Antarctica (50 page)

“We have five e-bags,” Carlos said. “With nine people, that’s enough for a week, maybe ten days if we go hungry. It’s not bad, but it sounds like we are not high priority in McMurdo. It might not be enough.”

“We could wait and see,” Wade said, “and when we only had a day or two left, go on down.”

“Yes, we could. But by that time Shackleton Camp may have been evacuated. Then we would be low priority again. I would rather do something now. And also, you have this man who is warmed up but not really conscious yet. I don’t know what that means, but …”

Val nodded to herself.

“It would be good to get him to McMurdo soon,” Jim said.

“Yes it would,” Val agreed.

Jorge and Elspeth seemed willing. Ta Shu merely watched them, as if it were not his call to make.

“We should get down there,” Val finally told her group.

“I don’t think we can walk it,” Elspeth said.

“No. But we have the hovercraft.”

She looked at each of them in turn, and they nodded their comprehension. They had already been through a lot, X saw, and they trusted Val.

“Tell you what,” Carlos said, “I’ll start up the hovercraft, and we’ll take it for a trial run right here outside the dock, make sure we know what we’re doing. If it looks good to you, we can go for it.”

So X and Carlos went forward to the controls, and sat in the two pilots’ seats, and looked around at the intimidating banks of control consoles. At that moment it looked to X like the inside of an airplane cockpit. He had watched Geraldo and German pilot the craft to Mohn and back, but that, he saw now, was not enough.

As they went over the controls together it became clear to X that they had an unspoken agreement not to discuss the many banks of toggles, switches, gauges and dials of which they were completely ignorant. They focused instead on the few things they knew which were crucial for running the thing: ignition, steering wheel, thrust throttles, lifter controls, outrigger deployment toggles. X nodded as Carlos named everything. The lifters and outriggers were the copilot’s only responsibilities. They seemed manageable.

The two men grinned nervously at each other. “No problem,” Carlos declared.

“Let’s see,” X said.

Carlos turned on the engines. Muffled roar from behind and below, vibration all through the metal of the craft. They waited while the engines warmed up. This hovercraft was old, X saw, looking at the finger-polished tops of the toggles. A Hake 1500a. At some time in its life, no doubt its stint at Corrosion Corner, the outriggers had been added to give the craft more resistance to side winds and small inclines. By and large the craft was intended for flat surfaces only, like water or sea ice; in strong winds, or traversing any kind of slope, it tended to sideslip pretty badly, floating as it was on its own air cushion, with little or no contact with the ground. The enterprising engineers who had reworked the craft had therefore welded and bolted booms onto the sides, with a hydraulic system to lower them down onto the ice or raise them again. At the ends of the booms hung what looked to be snowmobiles stripped to their functional essence; when the booms were lowered and the snowmobiles’ engines turned on, their tracks would engage the ice and do their best to haul the whole craft in that direction, which gave the hovercraft some traction to that side. X had seen them deployed, and the system worked pretty well, helping the hovercraft to glide up and down the gentle undulations of the polar ice without sideslipping into basins on the side.

Carlos had traveled with Geraldo and German on a route they had worked out down the steeper sections of the Zaneveld Glacier’s descent to Shackleton Camp, and now he found their maps marking the route in the craft’s computer, which X saw was a later addition, stuck on the dashboard and plugged in.

“Okay, try the lift fans.”

X found that the levers controlling these were extremely stiff, and had to be shoved up by main force; but when he did that the air intakes in the roof aft of them buzzed, the fan engines whined, the skirts that held in the air bellied out to their full extension, and the body of the hovercraft rose up off the ice, with only a single thump of the metal tub.

When they were fully lifted, Carlos gave the thruster of the propeller fan a push forward. That engine proved to run several thousand rpm faster for every centimeter he moved the thruster, so that the craft jerked and slid forward over the ice, tilting down a tiny bit.

“Jeez,” X said, “who did the ergonomics on these controls?”

“An idiot,” Carlos said.
“Where
are Geraldo and German? Goddamned Argentinians …”

“I thought they were Chilean.”

“Well, now they are Argentinians.”

Carlos turned the steering wheel gently. In this case the control was less sensitive; it took nearly a full revolution of the wheel to get the craft to change direction even slightly.

