by Mike Ashley
In all directions, he could see nothing but ice. It was hard, flat, and featureless, except for the occasional ridge or trough where the wind had shaped it. For hundreds of miles, from the Pole of Inaccessibility to the sea, the ice lay across the Antarctic Continent like a thick blanket. Under the immense pressure of its own weight, it inched towards to the coast, where it formed floating shelves that eventually shattered into flat-topped icebergs the size of countries.
Vostok Station was a ramshackle collection of buildings; a deep layer of snow covered the roofs, so heavy that they buckled in places. The largest hut contained the cramped cubicles that comprised the scientists’ sleeping quarters; the smallest was the kitchen. There were also two labs – one for examining the ice samples that the drill produced, and the other filled with meteorological equipment. And finally, there was the drill-house.
Because the storms that regularly screamed through the base destroyed anything that stood in their way, the drill that ate through the ice towards Lake Vostok had to be protected. It stood in a hangar, twenty feet high, and was a hissing, rattling, roaring machine that provided the focus of all activity at the station. Seven of the team of eight scientists, who had been detailed to remain at Vostok until the drill reached the lake, stood outside the drill-house now, waiting for Hall to open the door and let them in.
“Tanya must’ve locked it,” said Hall, still hauling on the handle. “She was on drill duty this afternoon.”
“Why would she do that?” asked Paxton. He gestured at the empty expanse that surrounded them. “It’s not like we need to worry about burglars.”
Paxton had three Americans, three Russians, and a fellow Britisher under his command. Of them all, he found the bellicose Texan, Hall the most difficult to like.
Hall shrugged. “We’ve almost reached the lake. Maybe Tanya wants to be alone when the drill reaches it – claim the glory for herself. After all, who knows what might be down there?”
“Our readings say we won’t break through ‘til tomorrow,” said Paxton, forcing himself to ignore Hall’s unpleasant snipe at the affable Russian.
“If we break through,” mumbled the morose Russian Pavel Senko gloomily. “The drill’s just about had it and we’re lucky to have got this far.”
“But the drill isn’t running,” said Hall truculently, although none of his colleagues needed him to point that out. The sudden and ominous silence as the drill had stopped was what had brought them from their work in the first place. “We won’t break through tomorrow unless we drill today, and Tanya’s switched the thing off.”
Senko’s compatriot, an affable bear of a man called Ivan Bannikov, dismissed Hall’s concerns. “Tomorrow we’ll break new grounds in science,” he said with a grin, taking a hip-flask from his pocket and grimacing as he swallowed some of its fiery contents. “We’ll take samples from a lake that’s been sealed from the rest of the world for hundreds of thousands of years. What’ll we find, d’you think?”
“Microscopic creatures, plants, and perhaps even fish that’ve evolved in complete isolation,” replied Senko immediately. It was not the first time the scientists had aired this debate, and all had their own ideas about what was waiting for them. “We’ll discover new species that no one’s ever seen before.”
“Right,” agreed British-born Julie Franklin, her blue eyes gleaming with excitement. “But we’ll have to be careful – they may be toxic to us. Who knows whether their environment and ours are still compatible?”
“I think we’ll just find water,” said Paxton, sceptical of their fanciful hopes for exotic discoveries. “We won’t find any life.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” said Hall fervently. “I want to take home something a bit more exciting than a bottle of water – assuming Tanya hasn’t stolen the results for herself, that is.”
Senko glared at him. “If you’re accusing us Russians—”
“No one’s accusing anyone of anything,” interrupted Paxton hastily, not wanting the Russian and the American to argue. He hammered on the door. “Tanya? Are you in there? Open the door.”
“Of course she’s in there,” snapped Hall. “She’s not in her room, the labs, or the kitchen. The only place she can be is here.”
“She may be ill,” said Julie, frowning anxiously. She liked the quiet, intelligent Tanya.
Paxton elbowed Hall out of the way and hit the door with his shoulder as hard as he could. With a sharp, splintering sound of tearing wood, it flew inwards.
