pools of shadow. He passed sickbay; he glanced in and saw Chaney quietly embracing Huelsmann outside Dr. Hoyser's office. She had her head on his shoulder. They didn't see or hear him; he moved on. The sailors he passed didn't acknowledge him; nor did they ignore him, exactly. Two armed sentries stood at the stairway leading down to the brig. There would be more sentries below. Jim went upward instead, up the stairs to the Helvig's living areas. He passed the lounge: no thunk and clatter from the billiards table. Two sailors sat playing chess across a round table, under a metal wall lamp.

Jim moved along. He was thinking of finding a jacket and heading aft to haunt Hannah and Piotr and the injured Bell in the chopper hangar when he saw light stealing out from under the door to Captain Andersen's office.

He eased up to the door, paused. It was open the slightest bit: hence the triangle of light in the dim hall. He rapped on the polished wood.

"Come in."

Jim entered. Andersen was seated at a heavy wooden desk across the way. Golden oak by the look of it. It matched the room's paneling. There was royal blue carpeting underfoot, a short royal-blue sofa against the wall on the right. Andersen was dividing his attention between a notebook open on the blotter on his desk and a black laptop to the blotter's right. A white bitten apple glowed upside-down on the laptop's open lid. The fixture above Jim's head was dark; the room's light came from a corner lamp next to the sofa and from a lamp on Andersen's desk. Deco glass, long slender panes in amber and white.

Andersen tapped with his long fingers at the keyboard of his laptop while Jim stood quietly and waited; two minutes or so passed, and then Andersen closed the black appled lid and the notebook, too, and folded his hands on the blotter and looked across at Jim with his terrible electric eyes under black brows and said politely: "What can I do for you, Mr. Sullivan?"

"I-- umm, I'm not-- I'm not sure, sir."

A thin smile. "Are you here to propose again, Mr. Sullivan?"

"No-- no, sir."

"That is a relief. Though I admire your intentions." Andersen's smile became slightly less skeletal. His eyes, though, remained sober. He gestured at the sofa, at a cushioned chair before and to the left of his desk. "Please, Mr. Sullivan: sit."

"Thank you, sir." Jim seated himself on the edge of the sofa. "If I'm bothering you, though--"

"Not at all." Andersen picked up the handset of the phone on his desk, tapped a button, waited. "Steward? Coffee and biscuits in my office, if you please. Two cups. Thank you."

He set down the phone; he looked over and chuckled at the expression on Jim's face. "Don't worry, Mr. Sullivan: it will not be the crude oil they serve in the mess."

"That's a relief, no lie." Jim smiled a bit, sheepishly.

"What brings you here, then?"

Jim tapped his fingertips together, looked at his knees. Then he looked at Andersen evenly. "I feel responsible for what happened yesterday, sir."

"Whatever for, Mr. Sullivan? We sank a vessel full of criminals and infected. I cannot and will not tolerate guilt for that. Or were you referring to Mr. Cooper?"

"I was, sir."

"You would prefer to have died in his place," Andersen said softly.

"I--" Hearing it spoken: it chilled him. He looked away. "I think-- I don't know--"

"You would prefer that Miss Miller not have her future husband. That your young companion not have a guardian. That Mr. Kalinovich not have a friend he considers to be of exemplary character and bravery." Andersen leaned back in his chair. "If anyone is to blame, Mr. Sullivan, I am. I should have had that scoundrel placed in irons the moment he began to speak. As for Mr. Cooper--" and he waited for Jim to look back at him-- "we should remember kindly those who have died, seek just retribution against those who did them harm, and live our own lives lawfully and well. Can you agree with that?"

Jim mulled; he said, "I can."

"Good." Andersen smiled, formally but kindly. Then his eyes went toward the door, and he looked genuinely pleased. "Ah: coffee."

A steward in a white jacket: a black tray and mugs, a black plate of biscuits, a silver coffee service. The man politely set down his burden, received his captain's thanks, and left. Jim watched Andersen pour.

"One thing, though--"

"What is that, Mr. Sullivan?" Andersen handed him a mug.

Jim reached for the cream, smiling wryly. "'Exemplary character.' Dunno if I agree with that."

