Icequake: A Prophetic Survival Thriller

by Crawford Kilian

  “Thanks,” Steve panted. “Will! You all right?”

  “As long as I don’t look down.”

  “Does the edge of the crevasse look solid?”

  “No — it’s crumbling — ” An instant later a metre-wide belt of snow vanished and there was a hard jerk on the rope that nearly pulled them all in. Al and Tim were right at the edge now, their hands and knees digging in for purchase.

  “I’m right against the wall of the crevasse,” Will called. “Can you climb back out?” Al asked.

  “Lost my bloody axe. Al, can you lower another rope?”

  “Can’t move or I’ll go in on top of you.”

  Penny let go of Steve and crawled the two metres to the edge of the crevasse. Lying beside Al, she tried to untie the rope looped around his shoulder. Her bear-paws were too clumsy so she pulled them off, and then the leather gloves underneath. The wool shells still on her hands were little protection, but at least she could use her fingers. Untying the coil of rope, she carefully unwound it from Al’s shoulder. He grinned and winked at her.

  “Good going. Now lower it to him.”

  Will caught the end of the rope. After a few endless minutes, he knotted it to the first one and rigged a sliding loop.

  “Right. Ready or not, here I come.”

  If he climbed too fast or too abruptly, he might yank the others in or further collapse the edge of the crevasse. Penny lay across Al’s back to hold him securely. She saw Jeanne doing the same thing with Steve. Tim was carefully working his elbows and knees deeper into the snow, his face set.

  It took Will almost ten minutes to pull himself to the surface. As he reached the top, Al gripped his wrists and helped him over the edge.

  “You’ve got some frostbite,” Al said conversationally.

  “More than that — I could hear my ears freeze. They snapped like potato crisps.” Will managed a smile as he crawled past them on to safe ground. Al and Tim, relieved of Will’s weight, inched backward on their bellies. Penny knelt by the edge, pulling on her gloves and bear-paws. Her hands hurt so much she wanted to scream. Instead, she looked down into the blue-black depths of the crevasse, and whispered: “Fuck you. You’ll never kill us.”

  Long before they got out of the crevasse field, they saw the Sno-Cat prowling along its edges, looking for a safe path. When they reached it, Howie and Simon welcomed them with handshakes and embraces. It was long past noon.

  “How far are we from Shacktown?” Al asked.

  “Only about three kilometres,” Simon answered. “Just over that rise.”

  “Why can’t we see the masts and the drilling rig? I was starting to think we were lost.”

  “Masts are down. So’s the rig,” Howie grunted.

  “Christ,” said Will.

  “Wait’ll you see the place. We’ve moved all the furniture” Simon smiled. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  The cab of the Sno-Cat was unheated, but still warmer than the outside by four or five degrees. Penny squatted against the rear wall of the cramped cab, wedged between Tim and Steve. The roar of the engine made talking difficult, but she was too tired to talk anyway. Steve caught her eye.

  “You were damn brave.”

  “Didn’t feel brave.” She leaned against him and abruptly fell asleep.

  Chapter 5 – The Greenhouse

  The tunnels looked about the same, though the supplies along the walls had obviously been stacked in haste. Carter Benson met them at the door to Tunnel E, where a work crew was still clearing up. His round face brightened when he saw them, though he seemed half-entranced by exhaustion.

  “There you are at last. God, it’s good to see you all! Everyone well?”

  “We’re cold and tired,” Will said. “How’s Hugh?”

  “They told you, did they? He’ll be fine if he gets enough rest. Poor guy — we may have to strap him down to make sure he gets it. Look, go and get something to eat. Then have Kate give you a quick look-over, and get to bed yourselves.”

  “There’s too much to be done,” Steve objected.

  “It’ll keep. Off you go now.”

  There were few signs of damage in the lounge and mess hall: a lamp missing, books still strewn on the floor, pictures hanging crooked. Suzy welcomed them with kisses.

  “How’s Terry?” Al asked her. “Howie told us he’d been hurt.”

