As they clustered on the deck near the boarding ladder in happy anticipation of going ashore, aiming their telephoto lenses at the penguins, Maeve Fletcher walked among them, checking the bright orange insulated jackets passed out by the ship’s cruise staff, along with life jackets for the short trip between the ship and shore.
Energetic and in constant motion, she moved about with a concentrated briskness in a lithe body that had seen more than its fair share of vigorous exercise. She towered above the women and stood taller than most of the men. Her hair, braided in two long pigtails, was as yellow as a summery iris. She stared through eyes as blue as the deep sea, from a strong face with high cheekbones. Her lips always seemed parted in a warm smile, revealing a tiny gap in the center of her upper teeth. Tawny skin gave her a robust outdoorsy look.
Maeve was three years shy of thirty, with a master’s degree in zoology. After graduation she took a three year sabbatical to gain field experience studying bird and animal life in the polar regions. After she returned to her home in Australia, she was halfway through her dissertation for a doctorate at the University of Melbourne when she was offered a temporary job as naturalist and expedition leader for passengers of Ruppert & Saunders, a cruise line based in Adelaide and specializing in adventure tours. It was an opportunity to earn enough money to finish her dissertation, so she dropped everything and set sail to the great white continent on board the company’s ship Polar Queen.
This trip there were ninety-one paying passengers on board, and Maeve was one of four naturalists who were to conduct the excursions on shore. Because of the penguin rookery, the historic buildings still standing from the whaling operations, the cemetery and the site of the camp where the Norwegian explorers perished, Seymour Island was considered a historical site and a fragile environment. To reduce visitor impact, the passengers were guided ashore at staggered times and in separate groups for two-hour expeditions. They were also lectured on a code of behavior. They were not to step on lichens or moss, nor step within five meters of any bird or animal life. Nor could they sneak souvenirs, not so much as a small rock. Most of them were Australians, with a few New Zealanders mixed in.
Maeve was scheduled to accompany the first party of twenty-two visitors to the island. She checked off the list of names as the excited travelers stepped down the boarding ladder to a waiting Zodiac, the versatile rubber float craft designed by Jacques Cousteau. As she was about to follow the last passenger, the ship’s first officer, Trevor Haynes, stopped her on the boarding ladder. Quiet and quite handsome in the lady’s eyes, he was uncomfortable mingling with the passengers and rarely made an appearance away from the bridge.
“Tell your people not to be alarmed if they see the ship sailing off,” he told her.
She turned and looked up the steps at him. “Where will you be going?”
“There is a storm brewing a hundred miles out. The captain doesn’t want to risk exposing the passengers to any more rough water than necessary. Nor does he want to disappoint them by cutting short the shore excursions. He intends to steam twenty kilometers up the’ coast and drop off another group at the seal colony, then return in time to pick you up and repeat the process.”
“Putting twice the number ashore in half the time.”
“That’s the idea. That way, we can pack up and leave and be in the relatively calm waters of the Bransfield Strait before the storm strikes here.”
“I wondered why you didn’t drop the anchor.” Maeve liked Haynes. He was the only ship’s officer who wasn’t continually trying to sweet-talk her into his quarters after late-night drinks. “I’ll expect you in two hours,” she said with a wave.
“You have your portable communicator should you encounter a problem.”
She held up the small unit that was attached to her belt. “You’ll be the first to know.”
“Say hello to the penguins for me.”
“I shall.”
As the Zodiac skimmed over water that was as flat and reflective as a mirror, Maeve lectured her little band of intrepid tourists on the history behind their destination. “Seymour Island was first sighted by James Clark Ross in 1842. Forty Norwegian explorers, castaway when their ship was crushed in the ice, perished here in 1859. We’ll visit the site where they lived until the end and then take a short walk to the hallowed ground where they are buried.”
“Are those the buildings they lived in?” asked a lady who must have been pushing eighty, pointing to several structures in a small bay.
