Surviving Antarctica (13 page)

“Sure.” Billy dreaded seeing this land of ice and snow. Again he regretted pretending that he was an expert. But what was his choice? If he hadn’t lied, he wouldn’t be here with the chance to earn one hundred thousand dollars.

Robert ran up and almost slipped on the icy deck. He slowed his pace and walked to the rail. He spotted a hut a short distance away. This must be Safety Hut, as shown on the map. A line from a hymn ran through Robert’s head:
“God loves me so much that he made the sun shine at midnight.”
It was four
A.M.,
and the sun shone down on him as if it were a hazy afternoon back home.

Except for the dull sun, everything looked white and frozen. In the flat light, details were hard to make out.

This land is not one color, Robert thought, training his mind to be alert to his surroundings. This is your new environment. You have to notice everything about it. Straining to see more clearly, he broke the whiteness down into lavender white, greenish white, blue-white, yellow-white, rose-white…. He pulled a cord, and the gangplank slowly lowered.

As Robert waited, he wondered if he should say something for the cameras. He didn’t want
to suck up, but at the same time he worried that if he ignored the cameras completely, all the viewers would hate him. He had no idea if he was getting much footage. If he knew the Secretary of Entertainment, she was probably covering Grace and the dogs.

The gangplank hit the snow.

“Land!” Robert called out, and then felt so ridiculous that he promised himself he would never do anything for the television audience again. He raced to the bottom of the gangplank and stepped onto the snow. It crackled under his weight. His breath came out in white puffs that looked like Christmas tree ornaments hanging in the air.

As he hiked toward Safety Hut, his boots felt heavy, as if he were walking in sticky sand. He opened the door of the hut and nearly fell back in surprise. Two silver-and-blue machines filled half the shed. The term
motor sledges
had made him expect some old beat-up go-carts with big tires. These sledges looked like snow motorcycles with tow hookups. He heard someone running behind him and turned.

Billy joined him at the doorway. “Wow!” he said. They wouldn’t have to use those dogs after all.

“Where are the others?” Robert asked.

“They’re coming.”

Robert looked back and saw Grace, Andrew, and Polly trudging toward them.

Robert climbed on one of the bikes and turned the ignition. It purred like a sweetheart. Perfect that there were two of them. Billy and he could each ride one. Robert didn’t have to tell Billy his idea, because Billy jumped on the other snowcycle.

The engine on Billy’s cycle roared, then died.

The other three kids crowded into the hut.

“I hope there’s more dog food,” Grace was saying to Polly as they entered.

When Polly saw the shiny machines, she groaned. They looked like toys.

“What’s wrong?” Robert shouted above the roar of the motor.

“I told you. Scott had some motors, too,” Polly said, “but he had all sorts of problems with them.”

Billy opened the panel covering the engine. “What sorts of problems?”

Robert turned his motor off and walked over to help Billy.

Grace pulled the lid off one of the aluminum boxes.

“The cylinders overheated, while the carburetors froze. They wasted a lot of time trying
to repair them,” Polly said.

Robert grinned. “Mine works like a charm.”

Grace peered into the box. “There’s no dog food.”

“Stop whining!” Billy said sharply. He had never been a good mechanic. If there was only one working snowcycle, he didn’t have to guess who would ride it, and it wouldn’t be him.

“Billy!” Polly scolded.

Grace defended herself. “The dog food on the ship is moldy. I need some fresh food.”

“I’m just sick of hearing about the dogs.” Billy stared resentfully at the dead engine.

“Billy’s right, Polly,” Robert said as he tinkered with the motor. “We’ve got to focus. If we need to, we’ll kill the ponies to feed the dogs.”

We can’t kill the ponies yet, Andrew thought. Maybe someday we’ll have to kill the ponies, but not yet.

Grace stared stonily into space.

“We do have to focus,” Polly said. “And you shouldn’t spend much time on those silly snowcycles. Motor sledges were losers for Scott, and I’m sure these cycles will be losers for us.” Their trip was a simulation of Scott’s. Something in Polly’s gut told her the Secretary would have made sure that these motors failed.

