Zodiac Station (11 page)

‘At fifty below, you can throw boiling water in the air and it freezes before it lands,’ said one of the students.

‘We should try it,’ said Pierre. ‘It’s supposed to get cold by the weekend. Big storm coming in.’

‘Send me a link to the video,’ I said. ‘I’ll be gone by then.’

Hard to imagine I’d be watching
Dr Who
with Luke in the living room. I looked over at our snow pit and thought of the light inside, the blue cathedral of the crevasse. I’d miss that. Other things, not so much.

There’d been a snow pit where Hagger died, I remembered. Except—

The idea hit me so hard I started to tremble. I grabbed Pierre’s arm.

‘Is that how you always dig snow pits? One covered, one open?’

‘Pretty much. Why?’

Some of the others had started to drift back to work. I ran to the coring rig and found Annabel. ‘The place where Hagger died – the Helbreen. How far is it from here?’

‘About thirty kilometres.’

‘I need to go there. Now.’

‘You don’t know the way.’

I could see she didn’t think I was serious. I ran over to a snowmobile and yanked on the starter cord. It was harder than it looked.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’m going to the Helbreen.’

‘You’ll kill yourself.’

‘Then you’d better come with me.’
Or else …
‘You don’t want someone else going off there without a buddy.’

The glacier was exactly as we’d left it: the jerrycans marking out the safe area, the yawning blue crevasse beyond. And the snow pit, half filled now with drifting snow. I jumped in and kicked against the walls. One stubbed my toe, so did the next, but the third disintegrated in a blizzard of collapsing snow. A ceiling appeared, a wooden board that had been covered by the drifts, making a small square cave. A red backpack lay on the ground.

I pulled off my mittens and unzipped the bag. There wasn’t much inside: a bar of chocolate, a Thermos (frozen solid), a topographic map, a pen and a green notebook.

I opened the notebook. My hands were already going numb – the thin liners were no match for the icy wind – but this was too important. I turned the pages, searching for any clue to what Hagger had been doing.

It looked like any other lab notebook. Neat columns of figures, measurements, interspersed with scrawled calculations and cryptic half-sentences.
Sulphite calibration
(double underlined);
Ratkowsky growth rate profile
;
Concentration of X.
Without careful reading, I couldn’t guess what it all meant. I could barely read the handwriting.

‘I need a wee,’ said Annabel. She went off behind a pile of moraine boulders at the edge of the glacier. I turned my back and kept reading.

A loose sheet of paper stuck out between the pages. I pulled it out and smoothed it against the notebook’s cover. It was a printout. Easier to read, but that was no help understanding it. Just a string of numbers, no spaces, zeros and ones and twos in an apparently random order:
1100121101012 …
Some sort of data set, I supposed.

A gust of wind lifted the paper. I snatched for it, but my fingers were clumsy with cold. It blew out of the notebook and fluttered across the glacier, white against white. In a split second, I could hardly see it.

I wasn’t going to lose it before I knew what it meant. I scrambled out of the pit and ran after it, floundering through the snow, skidding where the wind had scoured out patches of ice. Behind me, Annabel was shouting something, but with my hood up and the wind roaring around me, I didn’t make out the words.

The paper blew up against a rocky outcrop and stopped. I grabbed it, but my fingers wouldn’t move. I clapped it between my hands to lift it, then just about managed to stuff it into my coat pocket. I had to get my mittens back on.

Annabel was still shouting. I looked around to see what she wanted, and realised how far I’d come. Well beyond the safe area. Perhaps that’s what she was trying to tell me.

‘I’m coming,’ I called, and stepped forward.

Something cracked. The ground gave way under me. I felt a sickening emptiness as I fell. I remember thinking,
This is how a snowflake feels
.

Snow lands soft as a feather. I didn’t. I hit my head, and the white world went black.

USCGC
Terra Nova

The vibrating pager skittered across the tabletop like a beetle. The captain’s hand trapped it right before it went over the edge. He read the screen and stood.

‘Give me a minute.’

Anderson, half buried under the pink blanket, gave a lean smile. ‘I just reached the most exciting part.’

‘Yeah. But the helicopter’s coming in.’

The smile vanished. ‘Any survivors?’

‘That’s what I’m going to find out.’

