Nina was right behind him, scrambling eagerly into the dark. Purdue followed with Blomstein, then at last Sam saw a flicker of light down below as someone switched a torch on. He waved at Admiral Whitsun to go next, thinking it would be a good idea to get the old boy out of the storm. His instinct was to send Fatima down next, but when he made eye contact with her she shot him an amused look. Sam remembered then that she had far more experience in the Antarctic than he did and was much better equipped for all of this, so he closed his fingers around the metal ladder and began his descent.
By the time Sam reached the floor there were several torches lit. Their thin beams showed that the group had arrived in a tunnel with arching corrugated metal walls. Shuffling to one side to make room for the rest of the party, Sam bumped into a banister set into the wall. A little more shuffling confirmed that the floor sloped downhill. Above his head he heard the ominous clang of the circular door being pulled shut. He had never been claustrophobic, but for the first time in his life Sam experienced a pang of nerves at being shut in an enclosed space. He was not the only one. From somewhere behind him he heard a quickly-stifled whimper from Nina.
"You ok?" he muttered to her.
"Yes," she snapped. "I'm fine. Why shouldn't I be?" She shone her torch along the downward slope. "I think we should go this way," she called. "If we head uphill all we're going to find is another exit. This must be the way toward the main complex."
They filed slowly down the corridor, Alexandr and Nina at the front. The place had an odd smell of disinfectant, stale air, and dust, but the one thing that was missing was the odor of rusty metal. Sam directed his beam toward the walls and noticed that they were indeed rust-free. I wonder how that works, he thought. I'll have to ask Alexandr I'd have thought that if this place has been abandoned for so long it would be falling to bits by now. Ah well. I suppose we should just be glad that it isn't.
The corridor opened out into a large, hangar-like room where their footsteps and voices echoed and the torch beams stretched out into the distance. A little exploration revealed a number of massive engines, presumably designed to power the whole station.
"Let's find a way to get these running!" Purdue clapped his hands in delight. "Alexandr, what do you think? Between the two of us we should be able to find a way, should we not?"
"Certainly," Alexandr smirked. "You can smell the diesel, yes? I have never yet found a diesel engine that I could not make run." He pointed his torch toward the base of one of the engines, sizing it up.
"Purdue!" Jefferson Daniels' voice rang out, followed by the sound of a body slumping to the ground. The beams of light zoomed around in the direction of the voice, revealing Jefferson crouching beside the fallen Admiral Whitsun. Fatima was at his side in a second, scrutinizing the admiral's ashen face, wriggling her fingers into the neckline of his snowsuit to check his pulse.
"He's ok," she pronounced. "His pulse is steady; I don't think he's in any danger. He's probably just exhausted, and it's a lot warmer in here than outside, so he might be overheating. We need to find somewhere for him to rest and we can keep an eye on him."
"Very well," said Purdue. "The engines will wait, I suppose. Alexandr, can you take a few people and find us quarters of some kind? It's probably best if we don't drag the admiral along on the search."
Alexandr nodded smartly and pointed to Nina, Sam, and Matlock. "With me," he said, then turned on his heel and set off toward the nearest door. The trio that he had selected fell into line at once. Nina caught up with Alexandr and began discussing the probable layout of the ice station.
"If this is the main furnace room, there should be stairs to all the other levels nearby," she said. There was a tone in her voice that Sam had never heard before — a rushed, gabbling quality, slightly breathy, quite unlike Nina's usual controlled lecturer's tone. He could not tell whether it was simply excitement causing the change, or a touch of fear. "I wish I'd had a chance to copy more of those notes, because I'm completely working from memory here — but there was something in Kruger's notebooks about the main staircases, and one of them was right next to the engine room. So let's all keep a lookout — somewhere along here there's got to be a door."
Nina was right, of course. Her memory and sense of direction were both good. They had gone a little way along the corridor when they found the stairway and followed it down to the level below. A forbidding metal door stood in front of them, marked Schlafsale. Because Nina nodded and reached for the handle, Sam assumed that they had found the dormitories and followed her into a long, narrow, pitch-black room.
The walls were lined with slim bunks, stripped bare to reveal grey mattresses. Under normal circumstances Sam would have found them uninviting, but after a few nights in the tent and the long, choppy sea journey, he had to fight the impulse to hurl himself onto one and sleep for at least forty-eight hours. The beam from Alexandr's torch flashed back and forth as he made a quick inspection of the rest of the room. In the darkness there was the sound of a long-closed cupboard being yanked open.
"Blankets!" Alexandr's voice rang out. "We are in luck, my friends! Here, take this and make up some beds. I shall go and fetch the others." In a flicker of footsteps and torch beams he was gone, leaving Sam and Nina alone in the dormitory with their arms full of sheets and blankets.
Sam took his armload of bedding and dumped it on one of the bunks, then balanced his torch on the bunk opposite so that he could see what he was doing. The bedding had been neatly arranged in piles consisting of a white sheet, a pillowcase, and a grey blanket, though Sam's decision to toss them onto the mattress had sent this system into disarray. He unfolded item after item until he had a complete set, then began putting the sheet on the bed.
"Aren't these amazing?" Nina was in heaven, though her progress with the bed-making was slow thanks to her need to examine the sheets in detail. At least it kept her distracted, keeping her claustrophobia at bay. "All these things have been here since the 1940s, completely undisturbed… No one else has touched these, not since the people who staffed this base! We're going to be sleeping in their actual beds, in this actual dormitory — I know it's morbid and horrible, but there's something so incredible about being the first people to see these things and getting to interact with the artifacts this way! We need to photograph everything, absolutely everything. Look, the sheets are tagged with the serial numbers of the people they'd been issued to! We should be able to find out exactly who each of these sets belonged to — it's incredible!"
Sam fumbled with the stiff mattress, shoving the corner of the sheet beneath it. "So you're telling me that Nazis managed to build this station, but they couldn't manage fitted sheets? Do you know how to do corners?"
"Nope. Just tuck them in and hope for the best."
They continued making the beds inexpertly until they had prepared enough bunks for everyone. By that time the rest of the party had arrived, and Admiral Whitsun was very nearly back on his feet, being helped along by Jefferson and Professor Matlock. They eased him into the nearest bunk, then the group bedded down for the night, their torches blinking out one by one.
Sam flung his arm across his face as bright light flooded the room. In his semiconscious state he heard yells and groans from the others as they protested at the sudden glare. He tried to force his eyes open, but all he could see was painful whiteness. As he rubbed them and waited for the flashing behind his eyelids to stop, there was a rattle of footsteps dashing down the metal staircase outside. The door flew open and Nina and Alexandr tumbled in, giggling like schoolchildren.