Robert examined the motor. Polly was
assuming that if Robert Scott couldn’t do something, he, Robert Johnson, couldn’t do it either. Wrong. He was a great mechanic. Hadn’t he gotten more than one mud-drenched car to work? “How about if we drive the good one as far as we can and abandon it if it stops?”

“That’s fine,” Polly said. “But don’t spend a bunch of time trying to get the other one to start if it won’t.”

“It’s a deal,” Robert said. “And Grace, about the dogs, don’t forget that we might be able to kill a seal. Seal would be good for us to eat, too.”

“Yeah,” Billy said. “Better than that disgusting pemmican.” He still had a hard time believing that people in the nineteen hundreds had considered pemmican food.

Robert looked up from the motor. “So, Grace, you and Andrew unload the dogs and the ponies. Polly and Billy can help me bring the supplies down and load them onto the sleds.” He looked at Andrew. “Man, where is your coat?”

Andrew stood in the subzero temperature wearing only a woolen shirt. “It’s on the ship.”

“Am I going to have to be everyone’s father around here?” Robert shouted. “Wear your coat! It’s a matter of survival now that we are in Antarctica!”

Andrew reddened, and Robert reminded himself not to be too rough on the kid.

Polly put her arm around him. “Andrew, Robert is just telling you this for your own good.”

Andrew nodded, embarrassed.

“Wait,” Polly said. “We’ve never figured out what your special gift is.”

Andrew sighed.

“I’m not trying to be mean,” Polly continued, “but how long did you stay in the freezer?” In their tryouts for the contest, each of them had had to spend time in a freezer. When they got cold, they rang a bell to get out.

“I don’t remember,” Andrew said.

“I was in there for only a few minutes,” Polly said. “Aren’t you cold, Andrew? I mean now.”

Andrew shook his head.

“He’s our snowman,” Polly said to Robert and the others.

“You’re not cold?” Robert said.

Andrew shook his head again.

“How long do you think you stayed in the freezer?” Robert asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe an afternoon,” Andrew said. He had watched a small black-and-white TV in there.

“An afternoon!” Robert shouted.

Andrew nodded.

“That freezer was twenty below zero,” Billy said, looking at Andrew in awe.

Robert shook his head. “I don’t care. Wear your coat anyway. Just looking at you makes me nervous.”

“I’ve never worn a coat,” Andrew confessed. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he couldn’t remember ever wanting one, either.

“I’m freezing just standing here.” Polly hugged herself.

“Let’s go unload the ship, then,” Robert said. “We need to leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

Billy turned the ignition, and this time his machine roared. “Get out of my way!” he yelled.

The kids backed away. Billy drove the machine out of the hut and did a wheelie on the ice.
“Yeehaw!”

Robert started his snowcycle and followed. Soon the two boys were making figure eights and kicking up clouds of loose snow.

Polly looked on somberly.

“I’m going to get the dogs,” Grace said.

“I’ll bring the ponies,” Andrew chimed in.

Nobody had asked Robert what his special gift was. Everybody had assumed that it was his leadership skills. But maybe, just maybe, his
special gift was mechanics. He bet that he could keep these engines going where Scott and his men couldn’t. He’d work on them tonight. He did another wheelie.

Polly turned away to examine the landscape. She had experienced the great outdoors only through nature shows, and her first thought was that it was so, so big. Far away, she saw the jagged edges of icy mountains. The rest of the terrain was a flat white plain. The shed stuck out like a single word on a blank page.

She pounded her boot against the ground. The ice was hard, and she felt panic rise in her throat. The white expanse was endless. She could see for miles and miles.

“Andrew!” Polly shouted.

Andrew turned and stared at her.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“What gives?” Andrew asked.

“Look.” Polly spread her arms toward the horizon. “Where could a camera crew hide?”

“Good point,” Andrew said. As he stared at the white land, he understood what Polly was saying. They were completely alone.

“I don’t get it.” Polly felt truly confused.

“How are they filming us?” Andrew asked. Surely Polly, who seemed to know everything, would figure this out.

Polly just shook her head. She felt so disappointed, she had trouble talking.

“The Secretary lied?” Andrew had sensed that the Secretary had been lying to them, so he couldn’t say that he was surprised.

“I guess so. Because there’s no camera crew here.” Polly spoke slowly. Each word hurt.

