In Cold Pursuit

by Sarah Andrews

  “Emmett wanted to get back in there to find that damned chute and document what had happened, but NSF was in no hurry to run another flight in there. The risk of getting stuck was too great. Then in no time flat it was the end of the season, and everyone went home. Maybe you don’t understand yet what a narrow weather window we have here. It’s already the end of November. Even if Emmett were here, you’d be lucky to mobilize into your camp within the next week. First it’s storms and then it’s fog. Once the fog lifts, then there’s a backup of everybody trying to get where they want to go. Then you get the first really good day of flying weather, and it’s Sunday and the pilots are on their days off. Antarctica is the place where they invented the expression ‘hurry up and wait.’”

  “Let me guess: the News thought it was all a cover-up.”

  “They made it sound like he lured the guy down here and ran him up that mountain with the express purpose of killing him.”

  Valena shook herself to work her muscles and create heat. “Well, did he? I mean, is there any truth to it at all?”

  Skehan snorted. “Oh, ye of little faith. You’re kidding me, right? I can’t believe you would have come here with him if you believe him capable of that.”

  Valena stared into Skehan’s goggles and frozen beard. She said, “What’s faith got to do with science? Look, I don’t really know the man. He’s got a great reputation as a scientist. I was thrilled to get onto his project. But now here I am without him, and if Bellamy gets his way I’m on the next plane home. I don’t want to go. I want to stay! I’m here to do science, not perform acts of faith.”

  Skehan sighed. “Emmett wanted the guy to wait in Mac Town until they were done at the high camp and ready to move lower down, but with the storms and all, they were behind schedule. Sweeny said he was on a tight schedule himself, and if he did not get into the field in two more days he was going to return to Wall Street and write his story. NSF freaked at the thought of what he would write after coming all that way and not getting to the field. So they sent him up. Emmett really did not have much choice in the matter. He could have refused, but every project has to do media outreach, so a refusal could have come back to haunt him. The guy insisted that he had done plenty of high-elevation mountaineering and knew what he was good for. And maybe that’s all true. Maybe he already had a respiratory infection going into it and didn’t even know it. A lot of people show up here with the crud after all those hours in a commercial jet, or they catch it as soon as they get to McMurdo.”

  Valena said, “So the man got sick and they couldn’t get him out fast enough.”

  “Emmett ordered a Gamow bag. The Airlift Wing flew it in on an LC-130 and dropped it on a chute. It was blowing to beat the band. Eighty knots sustained, gusting to who knows what. Emmett went out to get it. He took Cal Hart. They saw the chute in the distance, blowing, apparently dragging its cargo. They chased it, but suddenly the gusts got so huge that they were blowing along like sheets of newspaper. They had to use their ice axes to stay fixed, to keep the tents in sight. Then things deteriorated to condition 1. They had to claw their way back to the tents and hunker down so they didn’t get lost. When the weather lifted, Emmett went out again, but he couldn’t find anything, not the chute, not its payload, nothing.”

  “So he ordered another one.”

  Skehan’s face remained aimed at Valena’s for several seconds. “I don’t know the answer to that question.”

  “I mean—”

  “You mean did he just let the guy die. Listen, you go ahead and think what you want, but try to get one thing straight: down here it’s tragedy when someone dies, no matter how little you might like him. It’s a personal loss. And just because you’re a wet-behind-the-ears grad student is no excuse to miss the really important point here: scientists don’t go around killing people just because they’re mad at them. That’s for mafiosos and presidents, not scientists. Scientists want their adversaries to stay alive, so they can prove them wrong!”

  Valena opened her mouth to say something, but Skehan had jumped to his feet. With one last unreadable stare, he stalked off into the gathering storm.

