The Pole of Inaccessibility

by Alan Bronston

  Chapter 2

  McMurdo Station

  Ross Island, Coast of Antarctica

  “Is there a Dr. Atkinson here?” the fatigue-clad figure in the doorway asked, looking at his clipboard.

  “I’m Steven Atkinson,” the doctor answered, peering over the top of his reading glasses.

  “You wanted to find out about some freight?” the soldier asked. While the Navy had owned the Antarctic program from its inception, the other branches of the military had, over time, gotten the opportunity to become involved in the operation. In this case, the Army managed cargo.

  “That is correct,” said Dr. Atkinson.

  “It’s definitely all there,” the cargo specialist assured him.

  “It’s definitely all where?” Dr. Atkinson asked, more confused than ever.

  “On the cargo line, Sir. Nothing’s lost.” As far as the cargo specialist was concerned, that should have settled everything.

  “Now wait just a minute here,” Dr. Atkinson said, clapping shut the book he was reading and becoming agitated.” I saw the manifest myself. It showed everything as being shipped!”

  Dr. Steven Atkinson was not, generally speaking, an overly excitable person, but things that refused to make sense were anathema to his well-ordered, analytical mind and he would have none of it.

  “That was an old one, Sir,” the cargo specialist explained. “The new one shows that it got bumped.”

  “Bumped? By whom?” Dr. Atkinson demanded to know.

  “I can’t tell you that, Sir, but I can tell you what went. It belongs to a Lieutenant. Richards,” the cargo specialist said, looking again at his clipboard. He was trying to be patient and accommodating, as evidenced by the use of the word “Sir,” which was not applied in a military context in Antarctica.

  “We don’t have a Lieutenant. Richards,” Dr Atkinson told the soldier, even more agitated than before.

  “Well,” the specialist told him as he made his way out the door, “it sure looks like you do now.”

  Dr. Atkinson zipped up his stiff new red parka and walked out of the prefab building where he was berthed while transiting McMurdo. It was only a few short steps from his building to the NSF headquarters, and his boots made a scrunching sound as they pulverized the volcanic ash underfoot to an even finer powder. He walked with the gait of a man who had done a great deal of walking in his time, most of it right there in Antarctica. He had been there every summer since the International Geophysical Year, the largest cooperative scientific venture ever, in which the nations involved in the IGY established permanent bases on the continent. That was in 1956. For twenty-three years, he had continued to come, and he was, by a wide margin, the elder statesman of the United States Antarctic Program.

  The building that served as headquarters was an “A”-framed timber construction that looked like a mountain cabin and possessed a moderate amount of charm, a quality of which all the other edifices on station were notably devoid. The base was made up of an assortment of sheet-metal walled buildings, green tent “Jamesway” structures that looked like canvas Quonset huts, and modular prefabs that were assembled on site. The headquarters was known simply as “The Chalet”.

  He strode past the administrative assistant towards the office of the program director, where he was accustomed to entering without the formality of being announced. The assistant, who was new, asked him on his way past if there was anything that she could help him with. When he didn’t stop to acknowledge her, she jumped up and chased him into the office, calling for him to wait.

  “It’s all right, Marsha,” the director said to his flustered assistant, who retired with that assurance. Dr. Atkinson waited for her to leave and then took a second liberty by slamming shut the door.

  “Who, Arthur,” he inquired with all the professorial haughtiness he possessed, “is this Lt. Richards?”

  Dr. Arthur Fredricks, Director of Polar Programs for the National Science Foundation, sighed heavily. “How did you hear?” he asked.

  “I haven’t heard. All I know is that I have one very unhappy grantee out in the field and the source of that unhappiness appears to be linked to a Lt. Richards. Is there something you’ve been waiting to tell me?”

  The director took off his glasses and commenced with a chewing operation directed towards one of the earpieces. He leaned back in his chair that squealed from the weight on ancient springs, looking at Dr. Atkinson for a long moment.

  “Steven, I think you had better sit down.”

  Dr. Atkinson returned to the building next door with a far slower step and a decidedly more somber countenance. He rubbed his clean-shaven chin as he walked. Unlike many who came to the wilderness and forsook the niceties of dress and appearance, Dr. Atkinson was of the old school of explorers. It would take more than living in a tent high up on an icy mountain in sub-zero temperatures to keep him from shaving. It was a matter of order and discipline.

