Icequake

by Crawford Kilian

  *

  On July 17 the convoy stopped for maintenance and repairs. Steve and Will took advantage of the pause to fire some seismic shots; when they came into the wanigan for lunch, Carter and Ben gaped at them.

  “You two look sunburned,” Carter said.

  Steve touched his cheeks and nose, but they were numb with cold. He found a small mirror and looked at himself. Carter was right: Steve’s face was dark red, and hard little blisters had already formed on his nose. Will was burned, too.

  “We must be getting some diffracted ultraviolet,” Steve said. “Can you get Gerry on the radio?”

  He asked Gerry to monitor ultraviolet intensity; a few minutes later Gerry called back to say he’d gotten a reading almost as high as those recorded in the summer weeks after the icequake. “We better be careful,” Gerry added. “How do your eyes feel?”

  “They itch,” Steve replied.

  “Yeah. You must’ve burned ’em a little.”

  “Christ,” Steve murmured after Gerry signed off. “If the ultraviolet is this bad here, what’s it like where the sun is shining?”

  “Worse,” said Will.

  *

  Later that day one of the DB’s sledges was abandoned, and the loads on the others were redistributed. So much fuel had been burned that Carter began to doubt whether the whole convoy would make it to Outer Willy. There was so little petrol left that he decided to save it for the pony engines, and the snowmobiles were left behind as well. Gordon and Roger were not sorry.

  For some days temperatures had stayed between -60° and -40°; on the 19th the sky clouded over and the temperature rose in an hour from -45° to -15°. By 1500 hours a blizzard stalled the convoy near a pressure ridge, and there they stayed.

  On the second day of the blizzard, Carter made a routine radio check with the other vehicles. There was no answer from Sno-Cat 2. After trying to raise them for five minutes, Carter gave up and called Sean in the Nodwell, which was parked next to the Sno-Cat.

  “I hate to ask it of you,” he told Sean, “but could you just pop across and see what the problem is?”

  “No problem,” Sean grunted. “I was just about to walk the dog anyway.”

  The Nodwell, like all the other vehicles, was almost completely drifted over. Sean, with help from Herm and Ray, managed to force open the rear door and dig his way out of the drift. With a safety line tied to his waist, he groped his way to the dark mound of the Sno-Cat and then to the wanigan behind it. He dug away part of the drift over the door and pounded on the plywood. There was no response. He shouted, but the wind drowned him out.

  Growing frightened, Sean began shovelling at the drift, throwing the powdery snow back into the wind. The cold clamped hard on his arms and legs and began working inward to his chest and belly. The only light came from the cab of the Nodwell, where part of one window was clear. It was just a few metres away, but made only a ghostly yellow blur in the screaming night.

  At last he was able to yank the door open. A lamp was on, but nothing moved. By the time Sean wrestled his way in, snow filled the wanigan with billions of glittering-cold sparks. A primus stove burned against the rear wall; the four men lay unmoving in their sleeping bags. When he saw their flushed, almost purplish complexions, Sean heaved the door open again and wedged it in place. The wanigan was full of carbon monoxide.

  After a minute Tim began to stir, and then Max and Colin. Terry Dolan took longest to come to. Sean turned off the primus, shut the door and got on the radio.

  “Carter, this is Sean. They nearly caught it — monoxide. But I think they’ll be all right. Katerina, can you hear me?”

  “Yes. I will be there as soon as I am dressed.”

  The four men were very sick for the next couple of days, but by the time the blizzard finally blew itself out they were fully recovered. Carter ordered regular ventilation checks to be made thereafter, and there were no more incidents. Sean’s nose, however, was grotesquely swollen with frostbite, and he had bad dreams for the next few nights.

  After a week’s hibernation everyone was impatient to get moving, but it took a full day to dig out the vehicles and warm their engines. At 1700 hours on July 27 they set out and made good progress until the next morning, when they had to bulldoze through another pressure ridge.

