Hugh sat in the co-pilot’s chair, silent and grim. When Al finally put the Herc on autopilot and paused to light a cigar, Hugh said:
“I really thought we were going to get home without a single death. I really did.”
Al nodded. He wore glasses against the glare of the sun, and his face was unreadable. After a while he said, “I felt pretty bad when I couldn’t get those guys off Observatory Hill. But — ” He spread his hands. “You don’t quit, but you don’t expect to win.”
“I did. I still do.”
Al leaned over and tapped one of the dials on the co-pilot’s instrument panel. “That’s the pressure in the booster hydraulic system. If that needle drops, you can expect to go on winning for maybe three minutes. That’s how long it’ll take us to hit the water. Or ice, as the case may be.” Then he grimaced. “Sorry, Hugh. That sounded pretty cynical.”
Hugh nodded.
Clouds thickened beneath them and reared up ahead. Unable to trust his compass systems, Al shot the sun and then lifted the plane another two thousand metres. They would pass safely over the storm, but at the cost of increased fuel consumption. He plotted the howgozit and talked briefly with Kyril over the intercom system. Kyril said everything was “Okay-khorosho.” Al buzzed Gerry Roche in the cargo compartment, who told him Jeanne was definitely in labour, but doing all right.
“How soon is she gonna have the baby?”
“I dunno, Al. Just a minute, eh? …Katerina says she’s dilated about eight centimetres, whatever the hell that means. And, uh, I don’t think she likes people asking questions.”
The plane thumped into a region of turbulence, and the flight grew increasingly rough. Al forgot about Jeanne; his attention was focussed on maintaining the plane’s stability, and on the hydraulic-system gauges.
Gerry’s voice buzzed in Al’s headphone: “Hey, Al, any idea how soon we get off this bumpy road? Jeanne, she’s kind of upset.”
“That makes two of us, but don’t tell her I said so. Maybe twenty minutes, maybe less. How’s everybody else?”
“Okay. Say, what’s our ETA at Chee-Chee?”
“Sometime around 1600 hours.”
The turbulence worsened. Clouds boiled up towards them in slow geysers of black and white; the sun, low on the horizon, burned redly through the far edges of the storm. Al lifted the Hercules two hundred metres, knowing that the increased altitude would increase fuel consumption to the danger point. They might have to change course for Dunedin after all, but he didn’t want to: the airfield there was likely to be closed down by the storm. He got up and shot the sun through the sextant mounted in the roof of the flight deck, and wished he could pick up Christchurch.
*
Jeanne was past transition and pushing hard. Will knelt beside her, counting slowly to time each push while she breathed in quick, infrequent gaps. Her face was congested and mottled with the fine red lines of broken blood vessels.
“Very good, very good,” Katerina said. “The baby is crowning. Very good, again, push, push…”
Suddenly the baby’s head emerged. Katerina’s hands gently turned it, and Will saw its face. Dark red beneath a cap of wet, dark hair, the face was impassive and serene, its eyes closed. Katerina drew mucus out of its nose and mouth.
“Now push again.”
“What does it look like?” Jeanne panted. “I can’t see it. What does it look like?”
“Beautiful,” Will said. “Push!”
It was out, its body purplish-grey and steaming in the cold air.
“A girl,” Katerina said.
Jeanne’s face blazed with delight and surprise. “A girl! A girl! Oh my God, there she is! Hullo, baby. She’s so tiny.” Katerina placed the baby on Jeanne’s belly while she tied and cut the umbilicus. “Oh, she’s so hot.”
The baby yelped for a few seconds as Katerina dried her and wrapped her in a soft towel. Once in her mother’s arms, she fell sound asleep. “What a funny little thing,” Jeanne said. “She looks just like my grandmother.” She beamed up at Will and Penny and Suzy, who had been standing beside her to screen her off from the other passengers. “Isn’t she lovely?”
The plane jolted and vibrated through the anti-climax of the afterbirth and Katerina’s deft, careful stitching.
“Now you can rest,” she said.
“Oh, I’m too excited to rest.” But a moment later she was asleep. Katerina took the baby and placed her gently in the incubator beside Jeanne’s stretcher. The baby woke, blinked her dark, unfocussed eyes and went to sleep again.
