***
Dr. Daniels removed his thumb from the throttle of the Alpine, allowing it to come to a stop. He used his other hand to turn the key and kill the motor. He wondered for the thousandth time, why he didn’t rig some system that didn’t require his thumb to freeze holding the lever for hours on end, then for the thousandth time forgot about it. He looked around and unconsciously nodded to himself.
“We’ll camp here,” he told the group. The portion of the voyage that took them onto the plateau was past, and they had crossed the transition from the plateau onto the glaciers that flow to the coast. This was to be the last camp before returning to the hut. He decided to stop there to reconnoiter the catchment, a place that a glacier flows into with no outlet, where meteorites accumulate throughout the ages. He was looking for Alistair to see if it would be worth his making a trip.
In an established routine, the students began to unload the sled, one of them arranging the tents, another undertaking the excavation of the cooking pit. Daniels himself took several bamboo poles, planted them in an X figure, then ran a wire from pole to pole. The antenna would be attached to the HF radio in his tent so that he could report in to the main camp. He forgot that he had the VHF radio underneath his parka where it stayed warm in order to extend the battery life. They used the VHF while they were working so they could coordinate the movements of each other. It would normally be turned off in camp.
“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Does anyone copy? Over,” he heard coming from under his coat. The clear sound from the hand-held radio jolted him to awareness of the harness on his chest. The students all looked at him with blank expressions. He fumbled with the zipper of the red parka.
“Station calling, say again your last,” he replied cautiously, keeping the alarm out of his voice.
“We have a Mayday,” Sokolov said over the radio. Since Gregore spoke almost no English, it fell upon the scientist to try and relay the message. “We are trapped in crevasse. Where are you?”
“Where are we?” Daniels mused aloud before answering. “How the hell am I supposed to answer that?” He chose a different response.
“We must be close or I wouldn’t copy your transmission,” he replied. “Where are you? Who are you?” he added.
“We are from Vostok in transit to make a treaty inspection at the Beardmore camp,” the radio announced.
“Nice of you to tell us you’re coming,” Daniels grumbled off the air before he remembered. “Are you the group looking for meteorites?” he asked.
“That is correct.”
“We didn’t know about the inspection,” he told them.
“It was a last minute decision. I am sorry for that, but we now have more pressing matters.”
“Of course. Do you have your last known position and direction of travel?” He waved at one of the students to open the map. Then, to the others, “Pack the sleds back up. Except for the radio.”
“Our position is …wait one moment.” He had Gregore look for the position and relayed it. “We were traveling to the southwest on grid just crossing the transition.”
Dr. Daniels had the map now, and he followed the lines to the point on the map that represented the location he had just received, and made a pin mark on the spot. He whistled softly to himself.
“Okay, Russia. I have the position. We are around ten miles, or fifteen kilometers, from that location. What is the condition of your personnel?”
“Four are missing, presumed dead. Two injured, not too serious. One unharmed. We are around eight meters down.”
“Son of a bitch,” Daniels said to himself, again off the air. “Okay. Hold on. We’ll get things going. Depending on how it goes, we may be able to get there in a couple of hours.”
“Thank you. We will keep this frequency open,” the scientist said in closing.
“Do you think we can get there at all?” the grad student with the map asked.
“Not easily,” Daniels admitted. “However, we don’t have much choice but to try.” He then wired the HF radio to the antenna that had already been set up and hailed the camp on the Beardmore.
The Pole of Inaccessibility Page 26
