The Ice Limit

Lincoln Child dedicates this book to his daughter,

Veronica

Douglas Preston dedicates this book

to Walter Winings Nelson, artist, photographer, and

partner in adventure.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Commander Stephen Littfin, United States Naval Reserve, for his invaluable help with the naval aspects of The Ice Limit. Our deep gratitude also goes out to Michael Tusiani and Captain Emilio Fernandez Sierra, who corrected various tanker-related elements of the manuscript. We would also like to thank Tim Tiernan for his advice on metallurgy and physics, the meteorite hunter Charlie Snell of Santa Fe for information on how meteorite hunters actually operate, and Frank Ryle, senior structural engineer at Ove Arup & Partners. We also want to express our appreciation to various other anonymous engineers who shared with us confidential engineering details related to moving exremely heavy objects.

Lincoln Child would like to thank his wife, Luchie, for just about everything; Sonny Baula for the Tagalog translations; Greg Tear for being such an eager and competent critic; and his daughter, Veronica, for making every day precious. Also, thanks to Denis Kelly, Malou Baula, and Juanito "Boyet" Nepomuceno for their various and sundry ministrations. And my heartfelt gratitude to Liz Ciner, Roger Lasley, and especially George Soule, my adviser (had I but known it!) all this last quarter century. May the warm enlightening sun shine always upon Carleton College and its progeny.

Douglas Preston would like to thank his wife, Christine, and his three children, Selene, Aletheia, and Isaac, for their love and support.

We also wish to thank Betsy Mitchell and Jaime Levine of Warner Books, Eric Simonoff of Janklow & Nesbit Associates, and Matthew Snyder of CAA.

THE

ICE LIMIT

Isla Desolación,

January 16, 1:15 P.M.

THE VALLEY that had no name ran between barren hills, a long mottled floor of gray and green covered with soldier moss, lichens, and carpha grasses. It was mid-January — the height of summer — and the crevasses between the patches of broken rock were mortared with tiny pinguicula flowers. To the east, the wall of a snowfield gleamed a bottomless blue. Blackflies and mosquitoes droned in the air, and the summer fogs that shrouded Isla Desolación had temporarily broken apart, allowing a watery sunlight to speckle the valley floor.

A man walked slowly across the island's graveled flats, stopping, moving, then stopping again. He was not following a trail — in the Cape Horn islands, at the nethermost tip of South America, there were none.

Nestor Masangkay was dressed in worn oilskins and a greasy leather hat. His wispy beard was so thick with sea salt that it had divided itself into forked tips. It waggled like a snake's tongue as he led two heavily burdened mules across the flats. There was no one to hear his voice commenting unfavorably on the mules' parentage, character, and right to existence. Once in a while the complaints were punctuated with the thwack of a sucker rod that he carried in one brown hand. He had never met a mule, especially a rented mule, that he liked.

But Masangkay's voice held no anger, and the thwacks of his sucker rod held little force. Excitement was rising within him. His eyes roamed over the landscape, taking in every detail: the columnar basaltic escarpment a mile away, the double-throated volcanic plug, the unusual outcropping of sedimentary rock. The geology was promising. Very promising.

He walked across the valley floor, eyes on the ground. Once in a while a hobnailed boot would lash out and kick a rock loose. The beard waggled; Masangkay grunted; and the curious pack train would move on once again.

In the center of the valley, Masangkay's boot dislodged a rock from the flat. But this time he stopped to pick it up. The man examined the soft rock, rubbing it with his thumb, abrading small granules that clung to his skin. He brought it to his face and peered at the grit with a jeweler's loupe.

He recognized this specimen — a friable, greenish material with white inclusions — as a mineral known as coesite. It was this ugly, worthless rock that he had traveled twelve thousand miles to find.

His face broke into a broad grin, and he opened his arms to heaven and let out a terrific whoop of joy, the hills trading echoes of his voice, back and forth, back and forth, until at last it died away.

He fell silent and looked around at the hills, gauging the alluvial pattern of erosion. His gaze lingered again on the sedimentary outcrop, its layers clearly delineated. Then his eyes returned to the ground. He led the mules another ten yards and pried a second stone loose from the valley floor with his foot, turning it over. Then he kicked loose a third stone, and a fourth. It was all coesite — the valley floor was practically paved with it.

Near the edge of the snowfield, a boulder — a glacial erratic — lay atop the tundra. Masangkay led his mules over to the boulder and tied them to it. Then, keeping his movements as slow and deliberate as possible, he walked back across the flats, picking up rocks, scuffing the ground with his boot, drawing a mental map of the coesite distribution. It was incredible, exceeding even his most optimistic assumptions.

He had come to this island with realistic hopes. He knew from personal experience that local legends rarely panned out. He recalled the dusty museum library where he had first come across the legend of Hanuxa: the smell of the crumbling anthropological monograph, the faded pictures of artifacts and long-dead Indians. He almost hadn't bothered; Cape Horn was a hell of a long way from New York City. And his instincts had often been wrong in the past. But here he was.

And he had found the prize of a lifetime.

Masangkay took a deep breath. He was getting ahead of himself. Walking back to the boulder, he reached beneath the belly of the lead packmule. Working swiftly, he unraveled the diamond hitch, pulled the hemp rope from the pack, and unbuckled the wooden box panniers. Unlatching the lid of one pannier, he pulled out a long drysack and laid it on the ground. From it he extracted six aluminum cylinders, a small computer keyboard and screen, a leather strap, two metal spheres, and a nicad battery. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, he assembled the equipment into an aluminum rod fifteen feet long, with spherical projections at either end. He fitted the computer to its center, clipped on the leather strap, and slapped the battery into a slot on one side. He stood up, examining the high-tech object with satisfaction: a shiny anachronism among the grubby pack gear. It was an electromagnetic tomographic sounder, and it was worth over fifty thousand dollars — a ten-thousand down payment and financing for the rest, which was proving to be a struggle to pay off atop all his other debts. Of course, when this project paid off, he could settle with everyone — even his old partner.

Masangkay flicked the power switch and waited for the machine to warm up. He raised the screen into position, grasped a handle at the center of the rod, and let the weight settle around his neck, balancing the sounder the way a high-wire artist balances his pole. With his free hand he checked the settings, calibrated and zeroed the instrument, and then began walking steadily across the long flat staring fixedly at the screen. As he walked, fog drifted in and the sky grew dark. Near the center of the flat, he suddenly stopped.

Masangkay stared at the screen in surprise. Then he adjusted some settings and took another step. Once again he paused, brow furrowed. With a curse he switched the machine off, returned to the edge of the flat, rezeroed the machine, and walked at right angles to his previous path. Again he paused, surprise giving way to disbelief. He marked the spot with two rocks, one atop the other. Then he walked to the far side of the flat, turned, and came back, more quickly now. A soft rain was beading on his face and shoulders, but he ignored it. He pressed a button, and a narrow line of paper began spooling out of the computer. He examined it closely, ink bleeding down the paper in the mist. His breath came faster. At first he thought the data was wrong: but there it was, three passes, all perfectly consistent. He made yet another pass, more reckless than the last, tearing off another spool of paper, examining it quickly, then balling it into his jacket pocket.

After the fourth pass, he began talking to himself in a low, rapid monotone. Veering back toward the mules, he dropped the tomographic sounder on the drysack and untied the second mule's pack with trembling hands. In his haste, one of the panniers fell to the ground and split open, spilling picks, shovels, rock hammers, an auger, and a bundle of dynamite. Masangkay scooped up a pick and shovel and jogged back to the center of the flat. Flinging the shovel to the ground, he began feverishly swinging the pick, breaking up the rough surface. Then he scooped out the loosened gravel with the shovel, throwing it well to the side. He continued in this fashion, alternating pick and shovel. The mules watched him with complete impassivity, heads drooping, eyes half-lidded.

Masangkay worked as the rain began to stiffen. Shallow pools collected at the lowest points of the graveled flat. A cold smell of ice drifted inland from Franklin Channel, to the north. There was a distant roll of thunder. Gulls came winging over his head, circling in curiosity, uttering forlorn cries.

The hole deepened to a foot, then two. Below the hard layer of gravel, the alluvial sand was soft and easily dug. The hills disappeared behind shifting curtains of rain and mist. Masangkay worked on, heedless, stripping off his coat, then his shirt, and eventually his undershirt, flinging them out of the hole. Mud and water mingled with the sweat that ran across his back and chest, defining the ripples and hollows of his musculature, while the points of his beard hung with water.

Then, with a cry, he stopped. He crouched in the hole, scooping the sand and mud away from a hard surface beneath his feet. He let the rain wash the last bit of mud from the surface.

Suddenly, he started in shock and bewilderment. Then he knelt as if praying, spreading his sweaty hands reverently on the surface. His breath came in gasps, eyes wild with astonishment, sweat and rain streaming together off his forehead, his heart pounding from exertion, excitement, and inexpressible joy.

At that moment, a shock wave of brilliant light burst out of the hole, followed by a prodigious boom that rolled off across the valley, echoing and dying among the far hills. The two mules raised their heads in the direction of the noise.

They saw a small body of mist, which became crablike, broke apart, and drifted off into the rain.

The tethered mules looked away from the scene with indifference as night settled upon Isla Desolación.

Isla Desolación,

February 22, 11:00 A.M.

THE LONG bark canoe cut through the water of the channel, moving swiftly with the tidal current. A single figure, small and bent, knelt inside, expertly feathering a paddle, guiding the canoe through the chop. A thin trail of smoke rose from the smoldering fire built on a pad of wet clay in the center of the canoe.

The canoe rounded the black cliffs of Isla Desolación, turned into the smoother water of a little cove, and crunched onto the cobbled beach. The figure leapt out and pulled the canoe above the high tide mark.

