Icequake

by Crawford Kilian

  “God, I was so worried about you,” she murmured. “We all thought you’d be here in no time, but then it was two weeks, and I was sure you were all dead.”

  “And I was sure you’d crashed the Otter.” He lightly touched her belly, feeling the baby’s kicks and tapping gently back at it.

  “I feel like a bloody cow.”

  “More like a cheetah with a good breakfast.”

  Jeanne began to cry. “Will, I’m scared again”

  *

  Late in the evening of August 3 Hugh and Carter sat down with Al and Bob Price in the mess hall. The huts were quiet at last. All four men looked exhausted. Al had cracked lips, with scabs that kept breaking, and his hands were mottled pink and grey. Bob was in better shape, but his clothes hung loosely on him. Hugh’s red moustache was turning off-white, and his eyes seemed a little unfocused; Carter, now that the traverse was over, felt dizzy with fatigue and relief.

  “The main problem is fuel,” Al said. “We gotta run the generator around the clock — not just for this place, but for the Herc. With all the available heaters going, we can at least keep the hydraulics from seizing up. And we have to keep the plane’s batteries charged. But we only have a little more fuel available. Unless we want to freeze, we gotta get out of here by the 7th or 8th.”

  “Can we do that?” asked Hugh.

  Al nodded. “If the weather cooperates. Kyril and I are gonna need another day, maybe, to check everything out. If the wind drops, it’ll take a day to dig out — ”

  “Yes?” said Hugh.

  “But I’m worried about the skis. They’re really frozen in, and it’ll be some job to get ’em loose.”

  “We’ll manage,” Carter said. “So it’s just the weather.”

  Al turned and smiled blackly at him. “Yeah, just the weather.” He guffawed, and the others joined in.

  “What if something goes wrong?” Carter asked. “Suppose the weather stays bad for a week or more?”

  “We start running out of everything,” Bob said. “Food, fuel, water — there’s just not enough to keep thirty-three people going for very long. Four or five could winter over all right, but not everybody.”

  “Well, if we are stuck,” Hugh said, “we’ll eat the pessimists first.”

  *

  All the next day the wind blew. Al and Kyril worked inside the Hercules, sometimes drafting two or three others to help for a while. When Penny went outside for a few minutes at noon, she saw the plane glowing crimson under a flaming sky. Lights burned in the big flight-deck windows. She was about to get in out of the wind and drift when one of the Here’s starboard engines boomed into life. The propeller blades merged into a shimmering red disc, and the noise drowned out the wind. Then another engine caught, and the third and fourth. The plane’s nose turned golden as a limb of the sun rose — by diffraction — above the Grid South horizon. A moment later it was gone again, but the big engines kept up their thunder.

  Penny went back inside and hugged the first person she saw; it was Howie. “We’re really going to go,” she shouted. “We’re — you should see what it looks like out there, with those engines going and the lights on and — ”

  “Aw, calm down,” Gordon said. “Think you’d never seen an aeroplane before.”

  *

  That night yet another blizzard hit. It was one of the worst of the winter, with winds that never dropped below 100 k.p.h. A marathon Monopoly tournament started after supper, and went on all night and all the next day. Al, Kyril and their helpers played as energetically as everyone else. The air in the mess hall was thick with smoke and profanity, but no one seemed perturbed by the weather.

  Around suppertime on August 5 the Jamesways shook briefly: another quake. It caused little comment and no concern. It was as if everyone had grown jaded with danger; people preferred to gossip, insult each other, and plan their homecomings.

  An hour later Bruce Robinson yelled “Shuddup!” He had been sitting at the radio, headphones on and a growing stack of empty beer cans under his chair. Conversation stopped dead. For a minute or two Bruce scrawled rapidly, then took off his headphones and stood up.

  “Got something from Australia,” he told the people in the mess hall. “They have an unconfirmed report that President Wood has resigned and handed over executive power to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A military government has been formed in Britain. And a typhoon has wrecked Darwin. Which never was much to begin with,” he added.

