Pushing Ice Read Online Free PDF

but I doubt that they’ll be able to shave more than four or six weeks off the schedule.”
    Chisholm looked at him, his eyes narrowed. “Back there you almost said something. ‘Short of, you began… and then you stopped. Short of what, exactly?”
    “I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t agree with it.”
    “Don’t agree with what?”
    “The company has a contingency plan,” Axford said, reluctantly, “for cases like yours where the prognosis is poor, and where there is no prospect of an early return to Earth. It’s called Frost Angel.”
    “Frost Angel? No one’s ever mentioned anything called Frost Angel to me.”
    “It isn’t widely discussed outside the medical section. It’s something we hoped never to have to put into practice.”
    “You have no idea how encouraging that sounds.”
    “The contingency is…” Axford hesitated, momentarily unable to continue. He had never expected to find himself talking to Jim Chisholm like this. Chisholm was still his effective superior, Bella Lind’s second-in-command. What business did the company have in not telling Chisholm about something like this through formal channels?
    “Ryan,” Chisholm prompted.
    Axford steeled himself and said, “The idea is that we kill you now. It’d be a controlled, painless transition into unconsciousness. Once you’re unconscious, there are a couple of options open to me to complete the euthanisation. After inducing cardiac arrest, I’d proceed with a rapid exsanguination, flushing out your blood and replacing it with a cold saline solution. The object is to get as much oxygen out of your body as possible. Oxygen is the engine that causes ischemic damage if your heart stops pumping, so the less of it we leave in you the better. That’s one option.”
    “I’m just dying to hear the other one,” Chisholm said.
    “Instead of the saline flush, we keep the heart running and expose you to an atmosphere containing a high concentration of hydrogen sulphide — around eighty parts per million. After a few minutes, respiration will slow and your core body temperature will plummet. The hydrogen sulphide molecules will start binding to the same cell sites that oxygen normally uses, so — in effect — we lock oxygen out of the loop. It achieves more or less the same result as the saline flush.”
    Axford waited for that to sink in. He looked at Chisholm’s smooth, untroubled face and read nothing.
    “Maybe I’m missing something,” Chisholm said, “but in either scenario, wouldn’t I still be dead at the end of it?”
    “Dead, yes, but protected from ischemic damage. That’s the point of Frost Angel. The damage doesn’t get any worse.”
    “And then — when we make it home — they’ll bring me back?”
    “They’ll try their best.”
    “How many people have been through this?”
    “As part of the official Frost Angel programme? Not as many as I’d like.”
    “Meaning none, right, Ryan?”
    “I’m not sugaring any pills here. The way things are going, in ten years, fifteen years, they might be able to bring you back. Then again, they might not.”
    “I don’t get this. You’re saying you can shut me down, but you can’t operate on my brain?”
    ‘The process isn’t complicated. It’s — how shall I put this? — within the scope of the services we’re set up to provide.“
    “You mean you’d be running that saline flush through me no matter what happens?”
    “Frost Angel means doing it before the damage becomes extensive.”
    Chisholm stared off into the distance for a few uncomfortable moments as Mingus played on. “You think this is a good idea?”
    “I accept the medical logic, given the situation. That doesn’t mean I’m jumping for joy at the idea of going ahead with it. It would depend on the severity of the condition, and on the odds of reaching home in time.” Still torn, Axford paused. “If you wanted it, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t oblige. I’d need your consent —