Dark Winter by William Dietrich

Author:William Dietrich [Dietrich, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: adventure
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dana Andrews shivered, and it wasn't just from cold. The shadowy fuel arch gave her the creeps, this dank tunnel that stank of petroleum and was so dimly lit. Accordingly, she started down the shadowy steel-roofed tunnel that held the station's petroleum supply with exasperated reluctance. Where the bloody hell was Rod Cameron?

Since coming upon the stiff, reaching hand of Harrison Adams, Dana had become more and more of a dome slug, clinging to the light and warmth of the galley and berthing floors like a child retreating to a bedroom. The winter was not beginning at all like she'd hoped. Thanks to Mickey's meteorite the station team seemed rent by suspicions and rivalries. Two deaths and the increasingly bizarre behavior of Mr. James "Buck" Tyson had smashed through the serenity she'd sought like a bus through a window. In reaction, Dana spent what time she could under the grow lights in the station greenhouse, helping Lena tend the hydroponic plants and trying to fight her own impending depression. God, it was claustrophobic here! Her work on polar atmospheric circulation was lagging to the point where she might not gain the tenure at the University of Auckland that she'd hoped to achieve by wintering at the Pole. She needed Tyson to help her sled and service her instruments pronto but it was impossible to get the mechanic to do anything unless he was ridden by Cameron, and the station manager had avoided Tyson since the two had almost come to blows two days before in the galley. It was an ugly situation. Cameron oscillated between bursts of annoying spunk, in which he'd radiate false optimism in a pathetic attempt to rally the troops, and a private gloom so profound he was becoming reclusive. Half the time he hid himself in his office and the other half he set off on pointless inspection tours of the tiny world of the dome. Then it would be up to the winter-overs to find him so they could get some work done.

Like now.

The crazy Americans were wrecking her work! Wrecking her future! It was hard being a woman in science, and she needed some good data, a solid discovery, to establish herself. Some stroke of dumb luck like Mickey's rock. Some commitment to the often mundane and tedious tasks that made up the painstaking minutiae of modern research. She needed logistical help and she needed to talk to the station manager alone. Have it out with him. Get him to snap out of it.

Their cook, who served as unofficial recording secretary of the comings and goings at the base, had told her that Cameron was checking the fuel that supplied the station. The generators suckled off four hundred thousand gallons of imported fuel kept in a chain of tanks in the arch behind Nancy Hodge's BioMed. The heat was as precious as oxygen. Periodically Cameron or Pika walked the tunnel to check the integrity of the valves and pipes as carefully as the hull of a boat.

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