Zodiac Station

Thirty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tick, tack, tick, tack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The storm is just beginning.