Her mind wandered, and she vaguely envisioned them all interred under the rocks with the Norwegian explorers and the British whalers. A delusion, she reminded herself firmly. Despite the fact that her father and sisters were violently hostile toward her, she could not bring herself to believe they would deny her proper burial in the family plot where her ancestors rested. And yet she knew it was a distinct possibility that her family would no longer admit that Maeve was of their own flesh and blood, not after the birth of her twin boys.
She lay there, staring at the fog that formed in the cavern from the heavy concentrated breathing, and tried to picture her sons, now only six years old, watched over by friends, while she earned badly needed money with the cruise line. What would become of them if she died? She prayed that her father would never get his hands on them. Compassion never entered into his reckonings. People’s lives mattered little to him. Nor was money a driving force. He considered it merely a tool. Power to manipulate, that was his passion. Maeve’s two sisters shared their father’s callousness toward others. Fortunately, she took after her mother, a gentle lady who was driven to suicide by her cold and abusive husband when Maeve was twelve.
After the tragedy, Maeve never considered herself part of the family. None of them had forgiven her for leaving the fold and striking out on her own under a new name with nothing but the clothes on her back. It was a decision she had never regretted.
She awakened, listening for a sound, or rather the lack of it. The wind was no longer whistling into the tunnel from outside. The storm was still brewing, but there was a temporary break in the frigid wind. She returned and roused the two Australian contractors.
“I need you to accompany me to the penguin rookery,” she told them. “They’re not hard to capture. I’m breaking the law, but if we are to stay healthy until the ship returns, we must put nourishment in our stomachs.”
“What do you think, mate?” boomed one of the men.
“I could use a taste of bird,” replied the other.
“Penguins aren’t candidates for gourmet dining,” Maeve said, smiling. “Their meat is oily, but at least it’s filling.”
Before they left for the rookery, she prodded the others to their feet and sent them to steal wood from the whaling station to build a fire. “In for a penny, in for a pound. If I’m going to jail for killing protected creatures and destroying historic property, I might as well do a thorough job of it.”
They made for the rookery, which was about two kilometers around the point encircling the north part of the bay. Though the wind had died, the sleet made their way miserable. They could hardly see more than three meters in front of them. It was as though they were looking at everything through a sheet of water. Sight was even more difficult without goggle. They were wearing only sunglasses, and the drifting sleet blew in around the rims of the lenses and caked their eyelashes. Only by keeping close to the edge of the water did they maintain a sense of direction. They added twenty minutes to the hike by not walking across the point as the crow flies, but at least the detour prevented them from becoming lost.
The wind howled in again, biting into their exposed faces. The thought of them all trekking to the Argentinean research station crossed Maeve’s mind. But she quickly dismissed it. Few would survive the thirty-kilometer journey through the storm. Better than half the aged tourists would quickly perish along the way. Maeve had to consider all prospects, the feasible and the impractical. She might make it. She was young and strong. But she could not bring herself to desert the people who were depending on her. Sending the big Aussie men who trudged beside her was a possibility. The nagging problem as she saw it was what would they find when they arrived?
What if the Argentinean scientists had died under the same mysterious circumstances as the members of her own party? If the worst had occurred, then the only hard incentive for reaching the station was to use their powerful communications equipment. The decision was agonizing. Should she risk the two Australians’ lives in a hazardous trek, or keep them at hand to help her care for the old and the weak? She decided against going for the research station. Her job did not involve putting the passengers of Ruppert & Saunders in life-threatening situations. It seemed inconceivable that they had been abandoned. They had no choice but wait it out until rescue came, from whatever source, and exist the best way they could until then.
The sleet had slackened, and their vision increased to nearly fifty meters. Overhead, the sun appeared as a dim orange ball with a halo of varied colors like a round prism. They rounded the spur of rock encompassing the bay and curved back to the shoreline containing the penguin rookery. Maeve did not relish the thought of killing penguins even as a means to stay alive. They were such tame and friendly creatures.
The Pygoscelis adeliae or Adelie penguins are one of seventeen true species. They sport a black-feathered back and hooded head and a white breast and stare through beady little eyes. As suggested by fossils found on Seymour Island, their ancestors evolved more than forty million years ago and were as tall as a man. Attracted to their almost human social behavior patterns, Maeve had spent one whole summer observing and studying a rookery and had begun a love affair with this most delightful of birds. In contrast with the larger emperor penguin, the Adelies can move as fast as five kilometers an hour and often faster when tobogganing over the ice on their chests. Give them a funny little derby and a cane to swing, she often mused, and they could have waddled along in a perfect imitation of Charlie Chaplin.
“I believe the bloody sleet is slackening,” said one of the men. He was wearing a leather cap and puffing on a cigarette.
“About damned time,” muttered the other, who had used a scarf to wrap his head, turban-style. “I feel like a damp rag.”