The storm was enormous, even by the standards of the Southern Ocean, and crosswinds were fierce. Not until 1600 did Al finally pick up the Christchurch beacon; he found he was almost 10° east of his proper heading and adjusted accordingly.
“The needle just dropped,” Hugh said.
“I know.” Al could feel the rudder freeze and reached instantly for the bypass switch. “Grab that handle and start pumping,” he ordered. Then he called to Kyril: “We have a malfunction. We are on manual for the booster hydraulic system.”
“Okay,” Kyril replied cheerfully.
By the time the rudder responded again, they were 20° west of their proper course. While Hugh pumped, Al cautiously swung the plane back.
“Are we going to make it?”
“Ask me again in half an hour.”
The crosswinds were weakening, and the beacon was increasingly clear. He wouldn’t have to ask much of the booster system until they made their landing approach; if it then collapsed completely, they could easily fly into the ground or overshoot the runway. They could try to ditch in Lyttleton harbour, if necessary, but Al had never ditched a Hercules and didn’t want to.
The clouds stretched to the horizon, giving no indication of what lay below them. But the plane must be rapidly approaching the South Island coast. Maybe they were close enough for line-of-sight radio contact.
“This is RNZAF Hercules 56740 to Harewood Tower. Hercules 56740 to Harewood Tower. Do you read me? Over.”
After a brief pause a surprised voice crackled in Al’s headphones. “Harewood Tower here. Hercules 56740, where are you? Over.”
“Harewood, I estimate my position as about 220 kilometres south-south-west of you, approaching on 355°. Request landing instructions. Over.”
“Ah, Hercules 56740, you must be the UFO we’ve been tracking here for the last few minutes. Your true distance is 195 kilometres. Can you confirm as Hercules 5, 6, 7, 4, 0? Over.”
“Harewood, yes, this is 56740, property of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Somebody left it in the Antarctic with the key in the ignition. We thought we’d bring it home before somebody swiped it. Over.” To Hugh he said: “Keep pumping.”
“Hercules, who in bloody hell are you? Over.”
Al roared with laughter. “The name is Al Neal. I’m the pilot for the Commonwealth Antarctic Research Program, and my passengers are the personnel of New Shackleton Station. Plus a few hitch-hikers, including a brand-new baby girl. Over.”
“What’s the name, Hercules? Over.”
“I don’t know if the mother’s chosen one yet. Over.”
“No, no, your name! Over.”
“Al Neal. Listen, Harewood, we are having some mechanical problems. Our hydraulic system is breaking down, and I’ll only have one shot at landing. We’ve got skis, so I’ll have to come down on grass. Our ETA is — ” He recalculated — “about 1625. What’s the weather like down there? Over.”
“Uh, uh — Hercules, ceiling is three hundred metres, visibility about four kilometres. It’s raining hard, and there are winds from the south-east gusting to fifty k.p.h. You can land just to the east of Runway 20. Repeat, just to the cast of Runway Two-Oh. It’s good and wet, so you should have no problems. Keep the runway lights to your left. Over.”
“Thank you, Harewood. Beginning descent.”
The Hercules edged down into the clouds. In seconds they were flying in opaque greyness, with rain hammering at the windscre
en. Al kept an eye on the hydraulic pressure: it was low, but it would do. The controls responded heavily, sluggishly, but properly. He switched on the PA system in the cargo compartment.
“We’re approaching Christchurch. Everybody strap in. The weather’s not so good down there, but we should be on the ground in about fifteen minutes.” He switched off. “Keep pumping.”
The rain intensified until the windscreen wipers could scarcely keep up. The gloom lightened, and then they were through, three hundred metres above the sea and just a few kilometres from the dark loom of land.
“Hercules 56740, this is Harewood Ground Control,” a new voice announced. “Raise your angle of approach by three degrees, please. Another degree — very good. Now four degrees east. Good… Two degrees west. Good. You’re right in the slot, Hercules.”
The plane swept low over Lyttleton harbour. Al stared: the oil-storage tanks along the south shore were like little circular islands well out in the water, and the docks west and north of them were gone. Streets ran down into the water and drowned. There were few lights despite the twilight gloom, and he saw no cars in the dark streets.