  The sun was close below the horizon now; the sky reddened as early as 1000 hours and didn’t darken until past 1500. But Gerry’s ultraviolet readings grew more ominous. What little UV diffracted to their latitude was as much as three times normal daylight intensity. In the outside world, Gerry estimated, ultraviolet must be seven to eight times normal.

  “That ain’t the worst of it,” he said to Carter over the radio. “When you lose the ozone layer, you start cooling right down to the surface. Not much — maybe half a degree Celsius, overall. But that gets you halfway to an ice age all by itself, without the surge.”

  “So much for the greenhouse theory,” Steve put in. “They’ve been saying for years that we’re putting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the earth would be warmer by the turn of the century than it’s been in eight thousand years. Even if that were true, the only way to overcome the present cooling would be to burn every drop of oil, and every stick of wood, as fast as possible.”

  “I hate gloaters,” Carter snorted.

  *

  The D4 burned out a bearing on July 30, and was abandoned. Its wanigan was attached to the Nodwell, and the men in it — Tom Vernon, George Hills, Gordon Ellerslee and Roger Wykstra — became regular visitors in the tractor.

  By August 1, when another quake hit, the strain was getting to all of them. No one had expected the traverse to take this long; the tonnes of fuel were almost all gone, and so was the food. Carter estimated the convoy to be no more than thirty kilometres from Outer Willy, but there was scarcely enough diesel fuel even for that distance.

  Will, Tim and Steve made a scouting trip on skis after the quake, to see if any crevasses lay across the convoy’s path. While they were gone, everyone slept or talked or played games.

  The wind was rising. It thumped the walls, moaned, threw snow hissing against the windows. In the cabin, with only a small battery lamp to illuminate it, the shadows were deep and cold. Penny tried to warm her hands between her thighs. How had she ever enjoyed being snowbound?

  She dreamed, half-awake, that she was outside trying to find Steve in the darkness. She was naked; her bare feet sank deep in the snow, and she knew she would freeze in just a few more moments. She called him, but the wind muffled her, choked her; she was coughing blood the way she had on the walk back from the helicopter. Steve, Steve, I’m bleeding! She waited for the grip of his hands on her shoulders, but it never came.

  Somewhere far away there were voices, then a blast of cold air and a slamming door. Penny woke to see three bulky shapes standing in the cabin, their faces muffled. One of them squatted awkwardly beside her bunk. He pulled off his ice-crusted wool mask and brushed frost from his beard.

  “Hi, Pen,” Steve said quietly. “Could we have a cup of tea? We brought our own snow in.”

  “I love you,” Penny said. He looked surprised. A little hesitantly, he took off one of his bear-paw mitts, the leather glove beneath it, and then the wool shell. He reached out and touched her cheek.

  “Your face is warm,” he smiled.

  “Your hand is freezing. I still love you.”

  “I love you, too. How about some tea?”

  While the kettle clanked and pinged on the primus, Steve got on the radio to Carter. “We just got in; we’re in the Nodwell.”

  “How’s the surface up ahead?”

  “Good. A few sastrugi fields, but nothing bad. No crevasses. But listen, Carter — we’re closer than we thought. There’s an ice island only about ten kilometres away. I’m pretty sure it’s Outer Willy.”

  Chapter 14 – Iceway

  Ten minutes after the convoy got underway that evening, Sno-Cat 1 lost its right rear track. Carter ordered it
and its sledge abandoned, and moved into the wanigan behind Sno-Cat 2. The others scattered to various parts of the convoy; Steve and Will crowded into the Nodwell.

  There was nothing to see through the windshield but the D4’s sledge a few metres ahead, and an occasional aluminium pole left by the ski party to mark the route. The wind-crust glittered in the headlights; the sky had a faint reddish tint from dust particles high enough to reflect the light of the sun.

  Penny and Steve sat together on her bunk, talking and laughing with the others. The cabin still smelled of the lamb curry they’d had for dinner, and Don had miraculously produced six bottles of Swan Beer.