They could clearly see out to sea for nearly half a kilometer. The once glasslike sea was now a turmoil of whitecaps agitated by the wind. Maeve turned her attention to the rookery. As far as she could see was a carpet of penguins, over fifty thousand of them. As she and the Hussies walked closer, it struck her as odd that none of the birds stood on their little feet, tail feathers extended as props to keep from falling over backward. They were, scattered all about, most lying on their backs as if they had toppled over.
“Something’s not right,” she said. “None are standing.”
“No fools those birds.” said the man in the turban. “They know better than to stand against blowing sleet.”
Maeve ran to the edge of the rookery and looked down at the penguins lying on the outer edge. She was struck by the absence of sound. None moved nor showed interest in her approach. She knelt and studied one. It lay limp on the ground, eyes staring sightless at her. Her face was stricken as she looked at the thousands of birds that showed no sign of life. She stared at two leopard seals, the natural predator of penguins, whose bodies washed back and forth in the small surge along the rock-strewn beach.
“They’re all dead,” she muttered in shock.
“Bloody hell,” gasped the man in the leather cap. “She’s right. Not one of the little buggers is breathin’.”
This can’t be real. Maeve thought wildly. She stood absolutely still She could not see what caused the mass death, but she could feel it. The crazy idea that every living thing in the rest of the world had died from the mysterious malady suddenly struck her mind. Is it possible we’re the only ones left alive on a dead planet? she wondered in near panic.
The man with the scarf-turban wrapped around his head bent over and picked up a penguin. “Saves us the trouble of having to slaughter them.”
“Leave them be!” Maeve shouted at him.
“Why?” the man replied indignantly. “We’ve all got to eat.”
“We don’t know what killed them. They might have died from some sort of plague.”
The man in the leather cap nodded. “The little lady knows what she’s talking about. Whatever disease killed these birds could do us in too. I don’t know about you, but I don’t aim to be respons
ible for my wife’s death.”
“But it wasn’t a disease,” the other man argued. “Not what killed those little old ladies and that sailor lad. It was more like some fluke of nature.”
Maeve stood her ground. “I refuse to gamble with lives. Polar Queen will be back. We haven’t been forgotten.”
“If the captain is trying to give us a good scare, he’s doing a damned fine job of it.”
“He must have a good reason for not returning.”
“Good reason or not, your company better be heavily insured because they’re going to get their ears sued off when we get back to civilization.”
Maeve was in no mood to argue. She turned her back on the killing ground and set off toward the storage cavern. The two men followed, their eyes searching over a menacing sea for something that wasn’t there.
To wake up after three days in a caw on a barren island in the middle of a polar storm and know you are responsible for three deaths and the lives of nine men and eleven women is not an enjoyable experience. Without any sign of the hoped-for arrival of the Polar Queen, the once cheerful excursion that came ashore to experience the wondrous isolation of the Antarctic had become a nightmare of abandonment and despair for the vacation travelers. And to add to Maeve’s desperation, the batteries of her portable communicator had finally gone dead.
Anytime now, Maeve knew she could expect the older members of the party to succumb to the harsh conditions inside the cave. They had lived their lives in warm and tropical zones and were not acclimated to the freezing harshness of the Antarctic. Young and hardy bodies might have lasted until help finally arrived, but these people lacked the strength of twenty- and thirty-year-olds. Their health was generally frail and vulnerable with age.
At first they joked and told stories, treating their ordeal as merely a bonus adventure. They sang songs, mostly “Waltzing Matilda,” and attempted word games. But soon lethargy set in, and they went quiet and unresponsive. Bravely, they accepted their suffering without protest.
Now, hunger overcame any fear of diseased meat, and Maeve stopped a mutiny by finally relenting and sending the men out to bring in several dead penguins. There was no problem of decomposition setting in since the birds had frozen soon after they were killed. One of the men was an avid hunter. He produced a Swiss army knife and expertly skinned and butchered the meat. By filling their bellies with protein and fat they would add fuel to maintain their body heat.
Maeve found some seventy-year-old tea in one of the whaler’s huts. She also appropriated an old pot and a pan. Next she tapped the casks for a liter of the remaining whale oil, poured it in the pan and lit it. A blue flame rose, and everybody applauded her ingenuity at producing a workable stove. Then she cleaned out the old pot, filled it with snow and brewed the tea. Spirits were buoyed, but only for a short time. Depression soon recast its heavy net over the cavern. Their determination not to die was being sapped by the frigid temperature. They morbidly began to believe the end was inevitable. The ship was never returning, and any hope of rescue from another origin bordered on fantasy.
It no longer mattered if they expired from whatever unknown disease, if any, killed the penguins. None were dressed properly to resist for long sustained temperatures below freezing. The danger of asphyxiation was too great to use the whale oil to build a bigger fire. The small amount in the pan merely produced a feeble bit of warmth, hardly sufficient to prolong life. Eventually the fatal tentacles of the cold would encircle them all.
Outside, the storm went from bad to worse and it began to snow, a rare occurrence on the peninsula during summer. Hope of a chance discovery was destroyed as the storm mounted in intensity. Four of the elderly were near death from exposure, and Maeve suffered bleak discouragement as all control began to slip through her frozen fingers. She blamed herself for the three that were already dead, and it affected her badly.
