It wasn’t much to look at: a pair of orange domed tents, one small, one large, flapping in the wind. It looked like the large one was for equipment; they could see the edges of boxes pressing against the tent fabric. From the camp, Evans could see orange-flagged units stuck into the ice every few hundred yards, in a line stretching away into the distance.

“We’ll stop now,” Bolden said. “I’m afraid Dr. Brewster’s not here at the moment; his snowtrack is gone.”

“I’ll just have a look,” Kenner said.

They shut the engines and climbed out. Evans had thought it was chilly in the cab, but it was a shock to feel the cold air hit him as he stepped out onto the ice. He gasped and coughed. Kenner appeared to have no reaction; he went straight for the supply tent and disappeared inside.

Bolden pointed down the line of flags. “You see his vehicle tracks there, parallel to the sensor units? Dr. Brewster must have gone out to check his line. It runs almost a hundred miles to the west.”

Sarah said, “A hundred miles?”

“That’s right. He has installed GPS radio units all along that distance. They transmit back to him, and he records how they move with the ice.”

“But there wouldn’t be much movement…”

“Not in the course of a few days, no. But these sensors will remain in place for a year or more. Sending back the data by radio to Weddell.”

“Dr. Brewster is staying that long?”

“Oh no, he’ll go back, I’m sure. It’s too expensive to keep him here. His grant allows an initial twenty-one-day stay only, and then monitoring visits of a week every few months. But we’ll be forwarding his data to him. Actually, we just put it up on the Internet; he takes it wherever he happens to be.”

“So you assign him a secure web page?”

“Exactly.”

Evans stamped his feet in the cold. “So, is Brewster coming back, or what?”

“Should be coming back. But I couldn’t tell you when.”

From within the tent, Kenner shouted, “Evans!”

“I guess he wants me.”

Evans went to the tent. Bolden said to Sarah, “Go ahead with him, if you want to.” He pointed off to the south, where clouds were darkening. “We don’t want to be staying here too long. Looks like weather coming up. We have two hours ahead of us, and it won’t be any fun if it socks in. Visibility drops to ten feet or less. We’d have to stay put until it cleared. And that might be two or three days.”

“I’ll tell them,” she said.

Evans pushed the tent flap aside. The interior glowed orange from the fabric. There were the remains of wooden crates, broken down and stacked on the ground. On top of them were dozens of cardboard boxes, all stenciled identically. They each had the University of Michigan logo, and then green lettering:

University of Michigan
Dept. of Environmental Science
Contents: Research Materials
Extremely Sensitive
HANDLE WITH CARE
This Side Up

“Looks official,” Evans was saying. “You sure this guy isn’t an actual research scientist?”

“See for yourself,” Kenner said, opening one cardboard carton. Within it, Evans saw a stack of plastic cones, roughly the size of highway cones. Except they were black, not orange. “You know what these are?”

“No.” Evans shook his head.

Sarah came into the tent. “Bolden says bad weather coming, and we shouldn’t stay here.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t,” Kenner said. “Sarah, I need you to go into the other tent. See if you can find a computer there. Any kind of computer—laptop, lab controller, PDA—anything with a microprocessor in it. And see if you can find any radio equipment.”

“You mean transmitters, or radios for listening?”

“Anything with an antenna.”

“Okay.” She turned and went outside again.

Evans was still going through the cartons. He opened three, then a fourth. They all contained the same black cones. “I don’t get it.”

Kenner took one cone, turned it to the light. In raised lettering it said: “Unit PTBC-XX-904/8776-AW203 US DOD.”

Evans said, “These are military?”

“Correct,” Kenner said.

“But what are they?”

“They’re the protective containers for coned PTBs.”

“PTBs?”

“Precision-timed blasts. They’re explosives detonated with millisecond timing by computer in order to induce resonant effects. The individual blasts are not particularly destructive, but the timing sets up standing waves in the surrounding material. That’s where the destructive power comes from—the standing wave.”

“What’s a standing wave?” Evans said.

“You ever watch girls play jump rope? Yes? Well, if instead of spinning the rope, they shake it up and down, they generate loopy waves that travel along the length of the rope, back and forth.”

“Okay…”

“But if the girls shake it just right, the waves appear to stop moving back and forth. The rope takes on a single curved shape and holds it. You’ve seen that? Well, that’s a standing wave. It reflects back and forth in perfect synchronization so it doesn’t seem to move.”

“And these explosives do that?”

“Yes. In nature, standing waves are incredibly powerful. They can shake a suspension bridge to pieces. They can shatter a skyscraper. The most destructive effects of earthquakes are caused by standing waves generated in the crust.”

“So Brewster’s got these explosives…set in a row…for a hundred miles? Isn’t that what Bolden said? A hundred miles?”

“Right. And I think there’s no question what he intends. Our friend Brewster is hoping to fracture the ice for a hundred miles, and break off the biggest iceberg in the history of the planet.”

Sarah stuck her head in.

Kenner said, “Did you find a computer?”

“No,” she said. “There’s nothing there. Nothing at all. No sleeping bag, no food, no personal effects. Nothing but a bare tent. The guy’s gone.”

Kenner swore. “All right,” he said. “Now, listen carefully. Here’s what we are going to do.”