Granger had tried to figure out what it was about the UpLink crew that had irritated him from the day they broke ground in Antarctica and that now gave an undeniable appeal to the proposition of his sticking it sharply into their gut. Whenever he thought it over, his mind would turn back to something one of the old VXE-6 Ice Pirates he’d known had told him right around the time their unit was being dissolved. What the guy claimed was that he and a couple of his flyboy buddies had decided their ceremonial good-bye to the continent would be to stroll off a ski way on their final Herc run, squat down, and empty their bowels right there on a patch of ice, leaving behind freeze-dried commemorative monuments that would last longer than any footprints they could make. In fact, they would probably last forever.

Granger wasn’t sure if the crewmen had ever gone ahead with their distinctive hail-and-farewells, or if it was the sort of notion that would have occurred to them after too many beers in a Cheech watering hole and been forgotten once they sobered up the morning after. And he supposed that wasn’t important. It was the idea itself that had stayed with him. Granger remembered finding it funny in a crude sort of way. But there was also something more than a little bitter about it, something almost contemptuous, that had caused Granger to believe those flyboys had been eager for a parting shot. He hadn’t known at whom or what. Maybe the cold hell they were vacating. Maybe their superiors and Air Guard replacements for making them feel expendable. Maybe all three. He’d really never cared enough to wonder or ask.

What Granger did know was that thinking about UpLink always left a comparably bitter taste in his mouth. He resented the fawning treatment they received from the Base Commander and NSF Directors at McMurdo, resented their instant prestige on the continent, especially resented how everybody jumped when their redheaded bitch-in-charge clicked her fingers, as if her entire perfect flock, hatched and delivered straight from the mother nest in San Jose, deserved whatever favors and assistance they wanted. He’d seen women like Megan Breen in action before, and they were very good at that—getting what they wanted by being nice but not too nice. Try taking it to a personal level, though, and they’d be all business, as Granger had told Chuck Trewillen that day at Marble Point. Breen wouldn’t even catch a hint that a guy was interested in her unless he rated as a notable. It hadn’t taken Granger long to see that he could never come into her radar . . . but he would have staked anything she was keeping her champion Pete Nimec from getting frostbitten at night during his visit to Cold Corners.