Dark Winter

CHAPTER THIRTY

Norse didn't open the bay doors that allowed him to exit the half-buried garage, he crashed through them as a precaution against surprise. Always a step ahead! His Spryte burst through in a blaze of light, spraying snow and plywood fragments like a tug butting a wave. The machine's headlights momentarily blinded the ring of winter-overs who'd hunched against the icy darkness to wait for their tormentor, and the violence of the breakout startled them. The machine lurched over the lip of the garage ramp and rocked back down, jerking a sled of fuel and supplies behind it. The engine's howl and the clanking of the treads made it sound like half dinosaur, half tank. When the beams finally swept by them and the cab was silhouetted against the stars, the ambushing group could see there were two people inside, Abby swaying uncertainly and Norse hunched at the wheel. It was obvious the psychologist planned to charge through the station and head toward Vostok as quickly as possible. No pause to say goodbye.

Pulaski was the first to stand up, running to take position in front of the lumbering tractor like a matador in front of a bull. The old soldier's blood was up now, his opponent finally plain and visible. "Come on!" he roared to the others. "Help me stop him!"

One by one the rest of the group rose out of the snow with their crude spears and clubs, rushing to surround the rumbling machine.

Norse sounded the horn of the Spryte at Pulaski's challenge, an angry, elephantine trumpeting, and then accelerated to run the determined cook down. The diesel snorted with power, its exhaust a black cloud. The commando waited until the last second, crouching as if willing to be hit, and then darted to one side as the machine ground by, running back along its length in his heavy boots, snow kicking up in lively spouts. A flying leap threw him upon the fuel and food sled that Norse was towing and the other pursuers roared at the sight. Then Pulaski regained his footing and sprang forward like a cat, a boot dancing on the trailer hitch until his gloved hand could catch a handhold on the main cab. If he could stop the Spryte the others could help him swarm Bob. Clenching a vent opening, he swung himself firmly aboard the snow tractor and worked along the driver's side, a hammer readied in one fist. The rest of the winter-overs were pursuing now like a pack of wolves, yelling and whooping.

Because they hadn't come through the tunnel, none of this group knew that Norse's gun had already murdered Pika.

The cook got to the cab door and Norse snarled soundlessly at him, swerving the tractor in a vain attempt to throw his attacker off. Pulaski hung on and swung the hammer. Heavy glass shattered, breaking the Spryte's cocoon of warmth, and the cook reached inside to either fumble with the door lock or drag Norse bodily out through the window's splintery teeth. The others would never know for sure.

The breakage gave Norse a clear shot. There was another bang.

The bullet cuffed the cook off the cab and sent him flying. There was something graceful to his arc, like a backward dive off a board, but when the old soldier fell into the snow it was heavily, his body instantly still. Now it was Norse who howled, an animalistic cry of rage and triumph, and he gunned the machine even harder. Jouncing across the sastrugi drifts toward the summer camp, his Spryte was well on its way toward leaving the Pole.

Dana and Geller reached Pulaski first. The cook's hood had been thrown back and the crest of his head had turned molten where the bullet had hit him. Hot blood steamed like acid into the snow.

He was dead.

A few of the others threw things, the clubs and spears banging off the sides of the Spryte as harmlessly as if it were an armored car. Then it was beyond them, red taillights a taunt, driving on into the night.

Norse was getting away.

"Always a step ahead!" he roared.

Suddenly there was a different snarl, a coughing rumble that rose to a whine, and another, single headlight blazed over the rim of the snow at the entrance to the garage. Snowmobile! It burst up through the wreckage of the garage's bay doors as if catapulted, leaping a drift and coming down in a wild skid, its treads biting and its single ski pointing toward its quarry. It was Lewis, in hot pursuit. Longfellow and Mendoza came charging along after him on foot.

The others began running again, too, trying to catch the churning tractor. "He's got Abby!" Geller roared at the geologist as Lewis shot by him. "He shot Cueball! Stop him and we'll finish it!"

The blinded Skinner was dancing from leg to leg to the sounds of pursuit, howling in the cold. "Get him, get him, get him!"

The snowmobile was far faster than the Spryte and Lewis pulled up alongside the machine quickly, eyeing the cab, trying to decide what to do. Norse pointed his gun out the window and Lewis fell back. How many shots did he have? One for Pika, one for the cook, but if he'd reloaded… Lewis hefted the meteorite as he decelerated, considering. What choice did he have? He swerved around the back of the sled and came up on the machine's other side, where Abby was riding, praying she'd jump at what was coming next. Pulling alongside the galloping treads, he chose a place to aim and then, with grim deliberation, threw the rock into the gearing.

There was another bang, a squeal of metal. The rock caught in the bogie wheels of the tread and jammed it so the Spryte swerved wildly, the other cab door popping open. There was a spurt of dust as Mickey Moss's jewel was crushed into powder. Even as the meteorite disintegrated, a broken tread slithered off one side and the snow machine spun helplessly. Abby was thrown clear and flopped onto the snow, apparently stunned or killed. The Spryte's one working tread sent it wheeling in a tight circle like a dog chasing its tail, the trailer tipping over and the hitch snapping free. The machine was mortally wounded: a window shattered, a tread gone, its extra fuel lost. The others ran up as it careened, surrounding it. Norse was wrenching with the controls, cursing in frustration.

It was like a boat without a rudder.