"A sound assessment, I'm sure." Andersen sipped from his mug. "My nephew is a sensible judge."

"Your nephew--?"

"Piotr, of course. He wouldn't have told you. You and your friends are under the protection of the Danish government. By extension now, also, you are guests of my family."


Jim returned to their cabin, his and Selena's, feeling better about things-- better, actually, than he'd felt in weeks. Good coffee, good ordinary conversation. His head was full of new facts, ideas that extended past the perpetual present, a present that until very recently had seemed to offer little other than day-to-day survival. Piotr Kalinovich, Andersen's sister's boy, had come to live with Andersen and his wife Emily when the sister and her husband died in a car wreck in Russia. Emily was English; she may-- or may not, Andersen had noted, drolly-- the importance of state discretion and all that-- have once worked for the British secret service. She would like them, he'd said, Jim and Selena and Hannah; they would like her. Which led, somewhat, to the future--

Andersen's house, his and his wife's, the one outside Copenhagen, was in fact "property." A piece of land, the house proper, outbuildings. And a carriage house. It was, frankly, something of a wreck, the latter structure; they'd debated for years whether to have it renovated or pulled down. Perhaps Jim and his friends could help them decide.

A pointed, friendly look from Andersen's lightning-blue eyes. Jim had stared back, realizing--

"You'd let us live there--? Why?"

"Why not?"

"You don't even know us--"

"You hardly seem vandals, Mr. Sullivan. You are Piotr's friends. And you are in need." A smile, thin but sincere. "And don't think I am exaggerating the condition of the place. I believe it is what one would call-- very euphemistically-- a 'nice fixer-upper.' Will you consider it?"

"I will. We will. Thank you, sir. Thank you."

On a glow, then, and optimistic, back to the cabin this time later. It was past twenty-three hundred hours when he closed the door quietly behind him. The lighting was low; Selena was asleep, curled on her side beneath the blanket and sheet. He stood for a moment and listened to her easy breathing; he went to the cabin's bathroom, then, and cleaned himself up a bit. He stripped to his boxers and hung up his trousers and sweatshirt and crept into bed behind her.

Beneath the sheet, Selena was wearing a t-shirt, blue; he had no doubt that somewhere on it one could find the Danish Navy's stenciled claim of ownership. He traced the lithe line of her back with his eyes. At her waist, he paused; he smiled. White waistband, clean baggy white cotton below--

Familiar. He switched off the light; in the dark, he eased in behind her, slipped his arm across her slender middle, and let his voice rumble very softly in her ear: "You can wear my knickers, but I can't wear yours--?"

She sighed contentedly and micro-stretched, molding herself back against him. "Mmm hmm."

"That's a double standard, that is."

"You could always take them back," she murmured.

She was speaking from a ways off. In the morning, if anything, it'd come off as a dream, what they were saying now. And there'd be more-- We've a place, darlin', if we want it. He smiled and snuggled up closer and spoke against her shoulder. "Mebbe later."

His hand had ended up against her belly, and she pressed her own hand over it. She'd had her crunches, by the feel of things, no lie. A million or so, at least.

"Mmm," she said.


Robbie and Laurel, one last, late stroll on deck. The night was clear and cool, the stars shining in swarms of brilliance. The Greenland coast was a low black mass passing by on the Helvig's port side. They'd come to pause near the railing by the helipad, at the edge of the light cast back from the hangar's open door. Within the structure, Piotr and Hannah were sitting on a bench, side by side. She was holding a greasy bit of machinery as carefully as any other girl might hold a rose from a sweetie, and he was indicating something to her about it, talking. The Bell sat open and neatly vivisected behind them.

"So-- are you going to make a play for him?" Robbie asked quietly, looking at the pair in the hangar.

"Are you?" Laurel softly countered.

"No."

"An' that'd be a 'no' here." She shrugged. "I know when I'm outclassed."

Robbie smiled at her. "Hannah? She's a kid."

"No, Robert, she's a kid with a crush. An' she needs that more'n I need a bit o' fun with him." Laurel turned from the hangar, looked out over the black shining water. "We're bound for a land of vikings an' Norse gods, anyway, aren't we? I'll catch th' next one."