  11

  VALENA WOKE DURING THE NIGHT WITH A DESPERATE need to pee and lay in her caterpillar-thick mound of sleeping bag considering her options. She read her wristwatch. It was one o’clock in the morning. She had climbed into the quinzy early because she had discovered, after her disastrous discussion with James Skehan, that she had let herself get dangerously cold. After dancing around and swinging her arms to warm up, she had swilled one last cup of hot chocolate and retired to her sleeping bag. Once inside its enormously thick wrapping of synthetic fibers, she had discovered that she was also extremely tired and had gone to sleep.

  Now that the call of nature had brought her awake, with no idea what time it was, the illumination coming through the snow walls being nearly identical to what was there when she fell asleep, she realized that she was no longer alone. Doris snored gently to her right, and Michael from Crary Lab was sleeping to her left.

  Realizing that there was no way she was going to get back to sleep if she did not relieve herself, she unzipped her bag as quietly as she could and struggled into her ECWs. She had gone to bed wearing two layers of long underwear, wool socks, and a fleece hat, with her big red parka pulled over the bottom half of her bag for an extra layer of warmth. She wiggled into her wind pants, raised their suspenders to her shoulders, shrugged her way into the parka, pulled on her boots, hat, and gloves, then stepped down inside the exit tunnel and crawled outside.

  She popped up into a world that was even less welcoming than the one in which she had gone to sleep. The sky had gone low and wooly, though even in this tiny hour of the night it was as bright out as four o’clock in the afternoon back home.

  It was blowing thirty knots, she estimated, kicking up loose snow that slithered as blurred white snakes across the packed surface of the ground. She counted flags along the route that led to the latrine and could see five. Given that they were spaced about twenty feet apart, that meant that visibility was down to less than one hundred feet.

  Valena considered just hopping over the wall and taking care of business right there but did not want to find out the hard way how cold or unpopular that was going to make her. Five flags was good enough for her, though it was time to get moving or the point was going to be moot.

  It seemed a long walk to the little wooden shack that housed the latrine. Ten flags out from camp, she looked back. The camp had disappeared. Everything was a blurry grayish white, a world of snarling wind and uncertain footing.

  Turning back toward her goal, she continued into the murk, buoyed by a growing sense of liberation. This wildness was what she had come ten thousand miles to experience, and her sense of glory was diminished only by the increasing urgency of her bladder. At length the little wooden shack appeared, resolving itself from the soft grayness first as a brownish smudge and then as increasingly distinct edges gathering into a solid form.

  When she pulled the pin from the clasp that kept it closed, the plywood door to the latrine flew out of her hand and banged open. Backing into the building, she had to use both arms to pull the door shut. As if anyone could see me, she thought, but I’m not dropping my pants in this wind. After pulling almost hard enough to give herself a hernia, she got the door closed and lowered the drop seat of her wind pants and the layers of underwear beneath it. The Styrofoam seat on the latrine was a shock for only a moment.

  On the return trip, her sense of isolation was so complete that anxieties began to grow in her tired mind. Am I walking the wrong direction? she wondered, and, after another five flags, worried, Shouldn’t I be there already?

  At last the vague outlines of the two Scott tents loomed from the blowing plumes of snow, followed by the edges of the block wall and the quinzy, and soon she was close enough to see over the wall into the little town of mountain dome tents. She was home. Funny to think of this as home, she mused, as she slithe
red back down the rabbit hole that led to the quiet warmth of her sleeping bag.

  She lay snug in her bag wondering if this was the kind of weather that had brought death to the reporter from the Financial News.

  Hours later, she awoke as Doris climbed over her and began hurrying into her clothes. “Nature calls,” said the computer specialist, pulling her last zipper up and disappearing down into the hole. Ten seconds later, she reappeared, popping up like a prairie dog, her eyes huge and her hood and shoulders covered with a fine sifting of snow. “I can only see three flags!” she gasped. Indecision stayed with her but an instant, and she was gone.

  Valena listened to the squeaking of many footfalls outside the quinzy. It sounded like most of the rest of the camp was already up.

  Michael rolled toward her and presented her with a divine smile. “Good morning,” he said. “It was nice sleeping with you.”