  “Know what I’m gonna do when we get home?” Gordon asked. “Going to move into a hotel in Calgary and drink myself stupid until autumn. Then I’m gonna go get a job in someplace like Saudi Arabia. Between the booze and the heat, I figure I’ll thaw out by this time next year.”

  “If you melt the permafrost between your ears, you’ll have mud for brains,” Ben remarked. Gordon ignored him — which, for Gordon, was equivalent to retreat.

  “For some of us,” Max Wilhelm said, “it’ll be easy to decide what to do. We’ll just get back to New Zealand, go home and go back to work.

  There was an uncomfortable silence. After all the months of speculation, they realised they would soon be in a world very different from the one they had left last year. At length, Yevgeni said: “All scientists, all technicians, they will need. Every place will be good place for us.”

  “Probably for all the wrong reasons,” Colin added.

  *

  Early the next morning Will tapped lightly on the Varenkovs’ door. Ivan opened it. “Jeanne says she’s lost the mucous plug.”

  “What is — ? Oh.” He turned and called to his wife in Russian. Katerina appeared in the doorway, buttoning her shirt.

  “When?”

  “Sometime during the night.”

  “I will come to see her very soon.”

  She quickly examined Jeanne. “Well, it will not be long now. Everything looks all right, but it will be early. Having you been doing your breathing exercises?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I will be back later.”

  She went into the next Jamesway and found George Hills. He woke slowly and heavily.

  “George, I need you to build for me an incubator.”

  “A what?”

  Patiently, she sketched her requirements on the plywood wall: a solid, double-walled box that could hold plenty of insulation. A small heating coil in the base would be plugged in to the huts’ electrical system. “Or into the system of the aeroplane. Can you do this?”

  “Oh, I guess. Have to talk to Al. But I think so.”

  “Very good. I will need it by noon.”

  By breakfast time, everyone knew Jeanne might have her baby very soon. The atmosphere in the mess hall was subdued; the blizzard was still going strong. Hugh held a meeting that morning, as much to give people something to do as to plan the details of the evacuation. After lunch most of the men met in smaller groups to plan loading, snow clearing and the flight itself. A few people irritably did the inevitable chores: refuelling the generator, filling the snow melter, cooking and cleaning up. Penny found herself working with the Dolans again, but now that the flight was so close she didn’t mind. Every time I wash a dish for the rest of my life, I’ll think of the ice.

  So the day passed.

  *

  Between 0500 and 0600 hours on August 7 the blizzard ended.

  A dead calm hung over the Shelf, and the stars glittered in a clear sky. Al Neal stood outside the Jamesways and looked around. The snow was thick and soft, at least on top; a few centimetres down it seemed hard-packed. In the distance the Hercules rose like a long hill, heavily drifted over. The Otter stood not far from it, with only its tail and one wing showing above the snow.

  The cold made Al’s teeth hurt badly. He went back inside, where the American geologists were having breakfast with Penny and Suzy.

  “It really looks good out there,” Al said. “But I don’t know how long it’ll last. Let’s get everybody up.”

  “Only quietly,” Penny urged.
“Jeanne didn’t sleep well. Katerina thinks the baby might — ” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Al, we can’t go today. We can’t.”

  “Not with a baby due any minute,” Suzy agreed.

  Al looked distressed. “Kids, it’s now or never. We could lose this weather by noon, for all we know.”

  “You better talk to Katerina,” Penny said. “Then wake up the others.”

  He tugged his white beard. “Damn it, you talk to her. I’ve got better things to do.” And he strode angrily into the tunnel to the next hut.

  “Wow, is he angry!” Suzy whispered. “I never heard him swear before.”

  “Me neither,” Penny said. “Look, I’ll start getting breakfast ready. You go get Katerina.” Then she added: “Gee — the kid might even get born in a proper hospital.”

  “You don’t have to sound so disappointed,” Bob said.

  *

  By 0645 the mess hall was crowded with men who bolted their hotcakes and sausages and hurried outside. Hugh, Carter and Bob went from table to table, assigning people to different jobs. The temperature was down to -40°C, and it wasn’t until well after 0700 that blowtorches and the flamethrower had warmed the bulldozers’ engines enough to let them be started. After that, the huts shook whenever the D4 or D8 passed nearby.

