Polar Quest

‘Oh?’

‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. My divorce was final last year and they just started dating a few weeks ago. The three of us have known each other for a lot of years. I met Faye when we were undergrads at UCLA. Shook both our families up when we started getting serious, but they got over the black-white thing by the time we got married. We spent the summer after our wedding backpacking across Europe. Those were good times.’

‘If you don’t mind my asking, what went wrong?’

‘It started with grad school. Faye stayed at UCLA and I went to Stanford. Long-distance relationships suck.’

‘Yeah, they do,’ Kilkenny agreed.

‘I hooked up with Lloyd at Stanford and we started laying the groundwork for UGene,’ Eames continued. ‘After Faye finished up her master’s, she moved up to be with me and took a job with a big architecture firm in San Francisco. We shortened the distance, but we still weren’t spending enough time together. It was mostly my fault. I fell in love with my work, and a man can only have one true love at a time. By the time I earned my Ph.D., Faye was ready to divorce me. I managed to talk her into giving me a second chance.’

‘How’d you pull that off?’ Kilkenny asked. ‘I’m interested in second chances myself.’

‘It was the promise of a fresh start. After Lloyd and I finished up at Stanford, we both signed on with the Life Sciences Initiative here at Michigan. Faye hired on with a preservation firm in town and we bought our first house. Things were pretty good for about three months, then I disappeared into my work again. By the time Lloyd and I officially formed UGene, my marriage was dead.’

‘Is it weird that your partner is dating your ex-wife?’

Eames sipped his beer and thought for a moment. ‘When you put it like that it sounds like something off a daytime talk show. Look, Lloyd and Faye are both entitled to happiness, and if they can find it together, then who am I to stand in their way?’

‘Very noble. Have you gotten over her yet?’

‘What kind of question is that?’ Eames asked defensively.

‘It’s just that I recently screwed up a relationship so badly that the woman I thought I’d be going home to is training to leave the planet, and our future is one very big question mark.’ Kilkenny raised his hands up. ‘So, if I’ve crossed the line, tell me.’

‘If you’re asking whether or not I’m carrying a torch for Faye, I guess the answer is no. Our divorce wasn’t ugly and I still care for her, but I think I’ve accepted the fact that we will never be together again.’ Eames sipped on his beer. ‘So what’s your sad story?’

‘When my hitch with the navy was almost up, a friend of mine here at the U asked if I’d give her a hand with a project she was working on – an optical computer processor.’

‘Sounds like something Lloyd would like.’

‘It is. Kelsey, my friend, and I have known each other since we were kids. She was quite literally the girl next door.’

‘Your old high school sweetheart?’

‘No, back then our families were so close that it would’ve been like dating my sister. After high school, I went to the Naval Academy and was pretty much gone for about twelve years, but we kept in touch. We were just good friends up until a couple of years ago when some crazy things happened that forced us to peel back a few layers. Marriage seemed like the next logical step.’

‘There’s your mistake, mixing love and logic. Oil and water, my friend, oil and water.’

Kilkenny nodded. ‘Our problems started after the craziness was gone and things got back to normal. I know Kelsey loves me … and we both take the idea of marriage seriously.’

‘So who got cold feet?’ Eames asked.

‘She did, but it wasn’t cold feet as much as a better offer.’

‘Another guy?’

‘No, a lifelong dream. Kelsey has wanted to be an astronaut since we were kids. She’s been in the corps for a few years, and last August, she got the call. I was excited as anyone for her, until we got the bad news.’

‘What?’

‘NASA needed her to go to Houston ASAP to begin mission training with the rest of the crew. They’d work right up to launch, then she’d spend the next five months on the space station. That kind of schedule wasn’t going to leave a whole lot of time to plan a wedding, at least not the kind she had in mind.’

‘Why didn’t you two just elope?’

Kilkenny smiled grimly. ‘That’s what I suggested. Not a Vegas quickie at the Elvis chapel, but a small private ceremony. No dice.’

‘Most women have pretty strong feelings about their wedding day.’

‘So I discovered. I also learned that, according to the etiquette books, a wedding is the bride’s party and the groom is just one of the invited guests. Long story short, I misread all the signs and started a fight in which I said some truly boneheaded things to her. During the few days when she wasn’t speaking to me, she gave some serious thought to our situation and decided it would be best for both of us if we postponed our engagement until after she returned from space. After all, seventeen months is a long time to be apart.’

‘Define postponed.’

‘My current status is single and unattached. Kelsey and I parted with no conditions and no promises regarding the future.’

‘Que sera sera.’

‘Yep. Doris Day is singing the sound track to my love life.’

‘I hear you, Nolan, and if I can offer you one bit of advice, as a man whose last romantic bridge is so badly burned that there’s nothing left but ash and some tiny bits of charcoal, it’s this: Get off your ass and do something about it. Wishing won’t fix nothing between you and Kelsey, and neither will hiding from it. I wished and hid my way right out of a marriage.’

‘Any suggestions?’

Eames took a draw on his beer. ‘She’s following a dream right now, that’s good. Make damn sure she knows you support her all the way and that you’ll be waiting for her when she returns from the heavens.’

After dinner, Eames returned to his office at UGene and spent the next several hours reviewing experimental data. His radio was tuned to a campus station that was playing a Natalie Merchant retrospective in connection with the concert. Eames recalled taking Faye to see the sultry vocalist back when she fronted for 10,000 Maniacs.

Eames left his office well after midnight. As he drove toward his home, he gave into an impulse and changed direction. He entered a modest neighborhood of well-kept homes and turned onto a street called Pineview. On their first visit to Ann Arbor, Faye had fallen in love with a cute ranch house that they eventually moved into.

Passing his former home, Eames saw that it was dark and Lloyd Sutton’s car was parked in the driveway.

4 JANUARY 30 LV Research Station, Antarctica (#ulink_693e45ea-0ad1-5b35-8428-009eeed356fb)

Nedra pulled the disk from her computer, labeled it, and placed it in a plastic jewel case. She had burned through a stack of CD-RWs this afternoon, downloading the final record of what she and her husband had accomplished during their time at LV Research Station. She switched off her workstation and set the box of disks into a small storage crate for the journey back to the U.S.

Years of planning, design, and testing had led them to this place, and now their work was done. She and her husband had proved it was possible to explore a world hidden beneath miles of ice, and they were now one step closer to hunting for life on Europa.

‘Are you finished yet?’ Collins called out from the galley.

Nedra closed the latch on the crate. ‘We are now officially packed and ready to go home.’

‘Great, now I can open this.’

Nedra heard a loud pop.

‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘Depends. Do you think it’s champagne?’