Last Gasp Read Online Free Page B

the covers and the pen slipped from his fingers.
    Chase held up the clipboard so that they could see what the man had scrawled.
    C0 2 + C0 3 = + H 2 0 2HC0 3
    Nick tugged at his beard. “What’s that?” he frowned. “Something to do with the carbon cycle?”
    “It’s the chemical interaction that takes place when carbon dioxide is dissolved in seawater,” Chase said. “It reacts with bicarbonate and carbonate ions, which allows more calcium carbonate from the sediments to dissolve.”
    “So what?”
    Chase studied the equation, still at a loss. “Search me.”
    He looked up at the sound of voices in the corridor. He thought it prudent to slip the piece of paper into his pocket, without quite knowing why. Quickly he replaced the clipboard on its hook at the foot of the bed, then straightened up as Professor Banting entered the sick bay followed by Grigson. Nick leaned against the plywood wall, apparently unconcerned.
    Professor Banting’s head shone like a polished green egg in the dim light. His close-set eyes in the narrow skull resembled suspicious black buttons.
    “Don’t you know this man is very ill and shouldn’t be disturbed?”
    “What’s wrong with him?” asked Nick, unintimidated.
    “His back is broken,” Grigson stated without emotion; it was a medical fact. He went over and checked the Russian’s pulse.
    Banting pointedly stood aside. “Please leave at once. You shouldn’t be here in the first place.”
    “What’s going to happen to him?” Chase wanted to know.
    Banting breathed out slowly, controlling his annoyance. “They’re sending a Hercules from McMurdo Sound. So now you know. All right?”
    “The Americans?” Chase said. “Why inform them?”
    “Because they have the facilities and we haven’t,” said Banting shortly. Professor Ivor Banting was project leader at the station and head of the British Section Antarctic Research Program. More administrator than serious scientist, he commanded little respect from the British contingent. He seemed to be more interested in keeping an eye on the stores’ inventory than in conducting research experiments and collecting important data. Chase thought him a typical careerist petty-minded bureaucrat, but just as long as Banting kept out of his way and didn’t interfere he was prepared to tolerate the man.
    Banting cleared his throat, as he might have done before commencing to lecture to a group of rather obtuse students. “There’s also the matter of security, which I doubt would have occurred to you. The Americans want to know what he was doing here.”
    “They don’t think he’s a spy,” Chase said incredulously, not sure whether he ought to laugh or not. “We find a man with a broken back on the ice, two thousand miles from nowhere, and the Americans regard him as a security risk!”
    But Professor Banting was clearly not in the mood to debate the point. He said crisply, “As head of the station, Dr. Chase, this is my responsibility. And my decision. The Americans are the right people to deal with it.” He stuck both hands into the pockets of his shapeless tweed jacket in the pose of someone whose patience was rapidly evaporating. “Now, if you and Dr. Power would be so good as to leave.” At the door Chase paused and glanced back at the figure on the bed, the black beard enclosing the soundlessly miming lips. Even now a reflex part of his brain was striving to communicate ... what? What could be so vitally important to him? A simple chemical equation? Chase curled his hand around the piece of paper in his pocket.
    “I just hope you know what you’re doing, Professor.” His jaw hardened. “This man is gravely ill. Moving him could be a fatal mistake.”
    “Quite so.” Banting turned his back. “But if so it will be mine and not yours, Dr. Chase.”
     
    Wearing only ragged shorts and a pair of canvas shoes with holes in them, Theo Detrick sat in the stern of a small wooden rowboat in the middle of a placid lagoon,