  Merely a boardinghouse for those who were passing through, by the entrance there was a small lounge where the two other PI’s destined for the Beardmore Glacier were engaged in a round of cribbage. While Susan Engen and Dr. Atkinson were geologists, the other two, Dr. Daniels and Alistair Adams, would be searching for meteorites. Daniels would be covering broad reaches of territory high onto the Polar Plateau, looking for large chunks atop the ice. Alistair, on the other hand, would be sifting through dust and finding miniscule bits of extraterrestrial matter.

  Dr. Daniels was older than Dr. Atkinson, being seventy-one years old compared to Dr. Atkinson who weighed in at 68, and if he hadn’t been at it in Antarctica as long as Atkinson, he was still far past the next most tenured person to follow. He had a long white beard, a wiry, active-looking frame, and deep-set eyes of pale blue that receded into hollows that bore testimony to many austral summers.

  Alistair Adams was much younger; British, glib, and according to Dr. Daniels, more than a little insane. Daniels attributed this to his being part of the British program, which required its personnel to stay on the ice two full years per contract. The Americans maxed out at one, and for many, that was altogether too much. Alistair had spent nearly as much time on the ice in his two years as Daniels had in the last ten. It was the winters, Daniels thought. The winters ate you up.

  “Why so glum?” Alistair asked, looking towards Dr. Atkinson.

  “What?” Dr. Atkinson responded, looking up quickly. “Me, glum? No, I was merely thinking.”

  “You should try and do less of it then,” Alistair advised him, counting the hand and moving the pegs. “It wouldn’t appear as if it agrees with you.”

  Alistair and Dr. Daniels had been sitting in the lounge drinking coffee and playing cards, watching the day get underway for those with jobs to do. Their work was just about finished; there wasn’t much else they could do. What was left to do was being done by the grad students. For the next two days, they would have little to do but wait. It was the worst part of the season for all three of them. They each possessed active minds, and equally active temperaments, else none would be where they were. Alistair seemed to be taking the wait the best, which in and of itself was enough for Dr. Daniels to establish doubts upon his mental state-which he did.

  “Oh, one learns to take the long view,” Alistair said wistfully at first, before turning garrulous, though perhaps a little facetious at the same time. “Winter is quite nice, really. It is a fair time for reflection of all things mortal. It is the very glass upon which one can see the light of their soul shining back at them. It is a vigil that can be reckoned by the fortnight, and, therefore, that much more beneficial to one’s soul. Peaceful.”

  “Like being dead,” Dr. Daniels said in response to Alistair’s soliloquy. He wasn’t trying to malign Alistair’s experience; it was rather that he dreaded that sort of confinement in the dark and cold for so long. He shuddered.

  Dr. Atkinson settled into an armchair quietly, apparently going over schedules for summer operations, leaving the two to carry on the conve
rsation.

  “I had fun,” Alistair said, shrugging it off.

  “Well, I’m just here to do my work, and then go home,” Dr. Daniels declared with finality.

  “I hope you do it well,” Atkinson said, taking an interest now. “You’ll have some competition this year.”

  “What do you mean?” Dr. Daniels asked.

  Dr. Atkinson held up the page in his hand. “I have been reading this manifest of all the projects in our area this year, not just our own, but everyone’s. It seems the Russians are planning a trip to our general vicinity, looking for meteorites.”

  Dr. Daniels lifted a shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. The area has not been overly explored as it is. Since we’re all required to make our findings available to all treaty nations, then it can only help. I welcome the assistance. I really am here only for the data.”

  Alistair smiled. “Really? After all these years? What do you expect to find that you haven’t found already?”

  “That which I haven’t already found and don’t already know,” Dr. Daniels said with unaffected sincerity. “I really would welcome their help.”

  “Humph,” Alistair commented, unconvinced. “Never worked with the Russians, have you?”

  “A little, yes,” Dr. Daniels replied. “I found them quite likeable.”

  “Really?” Alistair wondered aloud. “Who’d have thought? I suppose I should like to give them a try, though, if I’m ever given the chance.”

  “Well,” Dr. Atkinson said to the others, “it won’t be this year. From what I can tell, they will be outside of the perimeter that you have recorded as your area. Maybe next year.”

  “Next year?” Alistair repeated aghast, before stating pointedly, “There will not be a next year. Of that I can assure you.”

  “Did they clear up the cargo snafu?” Dr. Daniels asked, changing the subject.

  “Yes, they did,” Dr. Atkinson said, seeming to sink further into his chair. “It appears to have been a simple error.”

  “Good,” Dr. Daniels said. “Susan will be happy to hear it.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Atkinson said, looking once again, as Alistair had pointed out, very glum indeed. “She’s going to be very happy.”