“TRIAL RUN!”
Robert called. He buzzed off, the gear on his sled bouncing jerkily up and down and producing bursts of snow. He loved his cycle. This contest was fun. He roared past Billy, who was riding the other snowcycle.

Grace had no idea what time it was. When she had gone to sleep last night, the sun was lying low on the horizon like some kind of lazy yellow dog, and since then it seemed only to have had the energy to crawl sideways. But it had to be late afternoon, because her very bones were tired. She surveyed her hard day’s work: twelve dogs were fanned out in front of the loaded sled.

At the front of the team, T-Rex wagged his large tail as if ready to be off. Behind him Grace had placed Dryosaurus and Brontosaurus as her swing dogs. These two were smart enough to help T-Rex steer. The next several pairs of dogs were her team dogs. They didn’t need any particular skill other than strong muscles. She had struggled with where to put Triceratops, with her short legs, and finally decided that she would cause the fewest problems in the middle of the pack.

Her two steadiest dogs, Ankylosaurus and Polacanthus, Grace put last. They would be the first to feel the burden of the sled as the team started or traveled uphill. They would have to bear the constant pounding of the runners close behind them.

The snowcycles circled her again, and Grace decided that it was time for her own trial run. She stood on the plastic runners at the back of the sled and held on to the wooden handles. In her ancestors’ day sleds were sometimes made of walrus bone, and the handles were frozen fish.

Grace held no reins. She planned to use voice commands, as her ancestors had always done, and of course the whip. The handle of this whip was plastic. Her ancestors’ had been
made out of the leg bone of a caribou. Just in case she needed a brake, she had brought along a paddle to drag in the snow. She had no idea what her people had used in the old days to slow the dogs down.

Although they had spent the morning nipping at the snow and each other, now that the dogs were harnessed, she could feel their excitement. She sensed that they had pulled sleds before, though perhaps not together. She was sorry that she hadn’t bothered to learn the Iñupiaq commands from her grandfather, but she slapped the cold air with the whip and shouted, “Go!”

T-Rex surged forward impatiently. Most of the team lurched ahead, but Triceratops didn’t move quickly enough. Ankylosaurus tumbled into her. The traces knotted up.

“Stop!” Grace shouted, but with the confused mass of dog flesh behind him, T-Rex couldn’t go anywhere. He stopped and looked at her. He seemed to be asking, “Can’t you do any better than this?” She got off the sled to undo the tangle before one of the dogs choked to death.

She started with Triceratops. This dog was loose and relaxed, probably lazy from the trip. It was obvious that she didn’t want to pull anything.

Andrew, who was holding the reins of one of the ponies, stepped alongside her. He had been working all day to get them used to the snow.

The snowcycles circled in front of Grace’s team.

T-Rex grew confused from the roar of the cycles and tried to start running, but jerked the traces instead. Another dog collapsed into the growing heap.

“Are you okay?” Andrew asked.

Grace nodded and motioned him away. She was too frustrated to make small talk. When she had gotten the dogs into their places again, she climbed back into the sled and snapped the whip. The dogs ran a few feet forward. She snapped the whip to make the pack turn to the left, and for no reason that she could see, T-Rex slid and then pitched into the snow. This time he looked back at her sheepishly.

Grace took a deep breath before getting out of the sled. She heard her grandfather rooting for her: “Dogsledding is the greatest way to travel on the whole earth. Don’t give up.”

Robert circled back on the snowcycle and stopped. “What’s the matter?”

Billy pulled up next to Robert and gunned his engine. His face was shining. It was clear that these two were having a great day.

“It’s going to take me a day or so to make a team out of them,” Grace managed to say to Robert as she knelt by T-Rex. It looked like the dog had just hit a patch of ice. She wondered if he was unused to the slippery white stuff.

“We can’t spend days training these dogs,” Robert said.

“What were you doing on the boat with them, anyway?” Billy said. “You’ve already had five days.”

Before Grace could defend herself, Polly walked over with her mouth set in that determined way that Robert hated.

“Robert, dogs are the most reliable form of polar travel,” Polly said.

“These are good dogs,” Grace protested, even though a few moments before, her team had been a hopeless mess of snarling bodies. “I just need a little time.”