“She isn’t here,” said Senko, when a quick glance around the single-roomed building revealed that it was empty. “It wasn’t her who locked the door.”
Paxton studied the door in puzzlement. “Well, someone did; it was locked from the inside. You can see where the bolt’s still in place.”
Hall leaned down to inspect it. “No wonder I couldn’t get it open. Tanya must’ve done it.”
“But she isn’t here,” repeated Senko. “This building’s nothing but four walls, a roof, and a floor that’s four kilometres of solid ice. There’s nowhere to hide; she isn’t here.”
“But the door was locked from the inside,” insisted Hall. “That means someone in here locked it. And since the rest of us were together in the labs, and we know there isn’t another living soul within nine hundred miles of us, Tanya’s the only one who could’ve done it.”
“This is really odd,” said Julie nervously. “The only place Tanya could be is here, but we can all see she isn’t. So where is she?”
An exhaustive search of the camp did not reveal the whereabouts of Tanya. She had last been seen at lunch time, when the others had teased her because it was her turn to do “drill duty”. The drill was temperamental, and needed constant attention while it ran. Monitoring it in the frigid drill-house, to ensure its pumps were clear and that it was well lubricated, was not popular with the scientists, who would rather be in the heated labs doing their own work.
Tanya had dressed in her warmest clothes, and the team had heard the drill start up. And no one had seen her since. There was a limited number of places anyone could be at Vostok: she was not under the beds, in the tiny cupboards in which belongings were stored, or among the stacks of supply crates. The only possible explanation for her absence was that she had gone for a walk.
“She wouldn’t do that,” objected Senko. “There’s nowhere to go, and she’d never abandon the drill.”
Paxton knew that was true. Tanya, like all of them, was reliable and conscientious. She would never shirk her duties, especially given that they were so close to reaching the lake.
“We should look for her,” said Julie, worried. “She may’ve fallen and hurt herself.”
“The drill-house is the tallest building,” said Paxton. “We can climb on its roof and see if we can spot her.”
“I’ll go,” offered Julie. “The weight of the snow’s already made it buckle, and I’m lighter than the rest of you. We don’t want it to collapse and damage the drill – not now.”
She quickly scaled a ladder, and then stepped cautiously onto the snow-laden roof. Taking a pair of powerful binoculars, she scanned the expanse of ice slowly and carefully. But there was nothing to see. When her fingers began to ache from the cold, and the tears from her watering eyes froze on her cheeks, she descended again.
“The weather’s clear today,” she said. “I could see thirty miles easy. If Tanya were out there, I’d have spotted her. You know how colour stands out on the ice.”
“We saw her less than three hours ago, anyway,” said Senko. “She couldn’t have walked that far.”
“So, she isn’t on the ice and she isn’t in the base,” said Hall, puzzled. “Where is she?”
No one could answer him.
“We could look for footprints,” suggested Wilkes, a soft-spoken Virginian who always sported a cowboy-like necktie as part of his cold-weather clothing. “They’d lead us to her.”
“The ice is too hard for footprints,” said Paxton. “And even if w
e did find some, they won’t necessarily be hers. We all wander outside the camp from time to time.”
For the rest of the day, until it became too dark and too cold, they inspected every crack and crevice at the station, and scoured the featureless ice outside. Julie reported Tanya’s disappearance to the American base at McMurdo, and when Paxton stumbled into the kitchen late that night, cold and weary after his fruitless search, she told him that McMurdo was fog-bound, and that no plane would be available to help them for several days.
“We’ve got to do something,” said Senko, as members of the team gathered to discuss what to do next. “Tanya’s missing. We can’t go about our business like nothing’s happened.”
“What d’you suggest?” asked Hall tiredly. “We’ve looked everywhere. What else can we do?”
Senko shook his head helplessly. “There must be something. Perhaps she climbed inside an empty fuel can.”
“We checked them,” said Julie. “And every empty crate. She isn’t here.”
