“Above all else, make sure the person is pulling their weight. If they don’t want to talk much, fine, but they have to do their job.”

“And if they refuse?”

Bill Harris suddenly looked over his shoulder as if he’d heard something.

“What is it?” the psychiatrist asked.

“Sounded like a gunshot,” Harris replied. “I’ll be right back.”

Parker watched the astronaut get up from his chair. He was halfway to the open door of his room on the remote ice station when a sudden blur moved across the threshold. Harris staggered back, and then something hit the webcam, and Parker’s view was completely blocked. He watched for several seconds. Soon the blackness on his laptop took on a faint purplish cast. As more time elapsed, the view turned lighter and lighter, going from the deepest plum to light eggplant, and finally to red.

It took him a moment to realize what had hit the camera was a clot of blood that then oozed off the lens. Parker could make out few details because of the bloody film, but there was no sign of Bill Harris, and the audio feed was picking up the unmistakable wail of a woman screaming.

A full minute elapsed before her voice was cut off abruptly. Parker kept watching, but when something passed the doorway again it was an indistinct blur. It certainly looked like the outline of a man, but it was impossible to know who.

He double-checked that his computer was automatically recording, as he did all sessions with his distant patient. Everything was safely on the hard drive. As a precaution, he e-mailed the first part of the file to himself so he had backup imagery and cc’d his boss.

Leaving his computer recording the now-silent webcam at Wilson /George base, he picked up his phone and dialed his supervisor’s direct line.

“Keith Deaver.”

“Keith, it’s Tom. We’ve got a situation at Wilson/George. Check the e-mail I just sent. Forward through the file until the last five minutes. Call me back when you’re done.”

Six minutes later, Tom snatched up the handset before it had finished its first ring. “What do you think?”

“I know for a fact there aren’t any guns on that station, but I’m positive that was a gunshot.”

“I think so, too,” Parker replied. “To be sure, we need an expert to listen to it, do that stuff like you see on the cop shows. This is bad, Keith. I don’t know if you overheard Bill and I talking, but McMurdo can’t send in a plane for a week or more, not even to do a visual reconnaissance.”

“Who has lead on that place?”

“Penn State is monitoring it full-time, if that’s what you mean.”

“Do you have a contact there?”

“Yes. Ah, I think his name’s Benton. Yeah, that’s it, Steve Benton. He’s a climatologist or something.”