http://pro-libertate.net/20100713/132-read-ice-limit ( )

A thriller about the world's largest meteor, one hundred and ninety times denser than water (25,000 tons), found in a snowfield on an island close to Cape Horn, Chile. A New York billionaire wants to bring it to his Hudson Valley Museum, so he hires an engineering company to study the problem, and offers them millions to bring this off.
An oil tanker is outfitted with the latest in electronics, staterooms, bridge and cabins like a 4 ⭐ hotel, state of the art sickbay, but the outside of it is purposely made to look like a shabby, rusting, derelict old wreck. Their cover story, for the Chilean customs in Puerto Williams, is that they are a nearly bankrupt mining company, with a last chance to recover their footing by digging for ore.
The tanker's doctor, Dr Brambell likes to read books, and one of his favorite authors is Somerset Maugham. The Captain of the tanker, Britton, likes poetry, and one of her favorite poets is W.H. Auden. I related to and liked both of these characters.
The billionaire, Palmer Lloyd, discusses what they will do if customs officials wants to board the Rolvaag, with the head of the expedition, Eli Glinn:
2000 Paperback, Splendide Mendax, Inc.
P.120:
"...'look, eli. What if they want to board her anyway?'
'we've prepared a special reception room for the occasion.'
'reception room? The last thing we want is them hanging about.'
'the room will not encourage any lingering. If they do come aboard, they will be escorted to the forward tank -washing control room. It's not a very comfortable place. We fitted it with some metal chairs -- not enough -- and a formica table. The heat's been turned off. We've painted parts of the deck with a chemical wash smelling faintly of excrement and vomit.' "
Well, the customs officials don't come aboard because Glinn pretends to be sick when he visits the customs Shack. He tells the officials, when they ask him what's wrong with him, that there's a bug running through the crew, and that the sick Bay is full.
The tanker is loaded with excavating machinery, used for digging tunnels all around the meteorite and underneath. Tunnels are heavily fortified and braced up with hundreds of hydraulic jacks. Soon, they prepare to lift it slowly, inch by inch. When they remotely send the command for one section of the Jacks to lift, nothing happens. they up the hydraulic pressure, but still nothing happens. Then, abruptly, the Jacks of that section lock. Glinn says they will have to go down and manually unlock them, and start again. Rochefort, the head electronic engineer, volunteers to go down and selects a man to go with him. they go down a tunnel that accesses the section and pass down a parallel line of the jacks, unlocking and readying to release the hydraulic valves.
P.241-2:
"although it was important to begin releasing fluid from all the jacks together, the sound was so unusual that rochefort glanced down the row of jacks, trying to determine its source. it seemed to have come from the front of the row of Jacks. As he looked in that direction, the sound came again: a kind of whispered, agonized creak. He narrowed his eyes. Jack number one didn't look right; it seemed oddly crooked.
He didn't need time to think. 'Get out!' he shouted. 'Now!'
He rose to his feet and sprinted for the access tube, Evans at his heels. He knew that there must be more weight on those Jacks than they had guessed in even their most pessimistic assumptions: a lot more weight. Just how much more would determine whether they would get out in time.
he could hear Evans running behind him, feet thudding, grunting with each step. but even before they reached the access tube the first Jack gave with a terrifying crack, followed by a second crack, and then a third, as the Jacks failed in sequence. There was a pause, then a stuttering series of pops, like a burst of machine gun fire, as the rest of the jacks failed. Instantly, rochefort was surrounded by blinding sprays of hydraulic fluid. there was a sound like a whirr of a vast sewing machine as the tunnel struts and braces began to unravel. he ran desperately through the spray, the intense force of the pressurized fluid tearing his coat to ribbons and searing his flesh. he calculated that the probability of survival was dropping fast.
he knew it was exactly zero when the meteorite tipped toward him with a great hollow boom, buckling steel as it came, squirting dirt and mud and ice, looming into his field of vision until all he saw was a shining, inexorable, pitiless red."
Regardless of the deaths of two of his top team, Glinn proceeds with his quest:
P.244:
"...'the desolación meteorite is a great deal heavier than any of us predicted. Careful analysis of the failure data from the jacks, along with some highly sensitive gravimetric measurements, have given us a new and more accurate estimate of mass. And that mass is 25,000 tons.'
Despite his lingering sense of shock McFarlane [the expedition's meteorite expert] felt himself go cold at these words. he made a quick calculation: that gave it a specific gravity of about 190. 190 times denser than water. A cubic foot of it would weigh... Good lord. Almost 6 tons. but two men were dead. Two MORE men, McFarlane corrected himself, thinking of the pathetic litter of bones that had been his ex partner.
'double overage is our policy,' Glinn was saying. 'We planned as if everything would be twice our best estimate - twice the expense, twice the effort -- and twice the mass. That means we already planned for a rock that weighed almost this much. so I'm here to tell you that we can proceed on schedule. We still have the means at our disposal to retrieve it, bring it to the ship, and load it into the holding tank.' "
They have made an enemy of the Chilean navy Captain of a destroyer in these waters. Vallardez knew that they were not digging ore, and he resented the bribery to the customs officials used to speed the approval of their papers. He hung about their operations on Isla Desolación with his ship, and one night sent his son (although Glinn did not know that the officer was Vallardez's son at the Time) to spy on them and find out what they are excavating. Timmons (the son) is killed approaching the meteorite.
Now Vallardez is chasing the tanker out of international waters, loaded precariously with the meteorite. The destroyer, though old, makes better time than the Rolvaag, and is set to cut them off. From here on, the reader is on the edge of their seat. ( )

14-1

Nice book to relax ( )

The Ice Limit is a difficult book to plow through. The thriller story is not easy to believe. The characters are good, the settings are very well described. The situations that the characters are placed are not believable. It is a four star book, if one does not give up through the first half of the book. ( )