Last Gasp

You fought cold with heat. The only source available was the battery of lamps. The marine biologist grasped Nick by the shoulder, using the leverage to force the cowled arc light against the brass feed pipe. There had to be direct contact, otherwise the water would dissipate what little heat there was.

Together they floated in inky darkness. The muted thump and gurgle of Chase's air supply was the only sound. His companion had ceased to move and Chase found himself praying to a God in whom he didn't believe. This was no longer the top of the world, but the bottom, with the weight of the planet pressing down on them. Below them a thick slab of ice, beyond that the tenuous troposphere, and then bottomless space.

Wake up, wake up, he told himself savagely. He was starting to hallucinate, lose orientation. The cold was getting to him. If he didn't concentrate he might start swimming toward the seabed, thinking it was the surface.

Nick's arm twitched under his gloved hand. His head turned, the faceplate misty with expired water vapor. For the second time in as many days Chase thought he had a dead man on his hands, and both times, thank God, he had been wrong.

The valve, at last, was free. The ice on the feed pipe had melted, Chase saw with relief, and the gauge was registering again. A wavering chain of silver bubbles rose from Nick's exhaust release and surged upward.

Nick raised his arm and nodded weakly. He still had hold of the net, clamped in an instinctive grip. Holding the lamps above his head, Chase rose slowly, his other hand gripping Nick's shoulder harness tightly. In minutes the two men were in sight of the circle of green lights that marked the entry point through the ice and then gratefully hauling themselves onto the diving platform. Wooden steps led upward, connecting with a plywood-lined corridor that ran from the edge of the Weddell Sea onto the Filchner Ice Shelf--the actual Antarctic Plateau. There the corridor led directly into the basement of the station, though it took the two men over fifteen minutes to reach it. Chase had wanted to leave their scuba sets on the platform to be collected later, but Nick insisted he could manage.

He said dourly, "I hope those bloody specimens were worth getting. Are you sure we didn't come up with an empty net?"

Chase dumped his tanks on the rack and lifted the stainless-steel lid of the collecting vessel, in which the net sloshed in six inches of seawa-ter.

"Could be. Never be sure until we get it into the lab and take a look through the microscope."

"What?" Nick Power yelped. His face was circled with a fine red mark where the lip of the rubber hood had clung. It seemed even more incongruous because surrounding it was a frizzy mop of reddish hair and a straggly reddish beard, which for a reason Chase could never understand was neatly razor-trimmed in a crescent below the mouth while left to flourish unchecked elsewhere. An art student's beard; odd, since Nick was a glaciologist. "Do you mean I might have killed myself for nothing? Died in the cause of science and have only two pints of seawater to show for it? Jesus bloody Norah."

"A noble cause nevertheless," Chase intoned solemnly, filling the galvanized tub with steaming hot water. "And you wouldn't have been forgotten, I'd have seen to that. Those two pints of seawater would have been your memorial."

"You're all heart, Gav." Nick stripped off his rubber suit down to a pair of briefs with a saucy motto on the crotch. His pale skin was tattooed with blue patches from the cold. Chase helped him into the tub. "The most selfless man 1 know," Nick mumbled on, teeth chattering. "Think nothing of sacrificing a friend for a Guggenheim Fellowship. Allow me the privilege of accompanying you on your next suicide mission."

"Shut up and sit down," Chase said. He filled another tub, stripped off his own suit, and sank into it with a blissful sigh. At first he felt nothing, and then came slowly the luxurious tingle of returning life through his frozen limbs. They'd been under the ice for nearly an hour, which at these temperatures was the absolute limit before damage was done to the body's tissues.

His last dive, no question of that. Very nearly Nick's last dive, period. He felt a pang of guilt, mingled with thankful relief. Down there it was black, ball-freezing, and dangerous. They were both well out of it, thank Christ, alive and with all extremities intact. He cradled his privates in the hot soapy water and thought of Angie.

The warmth began to seep through him, making him pleasantly drowsy.