Ice Rift (7 page)

“I'm well aware of that and I wish we had longer, but we have to play the cards we're dealt. I don't intend to play bluff with the hand of fate. We'll go in, try to determine the cause of the anomaly, take samples, document and record as much as we can in five days and then leave.”

“Okay, Henry. I trust your judgment. I heard what Jane wanted, so I'll nip back to base and collect, but is there anything you need me to add to the list?”

After Henry had told Eli what he needed, Eli drove back to base in one of the Sno-Cats. Henry had added food and drinks to the list. He had a feeling once they were inside they wouldn't be too eager to abandon the cavern until the ice forced them to.

JANE AND LUCY FOUND it difficult to drag their gaze away from the large expanse of water; both were imagining what life-forms it might contain.

“I just realized something,” said Lucy. “We're making history. We're the first people ever to set eyes on an ancient lake beneath the Antarctic ice.”

Jane smiled. “Cool, isn't it?”

“It sure is.” Lucy let her eyes wander around the cavern. “How old do you suppose this place is?”

“At a guess, I'd say many thousands. As you probably know, satellite imagery has discovered many lakes entombed beneath the ice. The most famous being Lake Vostok, where the Russians drilled down into the ice to collect a sample of the water. However, that was located slightly over two miles beneath the ice and thought to have been sealed off for fifteen million years.” Jane glanced at the pool. “This is only about four hundred feet from the surface and a lot younger, about five to seven thousand years.”

“Still sounds old to me.”

“The age of the ice is similar to counting the rings on a tree to determine its age. The depth of ice is governed by the amount of snow that has fallen in any particular year. Some years there may have been very little snow fall, and other years, much more. This turns to ice and is gradually compressed when more snow fall's freeze and are in turn compressed by the following cycles, and on and on it goes. The deeper you look in the ice the more compressed it is, making it extremely difficult to count the individual layers.” Jane pointed her torch at the nearest wall. “You can see bands in the ice here. Each of them marks a particular year of snowfall that collected on top of the glacier and compressed into ice over time to increase the thickness of the glacier.” Her beam moved to highlight another detail in the ice. “Dirty grey bands in the ice like those seen here contain ash from volcanic eruptions. Probably from Mount Erebus on Ross Island, the second highest volcano in Antarctica after Mount Sidley, or perhaps Mount Terror, Mount Bird or Mount Terra Nova, but all three are now inactive.”

“Are you sure this is safe?”

The two women looked toward the sound of Henry's voice; his legs dangled through the hole in the cavern roof.

Max's face appeared in the hole. “Yes, Henry, I assure you its safe and the rope is secure.”

“That's what he said about my rope, Henry,” called out Jane, jokingly.

Henry's face peered at the women below, his headlight barely penetrating the darkness. “Get ready to catch me if I fall,” he joked. “I'm coming down.”

Henry lowered himself into the hole and for a moment just swung there.

Max leaned in and pointed. “You have to squeeze the lever on your descender to move.”

“I'm not a complete idiot.” Suddenly, Henry shot down the rope. Just as those watching thought he was going to crash into the ground, he slowed his pace and lightly touched down.

The two girls smiled and clapped.

“Nice entrance, Mr. Sandberg,” said Lucy.

Henry unhitched the rope and gave a little bow. He glanced at the hole far above. “The coming down's easy. It's the getting back up I find hard.” He glanced around the gloom-filled cavern. “Even from the little I can see, the cavern's bigger than I'd imagined.”

“When we get the brighter lights down here, we'll be able to get a measure of its true size and what's down here,” said Jane.

“Everything we need is on its way.” Henry walked over to join them. “Have you done much exploring yet?”

“Not yet,” said Lucy. “Though we were keen to, we thought we'd wait for the rest of the team so we can explore it together.”

Henry smiled at them. “That was very unselfish of you both. Many of my colleagues wouldn't have been so generous. They would've wanted to be the first to find anything waiting to be discovered down here and give it a name.”

“As you said in your pep talk, Henry, this is a team effort and we all share equally in the knowledge and any discoveries we make.”

“Thank you, Jane, and you Lucy. It's nice to know some people actually listen to what I have to say.” He glanced up at the opening. “Which is more than I can say for everyone on the team. Eli and Max should have started lowering down the supplies by now.”

Eli tied the last crate of supplies to the rope, pushed it over to the edge of the rift a short distance from where Jane and Lucy had climbed down, to avoid the ice shelf a few yards below. He grabbed the walkie-talkie from the top of the box and pressed the talk button to communicate with Theo at the bottom of the rift. “Final crate coming down. Over.”

“Okay. I'll let Henry know. Over.” Theo replied.

Eli slipped the radio into his pocket, grabbed tight hold of the rope and nudged the supply crate over the edge with a foot and slowly lowered it into the crevasse. A gust of cold wind ruffled the fur collar of his hood. He turned his head in the direction it had blown from. He frowned at the distant grey clouds. They were a good indication of an approaching storm.

Max glanced up at the snow and ice debris dislodged by the approaching crate sliding down the side of the ice wall. He squeezed past the three boxes ready to be lowered into the cavern, knelt beside the hole and poked his head through. “Eli's sending the last box down. As soon as we have it, we'll lower them down to you.”

“Okay,” Henry shouted back.

By the time all four boxes had been lowered into the cavern thirty minutes later, the wind blowing through the rift had increased, driving pellets of frozen snow that stung their faces.

Max observed the grey cloud-filled sky that had gradually darkened. “A storm's heading our way.”