  Valena laughed. “You too, Michael.”

  “Why don’t you roll up the gear and I’ll get us some nice hot tea,” he said.

  “You’ve talked me into it.”

  Michael got into his clothes and descended into the hole. He, too, returned a moment later with a fringe of tiny snowflakes. “It’s all the way down to condition 1. I hope Doris isn’t caught halfway out or back,” he said. He headed back down into the tunnel.

  “Wait, aren’t you supposed to stay here if you can’t see where you’re going?”

  “I’ll follow the wall from the side of the quinzy to the Scott tent,” he called from the tunnel. “I just can’t wait to know what sort of freeze-dried mush awaits us for breakfast.”

  Valena slithered into her gear and crawled down the tunnel to take a look. Outside, the world had gone completely white. She could vaguely make out the shapes and colors of other campers struggling to take down the dome tents in the wind, and they were less than ten feet from her. So this is what it was like when Emmett Vanderzee went looking for the chute, she thought. No wonder he couldn’t find it!

  Twenty seconds staring into the buffeting void was plenty. Valena dropped back into the tunnel and returned to the snug safety of the snow hut. Alone inside the quinzy, she went about the tasks of packing up the sleep kits. Life had telescoped down to just a few simple necessities. She was at peace.

  Her solitude was shattered by the return of Doris, who looked like she’d been dusted with a liberal coating of confectioner’s sugar. She said, “If I ever try that again, tell me to pee my pants instead, okay?” She then dug inside her personal duffel and produced the two-way radio Manny had given her, fiddled with the knobs, and made her call. “I-hut, this is Happy Camp, how read?”

  Fine static poured from the speaker.

  Doris repeated her call. Five seconds later, Manny’s voice came through the instrument. “Happy Camp, this is I-hut, go ahead.”

  “I-hut, we have condition 1, repeat, condition 1. We have the camp almost struck. We are leaving the two Scotts up until we see you. Request early departure. Over.”

  “H. C., we have same conditions. We’ll come get you when conditions permit. Until then, stay put, stay hydrated, and eat all the chocolate and oatmeal you can stand. You copy?”

  “H. C. copies,” growled Doris.

  “Check in each hour on the hour. Over.”

  “H. C. copies. Each hour on the hour.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No.” She stared at the radio for a moment, then added, “Clear.”

  “I-hut clear.”

  Doris switched off the radio. Her face was a mask of tension. “I’m a computer geek,” she said, as much to herself as to Valena. “What am I doing here?”

  “Having the adventure of a lifetime?”

  Doris turned her gaze toward Valena. She took a breath and let it out abruptly. Under her breath, she muttered, “Beakers.”

  12

  THE FIRST CALLS THAT SIGNALED THE STATE OF EMERgency came shortly before noon. It was the Boss’s voice over the radio that got Dave’s attention. “Challenger 283, this is Fleet Ops, you copy?”

  When the Boss was answered only by silence, Dave put down the tool he had been using to break ice off the steps of his own Challenger and headed toward Building 17, the tight little prefabricated unit that housed the offices of Fleet Operations. What was condition 1 out on the ice was condition 2 in Mac Town, which as usual had its own local version of the weather. It lay cuddled in the shadow of surrounding hills, which dampened the winds enough that it was still possible to walk from building to building without the hazard of getting lost. But most of the heavy equipment operators worked out on the sea ice grooming the runways and flag routes. Those who had been on night shift, at work as the storm closed in, had either managed to head back in to McMurdo before visibility got down below four flags or had hunkered down at the runway galleys. Everyone who had come on the day shift in McMurdo had stayed in McMurdo.

  Inside Building 17, Dave found Cupcake and a handful of other heavy equipment operators swilling strong coffee and munching stale Chips Ahoy cookies. “Hey, Dave!” Cupcake said. “You manage to keep busy this morning?”

  Dave poured himself a cup of coffee. “Yeah.”

  “You’re such a good doobie. Whatcha been up ta?”

