He doubted that much fuel remained in their tanks. The engines would conk out soon. No more light. No more heat.
Past the snowmobiles, the area that they had used for the temporary-camp lavatory lay on the far side of a U-shaped, ten-foot-high ridge of broken ice and drifted snow, twenty yards beyond the inflatable igloos that now lay in ruins. Harry actually had no need to relieve himself, but the call of nature provided the most convenient and least suspicious excuse for getting out of the cave and away from the others. He reached the opening in the crescent ridge that formed the windbreak, shuffled through drifted snow to the rear of that pocket of relative calm, and stood with his back to the ridge wall.
He supposed he might be making a big mistake with Pete Johnson. As he’d told Brian, no one could ever be entirely sure what might lie within the mind of another human being. Even a friend or loved one, well known and trusted, might harbor some unspeakable dark urge and despicable desire. Everyone was a mystery within a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. In his lifelong quest for adventure, Harry had settled by chance into a line of work that brought him into contact with fewer people on a daily basis than he would have met in virtually any other profession, and each time he took on a new challenge, the adversary was never another person but always Mother Nature herself. Nature could be hard but never treacherous, powerful and uncaring but never consciously cruel; in any contest with her, he didn’t have to worry about losing because of deceit or betrayal. Nevertheless, he had decided to risk confronting Pete Johnson alone.
He wished that he had a gun.
Considering the assault on Brian, it seemed criminally stupid of Harry to have come to the icecap without a large-caliber personal weapon holstered under his parka at all times. Of course, in his experience, geological research had never before required him to shoot anyone.
In a minute, Pete arrived and joined him at the back wall of the U-shaped, roofless shelter.
They faced each other, snow masks pulled down and goggles up on their foreheads, flashlights aimed at their boots. The light bounced back up at them, and Pete’s face glowed as if irradiated. Harry knew that his own countenance looked much the same: brightest around the chin and mouth, darker toward the forehead, eyes glittering from the depths of what appeared to be dark holes in his skull—as spooky as any Halloween mask.
Pete said, “Are we here to gossip about someone? Or have you suddenly taken a romantic interest in me?”
“This is serious, Pete.”
“Damn right it is. If Rita finds out, she’ll beat the crap out of me.”
“Let’s get right to the point. I want to know… why did you try to kill Brian Dougherty?”
“I don’t like the way he parts his hair.”
“Pete, I’m not joking.”
“Well, okay, it was because he called me a darky.”
Harry stared at him but said nothing.
Above their heads, at the crest of the sheltering ridge, the storm wind whistled and huffed through the natural crenellations in the tumbled-together slabs of ice.
Pete’s grin faded. “Man, you are serious.”
“Cut the bullshit, Pete.”
“Harry, for God’s sake, what’s going on here?”
Harry watched him for long seconds, using silence to disconcert him, waiting either to be attacked—or not. Finally, he said, “Maybe I believe you.”
“Believe me about what?” The bafflement on the big man’s broad, black face seemed as genuine as any lamb’s sweet look of innocence; the only hint of evil was entirely the theatrical effect from the upwash of the flashlight beams. “Are you saying somebody actually did try to kill him? When? Back at the third blasting site, when he got left behind? But he fell, you said. He said. He told us that he fell and hit his head. Didn’t he?”
Harry sighed, and some of the tension went out of his neck and shoulders. “Damn. If you are the one, you’re good. I believe you really don’t know.”
“Hey, I know I really don’t know.”