Last Gasp Read Online Free

American pilot brought in on the monthly supply run. This was Nick’s number-one priority; on the same chart glaciology came a poor second.
    “I’ve got a year to eighteen months lab work when I get back to Newcastle. I’ll need all the specimens I can get hold of.”
    “Hey, about that, Gav. Why go back to Newcastle? Why not try for a post in London? With your qualifications, and this experience at Hailey Bay, it should be a piece of cake.”
    “Newcastle sponsored me. I owe them something.”
    “Yeah, I was forgetting, you’re from the north, aren’t you?” Nick said, as if that explained everything. Having been born in Lewes in Sussex and lived most of his life in London, he visualized the north as one vast smoking slag heap populated by burly men in cloth caps and scrawny women in clogs and shawls. No civilized, educated, intelligent person ever stayed there unless compelled to. It was purgatory, exile, a blighted land.
    Chase heaved himself out of the water and reached for a towel. His jet-black hair, usually brushed sideways, hung in lank strands across his forehead. He was clean-shaven, mainly because condensation froze a beard into a spiky fringe of icicles.
    “You may find this hard to believe, Nick, but I actually like living in Newcastle. It’s a lively town, and there’s some gorgeous countryside within twenty minutes drive.”
    “Moors, you mean?”
    “The North Yorkshire moors, yes, but real countryside as well.” Chase smiled to himself. Nick obviously pictured it as Wuthering Heights country. “You know—trees. Grass. Tinkling streams. Even the occasional cow with bronchitis.”
    “The occasional cow,” Nick mused. “Are they similar to occasional tables?”
    “Near enough,” Chase agreed. “A leg at each corner.”
    He toweled himself briskly, body tingling and aglow. As they were getting dressed, standing on the slatted wooden boards beneath the puny sixty-watt bulb, Nick asked him if he’d heard anything more about the mysterious Russian.
    Chase glanced up, frowning. “How do you know he’s Russian?”
    “Well, whatever it is he’s babbling it sure ain’t English, according to Grigson. Could be Serbo-Croatian for all the sense it makes.”
    “Have you seen him yourself?”
    Nick buttoned up his plaid shirt and pulled on a double-knit navy sweater. “I looked into the sick bay after breakfast. Grigson was feeding him soup and the guy was staring into space with peas and carrots lodged in his beard. What I can’t understand is where he came from. How the hell did he get here?”
    “It’s a mystery all right.”
    “I mean, how far is the Russian base from here?”
    “Five, maybe six hundred miles. But it hasn’t been used in over two years. The main Soviet base, Mirnyy Station, is two thousand miles away on the edge of the Amery Ice Shelf.”
    Nick combed his fingers through his tangle of a beard. “One man and an eight-dog team never made it that far,” he asserted positively. “Did Grigson say anything about his condition?”
    “Didn’t ask. They’ve put his neck in a brace, which could mean he’s injured his spine.”
    Chase finished lacing his boots and stood up straight, a good three inches taller than Nick. “Anybody here speak Russian?”
    “Naw, don’t think so.” Nick thought for a moment. “Glyn Jones speaks three or four languages but Russian isn’t one of them. Perhaps the mad Russkie speaks English.”
    Chase raised his dark eyebrows. “Want to find out?”
    Dim green globes burned in the tiny sick bay, one above each of the four beds. The other three were empty, sheets and blankets folded in neat piles. The man in the bed nearest the door appeared to be sound asleep. He had a broad Slavic face and a flattened nose, the skin above the full black beard dark and crazed like old parchment. It was impossible to tell his age, though Chase guessed he was in his late forties, early fifties.
    He was lying half-raised on a bank of pillows, the plastic