Gradually he lowered the flaps and ailerons, reducing speed as quickly as he dared. The runway lights stood out brightly, but Christchurch itself, off to the north and east, was oddly dark. Suburban rooftops and gardens slid by under the plane. Al extended the landing gear; at least the utility hydraulic system was working well. Runway 20 was dead ahead, a dim, straight line extended into the murk. He steered a little to the right, lining up with the long strip of dead yellow grass along the runway and brought the Hercules down as gently as he could.
The grass was half-flooded, the skis touched water and began to hydroplane. Al cut speed, trying to get the plane’s weight on to the grass before it could skid out of control. It wasn’t enough. The Hercules began to swing to the right; the nose ski struck something and sheared away with a detonation that shattered the windscreen. The ruined landing gear ripped into the soil, and the plane pivoted through 180° before it came to a juddering halt.
Al caught his breath and threw the FA switch: “Okay, everybody out by the nearest exit. Right away!” Through the crazed glass of the windscreen, he saw flashing red-and-blue lights approach down the runway. Kyril was shouting something in Russian, and confused voices echoed from the cargo compartment. Al checked the fire detection system: there was no fire, at least not yet.
He unstrapped himself and helped Hugh get to his feet. Kyril was already heading for the exit. “Follow him,” Al said, and went into the cargo compartment.
Someone had already got the aft cargo door down, and most of the passengers were already on their way out. He saw Will and Steve carrying Jeanne’s stretcher down the ramp; Katerina and Penny were right behind with the rough wooden incubator. Others were struggling to unlash the crates of scientific records, and ignored Al’s commands to get out at once.
Gordon Ellerslee appeared at Al’s side. “C’mon, Al, gimme a hand with Ben.”
“Sure.”
They wrestled the stretcher to the crew door. Al jumped a metre to the ground and carefully hauled the stretcher out into the pounding rain. The air was dank and cold, colder somehow than Antarctica had ever been. The light was failing fast.
Two fire trucks and three ambulances braked a few metres away, on the edge of the tarmac. The men who emerged from them wore dark-green rain ponchos over combat uniforms.
“This fellow need help?” one of them asked Al.
“He’s dead. But there’s a new born baby and her mother somewhere over near the rear cargo door.”
The man turned and gestured violently to the driver of one of the ambulances; it drove off at once towards the people milling about near the tail of the Hercules. The man turned back to Al. “Well, we’ll put this poor fellow in the ambulance. Better get in yourselves, before you’re soaked. We’ll have you all indoors in a jiffy.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, wait a sec — is there fire on board?”
“No, at least not yet.”
“Right. See you later.”
Al and Gordon carried Ben’s body into the ambulance and sat awkwardly on the jump seats beside it. The driver smiled at them through the window behind his seat. Kyril clambered in after, and a moment later Hugh looked in. “Everyone all right?”
“Okay-khorosho,” Al nodded.
“Good.” He looked expressionlessly at the stretcher. “Thanks for getting him out. I’ve got to find whoever’s in charge here, and get in touch with the local CARP office.” He pushed rain-soaked hair off his forehead. “God, and I thought snow was a nuisance.”
They sat dripping in the ambulance, not saying much. A few minutes later the Dolans and Herm Northrop were escorted in by the man Al had first spoken to.
“We’ve got the rest of you in the other vehicles,” the man said as he climbed in. He offered Al his hand. “Ewan McDermott.”
“Al Neal.” He introduced the others and then asked, “What’s the military doing here?”
“We keep asking the same question. Christchurch is pretty quiet; it’s Wellington and Auckland that need us. A riot a night up there.”
“What in hell about?” Terry asked.
“Food, mostly.” McDermott looked surprised. “Or don’t you know what’s been happening? D’you know New Zealand’s under martial law?”
“No,” said Herm.
“Too true. That’s why I’m in this monkey suit — in real life I’m a physician. Between the weather and the ultraviolet and the energy shortage, it’s been pretty nasty. Not so bad as you fellows must have had it, of course, but — ” He looked at Kyril, who gave him a toothless grin. “Are you all from New Shackleton?”