He had heard the news, in passing, from one of the nomadic fishermen who lived alone in these cold seas. That a foreignlooking man would visit such a remote and inhospitable island was unusual indeed. But even more unusual was the fact that a month had passed, and the man had apparently not left.

He paused, catching sight of something. Moving forward, he picked up a piece of shattered fiberglass, and then another, looking at them, peeling some strands from the broken edges and tossing them aside. The remains of a freshly wrecked boat. Perhaps there was a simple explanation after all.

He was a peculiar-looking man — old, dark, with long gray hair and a thin little mustache that drooped down from his chin like the film of a spiderweb. Despite the freezing weather, he was dressed only in a soiled T-shirt and a baggy pair of shorts. Touching a finger to his nose, he blew snot out of his nostrils, first one, then the other, with a delicate motion. Then he scrambled up the cliff at the head of the little cove.

He paused at its brink, his bright black eyes scanning the ground for signs. The gravelly floor, dotted with mounds of moss, was spongy from the freeze-thaw cycle, and it had preserved the footprints — and hoofprints — excellently.

He followed the trail as it made its irregular way up a rise to the snowfield. There it followed the edge of the field, eventually cutting down into the valley beyond. At a brow overlooking the valley the prints stopped, milling around in a crazy pattern. The man paused, gazing down into the barren draw. There was something down there: bits of color against the landscape, and the glint of sunlight off polished metal.

He hurried down.

He reached the mules first, still tied to the rock. They were long dead. His eyes traveled hungrily across the ground, glittering with avarice as they registered the supplies and equipment. Then he saw the body.

He approached it, moving much more cautiously. It lay on its back, about a hundred yards from the mouth of a recently dug hole. It was naked, with just a shred of charred clothing clinging to the carbonized flesh. Its black, burnt hands were raised to the sky, like the claws of a dead crow, and its splayed legs were drawn up to its crushed chest. The rain had collected in the hollow eye sockets, making two little pools of water that reflected the sky and clouds.

The old man backed away, one foot at a time, like a cat. Then he stopped. He remained rooted to the spot, staring and wondering, for a long time. And then — slowly, and without turning his back on the blackened corpse — he turned his attention to the trove of valuable equipment that lay scattered about.

New York City,

May 20, 2:00 P.M.

THE SALE room at Christie's was a simple space, framed in blond wood and lit by a rectangle of lights suspended from the ceiling. Although the hardwood floor had been laid in a beautiful herringbone pattern, almost none of it was visible beneath the countless rows of chairs — all filled — and the feet of the reporters, latecomers, and spectators who crowded the rear of the room.

As the chairman of Christie's mounted the center podium, the room fell silent: The long, cream-colored screen behind him, which in a normal auction might be hung with paintings or prints, was vacant.

The chairman rapped on the podium with his gavel, looked around, then drew a card from his suit and consulted it. He placed the card carefully at one side of the podium and looked up again.

"I imagine," he said, the plummy English vowels resonating under the slight amplification, "that a few of you may already be aware of what we're offering today."

Decorous amusement rippled through the assembly.

"I regret that we could not bring it to the stage for you to see. It was a trifle large."

Another laugh floated through the audience. The chairman was clearly relishing the importance of what was about to happen.

"But I have brought a small piece of it — a token, so to speak — as assurance you will be bidding on the genuine article." With that he nodded, and a slender young man with the bearing of a gazelle walked out onstage, holding a small velvet box in both arms. The man unlatched it, opened the lid, and turned in a semicircle for the audience to see. A low murmur rose among the crowd, then fell away again.

Inside, a curved brown tooth lay nestled on white satin. It was about seven inches long, with a wickedly serrated inner edge.

The chairman cleared his throat. "The consigner of lot number one, our only lot today, is the Navajo Nation, in a trust arrangement with the government of the United States of America."

He surveyed the audience. "The lot is a fossil. A remarkable fossil." He consulted the card on the podium. "In 1996, a Navajo shepherd named Wilson Atcitty lost some sheep in the Lukachukai mountains along the Arizona-New Mexico border. In attempting to find his sheep, he came across a large bone protruding from a sandstone wall in a remote canyon. Geologists call this layer of sandstone the Hell Creek Formation, and it dates back to the Cretaceous era. Word got back to the Albuquerque Museum of Natural History. Under an agreement with the Navajo Nation, they began excavating the skeleton. As work proceeded they realized they had not one but two entwined skeletons: a Tyrannosaurus rex and a Triceratops. The Tyrannosaurus had its jaws fastened about the Triceratops' neck, just beneath its crest, virtually decapitating the creature with a savage bite. The Triceratops, for his part, had thrust his central horn deep into the chest of the Tyrannosaurus. Both animals died together, locked in a terrible embrace."

He cleared his throat. "I can't wait for the movie."

There was another round of laughter.

"The battle was so violent that beneath the Triceratops, paleontologists found five teeth from the Tyrannosaurus that had apparently broken off during the heat of the fight. This is one of them." He nodded to the assistant, who closed the box.

"A block of stone containing the two dinosaurs, weighing some three hundred tons, was removed from the mountainside and stabilized at the Albuquerque Museum. It was then taken to the New York Museum of Natural History for further preparation. The two skeletons are still partly embedded in the sandstone matrix."

He glanced at his card again.

"According to scientists consulted by Christie's, these are the two most perfect dinosaur skeletons ever found. They are of incalculable value to science. The chief paleontologist at the New York Museum has called it the greatest fossil discovery in history."

He carefully replaced the card and picked up the gavel. As if on signal, three bid spotters moved wraithlike onto the stage, waiting at quiet attention. Employees at the telephone stations stood motionless, phones in hand, lines open.

"We have an estimate on this lot of twelve million dollars, and an opening price of five million." The chairman tapped his gavel.

There was a faint smattering of calls, nods, and genteelly raised paddles.

"I have five million. Six million. Thank you, I have seven million." The spotters craned their necks, catching the bids, relaying them to the chairman. The sotto voce hubbub in the hall gradually increased.

"I have eight million."

A scattering of applause erupted as the record price for a dinosaur fossil was broken.

"Ten million. Eleven million. Twelve. Thank you, I have thirteen. I have fourteen. Fifteen."

The show of paddles had dwindled considerably, but several telephone bidders were still active, along with half a dozen in the audience. The dollar display to the chairman's right rose rapidly, with the English and Euro equivalents beneath following in lockstep.

"Eighteen million. I have eighteen million. Nineteen."

The murmuring became a groundswell and the chairman gave a cautionary rap with his gavel. The bidding continued, quietly but furiously. "Twenty-five million. I have twenty-six. Twenty-seven to the gentleman on the right."

The murmuring rose once again, and this time the chairman did not quell it.

"I have thirty-two million. Thirty-two and a half on the phone. Thirty-three. Thank you, I have thirty-three and a half. Thirty-four to the lady in the front."

An electricity was building in the sale room: the price was mounting far higher than even the wildest predictions.

"Thirty-five on the phone. Thirty-five and a half to the lady. Thirty-six."

Then there was a small stir in the crowd; a rustle, a shifting of attention. A number of eyes turned toward the door leading out into the main gallery. Standing on the crescent-moon steps was a remarkable-looking man of about sixty, a massive, even overwhelming presence. He had a shaved head and a dark Vandyke beard. A Valentino suit of dark blue silk was draped over his imposing frame, shimmering slightly in the light when he moved. A Turnbull & Asser shirt, uncompromisingly white, lay open at the neck. Over it was a string tie, held in place by a fist-size piece of amber, containing the only Archaeopteryx feather ever found.

"Thirty-six million," the chairman repeated. But his eyes, like everyone else's, had strayed toward the new arrival. The man stood on the steps, his blue eyes sparkling with vitality and some private amusement. He slowly raised his paddle. A hush fell. On the remote chance anybody in the crowd had not recognized the man, the paddle was a give-away: it was numbered 001, the only number Christie's had ever allowed to be given permanently to a client.

The chairman looked at him, expectantly.

"One hundred," the man said at last, softly but precisely.

The hush deepened "I beg your pardon?" The chairman's voice was dry.

"One hundred million dollars," the man said. His teeth were very large, very straight, and very white.

Again the silence was absolute.

"I have a bid of one hundred million," said the chairman, a little shakily.

Time seemed to have been suspended. A telephone rang somewhere in the building, at the edge of audibility, and the sound of a car horn filtered up from the avenue.

Then the spell was broken with a smart rap of the gavel. "Lot number one, for one hundred million dollars, sold to Palmer Lloyd!"

The room erupted. In a flash everyone was on their feet. There was exuberant clapping, cheers, a call of "bravo" as if a great tenor had just concluded the performance of his career. Others were not as pleased, and the cheering and clapping was interlaced with hisses of disapproval, catcalls, low boos. Christie's had never witnessed a crowd so close to hysteria: all the participants, pro and con, were well aware that history had just been made. But the man who had caused it all was gone, out through the main gallery, down the green carpet past the cashier — and the multitude found themselves addressing an empty doorway.

Kalahari Desert,

June 1, 6:45 P.M.

SAM MCFARLANE sat cross-legged in the dust. The evening fire, built of twigs on bare ground, cast a trembling net of shadows over the thorn scrub surrounding the camp. The nearest settlement lay one hundred miles behind his back.

He looked around at the wizened figures squatting on their heels around the fire, naked except for dusty breech-clouts, their alert eyes gleaming. San Bushmen. It took a long time to gain their trust, but once gained, it was unshakable. Very different, McFarlane thought, from back home.

In front of each San lay a battered secondhand metal detector. The San remained immobile as McFarlane rose to his feet. He spoke slowly, awkwardly, in their strange click language. At first there were some snickers as he struggled with the words, but McFarlane had a natural affinity for languages, and as he continued the men fell back into respectful silence.