"If I don't catch him first." He bumped shoulders with her, gently, his expression wry and affectionate. "Let's go in. It's getting cold."


Three thirty. Just before the end of a calm night. On the Helvig's dimly lit bridge, the blue-sweatered sailor at the communications post pulled away his headset and called to the officer of the watch: "Mr. Hecker, sir--"

Replied Second Officer Hecker, leaving the ship's sonar station and a display of the sea floor along the Greenland coast: "What is it Mr. Madsen?"

"Contact, sir. Helicopter approaching from the southeast. Claims to be our Super Lynx. Call sign KMD WSR 90B 'Valeria,' Pilot requests permission to land."

"That sounds like our Lynx. On the speaker, please, Mr. Madsen."

In the quiet of the bridge, an American voice, cheerful and brash, caught mid-transmission: Hey, Helvig, you there? Do you want this thing or not? We've been tryin' to catch ya for two days now. You still have that Bell your pilot borrowed?

"This is the Helvig," Hecker said. "Who are you?"

Name's Johnson. Isaac Johnson. Up from Infinity Base, West Yorkshire. Your pilot left this Lynx with us a few days back. Busted down. Finally got the parts, fixed her up. She's flyin' like a charm. You want her back?

"Should I notify the captain?" Madsen asked, very quietly.

Hecker shook his head no. "Yes, we would, Mr. Johnson."

Great. Umm, hey: about that Bell-- It's a Western Star 212--

"Here but disabled, sorry to say. Pilot made a hard landing under poor conditions a day ago."

Aww, that's too bad. Don't sweat it-- What's your name, buddy?

"Second Officer Hecker."

Hecker. Don't you worry, Hecker. We'll get that little bird patched right up, get her out of your hair. Okay?

"Very good, Mr. Johnson. Thank you. You have permission to land."

Thanks a million, Hecker. Johnson out.

The speaker went quiet. "One good thing to happen on this patrol, at any rate," Hecker said. "The captain will be pleased to see that Lynx, even with an American like Mr. Johnson flying it in. Notify the hangar crew, Mr. Madsen."

"Yes, sir."

Perhaps it was a trick of the too-clear Greenlandic air. Over the steady thrumming thump of the Helvig's engines, Second Officer Hecker and his radioman heard the chopping approach of the Super Lynx. A minute later, the chop sounded more distant. Then more distant still.

Madsen touched the left earpiece of his headset. He looked up at Hecker, frowning. "Sir-- the hangar crew reports-- the Lynx didn't land. It touched down briefly-- and then two people ran out and boarded it. It's heading for the coast now, sir."

Hecker felt the blood drain from his face. "Notify the captain, Mr. Madsen."


A dream. Deja vu, maybe. In the distance, approaching, a chop of rotors. Comfortable, warm, mostly asleep, Jim murmured, near her shoulder: "Selena, d'yeh hear--?"

She murmured back: "Yeah, I do--" But she was as mostly asleep as he was, and as comfortable, Jim's warm lean self pressing just right along her back and bum and the rears of her thighs, and then the chop was fading again, and gone, and they missed it not at all.


Then-- not a dream. A thumping at the door. Jim woke sharply. Selena woke sharply, too. He drew away from her and sat up: "Who is it?"

Across the dark cabin, beyond the door, muffled: "Mr. Skjol, sir."

"Wait, yeah--?" The shock of the air, cold after all that cuddling. Jim switched on the wall lamp, pulled on his trousers, pulled his sweatshirt over his head and arms and torso en route to the door. He opened it. "What's goin' on, Mr. Skjol--?"

Deferential but worried: that was the look on the stocky first officer's face. A touch embarrassed, too, when he glanced past Jim to Selena, sitting up on the bed in her makeshift nightwear. "It's Miss Davis, sir--"

"Who--?" Jim asked.

"Hannah?" Selena said. All the sleep was gone from her voice. She got up, approached the door. "What's happened to her?"

"We're not entirely certain." Skjol shrugged tightly, his face worried behind its tidy beard. "All we know is, she's no longer on the ship. She and Mr. Dalton: they're gone."