“I can think of one solution to this,” said Hall quietly. “The stress of not knowing whether the drill will make it to Lake Vostok became too much for her. So she walked out onto the ice, dug a hole, and buried herself.”
“The ice is too hard,” said Senko, dismissive of the American he did not like. “And how could she’ve done it with none of us seeing? Even if she walked ten miles – unlikely in three hours – she’d still be visible from here.”
“And she wasn’t suicidal at lunch time,” added Paxton. “Normally, she hated drill duty, but she was okay today, because we’re so close to breaking through.”
“But she shut the thing down, and we’ve wasted the whole day searching for her,” said Hall bitterly. “Now we might never reach the lake.”
“We will,” said Paxton. “I’m on first watch tomorrow – I’ll start early, and we’ll continue ‘til we reach it; then we’ll tell McMurdo to evacuate us. We’ve been here six months, and by tomorrow, we’ll have done all we came to do.”
“I only hope the drill lasts,” said Julie anxiously.
“All we need is one sample,” said Hall. “More would be better, obviously, but one sample will at least tell us whether there’s life down there.”
“Where are Wilkes and Bannikov?” asked Senko, noting that two of the remaining seven were missing. “Still searching?”
Paxton shook his head. “I saw Bannikov ten minutes ago. He said they’ll join us when they’ve changed.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when Bannikov burst into the room, bringing with him a flurry of tiny flakes, more like ice dust than snow.
“I can’t find Wilkes,” he said breathlessly. “I’ve looked everywhere. He’s not in the camp.”
Stomach churning, Paxton raced outside to look in the huts and the labs, ignoring the burly Russian’s protestations that he’d already checked them. Bannikov was right: Wilkes was not on the base.
“What happened?” Paxton demanded, while the others clustered around in alarm. “You said both of you were back.”
“We were both back,” insisted Bannikov, his usually florid face pale. He took the hip-flask from his pocket and raised it to his lips with unsteady hands. “He wanted to look in the drill-house one last time before giving up for the night; I went to change. After a few minutes, I went to the drill-house to make sure he was alright. I couldn’t find him.”
“That makes two,” said Hall, glancing around him fearfully. “What’s happening here?”
“More to the point,” said Senko in a nervous whisper. “Who’s going to be next?”
A more thorough search of the base revealed nothing: there was no sign of Wilkes, just as there had been no sign of Tanya. The two scientists seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Paxton found the cowboy-style necktie, twisted and frozen, in the drill-house, but it gave no clue as to what had happened to its owner.
“This is impossible,” he said, gazing down at the material. “People don’t just disappear.”
Hall turned to Senko. “The Russians didn’t put secret tunnels here, did they? This base was built during the Cold War, and so it’s possible they did something like that. Wilkes and Tanya may’ve fallen down one.”
Senko shook his head. “They only built what you can see – no hidden rooms or passages. And even if there were, they’d have collapsed under the weight of the snow by now.”
“Then maybe someone else is here,” said Hall. He gave Senko and Bannikov an unpleasant look. “We announce our progress every night on the radio, and so the whole of Antarctica knows we’re on the verge of tapping into Lake Vostok. Maybe not everyone wants us to be successful.”
“We’re at the Pole of Inaccessibility,” Paxton pointed out, determined that the Texan should not start to blame the Russians. “A rival band of scientists can’t simply fly in, snatch our samples, and leave.”
“Why not?” demanded Hall.
Paxton sighed. “First, only specially adapted planes can land here; and second, any unauthorized craft would be detected on radar and stopped. Plus there’s the fact that we’d have heard the engines.”
“Then maybe they came by land,” pressed Hall. “It wouldn’t be easy, but it’s not impossible.”
“It is,” said Julie. “You can’t cross Antarctica with a backpack, you know. It’d be a huge undertaking, needing a lot of logistical support. Such an expedition would be detected in no time.”
“And we’d have seen anyone approaching on foot,” added Paxton.