At the conclusion of his speech, McFarlane smoothed out a patch of sand. Using a stick, he began to draw a map. The San squatted on their heels, craning their necks to look at the drawing. Slowly the map took shape, and the San nodded their understanding as McFarlane pointed out the various landmarks. It was the Makgadikgadi Pans that lay north of the camp: a thousand square miles of dry lakebeds, sand hills, and alkali flats, desolate and uninhabited. In the deep interior of the Pans, he drew a small circle with his stick. Then he stabbed the stick in the center of the circle and looked up with a broad smile.

There was a moment of silence, punctuated by the lonely sound of a ruoru bird calling across the distant flats. The San began talking among themselves in low voices, the clicks and clucks of their language like the rattling of pebbles in a stream. A gnarled old figure, the headman of the band, pointed at the map. McFarlane leaned forward, straining to understand the rapid speech. Yes, they knew the area, the old man said. He began to describe trails, known only to the San, that crossed the remote area. With a twig and some pebbles, the headman began marking where the seeps were, where the game was, where edible roots and plants could be found. McFarlane waited patiently.

At last, quiet again settled on the group. The headman spoke to McFarlane, more slowly this time. Yes, they were willing to do what the white man wanted. But they were afraid of the white man's machines, and they also did not understand this thing the white man was looking for.

McFarlane rose again, pulled the stick out of the map. Then he took a small, dark lump of iron from his pocket, no bigger than a marble, and placed it in the hole left by the stick. He pushed it down and concealed it with sand. Then he stood; picked up his metal detector, and snapped it on. There was a brief, high-pitched whine. Everyone watched in nervous silence. He took two steps away from the map, turned, and began walking forward, making low sweeps over the ground with the detector. As it swept over the buried lump of iron, there was a squawk. The San jumped backward in alarm and there was a burst of rapid talk. McFarlane smiled, spoke a few words; and the San crept back into their seating places. He turned off the metal detector and held it toward the headman, who took it reluctantly. McFarlane showed him how to turn it on, and then guided him, in sweeping motions, over the circle. A second squawk sounded. The headman flinched but then smiled. He tried it again, and again, his smile growing broader, his face breaking into a mass of wrinkles. "Sun'a ai, Ma!gad'i!gadi !iaad'mi," he said, gesturing to his band.

With McFarlane's patient help, each San Bushman in turn picked up a machine and tested it on the hidden iron nugget. Slowly, the apprehension was replaced by laughter and speculative discussion. Eventually McFarlane raised his hands, and all sat down again, each with his machine in his lap. They were ready to begin the search.

McFarlane took a leather bag from his pocket, opened it, inverted it. A dozen gold Krugerrands fell into his outstretched palm. The ruoru bird began its mournful call again as the last light died from the sky. Slowly and with ceremony, he gave a gold coin to each man in turn. They took them reverently, with paired hands, bowing their heads.

The headman spoke again to McFarlane. Tomorrow, they would move camp and begin the journey into the heart of the Makgadikgadi Pans with the white man's machines. They would look for this big thing the white man wanted. When they found it, they would return. They would tell the white man where it was...

The old man suddenly darted his eyes to the sky in alarm. The others did the same as McFarlane watched, his brow creasing in puzzlement. Then he heard it himself: a faint, rhythmic throbbing. He followed their gaze to the dark horizon. Already the Bushmen were on their feet, birdlike, apprehensive. There was rapid, urgent talk. A cluster of lights, faint but growing brighter, rose in the distant sky. The throbbing sound grew stronger. The pencil-like beam of a spotlight stabbed downward into the scrub.

With a soft cry of alarm, the old man dropped his Krugerrand and disappeared into the darkness. The rest followed suit. Instantly, it seemed, McFarlane was left alone, staring into the still darkness of the brush. He turned wildly as the light grew in intensity. It was coming straight for the camp. And now he could see it was a big Blackhawk helicopter, its rotors tearing up the night air, running lights winking, the oversize spotlight racing across the ground until at last it fixed him in its glare.

McFarlane threw himself into the dust behind a thornbush and lay there, feeling exposed in the brilliant light. Digging a hand into his boot, he pulled out a small pistol. Dust whipped up around him, stinging his eyes as the desert bushes gyrated maniacally. The helicopter slowed, hovered, and descended to an open area at one side of the camp, the backwash blowing a cascade of sparks from the fire. As the chopper settled, a lightbar on its roof lit up, bathing the area in an even harsher glare. The rotors powered down. McFarlane waited, wiping dirt from his face, keeping his eyes on the helicopter's hatch, gun at the ready. Soon it swung open, and a large, solid man stepped out, alone.

McFarlane peered through the thorny scrub. The man was dressed in khaki shorts and a cotton bush shirt, and a Tilley hat sat on his massive shaven head. There was something heavy swinging in one of the shorts' oversize pockets. The man began walking toward McFarlane.

McFarlane slowly rose, keeping the bush between himself and the chopper, training his gun on the man's chest. But the stranger seemed unconcerned. Although he was in shadow, silhouetted by the chopper's takedown lights, McFarlane thought he saw teeth gleaming in a smile. He stopped five paces away. He had to be six foot eight, at least — McFarlane was not sure he had ever seen anybody quite as tall before.

"You're a difficult man to find," the man said.

In the deep, resonant voice McFarlane heard nasal traces of an East Coast accent. "Who the hell are you?" he replied, keeping the gun leveled.

"Introductions are so much more pleasant after the firearms have been put away."

"Take the gun out of your pocket and toss it in the dirt," said McFarlane.

The man chuckled and withdrew the lump: it was not a gun, but a small thermos. "Something to keep out the chill," he said, holding it up. "Care to share it with me?"

McFarlane glanced back at the helicopter, but the only other occupant was the pilot. "It took me a month to gain their trust," he said in a low voice, "and you've just scattered them all to hell and gone. I want to know who you are, and why you're here. And it had better be good."

"It's not good, I'm afraid. Your partner, Nestor Masangkay, is dead."

McFarlane felt a sudden numbness. His gun hand slowly dropped. "Dead?"

The man nodded.

"How?"

"Doing just what you're doing. We don't really know how." He gestured. "Shall we move by the fire? I didn't expect these Kalahari nights to be so nippy."

McFarlane edged toward the remains of the fire, keeping the gun loosely by his side, his mind full of conflicting emotions. He noticed, distantly, that the backwash of the chopper had erased his sand map, exposing the little nugget of iron.

"So what's your connection to Nestor?" he asked.

The man did not answer right away. Instead, he surveyed the scene — the dozen metal detectors scattered willy-nilly by the fleeing San, the gold coins lying in the sand. He bent down and picked up the brown fingernail of iron, hefted it, and then held it up to his eye. Then he glanced up at McFarlane. "Looking for the Okavango meteorite again?"

McFarlane said nothing, but his hand tightened on the gun.

"You knew Masangkay better than anybody. I need you to help me finish his project."

"And just what project was that?" McFarlane asked.

"I'm afraid I've said all I can say about it."

"And I'm afraid I've heard all I want to hear. The only person I help anymore is myself."

"So I've heard."

McFarlane stepped forward quickly, the anger returning. The man raised a pacifying hand. "The least you can do is hear me out."

"I haven't even heard your name, and, frankly, I don't want to. Thanks for bringing me the bad news. Now why don't you get back in your chopper and get the hell out of here."

"Forgive me for not introducing myself. I'm Palmer Lloyd."

McFarlane began to laugh. "Yeah, and I'm Bill Gates."

But the big man wasn't laughing — just smiling. McFarlane looked closer at his face, really studying it for the first time. "Jesus," he breathed.

"You may have heard that I'm building a new museum."

McFarlane shook his head. "Was Nestor working for you?"

"No. But his activities recently came to my attention, and I want to finish what he started."

"Look," said McFarlane, shoving the gun into his waistband. "I'm not interested. Nestor Masangkay and I parted ways a long time ago. But I'm sure you know all about that."

Lloyd smiled and held up the thermos. "Shall we talk about it over a toddy?" Without waiting for an answer, he settled himself by the fire — white man style, with his butt in the dust — unscrewed the cap, and poured out a steaming cup. He offered it to McFarlane, who shook his head impatiently.

"You like hunting meteorites?" Lloyd asked.

"It has its days."

"And you really think you'll find the Okavango?"

"Yes. Until you dropped out of the sky." McFarlane crouched beside him. "I'd love to chitchat with you. But every minute you sit here with that idling chopper, the Bushmen are getting farther away. So I'll say it again. I'm not interested in a job. Not at your museum, not at any museum." He hesitated. "Besides, you can't pay me what I'm going to make on the Okavango."

"And just what might that be?" Lloyd asked, sipping the cup himself.

"A quarter million. At least."

Lloyd nodded "Assuming you find it. Subtract what you owe everyone over the Tornarssuk fiasco, and I imagine you'll probably break even."

McFarlane laughed harshly. "Everyone's entitled to one mistake. I'll have enough left over to get me started on the next rock. There's a lot of meteorites out there. It sure beats a curator's salary."

"I'm not talking about a curatorship."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"I'm sure you could make a pretty good guess. I can't talk about particulars until I know you're on board." He sipped at the toddy. "Do this one for your old partner."

"Old ex-partner."

Lloyd sighed. "You're right. I know all about you and Masangkay. It wasn't entirely your fault, losing the Tornarssuk rock like that. If anyone's to blame, it's the bureaucrats at the New York Museum of Natural History."

"Why don't you give up? I'm not interested."

"Let me tell you about the compensation. As a signing bonus, I'll pay off the quarter million you owe, get the creditors off your back. If the project is successful, you'll get another quarter million. If it isn't, you'll have to settle for being debt free. Either way, you can continue at my museum as director of the Planetary Sciences Department if you wish. I'll build you a state-of-the-art laboratory. You'll have a secretary, lab assistants, a six-figure salary — the works."

McFarlane began to laugh again. "Beautiful. So how long is this project?"

"Six months. On the outside."