“No,” answered Maeve. “What you see are what remains of an abandoned British whaling station. We’ll visit it just before we take a short hike around that rocky point you see to the south, to the penguin rookery.”
“Does anyone live on the island?” asked the same lady.
“The Argentineans have a research station on the northern tip of the island.”
“How far away?”
Maeve smiled condescendingly. “About thirty kilometers.” There’s always one in every group who has the curiosity of a four-year-old, she mused.
They could see the bottom clearly now, naked rock with no growth to be seen anywhere. Their shadow followed them about two fathoms down as they cruised through the bay. No rollers broke on the shoreline, the sea ran smooth right up to the edge, lapping the exposed rock with the slight wash usually found around a small lake. The crewman shut off the outboard motor as the bow of the Zodiac skimmed onto the shore. The only sign of a living thing was a pure white snow petrel that glided through the sky above them like a large snowflake.
Only after she had helped everyone to disembark from the Zodiac and wade ashore onto the pebbled beach in the knee-high rubber boots supplied by the ship did Maeve turn and look at the ship as it gathered way and steamed northward.
The Polar Queen was quite small by cruise ship standards. Her length was only seventy-two meters, with a twenty-five hundred gross rated tonnage. She was built in Bergen, Norway, especially to cruise polar waters. She was as ruggedly constructed as an icebreaker, a function she could perform if the occasion arose. Her superstructure and the broad horizontal stripe below her lower deck were painted glacier white. The rest of her hull was a bright yellow. She could skirt the ice floes and icebergs with the agility of a rabbit due to her bow and stern thrusters. Her comfortable cabins were furnished in the style of a ski chalet, with picture windows facing the sea. Other amenities included a luxurious lounge and dining salon, hosted by a chef who turned out three-star culinary creations, a fitness center and a library filled with books and information on the polar regions. The crew was well trained and numbered twenty more than the passengers.
Maeve felt a tinge of regret she couldn’t quite understand as the yellow-and-white Polar Queen grew smaller in the distance. For a brief moment she experienced the apprehension the lost Norwegian explorers must have felt at seeing their only means of survival disappear. She quickly shook off any feelings of uneasiness and began leading her party of babbling travelers across the gray moonscape to the cemetery.
She allotted them twenty minutes to pick their way among the tombstones, shooting rolls of film of the inscriptions. Then she herded them around a vast pile of giant bleached whale bones near the old station while describing the methods the whalers used to process the whales.
“After the danger and exhilaration of the chase and kill,” she explained, “came the rotten job butchering the huge carcass and rendering the blubber into oil. ‘Cutting in’ and ‘trying out,’ as the old-timers called it.”
Next came the antiquated huts and rendering building. The whaling station was still maintained and monitored on an annual basis by the British and was considered a museum of the past. Furnishings, cooking utensils in the kitchen, along with old books and worn magazines, were still there just as the whalers left them when they finally departed for home.
“Please do not disturb any of the artifacts,” Maeve told the group. “Under international law nothing may be removed.” She took a moment to
count heads. Then she said, “Now I’ll lead you into the caves dug by the whalers, where they stored the oil in huge casks before shipping it to England.”
From a box left at the entrance to the caves by expedition leaders from previous cruises, she passed out flashlights. “Is there anyone who suffers from claustrophobia?”
One woman who looked to be in her late seventies raised her hand. “I’m afraid I don’t want to go in there.”
“Anyone else?”
The woman who asked all the questions nodded. “I can’t stand cold, dark places.”
“All right,” said Maeve. “The two of you wait here. I’ll conduct the rest a short distance to the whale-oil storage area. We won’t be more than fifteen minutes.”
She led the chattering group through a long, curving tunnel carved by the whalers to a large storage cavern stacked with huge casks that had been assembled deep inside the rock and later left behind. After they entered she stopped and gestured at a massive rock at the entrance.
