Deception Point Page 0,53

Michael Tolland had gone.

Corky Marlinson materialized beside her. "Looking for Mike?"

Rachel startled. "Well... no... sort of."

Corky shook his head in disgust. "I knew it. Mike just left. I think he was headed back to go grab a few winks." Corky squinted across the dusky dome. "Although it looks like you can still catch him." He gave her a puggish smile and pointed. "Mike becomes mesmerized every time he sees water."

Rachel followed Corky's outstretched finger toward the center of the dome, where the silhouette of Michael Tolland stood, gazing down into the water in the extraction pit.

"What's he doing?" she asked. "That's kind of dangerous over there."

Corky grinned. "Probably taking a leak. Let's go push him."

Rachel and Corky crossed the darkened dome toward the extraction pit. As they drew close to Michael Tolland, Corky called out.

"Hey, aqua man! Forget your swimsuit?"

Tolland turned. Even in the dimness, Rachel could see his expression was uncharacteristically grave. His face looked oddly illuminated, as if he were being lit from below.

"Everything okay, Mike?" she asked.

"Not exactly." Tolland pointed into the water.

Corky stepped over the pylons and joined Tolland at the edge of the shaft. Corky's mood seemed to cool instantly when he looked in the water. Rachel joined them, stepping past the pylons to the edge of the pit. When she peered into the hole, she was surprised to see specks of blue-green light shimmering on the surface. Like neon dust particles floating in the water. They seemed to be pulsating green. The effect was beautiful.

Tolland picked up a shard of ice off the glacial floor and tossed it into the water. The water phosphoresced at the point of impact, glowing with a sudden green splash.

"Mike," Corky said, looking uneasy, "please tell me you know what that is."

Tolland frowned. "I know exactly what this is. My question is, what the hell is it doing here?"

Chapter 39-41

39

"We've got flagellates," Tolland said, staring into the luminescent water.

"Flatulence?" Corky scowled. "Speak for yourself."

Rachel sensed Michael Tolland was in no joking mood.

"I don't know how it could have happened," Tolland said, "but somehow this water contains bioluminescent dinoflagellates."

"Bioluminescent what?" Rachel said. Speak English.

"Monocelled plankton capable of oxidizing a luminescent catalyst called luceferin."

That was English?

Tolland exhaled and turned to his friend. "Corky, there any chance the meteorite we pulled out of that hole had living organisms on it?"

Corky burst out laughing. "Mike, be serious!"

"I am serious."

"No chance, Mike! Believe me, if NASA had any inkling whatsoever that there were extraterrestrial organisms living on that rock, you can be damn sure they never would have extracted it into the open air."

Tolland looked only partially comforted, his relief apparently clouded by a deeper mystery. "I can't be for sure without a microscope," Tolland said, "but it looks to me like this is a bioluminescent plankton from the phylum Pyrrophyta. Its name means fire plant. The Arctic Ocean is filled with it."

Corky shrugged. "So why'd you ask if they were from space?"

"Because," Tolland said, "the meteorite was buried in glacial ice-fresh water from snowfalls. The water in that hole is glacial melt and has been frozen for three centuries. How could ocean creatures get in there?"

Tolland's point brought a long silence.

Rachel stood at the edge of the pool and tried to get her mind around what she was looking at. Bioluminescent plankton in the extraction shaft. What does it mean?

"There's got to be a crack somewhere down there," Tolland said. "It's the only explanation. The plankton must have entered the shaft through a fissure in the ice that allowed ocean water to seep in."

Rachel didn't understand. "Seep in? From where?" She recalled her long IceRover ride in from the ocean. "The coast is a good two miles from here."

Both Corky and Tolland gave Rachel an odd look. "Actually," Corky said, "the ocean is directly underneath us. This slab of ice is floating."

Rachel stared at the two men, feeling utterly perplexed. "Floating? But... we're on a glacier."

"Yes, we're on a glacier," Tolland said, "but we're not over land. Glaciers sometimes flow off a landmass and fan out over water. Because ice is lighter than water, the glacier simply continues to flow, floating out over the ocean like an enormous ice raft. That's the definition of an ice shelf... the floating section of a glacier." He paused. "We're actually almost a mile out to sea at the moment."

Shocked, Rachel instantly became wary. As she adjusted her mental picture of her surroundings, the thought of standing over the Arctic Ocean brought with it a sense