Then the psychologist realized the inevitable and sat back suddenly, cutting the engine so the Spryte ground to a stop. Its lights dimmed. Lewis cut the snowmobile, too.

It was quiet.

Norse was trapped.

The others stayed back several yards, wary of the gun, their lungs laboring in the bitter cold, surrounding the broken Spryte like hunters around a mammoth. Lewis got off his machine and ran for Abby, fearing she'd been shot. Falling to his knees in the snow beside her, he gingerly turned her over.

It was Raggedy Ann, the CPR doll.

Norse was laughing at him.

The psychologist had climbed out of the cab of the machine and was standing on the Spryte's roof, his parka hood back and his head lit by a halo of stars. He had his crude homemade pistol pointed casually outward, well aware that the others had recollected their hurled weapons and were in a circle around him now, arms poised to throw. He might get off one shot, maybe two. Then it would finally be over.

"Where's Abby?" Lewis called as he shakily rose, trying to catch his breath.

"You didn't do as you were told," Norse replied.

It was quiet again, the only sound the hiss of lightly blown snow slithering over the drifts. Lewis took a step toward the Spryte.

"I didn't really expect to get away," the psychologist finally went on. "I knew that when I was forced to eliminate Gabriella. The game had gotten out of control. But I've made my point, haven't I?"

"Where's Abby?"

"I didn't want to kill anybody, not really." Norse turned slowly, facing each one of the surrounding group in turn, still strangely in command with the force of his personality. "I wanted to kill the pomposity. The pride. The hubris! The academic arrogance, the smugness, the indifference. It was the station that killed you people, not me! The delusion that a place like this can work."

Lewis was trembling with impatience and outrage, desperate to know what had happened to the woman who'd saved him. But he had to communicate with this man, and that meant tolerating him for a few moments longer. "It's over, Doc," he tried, his face battered, his voice hoarse. "Give it up and maybe we can get you help come spring."

Norse looked down at him, remote, lordly, distracted. "What possible help could I get from you?"

"Learning how to live."

Norse shook his head, snowflakes dancing past his brush of regrown hair. "You still don't understand, do you? I already died. Long, long ago."

They were quiet then, watching each other.

"What did you put in the tractor treads?" Norse finally asked. The quiet of the group, their will against him, was unnerving him.

"The meteorite," Lewis said.

"And it's gone?"

"Yes."

"Destroyed?"

"Yes."

"Fitting, no?"

"Good riddance," Lewis said. "I hate that rock. Everyone does."

"Where did you find it?"

"With Pika, where you murdered him."

"He betrayed you, you know. We can't know anybody, can we?"

"Where's Abby, dammit?"

"Did you know that Pika sold you out for a few pounds of space rock? Quiet little Pika, who never seemed to know what was going on? Yet when I offered him the meteorite he showed me the way past the barrier into the fuel arch. I told him I was just fueling the jerricans to escape. I told him I was going to take him to Vostok. He ran away from me to try to fix things with you when he learned the truth. But it's always too late to fix things. That's what I've learned."

Lewis had a growing feeling of chill dread. "What truth?"

"That I'm still a step ahead of you, Lewis. That I've always been a step ahead. And the fact that you've cornered me out here, brought me down like a pack of yapping mongrel dogs, means nothing. Because I've already erased all of you."

"Did you kill Abby?" His voice was hollow. He felt sick.

"I loved Abby. She failed at loving me. So I'm giving her the quicker end. I opened some valves and the fuel level is rising in the arch, creeping up her parka where she's tied, and she'll either drown in jet fuel or ignite like a torch when it flashes into fire. Either way it's relatively quick and really quite merciful compared to freezing to death in the cold. I'm just letting her think about her rejection of me before her death comes. Believe me, you'll envy her- in your own last hours. I lied about what it would have been like if we'd left you on the stake. Freezing is a terrible way to go."

"Bob, it's not too late," Lewis tried. "Tell us what you've done. Help us make it right. We can fix it."

"The arch is filling with spilled fuel." Norse nodded solemnly. "The dome is becoming a bomb. If you'd left things alone you would have incinerated in the galley before you knew what was happening, which was the mercy I had planned for you. Now you can watch it from out here, your shelter vaporizing. The living will envy the dead."

The group looked up at him in disbelief. "But why?" Dana finally asked, her voice quavering.

"Because people don't work. Because it all falls apart on the way to Pluto."

There was a low keening sound as the winter-overs began to comprehend what he must have done. An enveloping dread at their own fate.

"Unfortunately, you didn't give me time to stop and destroy the generator at the Hypertats so there's a chance you can linger for days, maybe weeks. So I'm really leaving you with a final choice. The dilemma is my final gift to you. You can go back into the dome and try to save Dixon and risk dying with her. Or you can retreat to the emergency camp and try to save yourselves."

He reached in his parka and they stiffened, but it was only to pull out a sheaf of paper. "As you're freezing to death you might read some notes I made. It explains why you'll choose to save yourselves. Why our collective failure was inevitable. Why your mistake was in trusting each other. Trusting anybody! Every one of us is selfish at the final moment. So don't pity Abby. Pity yourselves." He glanced at his watch. "I'm guessing the rest of you have about thirty minutes."

"Tell us how to shut it off, dammit!" shouted Geller.

"This way," said Norse. And with that he turned the gun, pressed its twin barrels against the roof of his mouth, and fired.