  “Silly old bugger got scalded by his own soup. Katerina says he’ll be all right, but his legs — his legs — ”

  Jeanne hugged her. “He’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

  “Oh God, if you’d seen — the skin’s just gone, all raw and b-bleeding.” She caught her breath and wiped her eyes. “On top of everything else he’s got a damn cry-baby for a wife. And here you are — what on earth kept you? You all look done in. Sit down, sit down — what’ll you eat?”

  Katerina came in as they were eating. She looked business-like as ever, with her dark hair neatly brushed and her white jacket freshly ironed. She studied each of them expressionlessly.

  “Do your ears hurt?” she asked Will.

  “Oh — a bit.” He grunted when she touched one.

  “A bit, eh? A lot, I think. But they will be okay. Any frostbite? Yes, everyone a little bit. And your hands? Penny, let me see. Yes. Not so good, but not bad. And you are all very sunburned. Well, I will want complete examinations right away. Al first, then Steve, then Will, then Tim. Penny and Jeanne after.”

  “Why not ladies first?” Tim asked.

  “Ladies are tougher.”

  “Sexist,” he muttered.

  After the examinations Katerina was satisfied that there were no serious problems with most of them. Tim was surprised to learn that he had fractured his left wrist.

  “Never felt a thing,” he protested as she set the bone and put a cast on it. “Everything else hurt so much, I never noticed.” He studied the cast with disgust. “How the hell am I supposed to work with this thing on?”

  “You are resourceful; you will find ways.”

  Al was dehydrated, sunburned and exhausted, but otherwise in good shape. So were Steve and Will. Penny’s frozen bronchia made her cough, and her voice was almost gone, but Katerina saw nothing that a few days’ rest couldn’t repair. Jeanne was so tired she seemed to sleepwalk, and obviously needed rest also.

  “Go to bed. And stay there,” Katerina ordered them. Penny and Jeanne needed no urging, but the others simply went to the showers, changed their clothes and dispersed to help the work teams.

  “They are impossible,” Katerina told Hugh went she went to see him late that afternoon. “Suicidal.”

  “Nonsense. I think they’re wonderful.” Hugh grinned evilly. “Ought to follow their example.”

  “Do not make me more upset, Hugh. Please.”

  “I’m sorry, Kate. You are upset.”

  “Yes. I worry too much.”

  “Well, don’t. Now — unless you want to see me get up and go to work in the snow mine, bog off to the kitchen and have a nice cup of tea and a smoke with poor old Suzy.”

  Her smile was startlingly warm and beautiful, enough to make Hugh think it was a good job she didn’t reveal it often; it reminded him of his wife’s. He felt hideously lonely and impotent, lying in this chilly little room.

  “Very well. I will see you later. Don’t get up.”

  Hugh lay back, staring at the ceiling and waiting for Carter to arrive with the latest report on the clean-up. His chest hurt.

  Penny woke up around 2300 that night, and for one nightmarish moment did not know where she was.

  “Pen? You all right?” Jeanne’s sleepy voice was comforting.

  “Yes.” She could scarcely speak above a croak, and her face and hands hurt like hell. “How about you?”

  “God, I ache all over. And I’m starved. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  The bunkhouses were so quiet that they supposed everyone had gone to bed early. But when they entered the mess hall, they could hear voices in the lounge: deep, serious
male voices that made Penny hesitate to intrude. There was no boisterousness, no boyishness in the rumble of the voices, nor even much intensity. There was only the dispassion of men unwillingly but unavoidably in danger.

  Penny and Jeanne slipped into the lounge. Almost everyone was there except Terry; even Hugh was lying quietly on a sofa. Carter Benson was standing by the blank TV projection screen, looking haggard.

  “…and that about sums up the present condition of the station. Not good, but it could be worse. Our chief concern will be repairing the radio shack and getting the transmitter working again. Hullo, kids. Have a seat.

  “Any more questions? Good enough. Steve tells me he’s had a chance to study the tapes from Remote 12, and he can tell us just what happened up there.”

  There was a soft rustle in the room as men shifted in their seats, lit cigarettes or swigged beer. Steve got up.