Theo had reached the same conclusion. “We won't feel it when we're below.”

Max sat with his feet dangling into the void. “It's not us I'm worried about, but Eli up top.”

“It doesn't seem too bad at the moment. Hopefully it'll blow over soon.”

“I hope you're right.” Max dropped into the hole.

As soon as the first box had been freed from its tether, Henry opened it and took out a flask of hot chocolate and a tier of plastic cups. Because the temperature was warmer in the cavern and sheltered from the wind chill, there was no need to drink from thermos cups to prevent the hot liquid from freezing.

“Anyone for hot chocolate? I had Pike make a fresh batch.”

“Henry, I could kiss you,” said Jane with a smile.

Henry smiled. “If I was thirty years younger, I'd insist on it.” He handed out two cups and filled them with steaming hot chocolate.

Jane and Lucy both took a sip.

“Ahhhh,” sighed Lucy, appreciatively. “It's better than sex.”

“You've been dating the wrong men,” said Jane.

Lucy laughed. “You're so right.”

Max's descent was accompanied by flakes of snow drifting through the opening.

“Is the weather turning?” Henry asked.

Max released the rope so Theo could pull it up. “A storm's on the way.”

Lucy glanced up at the hole and the specks of snow and ice drifting in. “Will we be okay down here?”

“We'll be fine,” Henry reassured her.

Theo joined them a few moments later.

“Right,” said Henry. “Now we're all here, how about we find the flashlights and start exploring this amazing cavern?”

With no shelter to protect him, the wind whipped at Eli, flapping the hood of his coat. If it grew any stronger he'd have to return to base. Though a precaution of Henry's was that at least one person remained on the ice while the team entered the rift, in case they got into trouble, not even Henry would expect anyone to remain unsheltered in this weather. He could take refuge in the Sno-Cat temporarily. It had a heater if the engine was running, but if the storm was an exceptionally cold one and lasted for a few days he might run out of fuel and freeze to death.

Even through his layers of thermal clothing, Eli felt the high wind chill steal away his body heat. He wiped the film of frozen snow from his goggles with a gloved hand and gazed north. Rolling black clouds sped toward him. Though he'd never experienced one before, he'd heard about the Katabatic winds caused by heavy cold air rushing down glacial inclines like a tidal wave. Often referred to as
Hell's Wind
! Not named because it was hot― the opposite in fact― but because of the up to two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds that spurred it along, causing anyone unlucky enough to be caught in its path to endure hell or be sent to it.

He turned and looked at the base camp and back at the blizzard screaming across the ice. It was travelling too fast for him to outrun in the Sno-Cat; he had only one option. He picked up one of the climbing ropes trailing into the rift and moved to the edge. He was about to climb down when he heard a sound carried by the wind. It sounded like a small plane. His hurried glance into the sky revealed it clear of everything except dark clouds. He must have been mistaken. No pilot would venture out in this weather. Eli climbed down.

Jack fought the controls as the strong winds playfully jostled the small aircraft in all directions. The engine screamed in protest as it was forced to keep the small craft airborne and level. Jack cursed his greed, his bad decision and the frightened passenger who'd offered him four times his going rate to risk dropping him off at the rift base camp before the bad weather struck. The blizzard had arrived earlier than expected and was currently chasing their tail. Though, to be fair, it was also the chance of meeting Jane again that had helped persuade him to risk the flight. Though he'd been accused of wearing his heart on his sleeve on more than one occasion, resulting in a few sad partings, including one he thought would break his heart, it hadn't happened for a while. But it had with Jane. This time, however, it was different. Something more than the attraction he'd felt in previous relationships.
Love at first sight, perhaps?
  Whatever it was, he was smitten with her.

“Can't this damn thing go any faster?” shouted the plane's only passenger and the main cause of the danger they both now faced.

Jack ignored the man's dumb question. Though the plane was going flat out, it was unable to keep ahead of the storm chasing them. His eyes did a quick survey of the ground below; he would have to make an emergency landing if they were going to survive, but they were still too far away from the scientists' base camp to seek refuge from the wind and cold. His eyes rested on the wide, yawning rift. It was their only chance. He dipped the nose of the plane and aimed for the rift.

“Are we landing?” asked the passenger, hopefully, queasy from the plane's erratic movements.

“If we land here, we won't survive. We need to shelter from the blizzard and the only place able to offer us that around here is the rift base camp. I'm going to fly in the rift as the ice walls should shelter us from the full force of the side winds. I'm hoping I'll gain enough speed to keep ahead of the full brunt of the storm until we reach the scientists' camp.”

The passenger anxiously glanced out of a window, catching glimpses of the rift through gaps in the driving snow. He prayed the pilot knew what he was doing. “Will we make it?”

The pilot heard the fear in the man's voice, but felt no pity for him. “You'll be the second person to find out.”

The passenger gained no reassurance from the reply.

Eli backed along the small ice shelf and was about to climb over the edge when he remembered he'd forgotten to anchor the Sno-Cat. The strong wind he already experienced was nothing compared to the intensity of the gusts that would follow. If he didn't climb up and anchor it to the ice, there was a good possibility the wind would carry it away. Maybe even into the rift. He cursed and reluctantly moved to the ice wall and began climbing back to the top.

The front edge of the blizzard reached the rift base camp. Scott and Pike had just finished securing the garage and outbuilding doors and making sure anything the wind could pick up and blast through the air like missiles was safely stored away.