  They reached the ice island just after midnight on the morning of August 3. It rose only about ten metres above the Shelf, and its sides were mostly gentle slopes. The temperature was rising; another storm would be upon them soon. Carter ordered the ski party out to reconnoitre a safe path up the slopes.

  “If you can’t find a good route by 0300, come straight back,” he told them. “I’m not going to lose anybody when we’re this close.”

  “If this isn’t Outer Willy,” Howie broke in, “don’t come back at all.”

  Penny went outside with Steve and Will; Tim skied up from the D8’s wanigan.

  “You guys ready?” he asked.

  “All set,” Will nodded. He looked up at the sky: the reddish glow had vanished in a thickening overcast. “We’d better make it fast.”

  “Break a leg,” Penny said.

  Steve patted her arm, and grinned through his wool mask. “Don’t worry.”

  It wasn’t easy for two people in thick anoraks to embrace, but they managed. Then the three men were off, vanishing into the ice fog around the convoy.

  They were back in less than two hours, with the storm at their heels. After talking briefly with Carter, they returned to their vehicles. When Steve and Will came into the Nodwell, Carter’s voice was already on the radio:

  “ — they’ve marked out a route, but if we wait for the storm to blow over, the poles could be buried. And we don’t have enough fuel left to let the engines idle for two or three days. So we’re going up the hill right away. Howie, you’ll go first. Then Tim, then Sean, and John will follow up. Any problems? Any questions? — Right, let’s go.”

  The convoy travelled less than a kilometre along the Grid West side of the island before reaching a hard, gradual slope. The fluorescent-orange pennants on the marker poles were snapping violently in the wind, and blowing snow crackled against windscreens, loud enough to be heard even over the engines. Howie was an experienced trailbreaker by now; he found the easiest surfaces and bulldozed right through any unavoidable obstacles without even pausing. But as they neared the top of the slope, the wind increased and snow thickened, blowing horizontally across the top of the island.

  Penny had taken a turn at the wheel of the Nodwell, and swore as the tractor bellowed up off the slope on to the flat surface at the top. The snow was so thick and swift that it created a miniature whiteout in her headlights. Outside that wedge of seething white there was nothing but blackness and noise.

  Visibility was now almost zero. The interior of the Nodwell was full of snowflakes. Conversations died. Everyone huddled in sleeping bags, trying to keep warm. Despite the hot air forced in between the double panes of the windscreen, frost kept forming on the glass; every few minutes Steve had to scrape it off. Finally he picked up the microphone and called Carter.

  “I think we’d better call a halt. We can’t see a thing, not even Tim’s sledges. We could drive right past Outer Willy and never see it.”

  “You’re right, Steve. Okay, everybody, we’ll make camp — ”

  “Nonsense,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Just use your RDF, for God’s sake. You can’t be more than a couple of kilometres away.”

  Steve guffawed. “Hugh! You old bugger — why didn’t you call before?”

  “It wasn’t for lack of trying. We’ve been picking you up for the last two days, off and on. And trying to raise you.”

  “Well,” said Carter. “Well, by God, put another onion in the soup and we’ll be there before you know it.”

  Sno-Cat 2 had the best RDF equipment in the convoy, so it replaced the D8 as lead vehicle. The radios were full of crackling and babbling as everyone tried to talk with the people at Outer Willy. Katerina and Will alternately grilled Jeanne and fretted over her; Terry and Suzy exchanged shy, caustic greetings; one of the Russians, probably Yevgeni, kept yelling, “Monopoly! Monopoly! Gordon, we play Monopoly!”

  At 0658 hours on August 3 the convoy halted alongside a row of drifted-over Jamesway huts. One of them had a light burning above its doorway, just visible through the blowing snow. Carter sent people inside a few at a time, and made sure all the vehicles were empty before he himself cut off the Sno-Cat’s engine and plunged out into the wind. Twenty steps took him to the door; he went into the cold porch and slammed the door shut behind him. The floor of the cold porch was a trampled mass of snow and discarded anoraks. The interior of the Jamesway sounded like a wild party.