  Katerina ignored the vibration in the floor as she sat beside Jeanne’s bed, watching the sweep hand of her wristwatch.

  “Only ten seconds,” she said when Jeanne gasped and nodded. “And the contractions are still twenty minutes apart. It will be several hours, maybe a day, before the delivery.”

  “God, I really timed it well, didn’t I…”

  “Yes. Suppose it had come while we were still on the traverse. How would these men have done?”

  “Ugh. I don’t want to think about it. Katerina, am I going to be all right? Really?”

  Katerina’s deep laugh boomed out. “You will be very good.”

  *

  Penny and the Dolans hastily prepared food for the journey: sandwiches, soup, cold cuts and big urns of coffee. Around 1030 they lugged it all outside in cardboard boxes. The sky and the snow were the same predawn pink. The bulldozers were working around the sides of the Hercules, clearing away the drifts. As they approached the plane, Penny saw a dozen men digging and chopping at the snow around the nose landing gear. One of them was Steve; he paused as Penny and the Dolans came by.

  “How’s it going?” Penny asked.

  “Not fast. The snow and ash are mixed together like cement.” He grinned at her and went back to work.

  As she followed the Dolans in through the crew door on the port side, Penny could see the problem: the plane was low-slung, and the whole underside of the fuselage was buried in compacted drift. Tom Vernon, driving the D4, was clearing most of it away, but he couldn’t get too close or the fuselage might be damaged; it had to be cleared away with shovels, axes and even hands.

  The interior of the Hercules was almost as cold as the outside. They stowed their boxes in the galley, just ahead of the crew door, and Penny took a quick look around. With the lights on and the snow cleared away, the plane looked very different from the last time she’d seen it. The flight deck was littered with tools, tattered maintenance manuals and the remains of meals; the cargo compartment looked even more cavernous than before, now that it was cleared and lit. The aft cargo door was open, and men were hauling in boxes and duffel bags while others lashed them down in the broad aisle between the rows of seats. Near the cargo door Katerina supervised Ben and Simon as they rigged a stretcher along the wall. The white glare of the overhead lights, reflecting on the frosted walls, reminded Penny of Shacktown, and she felt a pang of homesickness.

  “Come on, Pen,” Terry said. “Let’s get the hell back inside and warm up. These buggers’ll want elevenses pretty soon.”

  *

  When everyone was in the mess hall for coffee and sandwiches, Hugh stood up.

  “We are about ready to go,” he said quietly. “Al tells me the aircraft is in good shape for the flight. But I want everyone to understand that this will be a very dangerous trip. It’s almost five thousand kilometres to Christchurch. We have no idea what the weather will be like en route. If anything goes wrong, and we go into the sea, we will have virtually no chance of survival. And there is always the chance of something going wrong, even in the best of circumstances. If anyone chooses to stay here, they should be fairly comfortable until spring. There will surely be flights to the ice then, and anyone here could count on being picked up.”

  No one spoke.

  “Very good,” Hugh went on. “Then good luck to us all. We’ll be in Christchurch by suppertime, I trust.”

  While most of the people went aboard, a small crew resumed cutting the Hercules’ landing gear free of the snow. Once a ski was cleared, the crew forced tar paper under it to keep it from refreezing to the snow. Ben Whitcumb then went along the sides of the plane with the flamethrower, melting the last few lumps of ice from the fuselage. By noon the job was done. Will and Howie carried Jeanne out on a stretcher and made her as comfortable as possible.

  “I feel such a twit, with everyone else doing something,” she said to Will.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. “Still, it’s a pity the baby couldn’t have been born in Antarctica.”

  “Oh, Will, I’m sorry.” She started to cry.

  “Och, there, there,” he consoled her. “I’m only joking, love.” He patted her hand and she calmed herself. Then he strapped himself into the seat at the foot of her stretcher; Katerina was sitting by her head.