“The rock you see here was cut from inside the cavern and acts as a barrier against the cold and to keep competing whalers from pilfering surplus oil that remained after the station closed down for the winter. This rock weighs as much as an armored tank, but a child can move it, providing he or she knows its secret.” She paused to step aside, placed her hand on a particular place on the upper side of the rock and easily pushed it to close the entrance. “An ingenious bit of engineering. The rock is delicately balanced on a shaft through its middle. Push in the wrong spot and it won’t budge.”
Everyone made jokes about the total darkness broken only by the flashlights as Maeve moved over to one of the great wooden casks. One had remained half full, and she held a small glass vial under a spigot and filled it with a small amount of oil. She passed the vial around, allowing the tourists to rub a few drops between their fingers.
“Amazingly, the cold has prevented the oil from spoiling, even after nearly a hundred and thirty years. It’s still as fresh as the day it came from the cauldron and was poured into the cask.”
“It feels as though it has extraordinary lubricating qualities,” said a gray-haired man with a large red nose, common in a heavy drinker.
“Don’t tell the oil companies,” Maeve said with a thin smile. “Or the whales will become extinct before next Christmas.”
One woman asked for the vial and sniffed it. “Can it be used as cooking oil?”
“Yes indeed,” Maeve answered. “The Japanese are particularly fond of whale oil for cooking and margarine. In fact the old whalers used to dip their biscuits in saltwater and then fry them in the bubbling blubber. I tried it once and found it to have an interesting if slightly bland taste—”
Maeve was abruptly cut off by the scream of an elderly woman who frantically clutched the sides of her head. Six other people followed suit, the women crying out, the men groaning.
Maeve ran from one to the other, stunned at the look of intense pain in their eyes. “What is it?” she shouted. “What’s wrong? Can I help you?”
Then suddenly it was her turn. A daggerlike thrust of pain plunged into her brain, and her heart began to pound erratically. Instinctively her hands pressed her temples. She stared dazedly at the excursion members. Through the hypnotic spell of agony and terror, all their eyes seemed to be bulging from their sockets. Then she was struck by a tidal wave of dizziness rapidly followed by great nausea. She fought an overwhelming urge to vomit, before losing all balance and falling down.
No one could understand what was happening. The air became heavy and hard to breathe. The beams of the flashlights took on an unearthly bluish glow. There was no vibration, no shaking of the earth, and yet dust began to swirl inside the cavern. The only sounds were the screams of the tormented.
They began to sag and fall to the ground around Maeve. With horrified disbelief she found herself immersed in disorientation, caught in the grip of a crazy nightmare where her body was turning itself inside out.
One moment people stared at death from an unknown source. Then inexplicably, an instant later, the excruciating agony and vertigo began to ease. As quickly as it had come on, it faded and disappeared.
Maeve felt exhausted to her bones. She leaned weakly against the cask of whale oil, eyes closed, vastly relieved at being free of pain.
No one found the voice to speak for nearly two minutes. Finally, a man, who was cradling his stunned wife in his arms, looked up at Maeve. “What in God’s name was that?”
Maeve slowly shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered dully.
With great effort she made the rounds, greatly cheered at finding everyone still alive. They all appeared to be recovering with no lingering effects. Maeve was thankful that none of the more elderly had suffered permanent damage, especially heart attacks.
“Please wait here and rest while I check the two ladies at the entrance of the tunnel and contact the ship.”
They were a good group, she thought. None questioned or blamed her for the unexplained event. They immediately began comforting each other, the younger ones helping the more elderly to restful positions. They watched as she swung open the massive door and walked through the portal until the beam of her flashlight vanished around a curve in the tunnel.
As soon as Maeve reached daylight again, she couldn’t help wondering if it had all been a hallucination. The sea was still calm and blue. The sun had risen a little higher in a cloudless sky. And the two ladies who had preferred to remain in the open air were lying sprawled on their stomachs, each clutching at nearby rocks as if trying to keep from being torn away by some unseen force.
