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The Ice Limit

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Overview

In the desolate reaches of southernmost Chile lies the Tierra del Fuego, the "Land of Fire", and on an island off the coast lies something else altogether -- a newly discovered 4,000-ton meteorite. Advances in modern engineering have enabled a rich tycoon to mount the transport of the priceless artifact to his New York museum, but the crew will first have to reckon with the daunting challenges of a raging storm at sea, foreboding superstition, and colliding egos as the expedition slowly moves northward.

Editorial Reviews

The summer-beach reader has few better friends than Preston and Child, who, beginning with Relic (1995), have produced one (generally) smart and suspenseful thriller after another, most recently Thunderhead. Their new novelDwhich, like its predecessors, skirts the edge of science fictionDis their most expertly executed (though not most imaginative) entertainment yet. Its concept is high and simple: a scientific expedition plans to dig out and transport to New York harbor the mother of all meteorites from its resting spot on an icy island offshore Chile. The mission is nearly impossible: not only will the meteorite be the heaviest object ever moved by humanity, but the Chileans, if they learn of the mission, may decimate it in order to keep the meteorite. Six strong if broadly drawn characters propel the premise into action. There's bullheaded billionaire Palmer Lloyd, who funds the expedition, and three (of the many) people he hires to get the rock: world-class meteorite-hunter Sam McFarlane, disgraced for his obsession about possible interstellar meteorites; Captain Britton, disgraced alcoholic skipper hired to ferry the meteorite to the U.S.; and Eli Glinn, cold-blooded mastermind of an engineering firm dedicated to getting incredible jobs doneDthis one at the price of $300 million. There's Commandante Vallenar, a Chilean naval officer exiled to his nation's southern wastes, who will stop at nothing to defend Chile's honor and property. Finally, there's the meteoriteDblood red, impossibly dense, possessed of strange and dangerous properties. Like the premise, the plot is simple, traversing a near-linear narrative that sustains serious tension as the expedition travels to Chile, digs out the meteorite and heads homewardDonly to face both Vallenar and a ferocious storm. What the novel lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in athleticism: this is a big-boned thriller, one that will make a terrific summer movie as well as a memorable hot-day read. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Lincoln Child

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are the coauthors of the bestselling novels The Relic, Mount Dragon, Reliquary, and Riptide. Lincoln Child is a former book editor at St. Martin's Press and has published numerous short-story anthologies. He welcomes reader e-mail at prestonchild@prestonchild.com.

Bio of Douglas Preston

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are the coauthors of the bestselling novels The Relic, Mount Dragon, Reliquary, and Riptide. Douglas Preston worked for the American Museum of Natural History, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and in 1989 retraced Coronado's thousand-mile odyssey on horseback. He welcomes reader e-mail at prestonchild@prestonchild.com.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Hachette Book Group USA

Filesize

2.94 MB

Number of Pages

512

eBook ISBN

9780446402767

Excerpt from: The Ice Limit by Lincoln Child

Isla Desolacien
January 16, 1:15 p.m
The valley that had no name ran between barren hills, a long mottled floor of gray and green covered with soldier moss, lichens, and carpha grasses. It was mid-January-the height of summer-and the crevasses between the patches of broken rock were mortared with tiny pinguicula flowers. To the east, the wall of a snowfield gleamed a bottomless blue. Blackflies and mosquitoes droned in the air, and the summer fogs that shrouded Isla Desolaci?n had temporarily broken apart, allowing a watery sunlight to speckle the valley floor.
A man walked slowly across the island's graveled flats, stopping, moving, then stopping again. He was not following a trail-in the Cape Horn islands, at the nethermost tip of South America, there were none.
Nestor Masangkay was dressed in worn oilskins and a greasy leather hat. His wispy beard was so thick with sea salt that it had divided itself into forked tips. It waggled like a snake's tongue as he led two heavily burdened mules across the flats. There was no one to hear his voice commenting unfavorably on the mules' parentage, character, and right to existence. Once in a while the complaints were punctuated with the thwack of a sucker rod that he carried in one brown hand. He had never met a mule, especially a rented mule, that he liked.
But Masangkay's voice held no anger, and the thwacks of his sucker rod held little force. Excitement was rising within him. His eyes roamed over the landscape, taking in every detail: the columnar basaltic escarpment a mile away, the double-throated volcanic plug, the unusual outcropping of sedimentary rock. The geology was promising. Very promising.
He walked across the valley floor, eyes on the ground. Once in a while a hobnailed boot would lash out and kick a rock loose. The beard waggled; Masangkay grunted; and the curious pack train would move on once again.
In the center of the valley, Masangkay's boot dislodged a rock from the flat. But this time he stopped to pick it up. The man examined the soft rock, rubbing it with his thumb, abrading small granules that clung to his skin. He brought it to his face and peered at the grit with a jeweler's loupe.
He recognized this specimen-a friable, greenish material with white inclusions-as a mineral known as coesite. It was this ugly, worthless rock that he had traveled twelve thousand miles to find.
His face broke into a broad grin, and he opened his arms to heaven and let out a terrific whoop of joy, the hills trading echoes of his voice, back and forth, back and forth, until at last it died away.
He fell silent and looked around at the hills, gauging the alluvial pattern of erosion. His gaze lingered again on the sedimentary outcrop, its layers clearly delineated. Then his eyes returned to the ground. He led the mules another ten yards and pried a second stone loose from the valley floor with his foot, turning it over. Then he kicked loose a third stone, and a fourth. It was all coesite-the valley floor was practically paved with it.
Near the edge of the snowfield, a boulder-a glacial erratic-lay atop the tundra. Masangkay led his mules over to the boulder and tied them to it. Then, keeping his movements as slow and deliberate as possible, he walked back across the flats, picking up rocks, scuffing the ground with his boot, drawing a mental map of the coesite distribution. It was incredible, exceeding even his most optimistic assumptions.