  Carter took off his anorak and added it to the pile on the floor. Then he turned and slammed his fist exultantly against the outer door, jubilantly uncaring that bits of skin stuck frozen to it.

  “Did it. Did it!”

  *

  The celebration lasted all day. Terry took over the cooking from Suzy, and fixed a second breakfast that started with steaks and eggs and ended, several courses later, with pancakes and waffles in strawberry jam. The aroma of fresh-ground coffee overcame even the stink of over thirty unwashed bodies; evilly exquisite cigarette smoke thickened the air. The American geologists were shyly genial hosts and proudly escorted everyone around: the Jamesway was now linked by snow tunnels to three adjoining ones, all snug and warm, that had been used as dormitories for the original station personnel. There was even a separate women’s toilet and shower.

  “We got enough water in the snow melter for everybody to take a shower if they want,” Earl said with an embarrassed smile.

  Penny and Katerina looked at each other. “Shall we?” asked Penny.

  “Of course.”

  Somehow it was stranger to stand naked in a stream of hot water than to rot in an anorak. Penny looked down at her body as if it belonged to someone else: it was thinner than she remembered, and harder; her skin was pale and even the freckles seemed to have faded. Her groin and armpits were chafed and reddened, cracked to bleeding in places, and the skin on her hands and face was dry and rough. But the sensation of wrapping a towel around wet, clean hair was worth all the discomfort. Draped in a blanket, she hurried into the cubicle she’d been given and found Steve just dropping off her duffel bag.

  “I thought you’d probably want a change of clothes,” he said, “so I went out and got your gear.”

  She pushed the door shut with her hip and let her blanket drop.

  *

  Katerina and Ivan sat together in the mess hall after she came back, fresh and smiling, from her shower. They wanted to hold hands, but it was nekulturny to do so in front of their celibate companions. She studied Ivan, Yevgeni and Kyril as they talked; all seemed well, though Kyril’s face and hands showed signs of recent frostbite.

  “And how is the aeroplane?” said Katerina.

  Kyril gave her a golden smile. “What a machine! It is almost ready. The booster hydraulic system was leaking, and there were some minor things as well. We’ve been checking it out for the past week. All the engines are working well. But the plane will have to be dug out, and that will be hard. Especially after these blizzards.”

  “But we really can fly it to New Zealand?”

  “We’d better hope so,” said Ivan. “There’s not enough food here to keep us all until spring.”

  “And when could we go?”

  “Ask Al.” Ivan beckoned to Al Neal, who had been talking animatedly to Hugh and Carter. Al came over; he looked thinner, and his beard and ponytail were longer. When he smiled, Katerina
saw that his front teeth were only blackened stumps.

  “Your teeth — ” she said.

  “Believe it or not, they froze and cracked about three weeks ago. Darn annoying, but I’ll get ’em fixed in New Zealand. How are you, Kate?”

  “Very well, thank you. How good it is to see you! And the plane is ready to fly.”

  “Almost. When the wind dies down, Kyril and I will run some last-minute checks while everybody else digs the plane out. By the time that’s done, we ought to be ready.”

  *

  Katerina’s examination of Jeanne was slow and thorough. When it was over she called Will into the cubicle. Jeanne and Katerina sat on the bunk; Will squatted against the raw plywood wall.

  “It looks good, but not as good as I would like. You are young and strong, but this is no place to be pregnant. You are underweight for seven months, and the baby has already dropped.”

  “Not sorry about that. At least I can breathe again.”

  “Yes, but you may very likely deliver prematurely. Anywhere else, it could be prevented or delayed. But here I can do nothing except to keep you rested until we fly.”

  “That’s no problem either,” Jeanne grinned. “I’m too bloody pooped to do anything.” She winked at Will. “You’re sleeping in the top bunk, mate.”

  “Judging from the looks of you, there’d be no room in the bottom one,” Will said. “Don’t worry, Katerina — I’ll see she gets plenty of rest.”

  When Katerina left, Will moved shyly over to sit beside her. It was good to put his arms around her again, to smell her hair.