McFarlane stopped laughing. "Half a million for six months' work?"

"If we're successful."

"What's the catch?"

"No catch."

"Why me?"

"You knew Masangkay: his quirks, his work patterns, his thoughts. There's a big mystery lingering over what he was doing, and you're the man who can solve it. And besides, you're one of the top meteorite hunters in the world. You've got an intuitive sense about them. People say you can smell them."

"I'm not the only one out there." The praise irritated McFarlane: it smacked of manipulation.

In response, Lloyd extended one hand, the knuckle of the ring finger raised. There was a wink of precious metal as he turned it in McFarlane's direction.

"Sorry," McFarlane answered. "I only kiss the ring of the pope."

Lloyd chuckled. "Look at the stone," he said.

Peering more closely, McFarlane saw that the ring on Lloyd's finger consisted of a milky gemstone, deep violet, in a heavy platinum setting. He recognized it immediately. "Nice stone. But you could have bought it from me wholesale."

"No doubt. After all, you and Masangkay are the ones that got the Atacama tektites out of Chile."

"Right. And I'm still a wanted man in those parts as a result."

"We will offer you suitable protections."

"So it's Chile, huh? Well, I know what the insides of their jails look like. Sorry."

Lloyd didn't respond immediately. Picking up a stick, he banked the scattered embers, then tossed the stick onto them. The fire crackled up, beating back the darkness. On anybody else, the Tilley hat would look a little silly; somehow, Lloyd managed to pull it off. "If you knew what we were planning, Dr. McFarlane, you'd do it for free. I'm offering you the scientific prize of the century."

McFarlane chuckled, shaking his head. "I'm done with science," he said. "I've had enough dusty labs and museum bureaucracies to last me a lifetime."

Lloyd sighed and stood up. "Well, it looks like I've wasted my time. I guess we'll have to go with our number two choice."

McFarlane paused. "And who would that be?"

"Hugo Breitling would love to be in on this."

"Breitling? He couldn't find a meteorite if it hit him in the ass."

"He found the Thule meteorite," Lloyd replied, slapping the dust from his pants. He gave McFarlane a sidelong glance. "Which is bigger than anything you've found."

"But that's all he found. And that was sheer luck."

"Fact is, I'm going to need luck for this project." Lloyd screwed the top back on the thermos and tossed it into the dust at McFarlane's feet. "Here, have yourself a party. I've got to get going."

He began striding toward the helicopter. As McFarlane watched, the engine revved and the heavy rotors picked up speed, beating the air, sending skeins of dust swirling erratically across the ground. It suddenly occurred to him that, if the chopper left, he might never learn how Masangkay died, or what he had been doing. Despite himself, he was intrigued. McFarlane looked around quickly: at the metal detectors, dented and scattered; at the bleak little camp; at the landscape beyond, parched and unpromising.

At the helicopter's hatch, Lloyd paused.

"Make it an even million!" called McFarlane to the man's broad back.

Carefully, so as not to upset the hat, Lloyd ducked his head and began stepping into the chopper.

"Seven fifty, then!"

There was another pause. And then Palmer Lloyd slowly turned, his face breaking into a broad smile.

The Hudson River Valley,

June 3, 10:45 A.M.

PALMER LLOYD loved many rare and valuable things, but one of the things he loved most was Thomas Cole's painting Sunny Morning on the Hudson River. As a scholarship student in Boston, he had often gone to the Museum of Fine Arts, walking through the galleries with his eyes downcast so as not to sully his vision before he could stand before that glorious painting.

Lloyd preferred to own the things he loved, but the Thomas Cole painting was not to be had at any price. Instead, he had purchased the next best thing. On this sunny morning he sat in his upper Hudson Valley office, gazing out a window that framed precisely the view in Cole's painting. There was a very beautiful line of light penciling the extreme horizon; the fields, seen through the breaking mists, were exquisitely fresh and green. The mountainside in the foreground, limned by the rising sun, sparkled. Not much had changed in the Clove Valley since Cole had painted this scene in 1827, and Lloyd had made sure, with vast land purchases along his line of sight, that nothing would.

He swiveled in his chair, gazing across a desk of spaulded maple into a window that looked in the opposite direction. From here, the hillside fell away beneath him, a brilliant mosaic of glass and steel. Hands behind his head, Lloyd surveyed the scene of frantic activity with satisfaction. Work crews swarmed over the landscape, fulfilling a vision — his vision — unparalleled in the world. "A miracle of rare device," he murmured beneath his breath.

At the center of the activity, green in the Catskill morning light, was a massive dome: an oversize replica of London's Crystal Palace, which had been the first structure made entirely of glass. Upon its completion in 1851 it was considered one of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed, but it had been gutted by fire in 1936, and its remains demolished in 1942 for fear it would provide a convenient landmark for Nazi bombers.

Beyond the overarching dome, Lloyd could see the first blocks being laid of the pyramid of Khefret II, a small Old Kingdom pyramid. He smiled a little ruefully at the memory of his trip to Egypt: his byzantine dealings with government officials, the Keystone Kops uproar about the suitcase full of gold that no one could lift, all the other tedious melodrama. That pyramid had cost him more than he liked, and it wasn't exactly Cheops, but it was impressive nonetheless.

Thinking of the pyramid reminded him of the outrage its purchase had caused in the archaeological world, and he glanced up at the newspaper articles and magazine covers framed on a nearby wall. "Where Have All the Artifacts Gone?" read one, accompanied by a grotesque caricature of Lloyd, complete with shifty eyes and slouch hat, slipping a miniature pyramid under his dark cloak. He scanned the other framed headlines. "The Hitler of Collectors?" read one; and then there were all the ones decrying his recent purchase: "Bones of Contention: Paleontologists Outraged by Sale." And a Newsweek cover: "What Do You Do with Thirty Billion? Answer: Buy the Earth." The wall was covered with them, the shrill utterances of the naysayers, the self-appointed guardians of cultural morality. Lloyd found it all an endless source of amusement.

A small chime rang on a flat panel laid into his desk, and the voice of his secretary fluted: "There's a Mr. Glinn to see you, sir."

"Send him in." Lloyd didn't bother to suppress the excitement in his voice. He had not met Eli Glinn before, and it had been surprisingly difficult to get him to come in person.

He closely observed the man as he entered the office, without even a briefcase in his hand, sunburnt face expressionless. Lloyd had found, in his long and fruitful business career, that first impressions, if carefully made, were exceedingly revealing. He took in the close-cropped brown hair, the square jaw, the thin lips. The man looked, at first glance, as inscrutable as the Sphinx. There was nothing distinctive about him, nothing that gave anything away. Even his gray eyes were veiled, cautious, and still. Everything about him looked ordinary: ordinary height, ordinary build, good-looking but not handsome, well-dressed but not dapper. His only unusual feature, Lloyd thought, was the way he moved. His shoes made no sound on the floor, his clothes did not rustle on his person, his limbs moved lightly and easily through the air. He glided through the room like a deer through a forest.

And, of course, there was nothing ordinary in the man's résumé.

"Mr. Glinn," Lloyd said, walking toward him and taking his hand. "Thank you for coming."

Glinn nodded silently, shook the proffered hand with a shake that was neither too long nor too short, neither limp nor bone-crushingly macho. Lloyd felt moderately disconcerted: he was having trouble forming that invaluable first impression. He swept his hand toward the window and the sprawling, half-finished structures beyond. "So. What do you think of my museum?"

"Large," Glinn said without smiling.

Lloyd laughed. "The Getty of natural history museums. Or it will be, soon — with three times the endowment."

"Interesting that you decided to locate it here, a hundred miles from the city."

"A nice touch of hubris, don't you think? Actually, I'm doing the New York Museum of Natural History a favor. If we'd built there instead of up here, we'd have put them out of business within a month. But since we'll have the biggest and the best of everything, they'll be reduced to serving school field trips." Lloyd chuckled. "Come on, Sam McFarlane is waiting for us. I'll give you a tour on the way."

"Sam McFarlane?"

"He's my meteorite expert. Well, he's still only about half mine, I'd say, but I'm working on him. The day is young."

Lloyd placed a hand on the elbow of Glinn's well-tailored but anonymous dark suit — the material was better than he expected — and guided him back through the outer office, down a sweeping circular ramp of granite and polished marble, and along a large corridor toward the Crystal Palace. The noise was much louder here, and their footsteps were punctuated by shouts, the steady cadence of nailguns, and the stutter of jackhammers.

With barely contained enthusiasm, Lloyd pointed out the sights as they walked. "That's the diamond hall, there," he said, waving his hand toward a large subterranean space, haloed in violet light. "We discovered there were some old diggings in this hillside, so we tunneled our way in and set up the exhibit within an entirely natural context. It's the only hall in any major museum devoted exclusively to diamonds. But since we've acquired the three largest specimens in the world, it seemed appropriate. You must have heard about how we snapped up the Blue Mandarin from De Beers, just ahead of the Japanese?" He gave a wicked chuckle at the memory.

"I read the papers," Glinn said dryly.

"And that," said Lloyd, becoming more animated, "will house the Gallery of Extinct Life. Passenger pigeons, a dodo bird from the Galápagos, even a mammoth removed from the Siberian ice, still perfectly frozen. They found crushed buttercups in its mouth — remnants of its last meal."

"I read about the mammoth, too," Glinn said. "Weren't there several shootings in Siberia in the aftermath of its acquisition?"

Despite the pointedness of the question, Glinn's tone was mild, without any trace of censure, and Lloyd didn't pause in his answer. "You'd be surprised, Mr. Glinn, how quickly countries waive their so-called cultural patrimony when large sums of money become involved. Here, I'll show you what I mean." He beckoned his guest forward, through a half-completed archway flanked by two men in hard hats, into a darkened hall that stretched for a hundred yards. He paused to flick on the lights, then turned with a grin.

