An Unchained Melody

By Ann Stratton

Easy thinks he found a pretty good deal, here at the bottom of the world. He's got a lab partner and best buddy, he has the ice, and nobody (well, hardly anybody) to fuss at him for not being social or demand explanations of complex religious and spiritual concepts. He does have scientists who constantly demand more data, more field samples, more of everything the glacier has to give. Life's pretty good, right?

 

Except for the politics. And then his best bud gets recalled.

 

What's overgrown ice worm to do?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ann Stratton
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215180495

Ann Stratton

Ann Stratton started writing at age thirteen with the usual results. After a long stint in fan fiction, honing her skills, she hopes she has gotten better since then. She lives in Southeastern Arizona, trying to juggle all her varied interests. 

Book preview

An Unchained Melody

The E-book edition

Ann Stratton

A Blind Woman Production publication

Copyright © 2022 Ann Stratton

To give the reader more of a sample, the front matter appears at the end.

* * *

Chapter One

I had just come in from a nice long run under the ice and hadn’t even gotten my windbreaker off when Lorna came up to me.

She’s about half my size, with sandy brown hair and green eyes, all pale from not seeing the sun in way too long, wrapped up in way too many layers. I thought it was hot in our base, but she didn’t think so. She was always cold.

Boss wants us, she said. She’s like that. She’s kinda blunt and doesn’t believe in niceties.

Okay, I told her, peeled out of my windbreaker and hung it up to drip in the airlock. I left my shoes there too, next to the felt house shoes we’re supposed to wear in the base and went barefoot, in only shorts and t-shirt. Like I said, I think the base is much too hot, and I dress accordingly. Drives the management nuts. Doesn’t do much for anyone else’s equilibrium, either. I snickered to myself and followed Lorna across our habitat/lab combo, the one we fought for and had to build ourselves. Most of it was occupied by the lab part. Lorna ran that. I was just the field man. I collected the data she analyzed and turned into research papers that made other researchers faint with envy. Hah!

Including the rest of the staff on the base. They didn’t think what she was doing applied to the real world, even if it was based on the very ice cap the base sat on. On the very data I brought to her and offered to share with the rest of the base. Ptch. Let them eat their own ice, then.

We were studying the Antarctic ice cap, measuring among other things how fast it was melting. Our base was dug in on the bank of the largest glacier on the continent to monitor the flow. Lorna specialized in the biochemistry of the glacier, the bacteria that lived in and on it and the animals that lived on them. It was a tiny and sparse habitat, but still a very rich one. I kept bringing her new species to exclaim over and catalog and analyze. I liked to watch her get all excited over some tiny thing under her microscope. I think they’re tasty, myself, and the rock makes a nice, spicy grit seasoning.

Our little lab smelled like her, all over, and while she thought it stank like dirty socks and old underwear, I liked it. It smelled like home to me.

The connecting tunnel to the main habitat didn’t, smelling more like cold air and mud underfoot. I’d had to build it a little high so I could walk through it without crouching or hitting my head on it. Lorna, of course, walked through easily. I let her lead the way, so I could watch how she moved inside all those layers. Besides, she was the nominal head of our tiny two person lab.

In the main habitat, which was much too hot, and did reek to high heaven of dirty socks, old underwear, a backed up toilet, and too many people, we went right to the Boss’ office. Being the high muckety muck she is, she got a separate office to herself, though technically it was the main room of her quarters. If she wanted to chew somebody’s head off, that’s where the head would land.

Doors to other labs and cabins opened up from the maze of halls. The labs were usually open, the cabins were usually closed, and people wandered up and down and in and out. We greeted them all as we went, and they all had to ask why we were being summoned to the Boss’ office. It’s a small base. News travels fast.

Nobody knows? Lorna asked me when we had the hall to ourselves for a moment.

Looks like it, I muttered back. Otherwise somebody would have mentioned it. The last thing anyone in this base could do was keep secrets. If they didn’t want their secret blabbed all over the base, they kept it to themselves. Nobody was talking, at least not to us.

The Boss’ door was closed, with a do not disturb sign hung on the knob. We looked at each other, then