Read The Nexus Colony for Free Online Page B

that needed cataloguing and initial analysis. They had lucked out for the past month, the weather cooperating almost daily. Then yesterday morning they went back out on the ice and were hit suddenly by a katabatic wind that sneaked up on them. It blew the ice and snow crystals around so intensely that everyone knew they had been lucky to get back to camp without anyone getting lost in the blizzard. Thank God for the brightly colored orange and black Scott tents that stood out against the whiteness of the landscape. And thank God even more for Mike Ruger’s incredible sense of direction. By the time they got back they were totally exhausted. Then the winds died down again, and they had spent the last ten hours sleeping in a relative calm weather hiatus.
    It might have been still, but the frigid air stung Grimes’ face nonetheless, and the air circulating through the tangled mesh of his beard felt like it had instantly frozen all the follicles of his skin. A shiver went down his spine, and he quickly withdrew back into the relative warmth of the tent. Dr. Tracey, his tent mate, had just turned up the burners of both camp stoves to get some more heat circulating.
    “How’s it look?” his partner asked. The look on his face said it all. Cabin fever. In a tent.
    “Superb,” Grimes replied. “But I said that yesterday, didn’t I?”
    “Might as well get it in.”
    “Might as well,” Grimes agreed, taking the cup of hot coffee handed to him.
    The zipper of the tent opened and Mike Ruger entered.
    “Coffee, Mike?” they offered.
    “No thanks. Just had one,” he replied. “We a go , Hilly?”
    “Yeah. What d’ya think? Look okay?”
    “I’d say so,” Ruger said, nodding his head. “You want to try that area at the base of the western slope?”
    “Yeah,” Grimes replied. “But I still think the rest of them are wrong about the ice flow up there.” But what the hell, we might as well try it. We don’t have hardly anything worthwhile to show for this whole trip so far.
    “All right,” Ruger responded. “I’ll call McMurdo and inform them.”
    Each morning Field Team Ruger would make contact with McMurdo Station to report their status and their itinerary for the day. It was important to do that in case something went awry and they had to send out search planes looking for you.
    By seven thirty all four of the snowmobiles were revving loudly across the ice field, breaking the relative silence of the glacial plain. Led by Ruger, alone in the lead snowmobile – Ruger’s partner had stayed behind to effect some needed repairs on some gear—the team headed due west across the glacier toward the area where one of Grimes’ colleagues had theorized that there should be some debris fields. The specimens would later turn out to be scarce. What they were going to find there in the next few days, however, would overshadow any significance of meteorites.
    Along the gently rising slopes of the glacier, the sastrugi painted the landscape in subtle patterns. Sastrugi were deep ruts carved into the layers of snow by the winds blowing down the slopes off the plateau. They were like sculptures etched away on the surface of the land, and they were always changing their appearance according to the whim of the katabatic winds. You had to be careful, because it was easy to drive a snowmobile into a sastrugi or even tumble into one while walking around the field looking for specimens. They were beautiful, but like everything else in this land, you learned to respect the natural order of things.
    It was late astral summer, and the low rays of the sun created a surreal effect, casting an orange-ish glow over the field. In the shadows, the aesthetic patterns of the sastrugi were plainly evident where the snow was piled up along the gentle rising slopes. As the entourage slowly made their way across the barren landscape—Grimes now riding in the back seat of Ruger’s snowmobile—they could sense how true it was that humans were