Before them stretched a hardened, mudlike surface. Wandering across this surface were two sets of small footprints. It looked as if people had wandered into the hall while the cement on the floor was setting.

The Laetoli footprints," Lloyd said reverently.

Glinn said nothing.

"The oldest hominid footprints ever discovered. Think about it: three and a half million years ago our first bipedal ancestors made those footprints, walking across a layer of wet volcanic ash. They're unique. Nobody knew that Australopithecus afarensis walked upright until these were found. They're the earliest proof of our humanity, Mr. Glinn."

"The Getty Conservation Institute must have been interested to hear of this acquisition," Glinn said.

Lloyd looked at his companion more carefully. Glinn was an exceptionally difficult man to read. "I see you've done your homework. The Getty wanted to leave them buried in situ. How long do you think that would have lasted, with Tanzania in the state it's in?" He shook his head. "The Getty paid one million dollars to cover them back up. I paid twenty million to bring them here, where scholars and countless visitors can benefit."

Glinn glanced around at the construction. "Speaking of scholars, where are the scientists? I see a lot of blue collars, but very few white coats."

Lloyd waved his hand. "I bring them on as I need them. For the most part, I know what I want to buy. When the time comes, though, I'll get the best. I'll stage a raiding party through the country's curatorial offices that will leave them spinning. It'll be just like Sherman marching to the sea. The New York Museum won't know what hit them"

More quickly now, Lloyd directed his visitor away from the long hallway and into a warren of corridors that angled deeper into the Palace. At the end of one corridor, they stopped before a door marked CONFERENCE ROOM A. Lounging beside the door was Sam McFarlane, looking every inch the adventurer: lean and rugged, blue eyes faded by the sun. His straw-colored hair had a faint horizontal ridge to it, as if years of wearing heavy-brimmed hats had permanently creased it. Just looking at him, Lloyd could see why the man had never taken to academia. He seemed as out of place among the fluorescent lights and drab-colored labs as would the San Bushmen he had been with just the other day. Lloyd noted, with satisfaction, that McFarlane looked tired. No doubt he had gotten very little sleep over the last two days.

Reaching into his pocket, Lloyd withdrew a key and opened the door. The space beyond was always a shock to first-time visitors. One-way glass covered three of the room's walls, looking down on the grand entrance to the museum: a vast octagonal space, currently empty, in the very center of the Palace. Lloyd glanced to see how Glinn would take it. But the man was as inscrutable as ever.

For months Lloyd had agonized over what object would occupy the soaring octagonal space below — until the auction at Christie's. The battling dinosaurs, he had thought, would make a perfect centerpiece. You could still read the desperate agony of their final struggle in the contorted bones.

And then his eyes fell on the table littered with charts, printouts, and aerial photographs. When this happened, Lloyd had forgotten all about the dinosaurs. This would be the pièce de résistance, the crowning glory of the Lloyd Museum. Mounting this in the center of the Crystal Palace would be the proudest moment of his life.

"May I introduce Dr. Sam McFarlane," Lloyd said, turning away from the table and looking at Glinn. "The museum's retaining his services for the duration of this assignment."

McFarlane shook Glinn's hand.

"Until last week, Sam was wandering around the Kalahari Desert looking for the Okavango meteorite. A poor use of his talents. I think you'll agree we've found something much more interesting for him to do."

He gestured at Glinn. "Sam, this is Mr. Eli Glinn, president of Effective Engineering Solutions, Inc. Don't let the dull name fool you — it's a remarkable company. Mr. Glinn specializes in such things as raising Nazi subs full of gold, figuring out why space shuttles blow up — that sort of thing. Solving unique engineering problems and analyzing major failures."

"Interesting job," said McFarlane.

Lloyd nodded. "Usually, though, EES steps in after the fact. Once things have gotten fucked up." The vulgarity, enunciated slowly and distinctly, hung in the air. "But I'm bringing them in now to help make sure a certain task doesn't get fucked up. And that task, gentlemen, is why we're all here today."

He gestured toward the conference table. "Sam, I want you to tell Mr. Glinn what you've found, looking at this data over the last few days."

"Right now?" McFarlane asked. He seemed uncharacteristically nervous.

"When else?"

McFarlane glanced over the table, hesitated, and then spoke. "What we have here," he said, "is geophysical data about an unusual site in the Cape Horn islands of Chile."

Glinn nodded encouragingly.

"Mr. Lloyd asked me to analyze it. At first, the data seemed... impossible. Like this tomographic readout." He picked it up, glanced at it, let it drop. His eyes swept over the rest of the papers, and his voice faltered.

Lloyd cleared his throat. Sam was still a little shaken by it all; he was going to need some help. He turned to Glinn. "Perhaps I'd better bring you up to speed on the history. One of our scouts came across a dealer in electronic equipment in Punta Arenas, Chile. He was trying to sell a rusted-out electromagnetic tomographic sounder. It's a piece of mining survey equipment, made here in the States by DeWitter Industries. It had been found, along with a bag of rocks and some papers, near the remains of a prospector on a remote island down near Cape Horn. On a whim, my scout bought it all. When he took a closer look at the papers — those that he could decipher — the scout noticed they belonged to a man named Nestor Masangkay."

Lloyd's eyes drifted toward the conference table. "Before his death on the island, Masangkay had been a planetary geologist. More specifically, a meteorite hunter. And, up until about two years ago, he'd been the partner of Sam McFarlane here."

He saw McFarlane's shoulders stiffen.

"When our scout learned this, he sent everything back here for analysis. The tomographic sounder had a floppy disk rusted into its drive bay. One of our technicians managed to extract the data. Some of my people analyzed the data, but it was simply too far outside the bell curve for them to make much sense of it. That's why we hired Sam."

McFarlane had turned from the first page to the second, and then back again. "At first I thought that Nestor had forgotten to calibrate his machine. But then I looked at the rest of the data." He dropped the readout, then pushed the two weathered sheets aside with a slow, almost reverent notion. He began leafing through the scatter and removed another sheet.

"We didn't send a ground expedition," Lloyd continued, speaking again to Glinn, "because the last thing we want to do is attract attention. But we did order a flyover of the island. And that sheet Sam's holding now is a dump from the LOG II satellite — the Low Orbit Geosurvey."

McFarlane carefully put down the data dump. "I had a lot of trouble believing this," he finally said. "I must have gone over it a dozen times. But there's no getting away from it. It can mean only one thing."

"Yes?" Glinn's voice was low, encouraging, holding no trace of curiosity.

"I think I know what Nestor was after."

Lloyd waited. He knew what McFarlane was going to say. But he wanted to hear it again.

"What we've got here is the largest meteorite in the world."

Lloyd broke into a grin. "Tell Mr. Glinn just how large, Sam."

McFarlane cleared his throat. "The largest meteorite recovered in the world so far is the Ahnighito, in the New York Museum. It weighs sixty-one tons. This one weighs four thousand tons. At an absolute minimum."

"Thank you," Lloyd said, his frame swelling with joy, his face breaking into a radiant smile. Then he turned and looked again at Glinn. The man's face still betrayed nothing.

There was a long moment of silence. And then Lloyd spoke again, his voice low and hoarse with emotion.

"I want that meteorite. Your job, Mr. Glinn, is to make sure I get it."

New York City,

June 4, 11:45 A.M.

THE LAND Rover jounced its way down West Street, the sagging piers along the Hudson flashing by the passenger window, the sky over Jersey City a dull sepia in the noon light. McFarlane braked hard, then swerved to avoid a taxi angling across three lanes to catch a fare. It was a smooth, automatic motion. McFarlane's mind was far away.

He was remembering the afternoon when the Zaragosa meteorite fell. He'd finished high school, had no job or plans of one, and was hiking across the Mexican desert, Carlos Castaneda in his back pocket. The sun had been low, and he'd been thinking about finding a place to pitch his bedroll. Suddenly, the landscape grew bright around him, as if the sun had emerged from heavy clouds. But the sky was already perfectly clear. And then he'd stopped dead in his tracks. On the sandy ground ahead of him, a second shadow of himself had appeared; long and ragged at first, but quickly compacting. There was a sound of singing. And then, a massive explosion. He'd fallen to the ground, thinking earthquake, or nuclear blast, or Armageddon. There was a patter of rain. Except it was not rain: it was thousands of tiny rocks dropping around him. He picked one up; a little piece of gray stone, covered in black crust. It still held the deep cold of outer space inside, despite its fiery passage through the atmosphere, and it was covered with frost.

As he stared at the fragment from outer space, he suddenly knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. But that had been years ago. Now, he tried to think as little about those idealistic days as possible. His eyes strayed to a locked briefcase on the passenger seat, which contained Nestor Masangkay's battered journal. He tried to think as little as possible about that, too.

A light ahead turned green, and he made a turn into a narrow one-way street. This was the meat-packing district, perched at the uttermost edge of the West Village. Old loading docks yawned wide, filled with burly men manhandling carcasses in and out of trucks. Along the far side of the street, as if to take advantage of the proximity, was a crowd of restaurants with names like The Hog Pit and Uncle Billy's Backyard. It was the antithesis of the chrome-and-glass Park Avenue headquarters of Lloyd Holdings, from which he had just come. Nice place for a corporate presence, McFarlane thought, if you deal in pork-belly futures. He double-checked the scribbled address lying on his dashboard.

He slowed, then guided the Land Rover to a stop on the far side of an especially decrepit loading dock. Killing the engine, he stepped into the meat-fragrant humidity and looked around. Halfway down the block a garbage truck idled, grinding busily away at its load. Even from this distance, he caught a whiff of the green juice that dribbled off its rear bumper. It was a stench unique to New York City garbage trucks; once smelled, never forgotten.

He took a deep breath. The meeting hadn't begun yet, and already he felt himself tense, the defensiveness rising. He wondered how much Lloyd had told Glinn about himself and Masangkay. It didn't really matter; what they didn't know they'd learn soon enough. Gossip moved even faster than the impactors he hunted.