“A total idiot. Still, we can do it. See, we are going in a circle. Here, better slow down,” knocking the thruster level back down to idle.

“What about brakes?” X asked.

“No brakes. If you really want to brake, you turn the craft around and hit the thrusters, and that slows it down.”

“Great.”

“Well, how are you going to have brakes when you aren’t touching the ground? I suppose deploying both the outriggers would slow you down.”

X shook his head.

“It’s all right,” Carlos said. “We can turn around and go down the steepest sections backwards.”

“Uh huh.”

It was sounding pretty tenuous to X, but on the other hand Carlos was now driving them around the ice offshore from Roberts in big swooping glides, just as if he knew exactly what he was doing.

Val came up behind them. “Looks like you have this thing in hand.”

“No problem,” Carlos and X said in concert.

“It looks like Jack is coming to a bit.”

“Good, good! And it’s almost time for sked coms with McMurdo. We can tell them what we’re doing. And remind me to ask about German and Geraldo and the rest of them.”

They brought the craft back in to the dock, X muscled down the lift fan lever, and the tub thumped hard down onto the ice.

Carlos stood. “Let’s get ready quick, and get going while the engines are still warm.”

They went to the back of the cabin. The injured trekker, Jack, had been awakened by the sounds of the hovercraft’s test run. Ta Shu and Jim were crouched at his sides, getting hot liquids into him; the others crowded in the doorway to see how he was, X at the back. Between sips Val and Carlos asked him questions. He was a bit groggy, and could not remember the accident in which he had been hurt; but he did remember much of the walk here, he said, with a brief glance at Val that X could not interpret. His shoulder hurt, he said, but otherwise he was fine. X got the impression that he was pissed off, but unwilling to talk about it. Something had happened out there on the ice. Val did not seem at all comfortable with him, which was in marked contrast to her behavior with her other clients.

“Okay,” Carlos said when Jack was done drinking. “Time to try Randi again.”

He went to the radio and turned it on, then wrapped a fist around the shrieking earpiece and started the call. “McMurdo, this is Roberts Station! Roberts Station at nineteen hundred
scheduled coms
, over!”

Reception was if anything worse than last time. But then Randi’s voice was cutting through.
“Kkkkkkkkkkkkk
got you, Roberts! How’s it
kkkkkkkkkkver?”

Carlos managed to make most of a status report, and Randi told them a bit more about what had happened. As far as they could gather through the static, one or all of McMurdo’s big fuel tanks had been contaminated somehow. “The Navy’s flying in some fuel and there’s a tanker on the way, but meanwhile the guys are filtering the shit out of what’s left, and we’re burning it as fast as they clean it. Really too bad Ron isn’t still here to work on the filtering. So search and rescue activities are still being conducted on a need basis, over.”

“Triage,” Wade commented.

Carlos waved him quiet. “Randi, does that mean you will not be able to collect us by helo, over?”

“No helo ops at Shackleton Camp at this time, T-023! Their fuel is wrecked. Do you still need a medevac?”

“Well, he has a broken collarbone.”

“Kkkkkkkkk
down the list. You should get down to Shackleton Camp if you can. We plan to fly a Herc there tomorrow and evacuate everyone there. Apparently a lot of the Roberts crew ended up there, did you know that, Roberts? Roberts Station and the Mohn station too.”

“Hey!” X and Carlos said, giving each other a brief hug.

“—to Shackleton, or hang tight at Roberts, and wait for us to get to you.”

“We don’t have the food to wait long,” Carlos said into the screeching, reaching over Jorge to shake hands with Wade as well.

“Then get yourselves to
Shackkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”

“Okay, okay,” Carlos said, “but who did all this, do you know, over?”

“Did not read you, Roberts, can you repeat, over?”

“Who did all this!”

“Kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”

“Mac Coms, this is Roberts, do you read me?”

“Roberts, are you there, repeat, Roberts, do you read me, over?”

“Yes
, Mac Coms, roger, roger, we read you!”

“We read you too, Roberts, over!”

“Repeat—who did all this!”

“No information on that, Roberts. We assume saboteurs of some sort, but
kkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”

“How illuminating,” Carlos said, shaking his head and staring at the handset. “Randi, listen! We are planning to take the hovercraft to Shackleton! Can you give us weather forecasting please, over!”