She bent down and tried to shake them awake but stiffened in horror when she saw the sightless eyes and the gaping mouths. Each had lost the contents of her stomach. They were dead, their skin already turning a dark purplish-blue.
Maeve ran down to the Zodiac, which was still sitting with its bow pulled onto the shoreline. The crewman who had brought them ashore was also lifeless, the same appalling expression on his face, with the same skin color. In numbed shock, Maeve lifted her portable communicator and began transmitting. “Polar Queen, this is land expedition one. We have an emergency. Please answer immediately. Over.”
There was no reply.
She tried again and again to raise the ship. Her only response was silence. It was as if Polar Queen and her crew, and passengers had never existed.
January is midsummer in Antarctica, and days are long with only an hour or two of twilight. Temperatures on the peninsula can reach as high as fifteen degrees Celsius (fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit), but since the tour group had come ashore it had dropped to freezing. At the scheduled time for the Polar Queen to return there was neither word nor sign of her.
Maeve continued her futile attempts to make contact every half hour until eleven o’clock in the evening. As the polar sun dipped toward the horizon, she stopped hailing on the ship’s channel to conserve the transmitter’s batteries. The portable radio’s range was limited to ten kilometers, and no other ship or passing aircraft was within five hundred kilometers of picking up her calls for help. The nearest source of relief was the Argentinean research station on the other end of the island, but unless freak atmospheric conditions stretched her signals, they would not have received them either. In frustration, she gave up and planned to try again later.
Where was the ship and crew? she wondered constantly. Was it possible they had encountered the same murderous phenomenon and suffered harm? She did not wish to dwell on pessimistic thoughts. For the time being she and her party were secure. But without food or bedding for warmth, she did not see how they could hold out very long. A few days at most. The ages of her excursion group were on the high side. The youngest couple were in their late sixties, while the rest ranged through the seventies to the oldest, a woman of eighty-three who wanted a taste of adventure before she went into a nursing home. A sense of hopelessness welled inside Maeve.
She noted with no small apprehe
nsion that dark clouds were beginning to drift in across the sea from the west, the vanguard of the storm that First Officer Trevor Haynes had warned Maeve to expect. She had enough experience with south polar weather conditions to know that coastal storms would be accompanied by fierce winds and blinding sleet. Little or no snow would fall. Debilitating windchill would be the primary danger, Maeve finally gave up hope of seeing the ship anytime soon and began to plan for the worst by making preparations for the excursion members to bed down for the next ten hours.
The still-standing huts and rendering shed were pretty well open to the elements. The roofs had caved in long ago, and high winds had broken the few windows as well as carrying off the doors. She decided her group would stand a better chance of surviving the bitter cold and life threatening wind by remaining in the cavern. A fire using a stack of weathered lumber at the whaling station was a possibility, but it would have to be placed near the entrance. Farther back in the cave, and the smoke could cause asphyxiation.
Four of the younger men helped her place the bodies of the two women and crewman in the rendering shed. They also pulled the Zodiac farther ashore and tied it down to prevent it from being blown inland by the increasing winds. Next they sealed all but a small opening of the tunnel entrance with rocks to minimize any frigid gusts that might sweep through into the cavern. She did not want to seal them off completely from the outside by closing the rock door. Then she gathered everyone around and ordered them to huddle together for mutual warmth.
There was nothing left to do, and the hours of waiting for rescue seemed like an eternity. They tried to sleep but found it all but impossible. The numbing cold slowly began to penetrate their clothing, and the wind outside turned into a gale that shrieked like a banshee through the air hole in the stone barrier they’d erected at the tunnel entrance.
Only one or two complained. Most bore the ordeal stoically. Some were actually excited at experiencing a real adventure. Two of the Aussie husbands, big men who had made their fortune as partners in a construction firm, teased their wives and cracked sarcastic jokes to keep everyone’s spirits up. They seemed as unconcerned as if they were waiting to board a plane. They were all good people in their twilight years, Maeve thought. It would be a shame, no, a crime, if they were to all die in that icy hellhole.
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