He pulled a heavy portfolio from the back of the Land Rover, then closed and locked the door. Before him rose the grimy brick facade of a fin de siècle building, a massive structure taking up most of the block. His eye traveled up a dozen stories, coming to rest at the words PRICE & PRICE PORK PACKING INC. The paint was almost effaced by time. Although the windows on the lower floors had been bricked over, he could see fresh glass and chrome winking on the upper stories.

The only entrance seemed to be a brace of metal loading doors. He pressed a buzzer at their side and waited. After a few seconds there came a faint click and the doors parted, moving noiselessly on oiled bearings.

He stepped into a poorly lit corridor that ended in another set of steel doors, much newer, flanked with security keypads and a retinal scanning unit. As he approached, one of the doors opened and a small, dark, heavily muscled man in an MIT warm-up suit came forward, an athletic spring to his step. Tightly curled black hair, fringed with white at the temples, covered his head. He had dark, intelligent eyes and an easygoing air that was very uncorporate.

"Dr. McFarlane?" the man asked in a friendly growl, extending a hairy hand. "I'm Manuel Garza, construction engineer for EES." His grip was surprisingly gentle.

"Is this your corporate headquarters?" McFarlane asked with a wry smile.

"We prefer our anonymity."

"Well, at least you don't have to go far for a steak."

Garza laughed gruffly. "Not if you like it rare."

McFarlane followed him through the open door. He found himself in a cavernous room, brilliantly lit with halogen lights. Acres of steel tables stood in long, neat rows. On them rested numerous tagged objects — piles of sand, rocks, melted jet engines, ragged pieces of metal. Technicians in lab coats moved around. One passed him, cradling a piece of asphalt in white-gloved hands as if it were a Ming vase.

Garza followed McFarlane's gaze around the room, and then glanced at his watch. "We've got a few minutes. Care for a tour?"

"Why not? I always love a good junkyard."

Garza threaded his way among the tables, nodding to various technicians. He paused at an unusually long table, covered with twisted black lumps of rock. "Recognize these?"

"That's pahoehoe. There's a nice example of aa. Some volcanic bombs. You guys building a volcano?"

"No," said Garza. "Just blew one apart." He nodded to a scale model of a volcanic island at the far end of the table, complete with a city, canyons, forests, and mountains. He reached beneath the lip of the table and pressed a button. There was a brief whirr, a groaning noise, and the volcano began to belch lava, spilling in sinuous flows down its flanks and creeping toward the scale city. "The lava is specially formulated methyl cellulose."

"Beats my old N-scale railroad."

"A Third World government needed our assistance. A dormant volcano had erupted on one of their islands. A lake of lava was building up in the caldera and was about to bust out and head straight for this city of sixty thousand. Our job was to save the city."

"Funny, I didn't read anything in the news about this."

"It wasn't funny at all. The government wasn't going to evacuate the city. It's a minor offshore banking haven. Mostly drug money."

"Maybe you should have let it burn, like Sodom and Gomorrah."

"We're an engineering firm, not God. We don't concern ourselves with the moral status of paying clients."

McFarlane laughed, feeling himself relax a little. "So how'd you stop it?"

"We blocked those two valleys, there, with landslides. Then we punched a hole in the volcano with high explosives and blasted an overflow channel on the far side. We used a significant portion of the world's nonmilitary supply of Semtex in the process. All the lava went into the sea, creating almost a thousand acres of new real estate for our client in the process. That didn't quite pay our fee, of course. But it helped."

Garza moved on. They passed a series of tables covered with bits of fuselage and burnt electronics. "Jet crash," said Garza, "terrorist bomb." He dismissed it with a quick wave of his hand.

Reaching the far side of the room, Garza opened a small white door and led McFarlane down a series of sterile corridors. McFarlane could hear the hush of air scrubbers; the clatter of keys; a strange, regular thudding sound from far below his feet.

Then Garza opened another door and McFarlane stopped short in surprise. The space ahead of him was vast at least six stories tall and two hundred feet deep. Around the edges of the room was a forest of high-tech equipment: banks of digital cameras, category-5 cabling, huge "green screens" for visual effects backdrops. Along one wall sat half a dozen Lincoln convertibles of early sixties vintage, long and slabsided. Inside each car sat four carefully dressed dummies, two in the front and two in the rear.

The center of the enormous space was taken up by a model of a city intersection, complete down to working stoplights. Building facades of various heights rose on either side. A groove ran down the asphalted road, and a pulley system within it was fixed to the front bumper of yet another Lincoln, its four dummies in careful place. An undulating greensward of sculpted AstroTurf lined the roadway. The roadway ended in an overpass, and there stood Eli Glinn himself, bullhorn in one hand.

McFarlane stepped forward in Garza's wake, halting at last on the pavement in the artificial shade of some plastic bushes. Something about the scene looked strangely familiar.

On the overpass, Glinn raised the bullhorn. "Thirty seconds," he called out.

"Syncing to digital feed," came a disembodied voice. "Sound off."

There was a flurry of responses. "Green across the board," the voice said.

"Everyone clear," said Glinn. "Power up and let's go." Activity seemed to come from everywhere. There was a hum and the pulley system moved forward, pulling the limo along the direction of the groove. Technicians stood behind the digital cameras, recording the progress.

There was the crack of an explosion nearby, then two more in quick succession. McFarlane ducked instinctively, recognizing the sound as gunfire. Nobody else seemed alarmed, and he looked in the direction of the noise. It seemed to have come from some bushes to his right. Peering closely into the foliage, he could make out two large rifles, mounted on steel pedestals. Their stocks had been sawn off, and leads ran from the triggers.

Suddenly, he knew where he was. "Dealey Plaza," he murmured.

Garza smiled.

McFarlane stepped onto the AstroTurf and peered closer at the two rifles. Following the direction of their barrels, he noticed that the rear right dummy was leaning to one side, its head shattered.

Glinn approached the side of the car, inspected the dummies, then murmured to someone beside him, pointing out bullet trajectories. As he stepped away and came toward McFarlane, the technicians crowded forward, taking pictures and jotting down data.

"Welcome to my museum, Dr. McFarlane," he said, shaking his hand. "I'll thank you to step off our grassy knoll, however. That rifle still holds several live rounds." He turned toward Garza. "It's a perfect match. We've cracked this one. No need for additional run-throughs."

"So this is the project you're just wrapping up?" McFarlane asked.

Glinn nodded. "Some new evidence turned up recently that needed further analysis."

"And what have you found?"

Glinn gave him a cool glance. "Perhaps you'll read about it in the New York Times someday, Dr. McFarlane. But I doubt it. For now, let me just say that I have a greater respect for conspiracy theorists than I did a month ago."

"Very interesting. This must've cost a fortune. Who paid for it?"

There was a conspicuous silence.

"What does this have to do with engineering?" McFarlane finally asked.

"Everything. EES was a pioneer in the science of failure analysis, and half our work is still in that area. Understanding how things fail is the most important component in solving engineering problems."

"But this... ?" McFarlane jerked his hand in the direction of the re-created plaza.

Glinn smiled elusively. "Assassination of a president is a rather major failure, don't you think? Not to mention the botched investigation that followed. Besides, our work in analyzing failures such as this helps us maintain our perfect engineering record."

"Perfect?"

"That's right. EES has never failed. Never. It is our trademark." He gestured to Garza, and they moved back toward the doorway. "It's not enough to figure out how to do something. You must also analyze every possible path to failure. Only then can you be certain of success. That is why we have never failed. We do not sign a contract until we know we can succeed. And then we guarantee success. There are no disclaimers in our contracts."

"Is that why you haven't signed the Lloyd Museum contract yet?"

"Yes. And it's why you're here today." Glinn removed a heavy, beautifully engraved gold watch from his pocket, checked the time, and slid it back. Then he turned the door handle briskly and stepped through. "Come on. The others are waiting."

EES Headquarters,

1:00 P.M.

A SHORT ASCENT in an industrial elevator, a mazelike journey through white hallways, and McFarlane found himself ushered into a conference room. Low-ceilinged and austerely furnished, it was as understated as Palmer Lloyd's had been lavish. There were no windows, no prints on the walls — only a circular table made out of an exotic wood, and a darkened screen at the far end of the room.

Two people were seated at the table, staring at him, evaluating him with their eyes. The closest was a black-haired young woman, dressed in Farmer Brown-style bib overalls. She was not exactly pretty, but her brown eyes were quick and had glimmers of gold in their depths. They lingered over him in a sardonic way that McFarlane found unsettling. She was of average size, slender, unremarkable, with a healthy tan browning her cheekbones and nose. She had very long hands with longer fingers, currently busy cracking a peanut into a large ashtray on the table in front of her. She looked like an overgrown tomboy.

The man beyond her was dressed in a white lab coat. He was blade thin, with a badly razor-burned face. One eyelid seemed to droop slightly, giving the eye a jocular look, as if it was about to wink. But there was nothing jocular about the rest of the man: he looked humorless, pinched, as tense as catgut. He fidgeted restlessly with a mechanical pencil, turning it over and over.

Glinn nodded. "This is Eugene Rochefort, manager of engineering. He specializes in one-of-a-kind engineering designs."

Rochefort accepted the compliment with a purse of his lips, the pressure briefly turning them white.

"And this is Dr. Rachel Amira. She started out as a physicist with us, but we soon began to exploit her rare gifts as a mathematician. If you have a problem, she will give you an equation. Rachel, Gene, please welcome Dr. Sam McFarlane. Meteorite hunter."

They nodded in reply. McFarlane felt their eyes on him as he busied himself with opening the portfolio case and distributing folders. He felt the tension return.

Glinn accepted his folder. "I'd like to go over the general outline of the problem, and then open the floor for discussion."