  “This and that.” To change the subject, he said, “I heard Happy Camp is pinned down with condition 1.”

  “Naw, they’re on their way in now,” said Wilbur. “It’s starting to lift by the ice runway, too.”

  The radio coughed into life again. “Challenger 283, this is Fleet Ops, you got a copy?” His voice had a pleading note to it.

  Silence.

  Cupcake turned to Dave. “The Boss is calling Steve. Is he out there in this?”

  The radio squawked again. “Challenger 283, this is Fleet Ops, come back please.”

  Joe said, “He was on night shift out at sea ice runway, but he knows what to do when he can’t see where he’s going. He must be in the galley or something.”

  “Yeah,” said Dave. “He knows to stay put and catch up on his sleep.”

  “Then why ain’t he responding?” Wilbur asked. “He ain’t such a heavy sleeper.”

  The radio crackled again. “Challenger 283, this is Fleet Ops, come back please.”

  A thin static filled their ears, but no reply from Steve.

  Wilbur said, “He don’t usually ask ‘please.’ Sumpin’s up.”

  Dave stood up and moved into the Boss’s office, which had a window that looked out over the sea ice. The scene was still dark with storm clouds. A hundred yards down the hill from the building, he could just make out the blurred form of someone trudging up the hill toward the post office, leaning into the wind, parka hood up and cinched close to the nose.

  The Boss sat at his desk with the radio microphone in his hand. He looked up as if drawn from deep thoughts. “You heard from Steve this morning, Dave?”

  “No, I have not.” He looked out the window. A gust of wind was abating, and he could see a dance of swirling snow that led clear down the hill onto the ice. “I can see the tails on the Hercs sticking up out of the blow. It’s clearing up.”

  The Boss gave him a look. “I may be sitting with my back to the window at this moment, Dave, but I have been looking out from time to time. It requires only that I push with one foot to swivel my chair the requisite one hundred and eighty degrees. I have the technology.”

  Dave offered no rejoinder. The Boss was firm, but he was a nice guy. Getting cranky like this meant that he was worried. Dave said, “What’s the sitch, Boss?”

  “I sent him out there last night with 283 before it got bad, because I wanted someone there in case things improved enough to get a flight in and the runway needed plowing. I knew he’d be pinned down for a while, but he doesn’t seem to mind the food out at the runway galley.”

  Now the man was not only being polite, he was apologizing and explaining. This was bad.

  The others had followed him into the Boss’s office and now stood clustered aroun
d the man’s desk. Cupcake said, “Yeah, Steve’ll eat anything. You think maybe he’s just gone in for lunch?”

  “No, they just phoned me to ask where he is. They’re counting heads, like. They said he was there for breakfast, but they haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “They think he went out to take a nap in the Challenger, maybe?”

  “They checked. It’s not there.”

  “Maybe he turned his radio off, or maybe—”

  The Boss keyed his mike one more time. “Challenger 283, this is Fleet Ops. Kindly respond, Bucko.”

  They all tensed as the radio crackled, but when the static resolved itself into a voice, it was a woman’s. “Fleet Ops, this is Mac Ops, do you have a problem you wish to report? Over.”

  The Boss stared into space. Admitting to Mac Ops that he had a problem was admitting to himself that one of his people was at serious risk. He keyed the mike. “Mac Ops, we have a man not responding to radio coms. We are trying to ascertain his position. Over.”

  “How do you wish to proceed? Over.”

  “I guess we’d better give him another couple minutes and then go find him.” After two or three heartbeats, he added, “Over.”

  “Mac Ops copies. Call back in five.”

  “Fleet Ops clear.” The Boss picked up the phone and dialed the sea ice runway galley. “Can you see his tractor?” His face tightened as he listened to the answer to his question. “Damn. Keep me posted anything changes. I’ll do the same.” He hung up. Leaned back in his chair. Puffed up his cheeks and blew out a long, wheezing breath. Stared at the ceiling.