“Most of us,” Al said. “Kyril here, and a couple others, are from Vostok, and there are three Americans from Outer Willy.”
“From where?”
Al patiently explained. The doctor shook his head.
“Well, I’m afraid you’ve come from the frying pan into the fire,” he said.
“More like the freezer into the fridge,” said Herm.
There was a brief pause at the terminal building. Hugh and the officer in charge of Harewood had a hurried conversation before one ambulance was sent off to a nearby hospital with Jeanne, the baby, Will and Katerina. Dr. McDermott said to Al that everyone ought to go in hospital at least for a check-up, but there were just no beds available; they would have to be put up at a local hotel and examined the next day.
Hugh stayed at Harewood while everyone else was put on a wheezing bus, escorted by a couple of noncoms carrying side arms. The bus drove slowly away from the terminal building; there was no other traffic, and the parking lot in front of the building was empty.
“Gee, it looks dark and deserted,” Penny said. “It was a lot livelier last Christmas.”
“Not much need to come out to Harwood,” a noncom said. “No regular flights anymore, at least not for civilians.” He looked at his watch. “And it’s nearly 1700 — that’s when curfew starts.”
“Curfew?” Penny echoed.
“Till 0700. Makes life a lot easier. Nothin’ to do after dark, anyway.” He looked at her incuriously, clearly preoccupied with greater concerns than explaining the facts of life to naïve outsiders.
The bus stopped three times at military checkpoints before arriving at the Hotel Avon downtown. Across the deserted street was a park on the banks of the Avon River; the willows beside the water were obviously dead. Penny saw a statue in the park, looming dimly in the growing darkness. The noncoms escorted them out of the bus.
The hotel’s plate-glass doors were criss-crossed with heavy tape, and only a couple of lights burned in the lobby. The noncoms shepherded them inside and left without a word. A gaunt, sallow young man in a dirty brown polo-neck sweater came out from behind the reception desk.
“You’re the explorers, right? Well, Colonel Chase himself told us you were coming, but we didn’t have much notice. Anyway, uh,
welcome back, and I hope you enjoy your stay with us.” He gave them an uncertain smile.
The restaurant, just off the lobby, was dim and obviously neglected. Two teenage girls were hastily setting a few of the tables and gawking over their shoulders as the newcomers came in and hung up their anoraks.
Penny sat down at one of the tables and looked warily around the room. “Not very festive, is it?” she muttered to Steve.
“Feels colder than the cab of the Sno-Cat.” Then he grinned and squeezed her hand. “Here I’ve been moaning for months about how awful it must be on the outside — but I always expected we’d get parades, TV interviews, a big fuss — ”
“You really are a total egomaniac. Oh God, Steve, we’re really back.”
“We’re really back. Oh, thank you.” One of the girls was serving bottles of Kiwi Beer.
“You’re welcome. But I’m afraid there’s only one to a customer.”
Howie O’Rourke, at the next table, looked dumbfounded. “Only one? You’re kidding!”
She wasn’t. The meal itself was a local form of frozen TV dinner, with slices of lamb in a rigid gravy, scalloped potatoes and mushy peas. There were no second helpings. “Thank God for small favours,” Herm grinned sourly. The coffee was terrible, and there was only saccharin to put in it. Howie was recruiting for a raid on the kitchen when Hugh came into the room, accompanied by a badly sunburned colonel.
Someone started clapping, and then they were all on their feet, cheering, pounding on tables and whistling. Hugh, who had begun to speak to Carter, looked up; his surprise turned to embarrassed pleasure. When the uproar ended, he said:
“Thank you. I — can’t tell you how happy I am to see us all here. Before — before I say anything else, let’s remember Ben Whitcumb. We might never have got here without him.”
The room was silent; dishes clattered in the kitchen, and a girl sang as she worked.
Hugh looked up again. “And I must thank all of you. It’s proud that Shackleton would have been of you…” He hesitated and smiled shyly. “I could go on, but I’d sound like an ass. Would you mind if I shut up and let this fellow have a word with you? He’s an old friend, Colonel Tommy Chase.”
Icequake: A Prophetic Survival Thriller Page 23