"Sure thing," said McFarlane, settling into a chair.

Glinn glanced around, his gray eyes unreadable. Then he withdrew a sheaf of notes from inside his jacket. "First, some general information. The target area is a small island, known as Isla Desolación, off the southern tip of South America in the Cape Horn islands. It lies in Chilean national territory. It is about eight miles long and three miles wide."

He paused and looked around.

"Our client, Palmer Lloyd, insists upon moving ahead with the utmost possible speed. He is concerned about possible competition from other museums. That means working in the depths of the South American winter. In the Cape Horn islands, temperatures in July range from above freezing to as much as thirty below zero, Fahrenheit. Cape Horn is the southernmost major landmass outside of Antarctica itself, more than a thousand miles closer to the South Pole than Africa's Cape of Good Hope. During the target month, we can expect five hours of daylight.

"Isle Desolación is not a hospitable place. It is barren, windswept, mostly volcanic with some Tertiary sedimentary basins. The island is bisected by a large snowfield, and there is an old volcanic plug toward the north end. The tides range from thirty to thirty-five vertical feet, and a reversing sixknot current sweeps the island group."

"Lovely conditions for a picnic," Garza muttered.

"The closest human settlement is on Navarino Island, in the Beagle Channel, about forty miles north of the Cape Horn islands. It is a Chilean naval base called Puerto Williams, with a small mestizo Indian shantytown attached to it."

"Puerto Williams?" Garza said. "I thought this was Chile we were talking about."

"The entire area was originally mapped by Englishmen." Glinn placed the notes on the table. "Dr. McFarlane, I understand you've been in Chile."

McFarlane nodded.

"What can you tell us about their navy?"

"Charming fellows."

There was a silence. Rochefort, the engineer, began tapping his pencil on the table in an irritated tattoo. The door opened, and a waiter began serving sandwiches and coffee.

"They belligerently patrol the coastal waters," McFarlane went on, "especially in the south, along the border with Argentina. The two countries have a long-running border dispute, as you probably know."

"Can you add anything to what I've said about the climate?"

"I once spent time in Punta Arenas in late fall. Blizzards, sleet storms, and fog are common. Not to mention williwaws."

"Williwaws?" Rochefort asked in a tremulous, reed-thin voice.

"Basically a microburst of wind. It lasts only a minute or two, but it can peak at about a hundred and fifty knots."

"What about decent anchorages?" Garza asked.

"I've been told there are no decent anchorages. In fact, from what I've heard, there's no good holding ground for a ship anywhere in the Cape Horn islands."

"We like a challenge," said Garza.

Glinn collected the papers, folded them carefully, and returned them to his jacket pocket. Somehow, McFarlane felt the man had already known the answers to his own questions.

"Clearly," Glinn said, "we have a complex problem, even without considering the meteorite. But let's consider it now. Rachel, I believe you have some questions about the data?"

"I have a comment about the data." Amira's eyes glanced at a folder before her, then hovered on McFarlane with faint amusement. She had a superior attitude that McFarlane found annoying.

"Yes?" said McFarlane.

"I don't believe a word of it."

"What exactly don't you believe?"

She waved her hand over his portfolio. "You're the meteorite expert, right? Then you know why no one has ever found a meteorite larger than sixty tons. Any larger, and the force of impact causes the meteorite to shatter. Above two hundred tons, meteorites vaporize from the impact. So how could a monster like this still be intact?"

"I can't —" McFarlane began.

But Amira interrupted. "The second thing is that iron meteorites rust. It only takes about five thousand years to rust even the biggest one into a pile of scale. So if it somehow did survive the impact, why is it still there? How do you explain this geological report that says it fell thirty million years ago, was buried in sediment, and is only now being exposed through erosion?"

McFarlane settled back in his chair. She waited, raising her eyebrows quizzically.

"Have you ever read Sherlock Holmes?" McFarlane asked with a smile of his own.

Amira rolled her eyes. "You're not going to quote that old saw about how once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth — are you?"

McFarlane shot a surprised glance at her. "Well, isn't it true?"

Amira smirked her triumph, while Rochefort shook his head.

"So, Dr. McFarlane," Amira said brightly, "is that your source of scientific authority? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?"

McFarlane exhaled slowly. "Someone else collected the base data. I can't vouch for it. All I can say is, if that data's accurate, there's no other explanation: it's a meteorite."

There was a silence. "Someone else's data," Amira said, cracking another shell and popping the nuts into her mouth. "Would that be a Dr. Masangkay, by chance?"

"Yes."

"You knew each other, I believe?"

"We were partners."

"Ah." Amira nodded, as if hearing this for the first time. "And so, if Dr. Masangkay collected this data, you have a high degree of confidence in it? You trust him?"

"Absolutely."

"I wonder if he'd say the same about you," Rochefort said in his quiet, high, clipped voice.

McFarlane turned his head and looked steadily at the engineer.

"Let's proceed," Glinn said.

McFarlane looked away from Rochefort and tapped his portfolio with the back of one hand. "There's an enormous circular deposit of shocked and fused coesite on that island. Right in the center is a dense mass of ferromagnetic material."

"A natural deposit of iron ore," said Rochefort.

"The flyover indicates a reversal of the sedimentary strata around the site."

Amira looked puzzled. "A what?"

"Flipped sedimentary layers."

Rochefort sighed heavily. "Signifying... ?"

"When a large meteorite strikes sedimentary layers, the layers get reversed."

Rochefort continued tapping his pencil. "How? By magic?"

McFarlane looked at him again, longer this time. "Perhaps Mr. Rochefort would like a demonstration?"

"I would," said Rochefort.

McFarlane picked up his sandwich. He examined it, smelled it. "Peanut butter and jelly?" He made a face.

"May we just have the demonstration, please?" Rochefort asked in a tight, exasperated voice.

"Of course." McFarlane placed the sandwich on the table between himself and Rochefort. Then he tilted his coffee cup and carefully poured liquid over it.

"What is he doing?" said Rochefort, turning to Glinn, his voice high. "I knew this was a mistake. We should have required one of the principals to come in."

McFarlane held up his hand. "Bear with me. We're just preparing our sedimentary deposit here." He reached for another sandwich and placed it on top, then tipped on more coffee until it was saturated. "There. This sandwich is the sedimentary deposit: bread, peanut butter, jelly, more bread, in layers. And my fist" — he raised his hand above his head — "is the meteorite."

He brought his fist down on the sandwich with a jarring crash.

"For Christ's sake!" Rochefort cried, jumping back, his shirt splattered with peanut butter. He stood up, flicking bits of sodden bread from his arms.

At the far end of the table, Garza sat with an astonished look on his face. Glinn was expressionless.

"Now, let us examine the remains of the sandwich on the table," McFarlane continued as calmly as if he were giving a college lecture. "Please note that all the pieces have been flipped over. The bottom layer of bread is now on the top, the peanut butter and jelly have reversed places, and the top layer of bread is now on the bottom. It's what a meteorite does when it hits sedimentary rock: it pulverizes the layers, flips them over, and lays them back down in reversed sequence." He glanced at Rochefort. "Any further questions or comments?"

"This is outrageous," said Rochefort, wiping his glasses with a handkerchief.

"Sit down, please, Mr. Rochefort," said Glinn quietly. To McFarlane's surprise, Amira began to laugh: a deep, smooth laugh. "That was very good, Dr. McFarlane. Very entertaining. We need a little excitement in our meetings." She turned to Rochefort. "If you had ordered club sandwiches like I suggested, this wouldn't have happened."

Rochefort scowled as he returned to his seat.

"Anyway," said McFarlane, sitting back and wiping his hand with a napkin, "strata reversal means only one thing: a massive impact crater. Taken together, everything points to a meteorite strike. Now if you have a better explanation for what is down there, I'd like to hear it."

He waited.

"Perhaps it's an alien spaceship?" Garza asked hopefully.

"We considered that, Manuel," Amira replied dryly.

"And?"

"Occam's razor. It seemed unlikely."

Rochefort was still cleaning the peanut butter from his glasses. "Speculation is useless. Why not send a ground party to check it out, and get some better data?"

McFarlane glanced at Glinn, who was listening with halflidded eyes. "Mr. Lloyd and I trust the data we have in hand. And he doesn't want to draw any more attention to the site than he has already. With good reason."

Garza suddenly spoke up. "Yeah, and that brings up the second problem we need to discuss: how we're going to get whatever it is out of Chile. I believe you're familiar with that sort of — shall we say — operation?"

More polite than calling it smuggling, McFarlane thought. Aloud, he said, "More or less."

"And your thoughts?"

"It's metal. It's basically an ore body. It doesn't fall under the laws of cultural patrimony. At my recommendation, Lloyd created a company that is in the process of acquiring mineral leases to the island. I suggested that we go down there as a mining operation, dig it up, and ship it home. There's nothing illegal in it — according to the lawyers."

Amira smiled again. "But if the government of Chile realized this was the world's largest meteorite and not just some ordinary iron deposit, it might take a dim view of your operation."

"A ‘dim view' is an understatement. We might all get shot."

"A fate you barely escaped smuggling the Atacama tektites out of the country, right?" Garza asked.

Throughout the meeting, Garza had remained friendly, showing none of Rochefort's hostility or Amira's sardonic attitude. Still, McFarlane found himself coloring. "We took a few chances. It's part of the job."

"So it seems." Garza laughed, turning over the sheets in his folder. "I'm amazed you'd consider going back there. This project could create an international incident."

"Once Lloyd unveils the meteorite in his new museum," McFarlane replied, "I can guarantee you there will be an international incident."

"The point," Glinn interjected smoothly, "is that this must be carried out in secrecy. What happens after we conclude our part of the business is up to Mr. Lloyd."

Nobody spoke for a moment.

"There is one other question," Glinn continued at last. "About your ex-partner, Dr. Masangkay."

