Polar Quest

43

‘Carl, you there?’ the senior security guard stationed in the Operations Center called out over the radio.

No answer.

‘Hey, Jon, you read me?’

‘Loud and clear, Danny. Whassup?’

‘Carl’s gone off the air. He said he was gonna check out a mag lock that was actin’ up near the intersection of one-five and one-six. Can you head down there and see what that jerk-off is doin’?’

‘Sure, Danny.’

The guard leaned back in his chair and resumed watching the security monitors. Other than the occasional flicker, the picture never seemed to change. He watched as a bank of four monitors switched over to the laboratory wing.

‘Lab one, two, three, and four,’ he recited as the images appeared on the screen.

Thirty seconds later, the next series appeared.

‘Level F — ’ The word choked in his throat. ‘What the hell!’

The guard bolted upright and grabbed the microphone. ‘Heads up, guys. We got an intruder in the Level Four corridor. Mark, Jon, Jeff, get your asses over there and seal it off.’

‘The guy’s in Level Four? Ain’t that the hot zone?’

‘Yeah, but I’ll make sure that he gets hosed off real good on the way out. Now move it!’

‘What about Carl?’ Jon asked.

‘Fuck Carl! If we don’t nail this intruder Duroc’s gonna hang us all by our balls from the flagpole.’

Kilkenny found the Ice Pick probe in a far corner of the lab. Thick orange cables ran from wall outlets into jacks on the probe’s exterior, providing power. The spherical cryobot had been removed from the probe and placed in a support frame on the lab bench.

Kilkenny scrolled through a list of commands on the Palm X and selected Cryobot Access. The upper hemisphere of the cryobot spun 180 degrees, then separated from the lower half. A hydraulic lift in the center of the cryobot telescoped upward, opening a twelve-inch gap between the halves.

Inside the lower hemisphere, Kilkenny found the hexagonal storage drawers where the sample capsules were stored. Most of the spaces were empty. Kilkenny reached in and tried to grip one of the capsules with his gloved hands but found it difficult to extract the tiny objects.

The people working on this must have the same problem. Kilkenny thought. How’d they solve it?

Kilkenny searched the countertop and found a pair of blunt-nosed tongs. He placed the looped ends of the tongs over his thumb and forefinger, then carefully extracted one of the metallic capsules.

I got what I came for. Time to go.

‘Roxanne!’ Grin called out. ‘There’s two — no, three — guards heading your way. They must have spotted Nolan in the lab.’

‘Understood,’ Tao replied.

She glanced back at the door that led to the Level 4 lab, mentally urging Kilkenny to walk through it.

Kilkenny disconnected his umbilical line, reentered the air lock, and closed the door behind him. Immediately, shower heads mounted in the ceiling and walls of the air lock began spraying his suit with chemicals designed to kill any pathogen that might try to hitch a ride out of the lab.

The chemicals had no effect on the metallic capsule he’d recovered from the probe, but they quickly destroyed the Palm X. The screen flickered, then went blank, and the plastic shell began to disintegrate in Kilkenny’s gloved hand.

‘Grin, how close are the guards?’ Tao asked.

‘Two of them are closing fast. You and Nolan better get out of there now.’

‘He’s not back yet.’

Tao looked around the locker room for some defensive cover, but found nothing. The room was lined with metal lockers. Once the guards reached the entry door, they would have a clear shot at her.

Tao looked up at the two-by-two acoustic tile ceiling. ‘Grin, how much room is there above the suspended ceiling?’

Grin sliced a sectional view through the computer model of the locker room. ‘About four feet.’

Tao set the guard’s card key and the Beretta on the floor. She was loathe to give up the weapon, but reasoned that leaving these things where the guards would find them increased the odds that they would think Kilkenny was acting alone.

She then stood atop one of the long steel benches, pushed up on the ceiling tile above her head, and slid it off to the side. Grabbing hold of the steel studs that supported the drywall soffit over the lockers, Tao pulled herself through the opening into the ceiling. Sealed metal ducts, cable trays, and dozens of pipes and conduits filled the darkened space. Once she found her footing, she pushed the ceiling tile back into place.

The decontamination cycle ended with a clear water rinse and a blast of high pressure air to blow off the excess water. Finally, the door to the staging area unlocked, and Kilkenny quickly exited the claustrophobic confines of the air lock. Inside the staging area, he set the capsule down on a stainless-steel bench, tossed the wrecked Palm X into one of the lockers, and began stripping off the cumbersome space suit.

‘I’ll take a wet suit over this thing any day,’ he muttered.

He left the space suit in a heap on the floor, grabbed the capsule, and headed for the door. He stepped into the next air lock and was run through an ultraviolet-light decontamination cycle. Once the cycle completed, the door began to slowly slide open.

‘Freeze!’

At the far end of the corridor Kilkenny saw a guard with a surgical mask over his face pointing a pistol at him. He ducked behind the open door, popped the sealed metal capsule into his mouth, and swallowed.

‘I said freeze, goddammit! You deaf, motherfucker?’

Kilkenny stood in the fully open doorway, hands raised.

‘If you so much as move a goddammed inch, I’ll shoot you! Face the wall and put your hands behind your head.’

Kilkenny complied and the guard trained his pistol on the back of Kilkenny’s head. A second guard stepped out into the Level 2 corridor.

‘You got him, Mark?’

‘Yeah,’ Kilkenny’s captor replied.

‘He clean?’

‘How the fuck should I know?’

‘He was in the hot zone, man!’

Kilkenny’s captor recalled what he’d been told about Level 4 as part of his training for this facility. ‘The air locks wouldn’t have opened unless he ran a decontamination cycle, so don’t worry about it. Cuff him.’

The second guard holstered his pistol as he walked down the corridor and bound Kilkenny’s hands behind his back.

‘Danny,’ Kilkenny’s captor called into his radio, ‘we got him.’

‘I was beginning to wonder. Bring him in while I call the boss.’

The two guards marched Kilkenny through the Level 2 air lock, where all three men were exposed to ultraviolet light. They moved through the alcove and back into the men’s locker room.

‘These must be Carl’s,’ the guard said, picking up the Beretta and card key. ‘Duroc ain’t gonna be happy with him.’

‘Shut up,’ Kilkenny’s captor ordered. ‘If any of us still has a job after this, we should consider ourselves lucky.’ He smacked his hand against the back of Kilkenny’s head. ‘How the fuck did you get in here?’