“Kkkkkkkkk
would you like weather forecasting, Roberts?”

“Yes, Randi, yes! Affirmative, roger, over!”

“Roberts, repeat message, I say, would you like weather forecasting here, over!”

“Yes
, Mac Coms! Yes! Yes! Roger! Affirmative! Roger ro-ger ro-ger!”

“I can’t read you guys anymore, but I’m gonna switch you over to weather forecasting, Roberts. Listen are you aware that there is something wrong with your radio, over?”

Carlos waved the handset in the air over his head,
eyes bugging out. Then he shouted into it, “Roger, Mac Corns, we are aware of that! Over!”

“Listen Roberts, can you call back in half an hour? Weather is out to lunch right now, and I’m getting a
kkkkkkkkkkkk.”

“Roger, Mac Coms! We will try to call back in half an hour, but we are going to leave for Shackleton now! Over!”

“Excuse me, Roberts, what did you say, over?”

“We will STAND BY and call back in HALF AN HOUR. Over.”

“Roberts, I’m not reading you anymore. Please stand by, over.”

“Okay, God damn it! Roger! We will stand by!” Carlos began to laugh maniacally.

“Kkkkkkkkkkkkk
what?”

“No, what’s on second!” Carlos shouted.
“Who’s
on first!”

“What?”

“No!
What’s
on
second! Who’s
on first!”

“What?
Oh! Oh, ha ha ha! Very funny, Roberts! Tell you what, you keep on doing your Abbott and Costello by yourself, I gotta go attend to the Three Stooges now! Call back in half an hour, God damn it, over and out!”

Carlos slammed the radio off and shook the handpiece like he wanted to smash it to pieces, still laughing. “Ah, ha ha ha! We used to laugh ourselves sick at that when we were kids. It was the best English lesson we ever had. I don’t know’s on third!” he shouted at the handset.

He looked around at the others. “Come on, let’s go. Shackleton Camp here we come.”

Wade was helping Carlos and X and the others to secure everything in the hovercraft for the trip down to Shackleton Camp when his wrist phone beeped. He jumped as if shot, and ran up the short set of stairs to the aft cabin to get some quiet and reduce interference, then clicked the receive button.

“Hello!”

“Wade, Wade, is that you?”

“It’s me, Phil! Where are you?”

“Never mind where I am Wade, where are you! What’s going on down there?”

“Well, let’s see, there’s been an attack on the oil camp I was visiting, and we’re now at the oil group’s base camp on Roberts Massif, top of the Shackleton Glacier, and that base has also been destroyed, so we’re about to take a hovercraft down to NSF’s Shackleton Glacier Camp, to be flown back to McMurdo.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No Phil, listen, what have you heard, what’s happening?”

“Well I don’t have the full story yet, I got a call from John and he told me that satellite communications to Antarctica had been interrupted and there were no reports coming out, but clearly something was wrong, and at that point I started calling you and got no reply! I got no reply!”

“I know.”

“But now I’m calling you using a Pentagon code I got, they must have some satellites of their own up there that are a little bit more reliable, but they don’t like to share them. I had to get John to contact Andy right in the Pentagon to get the codes, but it seems like they’re working pretty well.”

“Better than our radio contact with McMurdo, that’s for sure. Could you patch me in to McMurdo, do you think?”

“Sure, I can try. Just a second.”

The line went dead.

“Hey!” Wade said, punching Phil’s button on his phone. No answer. The same blank he had gotten since the moment they saw the smoke rise over Mohn Station. “God
damn
it.”

“What’s wrong?” It was Val, up to see what had happened.

“I just had a talk on the phone with Phil Chase. He was using a military satellite link, and said he would patch me to McMurdo.”

“Must not have worked. We’re almost ready to go here.” She leaned against the seat back next to him, let out a deep breath.

“You must be tired,” Wade said.

“No, not tired exactly.”

“Worried about your group. That guy who’s sick.” She nodded, then shook her head. “I knew there was
something wrong with him, but he wouldn’t tell me. He had a broken collarbone and he didn’t tell me.”

“Some people are like that. He may not have known exactly what was wrong, anyway. If he was stunned.”