Franklin closed the door behind him. Santiago was waiting in the corridor.

‘You get anything, boss?’

‘Long story. What’s the word from the boarding party?’

‘ETA five minutes. They said to have a couple of stretchers ready. And to open up the cold locker.’

They climbed the stairs towards the wheelhouse. There were ten decks on the
Terra Nova
, and wherever you happened to be, the chances were that what you wanted would be on a different deck. A floating StairMaster. The crew were the fittest in the Coast Guard.

Santiago’s voice dropped. ‘We’ve been doing some checking up on this guy. There’s a few wrinkles.’

‘Like?’ They went past the wipe board where the science schedule was written up. Sailing in the Arctic, things changed so often the geeks called it the Board of Lies.

‘For starters, he doesn’t have a PhD like he claimed. He got kicked out of school before he finished – some big scandal. An experiment went wrong, he’d faked the paperwork, they cut him loose.’

‘You figure all that out yourself, Ops?’

Santiago grinned. ‘I got one of the geeks to help me out.’

They came out on the bridge. Franklin crossed to the rear windows and looked down on the flight deck. Snow was blowing over the side, covering the deck as quickly as the crew could sweep it back. He scanned for the helicopter. Couldn’t even find the sky.

‘There, sir.’

Santiago pointed. A dim light had appeared, blinking in the fog like a distant lighthouse. It grew brighter. Rotor blades chopped a hole in the fog.

‘“At length did cross an Albatross,”’ Franklin murmured. ‘“Through the fog it came.”’

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘Poetry, Commander. You wouldn’t like it.’

‘Is it gonna be on the test?’

The helicopter swam out of the fog and towards the deck. In the Navy, they’d drop a wire to the deck and winch the helicopter in. But everyone knew the Navy were pussies. The Coast Guard liked to keep their birds free-range. As it passed the wheelhouse, Franklin could see the pilot only a few yards away, concentrating like hell.

The helicopter touched down, bounced on its wheels and settled. The deck crew raced to secure it; Parsons and her team ran out from where they’d been sheltering and slid open the door. Two stretchers came out, covered in foil blankets that flapped and crinkled in the wind. Then came the bodies. Franklin counted eleven. Last of all, Lieutenant Klein, the first officer, who had led the mission. He looked none too steady on his feet, though the crew had done a good job clearing the ice.

‘Tell Klein to see me in my quarters. And send someone to make sure Anderson stays in his cabin. I don’t want him seeing this.’

Tim Klein,
Terra Nova
’s first lieutenant, sat in the easy chair opposite Franklin. His family were Marines, three generations; it had been a minor family scandal when he went into the Coast Guard. But he still had the posture. He sat ramrod straight, but angled about ten degrees forward, gripping the coffee cup two-handed. He still couldn’t stop it shaking.

‘It was real bad, sir. First they burned, then they froze.’

‘There was a fire?’

‘More like an explosion. The main building was jacked up on stilts. Something blew a hole right out of it: whole thing collapsed and burned. Like a car bomb, or a missile strike.’

He stared at his reflection in the cabin window. ‘You wouldn’t think it could burn so much in this cold.’

Franklin waited for Klein’s thoughts to settle, and made a mental note to arrange some CISM counselling for him with the Chief.

‘Any idea what caused it?’

‘There were some gas tanks – but they were a ways from the Platform.’ He knitted his fingers together around the cup and frowned. ‘To be honest, sir, it looked like high explosive.’

‘It’s plausible. Anderson – the guy from the ice – he said they did seismic blasting on the glaciers there. Something could have gone wrong.’

‘Yeah.’ Klein was looking at Franklin, but his eyes were seeing something else. ‘We found these, too.’

He held out his palm. Three copper bullet casings gleamed. ‘There was blood on the snow nearby.’

‘Did you get anything from the survivors?’

‘They weren’t in a position to talk. Frankly, they were lucky to be alive.’ His voice shook. ‘There were a lot of bodies, sir. We brought back the ones we could fit, but there’s more we’ll have to go back for.’

‘There’s no hurry, Lieutenant.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

A knock at the door; Santiago came in. Klein looked grateful for the intrusion.