  Carter came aft, checking to make sure everyone was aboard and strapped in. “It’ll be a rough take-off,” he said quietly to Will. “And this beast climbs like a rocket. Keep an eye on her.”

  “I will.”

  A few seconds later the engines started. The noise reminded Penny of the beginning of the surge, and she realised that it had been exactly six months since the icequake. She found herself gripping Steve’s hand more tightly than necessary; he smiled at her and squeezed back. The plane began to vibrate, and the pitch of the engines rose, but nothing happened.

  The engines stopped. People began to mutter and laugh, their breaths frosty in the chill air. Al appeared in the doorway to the flight deck.

  “We’re still frozen in,” he announced. “I need some people to get outside and see what the problem is. Ben, where’s your flamethrower?”

  “I left it outside.”

  Ben was on his feet. Steve and Howie unstrapped themselves and followed him forward.

  There was a long, tense wait. Penny could faintly hear scrapes and bangs under the fuselage. Across the aisle Katerina took out a cigarette and then put it back in her pocket. Ivan touched her hand. Jeanne gasped and began breathing in a controlled rhythm, her face to the wall.

  The scraping and banging ended. Penny got up and went to the latrine at the rear of the cargo compartment. When she came out a minute later, there was a confused babble of shouts from the front, and a crowd was milling around the door to the flight deck. Steve’s face, blackened and savage, appeared in the doorway:

  “Katerina!”

  She unstrapped herself, grabbed her medical bag from between her feet, and ran to the door. The crowd pulled away, but not quickly enough for Steve. He shoved Gordon and Simon roughly out of Katerina’s way.

  “Somebody get a stretcher!” he shouted.

  There was one stowed under Jeanne’s; Ivan pulled it out and hobbled forward with it.

  Hugh got everyone seated. “We’ve had an accident,” he said. “A bad one. Ben… Ben Whitcumb is dead.” He took a deep breath. “The damned fuel tank on his flamethrower exploded. He — he was very badly burned — went into shock — and died.”

  “God rest his soul,” George Hills said, crossing himself.

  A few minutes later Steve and Howie carried the stretcher into the cargo compartment. Ben’s body had been wrapped in an orange nylon tent. They lashed it to th
e icy metal floor. The stink of gasoline and burned flesh filled the compartment.

  “All right,” said Hugh. “Everyone strap in.”

  The engines started again. Steve slumped back into his seat, and the scorched smell was thick on his clothes. He leaned towards Penny, his voice faint over the growing roar of the engines.

  “He was just unstrapping the tank. I don’t know why it happened; maybe he didn’t shut the valve completely. But it just — blew up in his face. His clothes caught fire — ”

  She gagged, and shook her head; she didn’t want to hear any more.

  “ — we rolled him in the snow”, but his clothes were soaked with gas. He kept — and then he just convulsed, and died.”

  The Hercules bumped, and heaved, and began to move. Steve leaned back and closed his eyes. His beard was singed half-off and his eyebrows were gone. The front of his green anorak was full of black-edged holes. Penny took his hand very gently, and held it as the plane gained speed and lifted abruptly from the ice. — It isn’t fair, it just isn’t goddam fair! She felt tears run coldly down her face.

  There were not many portholes in the cargo compartment; the nearest one was across the aisle and several metres forward. Through it. Penny could see a tilted surface of pink and black. Then, as they climbed still higher, the porthole blazed with the blinding yellow light of the risen sun.

  Chapter 15 – North

  For the first three hundred kilometres, the weather held clear. Seven kilometres below, the Shelf stretched endlessly in all directions, its irregular surface red and black under the low rays of the sun. They were well to the north — true north — of Cape Adare, and out over the Southern Ocean, but the Shelf seemed as solid as it had been on the traverse.

  Al paid little attention to the view. It was good to be flying a Herc again, but without a co-pilot or navigator he was working very hard. Kyril, as flight engineer, monitored the plane’s systems, but if anything went wrong Al would have to fix it — if it could be fixed.

  Hugh sat in the co-pilot’s chair, silent and grim. When Al finally put the Herc on autopilot and paused to light a cigar, Hugh said: