"My opinion? What about here on this ridge, right on that big boulder with the notch? That's going to be here for a while."

"Fine, then just do it,” Elliott Fisk said disagreeably, “before we all freeze to death. What's the difference? Who comes here, one person every ten years? Who's going to see a plaque, a bunch of polar bears?"

"Just like a dentist,” Pratt mumbled inscrutably to no one.

Fisk's pale eyes fixed him. “And what is that supposed to mean, if anything?"

"Just say the word ‘plaque’ and he comes unglued,” Pratt said amiably.

Tremaine looked at him, surprised. Did a dormant sense of humor actually lurk somewhere in that gaunt and dour frame?

"I am not unglued,” Fisk replied pettishly, “I just want to get on with the damn thing."

Tremaine wanted to get on with it too. “Well, I'd say that wherever Mr. Tibbett-"

He was interrupted by a cry from Walter, who had been wandering aimlessly, shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets, kicking without point at chunks of gray, decaying ice. “Good God!" he shouted. “What in the world…"

The others turned to him to find him staring at the ground at his feet. On the wet gravel, lying among the softening pieces of ice that had fallen away from the glacier, lay a glistening ivory shaft of bone, six or eight inches long, broken roughly off at one end.

The thought leaped among them like a spark, almost visible in the whitish air. Once before, a few years after the tragedy, the glacier had disgorged some grisly shreds of the dead expedition members. Had it happened again? They stared, fascinated and appalled. Were they looking at a piece of James Pratt? Of Jocelyn Yount? Steven Shirley made a gagging noise. “Look, another piece,” she said, pointing. “Oh, God.” She shuddered and moved closer to Tremaine, presumably for support, but looming some three inches over him. “Are they…are they human? Can you tell?"