‘The Brits emailed photos of their Zodiac people. We’ve identified three of the bodies so far – the rest got burned too bad.’ He handed Franklin the printout, three of the photos circled in red marker. ‘Stuart Jensen. Daniel MacGregor. Francis Quam.’

Franklin scanned the rest of the pictures. ‘Where’s Anderson?’

‘They didn’t have him on file.’

‘Makes sense – he said he went there in a hurry. So who are the survivors?’

Santiago pointed. ‘These two, sir. Bob Eastman and Sean Kennedy.’

‘Can they talk?’

‘Eastman had it worse – he’s still out. Doc has him rigged up in the sickbay. But Kennedy’s OK. Well, conscious. She’s moved him to one of the staterooms to keep him comfortable.’

‘Then let’s go see what he has to tell us.’ Franklin touched Klein on the shoulder. ‘You’ve done good work, Lieutenant. Get some rest.’

It was strange meeting a man you’d just been hearing about. Stranger still when he was bandaged up like a mummy, one eye and his mouth about all you could see. Kennedy was taller and thinner than Franklin had imagined him. As much as he could tell.

He held up the bottle he’d brought from his cabin. ‘I thought you might like this. Scotch – not Irish. It’s the best we could do.’

Kennedy struggled to prop himself up.

‘It’s kind of you, Captain.’ His voice was hoarse, the Irish accent almost buried in the rasp. ‘And I don’t want you to think badly of the Irish, now – but I don’t drink.’

‘Really?’

‘A disgrace, to be sure.’

Franklin was about to say more, but decided against it. ‘My apologies.’

He put the whisky on the table and took the seat beside the bed. Santiago loitered by the door.

‘Are you able to talk? I don’t want to—’

Kennedy shook his head – as much as the bandages would allow. ‘I’m better than I look. On the outside, anyway.’

‘How did you …?’

‘Survive?’ Kennedy lapsed into a fit of coughing. ‘The luck of the Irish. Bob Eastman and I had just gone out when the explosion happened. That was what saved us. From the fire, of course – and from the cold. We had our ECW gear on, you see; none of the others did. We did what we could for them, but in that climate …’

He slumped back. ‘The ones that didn’t burn froze to death.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Franklin. It sounded inadequate; it always did.

Kennedy put out his hand. ‘Perhaps I will have that drink after all.’

Franklin splashed some whisky in a plastic cup. He thought about taking some for himself, and decided against it. He had to stay sharp.

‘I’m trying to figure out what happened at Zodiac. There are folks back in Britain and Stateside who are asking a lot of questions. If there’s anything you can tell me …’

‘I’ve spent the last five days asking myself these questions. I don’t know why it happened.’

‘I understand. But maybe if you go through what happened those last few days before the explosion, you’ll remember something.’

Kennedy’s good eye flickered towards Santiago. ‘I don’t want to take up your time, Captain. You’re a busy man, you’ve a ship to run.’

‘Just give me a second.’

He took Santiago into the corridor.

‘Keep an eye on Eastman. Tell the Doc I want to speak to him the minute he comes round. And keep tabs on Anderson, too.’

‘You think something’s up?’

‘Something very bad happened at Zodiac. Until we know what it is, I don’t want to risk it affecting my ship.’

Back in the cabin, Kennedy had put his whisky down on the table, almost untouched.

‘I’ll tell you what I can.’

Kennedy

The dirty secret to being the doctor at a place like Zodiac is you don’t actually have much to do. Especially outside the summer season. You’ve got maybe two dozen people, mostly young and fit, all screened for every disease under the sun before they set foot there. I had a surgery kitted out like a small hospital, a dispensary to make a pharmacist weep with envy – and all they ever needed was a few paracetamol on Sunday mornings after movie night.

But you’ve got to keep busy. Some of my predecessors dabbled in science; others painted, or wrote the novel they’d always meant to get round to. I’m a fossil man, myself: Utgard’s stuffed full of them. But there’re always odd little jobs coming up that need to be done. Because the scientists have no time, they usually land on the doctor.

Now, there’s an outfit in America called Planet Climate Action. Don’t let the name fool you: it’s actually a front for oil companies, car companies, utilities, anyone who wants to burn fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow. They’d been getting hold of some of our data and leaking it so as to make us look bad. Quam, the base commander, had it in his head that someone at Zodiac was helping them. He asked me to find out about it.