“Even if someone did come by land, it doesn’t explain why Tanya and Wilkes are missing,” said Bannikov reasonably. “We’ve searched all around the base. If someone else were here, we’d have found evidence of it – and we didn’t.”
“So, what’re we going to do?” asked Hall, fear stark in his eyes. “Do we wait here until we disappear, one by one?”
“There are six of us: we’ll stay in pairs,” said Paxton, not liking the way Hall’s panic was beginning to spread to the others. “And we’ll radio McMurdo for an immediate evacuation.”
“Maybe it’s something to do with the lake,” said Julie, casting a nervous glance towards the drill-house. “Tanya went missing when she was supposed to be drilling, and Wilkes disappeared when he went there to look for her.”
“Such as what?” asked Paxton incredulously. “D’you think a monster from the untapped deep has wriggled its way up the drill shaft and is doing away with our friends?”
Julie’s expression indicated that she did not consider his mocking suggestion so improbable. “I always said we’d find something dangerous down there. I assumed it’d be a microbe that might cause some deadly disease, but maybe there’s something bigger.”
“Are you serious?” demanded Paxton, scarcely believing his ears. “You’re a scientist, Julie! All we’ll find down there is water.”
“Perhaps she’s right,” said Hall, swallowing hard. “We don’t know what might’ve happened in a body of water that’s been sealed for thousands of years.”
That Hall was willing to believe some mysterious creature had slithered up the drill shaft was not a surprise to Paxton – the Texan watched a lot of science fiction videos, and his gullibility had provided the Russians with a good deal of entertainment during the long Antarctic evenings – but Paxton was astonished that such an idea should have come from the practical, rational Julie Franklin.
“We should contact McMurdo,” he said, pushing the idiotic notion from his mind and heading for the radio in the kitchen. “Tell them about Wilkes.”
“We should tell them about the lake, too,” said Julie, running to catch up with him. “We should warn them.”
“Warn them about what?” asked Paxton. “You’ve no evidence that whatever happened to Tanya and Wilkes has anything to do with the lake. There’ll be some perfectly rational explanation—”
“But there isn’t, is there?” demanded Julie angrily. “Two people’ve disappeared without trace from a place that – q
uite literally – has no way out. There isn’t a rational explanation.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t tell them what we think,” said Hall, following them into the kitchen. “If my government think we’ve unearthed some weird creature, they’ll put us in quarantine and we’ll never get out of here.”
Bannikov and Senko exchanged an amused glance with the shy American called Morris who was their radio expert. Paxton was relieved to see that at least three of his team had not taken leave of their senses, even if Julie and Hall had.
“It’s not funny!” snapped Julie, angered by their smiles. She glowered at them until they left, and then turned to Paxton. “Tell McMurdo now.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” said Paxton firmly. “They’ll think we’ve gone stark raving mad. I’ll report Wilkes’ disappearance and that’s it.”
The sleepy voice of the radio operator at McMurdo snapped into wakefulness when Paxton informed him that a second member of the expedition was missing. Just as Paxton was about to break the connection, Hall made a lunge for the transmitter and snatched it from his hand. Paxton tried to grab it back again before Hall made a total fool of himself, but tiredness made him slow, and the Texan had informed the startled operator about Julie’s theory and signed off before Paxton could stop him.
“You’ve been watching too many movies,” Paxton said in disgust. “I’m going to bed.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Hall, following him outside to where Morris, Bannikov and Senko stood in an uncertain group in the darkness, reluctant to leave the halo of light thrown out by the kitchen. “I’m not walking alone around here.”
“Good thinking,” said Bannikov. He retrieved his hip-flask from his pocket and took a swig. “I’ll take one last look in the labs and the drill-house, and then I’m turning in, too. Morris can come with me. Julie should stay with Senko.”
Senko slapped Hall on the back and gave him a wicked grin. “Watch out for gigantic ice worms.”
Julie glared at him. “Laugh all you like. You’ll see.”
