He looked back as the others got out of the backseat. Nicholas Drake, thin and frowning, wearing a shirt and tie and a tweed sport coat beneath his windbreaker, winced as the cold air hit him. With his thinning hair, wire-frame glasses, and pinched, disapproving manner, Drake conveyed a scholarly quality that in fact he cultivated. He did not want to be taken for what he was, a highly successful litigator who had retired to become the director of the National Environmental Resource Fund, a major American activist group. He had held the job at NERF for the last ten years.

Next, young Peter Evans bounced out of the car. Evans was the youngest of Morton's attorneys, and the one he liked best. Evans was twenty-eight and a junior associate of the Los Angeles firm of Hassle and Black. Now, even late at night, he remained cheerful and enthusiastic. He pulled on a Patagonia fleece and stuck his hands in his pockets, but otherwise gave no sign that the weather bothered him.

Morton had flown all of them in from Los Angeles on his Gulfstream G5 jet, arriving in Keflavнk airport at nine yesterday morning. None of them had slept, but nobody was tired. Not even Morton, and he was sixty-five years old. He didn't feel the slightest sense of fatigue.

Just cold.

Morton zipped up his jacket and followed the graduate student down the rocky hill from the car. "The light at night gives you energy," the kid said. "Dr. Einarsson never sleeps more than four hours a night in the summer. None of us does."

"And where is Dr. Einarsson?" Morton asked.

"Down there." The kid pointed off to the left.

At first, Morton could see nothing at all. Finally he saw a red dot, and realized it was a vehicle. That was when he grasped the enormous size of the glacier.