Here it comes, McFarlane thought. He steeled himself.

"Any idea what killed him?"

McFarlane hesitated. This was not the question he'd expected. "No idea," he said after a moment. "The body hasn't been recovered. It could well have been exposure or starvation. That climate isn't exactly hospitable."

"But there were no medical problems? No history that might have contributed?"

"Malnutrition as a kid. Nothing else. Or if there was, I didn't know about it. There was no mention of illness or starvation in the diary."

McFarlane watched Glinn page through his folder. The meeting seemed to be over. "Lloyd told me to bring back an answer," he said.

Glinn put the folder aside. "It's going to cost a million dollars."

McFarlane was momentarily taken aback. The amount was less than he had expected. But what surprised him most was how quickly Glinn had arrived at it. "Naturally, Mr. Lloyd will have to sign off, but that seems very reasonable —"

Glinn raised his hand. "I'm afraid you've misunderstood. It's going to cost a million dollars to determine whether we can undertake this project."

McFarlane stared at him. "You mean it's going to cost a million dollars just for the estimate?"

"Actually, it's worse than that," Glinn said. "We might come back and tell you EES can't sign on at all."

McFarlane shook his head. "Lloyd's going to love this."

"There are many unknowns about this project, not the least of which is what we're going to find when we get there. There are political problems, engineering problems, scientific problems. To analyze them, we'll need to build scale models. We'll need hours of time on a supercomputer. We'll need the confidential advice of physicists, structural engineers, international lawyers, even historians and political scientists. Mr. Lloyd's desire for speed will make things even more expensive."

"Okay, okay. So when will we get our answer?"

"Within seventy-two hours of our receipt of Mr. Lloyd's certified check."

McFarlane licked his lips. It was beginning to occur to him that he himself was being underpaid. "And what if the answer's no?" he asked.

"Then Lloyd will at least have the consolation of knowing the project is impossible. If there's a way to retrieve that meteorite, we'll find it."

"Have you ever said no to anyone?"

"Often."

"Oh, really? Like when?"

Glinn coughed slightly. "Just last month a certain eastern European country wanted us to entomb a defunct nuclear reactor in concrete and move it across an international border, undetected, for a neighboring country to deal with."

"You're joking," said McFarlane.

"Not at all," said Glinn. "We had to turn them down, of course."

"Their budget was insufficient," said Garza.

McFarlane shook his head and snapped his portfolio shut. "If you show me to a phone, I'll relay your offer to Lloyd."

Glinn nodded to Garza, who stood up. "Come this way, please, Dr. McFarlane," said Garza, holding open the door.

As the door hissed shut, Rochefort let out another sigh of irritation. "We don't really have to work with him, do we?" He flicked a clot of purple jelly from his lab coat. "He's not a scientist, he's a scavenger."

"He has a doctorate in planetary geology," said Glinn.

"That degree died long ago from neglect. But I'm not just talking about the man's ethics, what he did to his partner. Look at this." He gestured at his shirt. "The man's a loose cannon. He's unpredictable."

"There is no such thing as an unpredictable person," Glinn replied. "Only a person we don't understand." He gazed at the mess on his fifty-thousand-dollar Accawood table. "Naturally, we'll make it our business to understand everything about Dr. McFarlane. Rachel?"

She turned to him.

"I'm going to give you a very special assignment." Amira flashed another sardonic smile at Rochefort. "Of course," she said.

"You're going to be Dr. McFarlane's assistant."

There was a sudden silence as the smile disappeared from Amira's face.

Glinn went on smoothly, without giving her time to react. "You will keep an eye on him. You will prepare regular reports on him and give them to me."

"I'm no damn shrink!" Amira exploded. "And I'm sure as hell no rat!"

Now it was Rochefort whose face was mottled with an expression that might have passed for amusement, if it had not been so laced with ill will.

"Your reports will be strictly observational," Glinn said. "They will be thoroughly evaluated by a psychiatrist. Rachel, you're a shrewd analyst, of human beings as well as mathematics. You will, of course, be an assistant in name only. As for your being a rat, that's entirely incorrect. You know Dr. McFarlane has a checkered past. He will be the only one on this expedition not of our choosing. We must keep a close watch on him."

"Does that give me license to spy on him?"

"Say I hadn't asked you to do this. If you were to catch him doing anything that might compromise the expedition, you'd have told me without a second thought. All I'm asking you to do is formalize the process a little."

Amira flushed and was silent.

Glinn gathered up his papers, and they swiftly disappeared into the folds of his suit. "All this may be moot if the project turns out to be impossible. There's one little thing I have to look into first."

Lloyd Museum,

June 7, 3:15 P.M.

MCFARLANE PACED his office in the museum's brand-new administration building, moving restlessly from wall to wall like a caged animal. The large space was half filled with unopened boxes, and the top of his desk was littered with blueprints, memos, charts, and printouts. He had only bothered to tear the plastic wrap off a single chair. The rest of the furniture remained shrink-wrapped, and the office smelled raw with new carpeting and fresh paint. Outside the windows, construction continued at a frantic pace. It was unsettling to see so much money being spent so quickly. But if anyone could afford it, he supposed Lloyd could. The diversified companies that made up Lloyd Holdings — aero-space engineering, defense contracting, supercomputer development, electronic data systems — brought in enough revenue to make the man one of the two or three richest in the world.

Forcing himself to sit down, McFarlane shoved the papers aside to clear a space, opened the bottom desk drawer, and pulled out Masangkay's moldy diary. Just seeing the Tagalog words on paper had brought back a host of memories, almost all of them bittersweet, faded, like old sepia-toned photographs.

He opened the cover, turned the pages, and gazed again at the strange, crabbed script of the final entry. Masangkay had been a poor diary keeper. Exactly how many hours or days passed between this entry and his death was impossible to know.

Nakaupo ako at nagpapausok para umalis ang mga lintik na lamok. Akala ko masama na ang South Greenland, mas grabe pala dito sa Isla Desolación...

McFarlane glanced down at the translation he had written out for Lloyd:

I am sitting by my fire, in the smoke, trying to keep the damned mosquitoes at bay. And I thought South Greenland was bad. Isla Desolación: good name. I always wondered what the end of the world looked like. Now I know.

It looks promising: the reversed strata, the bizarre vulcanism, the satellite anomalies. It all meshes with the Yaghan legends. But it doesn't make sense. It must have come in damn fast, maybe even too fast for an elliptical orbit. I keep thinking about McFarlane's crazy theory. Christ, I find myself almost wishing the old bastard were here to see this. But if he was here, no doubt he'd find some way to screw things up.

Tomorrow, I'll start the quantitative survey of the valley. If it's there, even deep, I'll find it. It all depends on tomorrow.

And that was it. He had died, all alone, in one of the remotest places on earth.

McFarlane leaned back in his chair. McFarlane 's crazy theory... The truth was, walang kabalbalan didn't precisely translate as "crazy" — it meant something a lot more unflattering — but Lloyd didn't need to know everything.

But that was beside the point. The point was, his own theory had been crazy. Now, with the wisdom of hindsight, he wondered why he had held on to it so tenaciously, for so long, and at such a terrible price.

All known meteorites came from inside the solar system. His theory of interstellar meteorites — meteorites that originated outside, from other star systems — appeared ridiculous in hindsight. To think that a rock could wander across the vastness of the space between the stars and just happen to land on Earth. Mathematicians always said the probabilities were on the order of a quintillion to one. So why hadn't he left it at that? His idea that someday someone — preferably himself — would find an interstellar meteorite had been fanciful, ridiculous, even arrogant. And what was more to the point, it had twisted his judgment and, ultimately, messed up his life almost beyond redemption.

How strange it was to see Masangkay bringing up the theory now in his journal. The reversed strata were to be expected. What was it that didn't make sense to him? What had been so puzzling?

He closed the diary and stood up, returning to the window. He remembered Masangkay's round face, the thick, scruffy black hair, the sarcastic grin, the eyes dancing with humor, vivacity, and intelligence. He remembered that last day outside the New York Museum — bright sunlight gilding everything to a painful brilliance — where Masangkay had come rushing down the steps, glasses askew, shouting, "Sam! They've given us the green light! We're on our way to Greenland!" And — more painfully — he remembered that night after they actually found the Tornarssuk meteorite, Masangkay tilting the precious bottle of whiskey up, the firelight flickering in its amber depths as he took a long drink, his back against the dark metal. God, the hangover the next day... But they had found it — sitting right there, as if someone had carefully placed it on the gravel for all to see. Over the years, they had found many meteorites together, but nothing like this. It had come in at an acute angle and had actually bounced off the ice sheet, tumbling for miles. It was a beautiful siderite, shaped like a sea horse ...

And now it sat in some Tokyo businessman's backyard garden. It had cost him his relationship with Masangkay. And his reputation.

He stared out the window, returning to the present. Above the leafy maples and white oaks a structure was rising, incomprehensibly out of place in the upper Hudson Valley: an ancient, sun-weathered Egyptian pyramid. As he watched, a crane swung another block of limestone above the treetops and began lowering it gently onto the half-built structure. A finger of sand trailed off the block and feathered away into the wind. In the clearing at the base of the pyramid he could see Lloyd himself, oversized safari hat dappled by the leafy shade. The man had a weakness for melodramatic headgear.

There was a knock on the door and Glinn entered, a folder beneath one arm. He glided his way among the boxes to McFarlane's side and gazed at the scene below.

"Did Lloyd acquire a mummy to accessorize it?" he asked.

McFarlane grunted a laugh. "As a matter of fact, he did. Not the original — that was looted long ago — but another one. Some poor soul who had no idea he'd be spending eternity in the Hudson River Valley. Lloyd is having some of King Tut's golden treasures replicated for the burial chamber. Couldn't buy the originals, apparently."

"Even thirty billion has its limits," said Glinn. He nodded out the window. "Shall we?"