  “I’ll keep it short. You know Tim and I have been studying earthquake swarms, and that I suspected we were in for a major quake. I thought it might even cause a surge of the ice sheet — part of it, anyway. And in the last few weeks there were signs that the quake might be coming soon. We had meltwater under the Shelf, with radon gas dissolved in it. Also, pressure-wave velocities were increasing; that’s often a sign that a quake is due.

  “What I didn’t realise until now is that the quake and the surge created each other. You see, when rock undergoes strain, it expands and opens up microscopic pores. That helps stabilise the rock. Then water percolates into the pores, and when the rock is saturated, the quake occurs. It looks now as if the ice sheet put a strain — a really enormous strain — on a series of faults on the far side of the Queen Maud Range. Tim and I are pretty sure the faults mark the edge of a plate boundary. Because there was so little liquid water available to soak down into the rock, the faults were locked, maybe for centuries. But meltwater began to form, partly from the pressure of the ice and, maybe, from the heat that the ice sheet has been slowly absorbing for the last ten thousand years, the meltwater began to soak into the rock, and when the rock couldn’t absorb any more, water began flowing out under the ice into the sea. So the ice sheet made certain that any quake would be a big one, big enough to create a surge.

  “According to the tapes, the quake was centred between Otway Massif and Roberts Massif, just over the mountains. It was fairly shallow — only about fifteen or twenty kilometres down.”

  “How strong?” Hugh asked.

  “At first I thought it was about 7.5 on the Richter scale. But in fact it was an order of magnitude larger — 8.4 or 8.5. Roughly as strong as the Alaska quake of ’64… It’s got something else in common with the ’64 quake. Most of the damage done to Fairbanks was caused by soil liquefaction. The ground under the city lost its stability and flowed like thin mud. The ice here seems to have done something like that.”

  “Wait a minute, Steve,” said Gerry Roche. “You’ve always said a surge would ride its own meltwater, and make more by friction.”

  “That’s happening. But the Beardmore settled too fast — and moved too fast. The only explanation I can come up with is that a good part of the base of the ice sheet just turned to mush and carried the upper layers down the glacier valleys. No one’s ever seen so much ice subjected to such a quake, but now we know that it behaves like an unstable soil.”

  “How fast?” Hugh said.

  “We estimated that the centre of the Beardmore was moving about five kilometres per hour — maybe more.” He paused and looked at the ceiling. “The Beardmore is a hundred and sixty kilometres long. So it must be spilling its whole length into the Ross Sea every thirty-two hours. If the surge is widespread and moving at the same speed, maybe half the total volume of the ice sheet could be in the ocean in two or three weeks.”

  “D’you know how much ice you’re talking about?” Gerry asked incredulously.

  “Roughly thirteen million cubic kilometres. Enough water to refill the North Atlantic.”

  Will Farquhar raised his hand. He looked both exhausted and excited.

  “Wilson and Hollin predicted what would happen, twenty years ago. The ice will spread out, all around the edge of the continent, maybe as far as the Antarctic Convergence.”

  Scan McNally interrupted. “That would make one hell of a heat sink, Will. You’d double the albedo of the southern hemisphere.”

  “I know.”

  “Hey, what’s albedo?” asked Tom Vernon.

  “Reflectivity,” Sean explained. “If we got a new ice shelf that size, the southern hemisphere would reflect twice as much sunlight back into space as it does now.”

  “And that,” said Will, “means the new ice shelf would be self-sustaining; it would cool the southern hemisphere enough to keep itself intact. Now is the time to invest in Brazilian coffee futures.”

  There was a brief burst of laughter.

  “There’ll be some more dramatic effects than that,” Steve said. “The whole Pacific basin has probably had some bad tsunamis. You can’t dump billions of tonnes of ice into the ocean without creating terrific waves.”

  Carter Benson said: “Let’s stay a little closer to home for a moment. You’re suggesting that the Shelf — the ice right under us — is going to move north.”

  “It already is.”

  “Then what happens to us? To this station?”

  “We’ll move north, too. At a guess about a kilometre or two per day.”

