The ice axe McReady had left shivered the slick blackness into refracting, scattering chips, and Barclay walked stolidly up the crude steps cut in the slanting wall of the pit.
“Bar—what the hell’s the matter?” Vane demanded.
“Go ahead and dig. I know damn well I’m screwy, so I’ll let you find out for yourselves. If you find what I think I saw, I’ll help. But not until or unless. It’s about five feet down. Go easy when you get there.” Barclay walked off toward the sledge, and began relashing the load silently.
For a moment the other three looked at each other uneasily. “There’s one good way to find out,” suggested McReady. He slid down the steep slope, using an ice axe to break his fall. Vane joined him, throwing the ice chips he tore loose into a tarpaulin to be taken to the surface. Norris followed Barclay over to the sledge, fruitlessly trying to get some answer to his question.
Abruptly, the two men turned at the explosive shout of McReady in the depth of the pit. There was an immense silence, then a single curse. Then: “Bar—Bar, you damned wall-eyed idiot. Why in ten hells didn’t you say what you saw. Norris—Norris—for God’s sake come here! There’s a plate of polished, machined metal that extends for an indefinite distance.”
“It’s the magnet, Norris!” Vane’s voice rang out hollowly from the pit.
“That,” said Barclay softly, seating himself on the edge of the sledge, “is not what I saw. I guess I’m not nuts, maybe, but maybe I am at that. They haven’t gone down five feet. Tell ’em to keep going.”
Norris left on the run. Vane passed up the ice chips to him, and a second sack before the first was returned, while McReady’s ice axe and snow shovel rapidly enlarged and deepened the pit before Norris was able to get down for an examination. Then—the brittle schith sound of the splitting ice crystals changed to a duller, sodden crack. The activity below became a sudden silence.
“God!” said McReady softly. “Good God!” The schuff of the ice axe started, very gently, very carefully.
Unable to see past the two men, Norris heard Vane’s soft sigh, and over his head caught a glimpse of glittering silvery metal. A smooth, curving metal surface nearly five feet square was bared. The sun had set again, but the rose and lavender, apple greens and melting yellows lingered in the sky. The light that trickled down through twenty feet of ice glimmered on the bared metal, hinting at an immense bulk of machined, rounded metal plates, joined with unhuman skill.
Vane straightened, and backed away. Half visible between McReady’s legs was a head, a half-split head laid open by a careless ice axe. Norris turned up toward the sun-painted patch of sky and called out to Barclay.
“Bar, if what you saw had blue hair like earthworms and three red eyes, it’s here.”
CHAPTER TWO
The autogyro settled to the ice gingerly, in an absolutely vertical descent. The thirty-five-mile wind rushing across the bald ice was a steady, smooth river of super-cold air flowing from the high South Polar Plateau to the sea somewhere to the north. The brilliant orange of the plane was the only color on a landscape, made glaringly blatant under the fierce brilliance of four magnesium torches. The moment it touched, the four members of the Secondary Magnetic Station party started inward with the torches, while Blair jumped from the cabin of the plane with ice-anchors in hand. Behind the wiry little biologist, the stocky figure of Dr. Copper tumbled out with further anchors. The ’gyro rocked slightly back and forth as the pilot gunned the engine uncertainly. The propeller had to maintain a fair thrust to barely hold the plane in place against the unceasing thrust of the wind from the south. The twinkling rotor blades shifted jerkily, then slowed as Macy gradually cut their lift-angle to make the plane stay more solidly on the ground.
The biologist and the medico had the anchors placed by the time McReady and Norris reached them, and the pilot cut back his throttle. Almost instantly the thin, cold blast of air chilled the motor, and it began to splutter. Macy gunned it again, jazzing the throttle to make it catch. His mouth moved behind the plastic windows, but the roar of the engine drowned his words.
“Six sacks of coal—food supplies—two more bunks.” Blair shouted. “He’s going right back. Dr. Copper can stay only two days or so. Commander Garry had to stay behind—too much weight.”
Norris nodded vigorously. Barclay and Vane came up, dousing their unneeded torches. The bitter blast of the plane’s slipstream forced the men to some distance, as Copper explained the plans.
“Garry thinks he will let you men work here, modify the plans for the Geological Party to leave this tractor available. They’ve sent another gang of men to the coal vein so more fuel can be used. Done any more digging?”
Vane shook his head. The booming of the engine made conversation half lip-reading. “Waiting for you. Moved the tractor up, though. Bring the saw?”
“Yes. Upjohn kicked, but gave it up. He’s needed it making the ‘houses’ on the other tractors, so he wants it back when we can let him have it. Macy wants to get going. Says that he can land the Douglass here if you can promise a wind like this all the time.”
McReady grinned sourly. “We’ve had it practically 24 hours of every day we’ve been here. The elevation’s only 1100 feet, and a little chopping will smooth any humps out of this ice. He could land the big Boeing here if he had to. I’ll promise him a 35-mile wind any day, and on special order we can get him a 50-miler.”
“We’ll need more coal,” Barclay put in. “We’ll be running the tractor engine for the dynamo a lot.”
“Couldn’t carry any more this trip. Too much junk. He’ll be back for me in the Lockheed, he said, and bring three tons if you need it. Let’s get that stuff out before his engine conks. Ye gods, its cold.”
McReady said, “You haven’t been here, Doc. It’s -45° tonight. Let’s go.”
Ten minutes later, the ’gyro’s vanes began spinning more rapidly. There was no need to clutch in the engine here; the river of wind cranked them to speed. The plane took off from the ice in a vertical climb, the windmill vanes flapping awkwardly, like some immense duck rising from blue water. The tiny lights circled overhead, then vanished at express speed as Macy turned downwind toward Big Magnet.
“I’ll signal the take off.” Barclay started toward the buried station, two bags of coal trailing black dust behind him, black dust the rushing wind scoured off the ice instantly to whip away toward the Antarctic Ocean 400 miles north. Blair and McReady were lashing the little biologist’s instruments onto the sledge, piling bunk sections and sacked food supplies on top.
The Station seemed even more crowded, with everything jammed down to one wall. The magnetic instruments were gone, packed on the tractor and moved to the new location. But the battery-operated trail radio set had replaced them, the dry batteries forming a fringe under Barclay’s bunk, swinging high enough from the floor to be above the “frost line.” The transmitter had been suspended at shoulder height by cords from the ceiling, the key lashed to a horizontal brace of the wall.
Barclay leaned against the bunk upright and began tapping out a call for Big Magnet. Macy and the ’gyro were already in sight over the main base before he got an answer fifteen minutes later. Macy had found a band of 80-mile wind at 4,000 feet.
“Is it time for theories yet?” Dr. Copper asked, as the bunk sections were going into position. “By the way, I hope you birds aren’t sloppy eaters. I see my bunk is going to be the dining table.”