‘Anyone home?’ I called. All I heard back was the wind howling around the outside of the building.

I took off my hat and hooked it on the rifle muzzle, then pushed it up through the hatch. A dumb trick — I probably got it from an old war movie. Anyhow, nothing happened. Either there wasn’t anyone there, or they’d seen the same movie.

Leading with the rifle, I put my head through the hatch. Even in the cold, my forehead prickled with sweat; my heart was going about a million miles an hour. I’d never felt so naked and so alive.

Above the first floor, the whole building had been gutted out. No internal walls, no floors, not even a roof. Just a brick shaft, three storeys high and open to the sky. Over my head, out of reach, eight cables came through the walls from different directions and met together in a long steel needle suspended in mid-air, pointing straight at outer space. A couple inches of snow covered the floor, but there was none on the wires. Someone made sure they got dusted off pretty regularly, it looked like.

I closed the trapdoor behind me, so that no one could sneak up. I checked the lock was in my pocket: I didn’t want to get locked in. Then I examined the antenna.

Keeping equipment in any kind of shape up there is tough. I should know. But this was pristine: all the cables tight, the metal buffed. A single wire hung down from the needle to a cleat in the floor, then ran across into a black box bolted on to the wall.

I went over and checked it out. Nothing on the outside to say what it did, not even a light to show if the power was on. A black box in every sense of the word. The only opening was the socket where the cable plugged in.

I squinted at the plug. It looked like a regular RF. The same kind I use to connect my instruments.

I took off my pack and got out my laptop. It wouldn’t boot, so I popped the battery and stuck it down my shorts for five minutes. Meanwhile, I found the interface cable I use when I’m in the field and connected it to the laptop. I put in the warmed-up battery and started the computer.

‘Here goes nothing.’

I yanked out the cable from the box. Somewhere on Utgard, if someone was watching satellite TV, I’d just ruined his show.

I didn’t waste time. Even weatherised, the battery doesn’t last much more than fifteen minutes in that cold. I connected the RF plug to the laptop, and opened a software transceiver program I use. I dialled it in to the C-band frequencies and hit record. I didn’t bother with transforms or other graphical shit: I just wanted to grab it as fast as I could.

The battery was dying in front of my eyes. When it hit ten per cent, I saved the file and shut down. Then I plugged the cable back in the black box. Didn’t want to piss off whoever the signal belonged to. With luck, they’d think it was the storm screwing with the transmission.

Or maybe they were closer than I’d thought. Before I’d even zipped my bag, I heard a creak on the stairs. I forgot the pack and grabbed my rifle. More creaks — definitely someone coming up. He stopped, just the other side of the trapdoor. I aimed the rifle.

The steel door squeaked. A gloved hand pushed it up until it latched open.

‘If you take another step, I’m going to blow your head off,’ I warned.

I heard him stop. Then, a rustling sound as he unzipped his coat. A hundred crazy scenarios played out in my head. What if he had a grenade? Or a bomb? Or—

A head popped up like a rabbit through the hatch. I was so wired, I almost pulled the trigger right there.

‘Jesus, Bob,’ said Malick. ‘I thought you wanted to see me.’

Twenty-six

He lifted himself through the hatch. He noticed I hadn’t moved the gun.

‘What is this?’

‘You tell me.’ I nodded at the antenna hanging in the space above us like a giant spider. ‘In fact, there’s a few conversations we need to have.’

He looked up, and did a pretty good job of making himself seem surprised. ‘What the hell is that thing?’

‘You tell me,’ I said again.

‘I swear on my mother’s grave, I never saw it in my life.’

‘Yeah?’

He chuckled. ‘Truth to tell, Mom’s alive and well, doing just fine in Fort Lauderdale. But you get the point.’

I didn’t smile. ‘I’m not sure that I do.’

‘I only came here because you asked me, Bob. If you want to show me whatever fancy toy you’ve got here, you go right ahead. But don’t make out like I should know what the hell you’re talking about.’

‘It’s not my toy. It’s a satellite antenna — and I want you to tell me what you’re doing with it.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m in the oil business.’

‘Really? I heard you have something called methane clathrates coming out of that well.’

He didn’t argue the point. ‘Either way, DAR-X isn’t exactly AT&T. We’ve got Iridium and UHF at Echo Bay, and that does us fine. We’re not searching for E.T. in our spare time.’

‘You expect me to believe that.’

He managed to make himself look genuinely hurt. ‘As a matter of fact, Bob, yeah, I do.’

I pitched him the change-up. ‘Tell me about Martin Hagger.’

He looked confused. ‘Your guy who fell down the crevasse?’

‘Who was doing a special project for you. Why did you need to get rid of him?’

Malick just stared at me. Big Texas oilmen don’t go down easy, but he looked floored.

I switched up again. ‘Were you here two days ago, Bill? Any of your people chasing us? Our doc almost got himself killed, running away from some guy in a yellow parka shooting at him.’

The fear I’d felt was flowing out now. Strength and weakness, it’s the same thing, they just run in opposite directions depending on which way the switch is flipped. I had the gun; I could make him do what I wanted. I jabbed it at him in case he’d forgotten.

‘I can account for every one of my guys. None of them’s been up here since the weekend. Show’s over; we’re breaking down the camp. Heading home tomorrow.’

That surprised me, if it was true. Maybe now they had this thing up, they could leave it to run itself.

‘Can we rewind?’ said Malick. ‘I came here because you said you had some data for me.’

‘I lied.’ I’ll admit it, I enjoyed saying that. Something about a gun that strips away the bullshit. ‘I just had to get you here.’

‘So you could show me this space needle?’

‘So you could tell me what it’s about.’

He looked at me like I was crazy.

‘What the hell are you on? Yeah, we’re drilling for methane at Echo Bay. Yeah, we were having problems with the pipes and Hagger looked into it. All above board. Why he died, and what that has to do with this great big radio you’ve found — maybe you can tell me.’

‘You know who you’re working for?’

‘I work for DAR-X.’

‘I mean, who’s paying you.’

‘Some company out of the Bahamas. Why are you looking at me like that? They’ve got the concession, they’ve got the permits, they’ve got the paperwork. We’re just the contractors. The only reason we keep quiet about the methane is to stop Greenpeace getting on our asses. You saw what they did to Shell in Alaska.’

‘The guys you’re working for are Russians, Bill. I guess you know that. And they don’t give a damn about gas or oil, do they?’

‘They do when I give them my progress reports.’

I nodded my head up at the giant web above us. ‘This is what it’s all about.’

He shrugged. ‘If I even knew what it was, I could tell you why you’re wrong.’

We stared each other down, like two gunslingers in a stand-off. Except, I was the only guy with a gun. And you know what?

I had no clue what the hell to do with it.

Like I said before, I’m a scientist, not Jack Bauer. I couldn’t waterboard the guy, or hook electrodes on his balls. I’d counted on the gun to scare him into confessing. Now what?