The living looked upon her as their only hope. Even the men respected her authority and carried out her orders without question. “God help them,” she whispered to herself. “I can’t let them know I’ve come to the end of my rope.”
She shuddered from an oppressive feeling of helplessness. A strange lethargy stole through her. Maeve knew she must see the terrible trial through to its final outcome, but she didn’t think she had the strength to continue carrying twenty lives on her shoulders. She felt exhausted and didn’t want to struggle anymore. Dimly, through her listlessness, she heard a strange sound unlike the cry of the wind. It came to her ears as though something were pounding the air. Then it faded. Only her imagination, she told herself. It was probably nothing but the wind changing direction and making a different howl through the air vent at the tunnel entrance.
Then she heard it again briefly before it died. She struggled to her feet and stumbled through the tunnel. A snowdrift had built up against the wind barrier and nearly filled the small opening. She removed several rocks to widen a passage and crawled outside into an icy world of wind and snow. The wind held steady at about twenty knots, swirling billows of snow like a tornado. Suddenly, she tensed and squinted her eyes into the white turbulence.
Something seemed to be moving out there, a vague shape with no substance and yet darker than the opaque veil that fell from the sky.
She took a step and pitched forward. For a long moment she thought of just lying there and going to sleep. The urge to give it all up was overwhelming. But the spark of life refused to diminish and blink out. She lifted herself to her knees and stared through the wavering light. She caught something moving toward her, and then a gust obliterated it. A few moments later it reappeared, but closer this time. Then her heart surged.
It was the figure of a man covered in ice and snow. She waved excitedly and called to him. He paused as if listening, then turned and began walking away.
This time she screamed, a high-pitched scream such as only a female could project. The figure turned and stared through the drifting snow in her direction. She waved both arms frantically. He waved back and began jogging toward her.
“Please don’t let him be a mirage or a delusion,” she begged the heavens.
And then he was kneeling in the snow beside her, cradling her shoulders in arms that felt like the biggest and strongest she had ever known. “Oh, thank God. I never gave up hoping you’d come.”
He was a tall man, wearing a turquoise parka with the letters NUMA stitched over the left breast, and a ski mask with goggles. He removed the goggles and stared at her through a pair of incredible opaline green eyes that betrayed a mixture of surprise and puzzlement. His deeply tanned face seemed oddly out of place in the Antarctic.
“What in the world are you doing here?” he asked in a husky voice tinged with concern.
“I have twenty people back there in a cavern. We were on a shore excursion. Our cruise ship sailed off and never returned.”
He looked at her in disbelief. “You were abandoned?”
She nodded and stared fearfully into the storm. “Did a worldwide catastrophe occur?”
His eyes narrowed at the question. “Not that I’m aware of. Why do you ask?”
“Three people in my party died under mysterious circumstances. And an entire rookery of penguins just north of the bay has been exterminated down to the last bird.”
If the stranger was surprised at the tragic news, he hid it well. He helped Maeve to her feet. “I’d better get you out of this blowing snow.”
“You’re American,” she said, shivering from the cold.
“And you’re Australian.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“You pronounce a like i.”
She held out a gloved hand. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you, Mr...?”
“My name is Dirk Pitt.”
“Maeve Fletcher.”
He ignored her objections, picked her up and began carrying her, following her footprints in the snow toward the tunnel. “I suggest we carry on our conversation out of the cold. You say there are tw
enty others?”
“That are still alive.”
Pitt gave her a solemn look. “It would appear the sales brochures oversold the voyage.”
Once inside the tunnel he set her on her feet and pulled off his ski mask. His head was covered by a thick mass of unruly black hair. His green eyes peered from beneath heavy dark eyebrows, and his face was craggy and weathered from long hours in the open but handsome in a rugged sort of way. His mouth seemed set in a casual grin. This was a man a woman could feel secure with, Maeve thought.
A minute later, Pitt was greeted by the tourists like a hometown football hero who had led the team to a big victory. Seeing a stranger suddenly appear in their midst had the same impact as winning a lottery. He marveled that they were all in reasonably fit shape, considering their terrible ordeal. The old women all embraced and kissed him like a son while the men slapped his back until it was sore. Everybody was talking and shouting questions at once. Maeve introduced him and related how they met up in the storm.
“Where did you drop from, mate?” they all wanted to know.
“A research vessel from the National’ Underwater & Marine Agency. We’re on an expedition trying to discover why seals and dolphins have been disappearing in these waters at an astonishing rate. We were flying over Seymour Island in a helicopter when the snow closed in on us, so we thought it best to land until it blew over.”
“There’re more of you?”
“A pilot and a biologist who remained on board. I spotted what looked like a piece of a Zodiac protruding from the snow. I wondered why such a craft would be resting on an uninhabited part of the island and walked over to investigate. That’s when I heard Miss Fletcher shouting at me.”
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