  “That’s pretty damned fast,” Carter said. “At that rate Shacktown would be out in the Pacific in a year, if the Shelf hasn’t completely broken up by then.”

  “I don’t think it’ll disintegrate,” said Will. “More likely the Shelf will break up into big floes — islands — with not much open space between them. The surge ice will be all broken up, but it should consolidate fairly fast. This winter the whole mess will freeze together — if the surge has slowed by then — and we’ll have the beginnings of a super-shelf. I expect Shacktown will be somewhere in the middle of it.”

  “By then we’ll be evacuated,” Sean said.

  “Don’t count on it,” Steve replied.

  “Oh, come on, Steve — ”

  “We know Erebus started erupting just before the, uh, icequake. McMurdo was in trouble, and Willy Field was being covered with volcanic ash. If the Shelf is pushing up against Ross Island, it may wipe McMurdo right off the map.”

  “Christ,” someone muttered.

  “Bruce,” said Katerina, “what are our chances of making contact with McMurdo?”

  “Not good.” Bruce sat awkwardly with his left arm in a sling. “The main transmitter is so much junk, and we really need to get the masts up again. I might be able to luck out with one of the smaller transmitters.”

  “And McMurdo may not be able to help us anyway,” said Carter.

  “What about New Byrd, or the stations on the Peninsula?” Katerina persisted.

  “We might get messages through, but they’re no good as places to evacuate to,” Bruce said. “Too far away. And not much chance that they’d have a plane big enough to fly in and get us.”

  “McMurdo is still our best chance,” Hugh said. “Al, I know you’ve earned a rest, but the sooner you can go the better.”

  “No problem,” Al said serenely. He was sitting in a chair with his feet up on a coffee table, puffing benignly on a cigar. But to Penny he seemed drained, almost numb with fatigue.

  “Good,” said Carter. “Colin, how long is this clear spell likely to last?”

  The meteorologist shrugged. “At least twelve hours; more likely twenty-four. But I don’t know what it’ll be like at McMurdo.”

  “I may not even have to land there,” Al said. “But once I’m close enough for line-of-sight radio, I should be able to find out how they’re doing. And see if they can send a plane down to get us.”

  “How soon can you start?” asked Carter.

  “Give me four hours’ sleep — another hour to check out the Otter — call it 0530 tomorrow mornin
g.”

  “Al, would you like some company?” asked Max Wilhelm.

  “Love it.”

  “Good enough,” Carter said. “Then I suggest the rest of us pack it in. We’ve had a long, long day.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ben Whitcumb. He stood up self-consciously, hands in his trouser pockets. “Uh, we’ve been talking as if no one else on the ice has problems. What about the people at Amundsen-Scott and New Byrd? They may be in even worse shape than we are.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell.

  “Very true,” said Steve. “Any suggestions, Ben?”

  “I think we ought to fly out to them as well. See how they’re doing, and give whatever help we can.”

  Two or three people snorted with annoyance. Steve ignored them.

  “I think you’re right. It’ll depend on the weather, and the plane. Not to mention Papa Al. But McMurdo’s got to be our first priority; if it’s okay, we can consider possible rescue flights to other stations before we’re evacuated.”

  “Of course, they might show up here first,” Will said. “If there’s a Hercules at the Pole, and they evacuate, they might stop here to pick us up. I must say I don’t feel much like a rescuer just now. Much rather be a rescuee.”

  There was another burst of laughter, and some applause. Penny saw the men’s tension vanish. Good for Will. He knows how to cheer us up. She remembered his calm and endurance in the crevasse, and felt comforted. Carter finally ended the meeting, and everyone straggled off to bed.

  *

  Jeanne touched Will’s arm as the meeting broke up. “Hullo. Can we talk a bit, if you’re not too tired?”

  “Sure. Shall we go have a drink?”

  “No, I just want to talk, somewhere quiet.”

  “There’ll be no one in the lab.”

  The lab was still a mess, and they had to pick their way over broken glass and scattered equipment. Jeanne sat down on a cot sometimes used when observations had to be made all night at frequent intervals. Will sat down beside her.