“Is that why you’re screwing Devlin… ‘cause he can help you get the story?”
Conner lifted herself up on an elbow. “Listen. Who I sleep with is—”
The door burst open and Riley stood there. “The mess hall, now!” He was gone as quickly as he’d come.
Conner and Sammy scrambled out of bed and rushed to the mess hall to find Riley leaning over an unconscious Swenson. The pilot was slumped in a chair, his clothes covered with melting ice and snow.
“What happened?” Conner asked.
“I found him outside, lying in the snow.” Riley was checking the pilot’s bare hands for frostbite. “Another five minutes and he’d have frozen to death.”
“How’d you find him?” Sammy inquired.
“I heard a noise. Sounded like the main door slamming shut. I don’t know.” Riley shrugged. “Something just didn’t seem right, so I got up and checked.”
As Riley spoke, the other members of the team filed in until all were assembled.
“So what happened to him?” Conner wanted to know. “Did he fall and knock himself out?”
Riley shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He broke open a medical kit, pulled out some smelling salts, and waved them under Swenson’s nose. The pilot gagged briefly and then his eyes flickered open. He reached for his head and moaned. Conner stepped behind him for a closer look. Through the thinning hair on the back of Swenson’s head, a large purplish bruise was visible.
Conner moved in front of Swenson. “What happened?”
Swenson tried shaking his head, but the pain got the better of him and he held still. “Shit. I don’t know. I was going down the corridor to take a piss and someone whacked me on the back of the head. That’s all I remember.”
Eight sets of eyes met, then shifted uneasily from one to another. The silence lasted for almost a minute.
Riley looked at the other men. “Was anybody awake when Swenson left?”
All three men shook their heads. Riley turned to Conner. “When I came in, all three were in their beds and appeared to be sleeping. You two were in your room. The three people from Our Earth were all accounted for also.”
“That leaves you then, doesn’t it?” Devlin observed.
Riley shrugged. “Then it would have been pretty stupid of me to rescue him, wouldn’t it?”
Conner decided to take charge before things got out of control. “Are you able to fly?” she asked Swenson.
Swenson nodded carefully. “Aye. I don’t think I have any permanent damage.” He got up, a bit unsteady on his feet.
‘Then we leave now.” Conner turned to Vickers and Lallo. “Get your gear ready to go. We leave for the plane in fifteen minutes.”
After Conner’s crew left the room, Devlin turned to her. “What about whoever knocked him out? I don’t think it was chance that our pilot was attacked. Somebody is trying to stop us from getting to Eternity Base.”
“That’s why I want to leave right away,” Conner replied. “If we wait around here any longer, whoever it is will have a chance to do something else, like maybe sabotage the plane.”
“So we’re going to fly with a pilot who just got conked on the head?” Sammy asked.
“I don’t have time for this,” Conner said. “He said he can fly.”
“The odds are,” Riley said, “that we’ll be transporting our problem with us to Eternity Base — if we find it.”
“Once we find the base,” Conner declared, “it will be too late. We’ll have the story.” She pointed at Sammy. “It’s the same reason you came down here. The key to stopping these people is to find out who built the base.”
Sammy shook her head. “But whoever it is has to be pretty powerful to have been able to infiltrate your team so quickly.”
Conner looked her sister in the eye. “I don’t think whoever tried to kill Swenson is from my team.”
Sammy looked at Riley and then back at her sister. “Are you accusing Riley?”
“I’m not accusing anybody. I’m just being realistic,” Conner retorted.
Sammy bristled and Riley stepped between the two women with his hands raised. “Let’s chill out,” he suggested. “Conner’s right. We need to get to Eternity Base first. Standing around yacking isn’t going to do us any good.” He looked from one woman to the other. “All right?”
Sammy nodded. “All right.”
“All right,” Conner echoed.
Conner could hear Vickers humming the theme song from The Wizard of Oz as the plane picked up speed. Swenson pulled in the yoke and the heavily laden Cessna bounced a few times, then clawed into the air. Reaching sufficient altitude, the plane banked and headed for the search area.
Their course followed the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf to the east. Ross Island faded behind them, and after an hour Roosevelt Island appeared below and then slid to the rear. They slowly closed the distance to the Ford Mountain Range, looming up in front of them. As they approached the first mountains, Swenson increased power; the wings groped in the thin air for even more altitude until the Cessna had sufficient height to clear them.
The plane was as crowded with people and equipment as it had been on the flight from New Zealand. Conner, Kerns, and Riley were on the left side of the plane, one in front of the other; Vickers was in the copilot’s seat; and Devlin, Sammy, and Lallo behind Vickers on the right. They’d loaded all the camera equipment along with one backpack of survival gear for each person. If they found the base, Conner wanted to be prepared to stay and get her story.
Although the magnificence of the peaks that jutted out of the white impressed Conner, what struck her more was the sea of ice that swept the flanks of those mountains. It was hard to imagine an ice sheet almost two miles thick. Devlin had told her that the ice was so heavy it had forced most of the bedrock surface of Antarctica below sea level; if the ice were removed, the land, relieved of the pressure, would rise above sea level.
Swenson had piloted them over a glacier and through a pass, putting them on the opposite side of the mountain range. Now they flew along the southern edges, looking to their left, searching for the three mountains. Conner had taped the photocopy of the picture against the bulkhead above the left side window, and she and Devlin were scanning in that direction. As Devlin leaned over her right shoulder, she tried to ignore his close proximity, but his body was generating a warmth that was welcome in the frigidness of the plane. She wondered if Sammy was right: was she attracted to Devlin as a person, or because he could be of use to her at the moment — a way to Eternity Base, a warm body on a cold airplane.
Swenson flew straight up the middle of the mountain chain. The weather was remarkably clear, and the peaks seemed startlingly close. Conner felt as if she could reach a hand out the window and caress the rock. She glanced right at the map board on Devlin’s lap. He had their route marked on the plastic cover with a grease pencil.
“Everyone look carefully. McKinley should be coming up soon,” Devlin yelled. His words disappeared into the whine of the engines without any reply from the others.
“That’s McKinley,” Swenson shouted a short while later. He immediately banked to the left, and the nose of the aircraft settled on a northerly route.
Riley reached forward and tapped Devlin on the shoulder, gesturing for the map board. Devlin passed it back and Riley oriented himself, checking the map against the terrain features he could see below.
“Can we move to the right a little bit?” he called out to Swenson. Riley ignored Conner’s annoyed look. Taking her silence as assent, Swenson changed course slightly to the right.