Terminal Freeze by Lincoln Child

Author:Lincoln Child
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780385529235
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-12-16T06:00:00+00:00

28

“I got your message,” Marshall said as he stepped into Faraday's lab and closed the door behind him. “You’ve found something?”

Faraday glanced up at Marshall, then at Chen, then back at Marshall. The biologist's eyes looked wide and anxious behind the round tortoiseshell frames. But this in itself didn't disturb Marshall—Faraday wore a nervous look on even the best of days.

“It's more an interesting succession of facts than a hard theory,” Faraday said. He was standing behind—almost hiding behind, it seemed—a bewildering array of test tubes and lab equipment.

“Not a problem.”

“I can't corroborate any of it. Not from here, anyway.”

Marshall crossed one arm over the other. “I won't tell the NMU board of regents if you won't.”

“And I warn you that Sully's going to—”

Marshall sighed in exasperation. “Just let me hear it.”

One last hesitation. “Okay.” Faraday cleared his throat, straightened the soup-stained tie he insisted on wearing under the lab coat. “I think I understand. About the melting in the vault, I mean.”

Marshall waited.

“I told you we went back up to get more ice samples from the cave. Well, we’ve been examining them with X-ray diffraction. And they’re very unusual.”

“Unusual how?”

“The crystalline structure is all wrong. For normally occurring precipitant ice, I mean.”

Marshall leaned against a lab table. “Go on.”

“You know how there are many different kinds of ice, right? I mean, other varieties beyond the kind we put in our lemonade or chop off our car windows.” He began ticking them off on his fingers. “There's ice-two, ice-three, five, six, seven, and so forth, up to ice-fourteen—each with its own crystalline structure, its own physical properties.”

“I remember something about that in my graduate-level physics course. It takes great pressure or extreme temperatures for the solid-state transformation to take place.”

“That's right. But the really unusual thing about some of these types of ice is that—once they’ve formed—they can remain solid well above the freezing mark. “ He handed Marshall a sheet of paper through the forest of test tubes. “Look. Here's the structure diagram for ice-seven. Look at its unit cell. Under sufficient pressure, this form of ice can remain in solid form up to two hundred degrees centigrade.”

Marshall whistled. “That hot? We could have used that kind of ice in the vault yesterday.”

“But here's the thing,” Faraday went on. “I read an article in Nature last month describing another type of ice that could theoretically exist: ice-fifteen. Ice that has just the opposite qualities.”

“You mean …” Marshall paused. “You mean, ice that would melt below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit?”

Faraday nodded.

“The key word is ‘theoretically,’ “ Chen added.

“And the unusual crystalline structure of this melted cave ice—does it match ice-fifteen?”

“There's no way to be sure,” Faraday said. “But it may well.”

Marshall pushed away from the lab table, paced back and forth. “So possibly—just possibly—that ice melted on its own.”

“They were slowly raising the temperature overnight,” Faraday said. “And in all the commotion of finding their prize missing, nobody bothered to check the temperature in the vault. To verify it was actually above freezing inside.

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