“Masts are down. So’s the rig,” Howie grunted.
“Christ,” said Will.
“Wait’ll you see the place. We’ve moved all the furniture” Simon smiled. “C’mon, let’s go.”
The cab of the Sno-Cat was unheated, but still warmer than the outside by four or five degrees. Penny squatted against the rear wall of the cramped cab, wedged between Tim and Steve. The roar of the engine made talking difficult, but she was too tired to talk anyway. Steve caught her eye.
“You were damn brave.”
“Didn’t feel brave.” She leaned against him and abruptly fell asleep.
Chapter 5 – The Greenhouse
The tunnels looked about the same, though the supplies along the walls had obviously been stacked in haste. Carter Benson met them at the door to Tunnel E, where a work crew was still clearing up. His round face brightened when he saw them, though he seemed half-entranced by exhaustion.
“There you are at last. God, it’s good to see you all! Everyone well?”
“We’re cold and tired,” Will said. “How’s Hugh?”
“They told you, did they? He’ll be fine if he gets enough rest. Poor guy — we may have to strap him down to make sure he gets it. Look, go and get something to eat. Then have Kate give you a quick look-over, and get to bed yourselves.”
“There’s too much to be done,” Steve objected.
“It’ll keep. Off you go now.”
There were few signs of damage in the lounge and mess halclass="underline" a lamp missing, books still strewn on the floor, pictures hanging crooked. Suzy welcomed them with kisses.
“How’s Terry?” Al asked her. “Howie told us he’d been hurt.”
“Silly old bugger got scalded by his own soup. Katerina says he’ll be all right, but his legs — his legs—”
Jeanne hugged her. “He’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
“Oh God, if you’d seen — the skin’s just gone, all raw and b-bleeding.” She caught her breath and wiped her eyes. “On top of everything else he’s got a damn cry-baby for a wife. And here you are — what on earth kept you? You all look done in. Sit down, sit down — what’ll you eat?”
Katerina came in as they were eating. She looked business-like as ever, with her dark hair neatly brushed and her white jacket freshly ironed. She studied each of them expressionlessly.
“Do your ears hurt?” she asked Will.
“Oh — a bit.” He grunted when she touched one.
“A bit, eh? A lot, I think. But they will be okay. Any frostbite? Yes, everyone a little bit. And your hands? Penny, let me see. Yes. Not so good, but not bad. And you are all very sunburned. Well, I will want complete examinations right away. Al first, then Steve, then Will, then Tim. Penny and Jeanne after.”
“Why not ladies first?” Tim asked.
“Ladies are tougher.”
“Sexist,” he muttered.
After the examinations Katerina was satisfied that there were no serious problems with most of them. Tim was surprised to learn that he had fractured his left wrist.
“Never felt a thing,” he protested as she set the bone and put a cast on it. “Everything else hurt so much, I never noticed.” He studied the cast with disgust. “How the hell am I supposed to work with this thing on?”
“You are resourceful; you will find ways.”
Al was dehydrated, sunburned and exhausted, but otherwise in good shape. So were Steve and Will. Penny’s frozen bronchia made her cough, and her voice was almost gone, but Katerina saw nothing that a few days’ rest couldn’t repair. Jeanne was so tired she seemed to sleepwalk, and obviously needed rest also.
“Go to bed. And stay there,” Katerina ordered them. Penny and Jeanne needed no urging, but the others simply went to the showers, changed their clothes and dispersed to help the work teams.
“They are impossible,” Katerina told Hugh went she went to see him late that afternoon. “Suicidal.”
“Nonsense. I think they’re wonderful.” Hugh grinned evilly. “Ought to follow their example.”
“Do not make me more upset, Hugh. Please.”
“I’m sorry, Kate. You are upset.”
“Yes. I worry too much.”
“Well, don’t. Now — unless you want to see me get up and go to work in the snow mine, bog off to the kitchen and have a nice cup of tea and a smoke with poor old Suzy.”
Her smile was startlingly warm and beautiful, enough to make Hugh think it was a good job she didn’t reveal it often; it reminded him of his wife’s. He felt hideously lonely and impotent, lying in this chilly little room.
“Very well. I will see you later. Don’t get up.”
Hugh lay back, staring at the ceiling and waiting for Carter to arrive with the latest report on the clean-up. His chest hurt.
Penny woke up around 2300 that night, and for one nightmarish moment did not know where she was.
“Pen? You all right?” Jeanne’s sleepy voice was comforting.
“Yes.” She could scarcely speak above a croak, and her face and hands hurt like hell. “How about you?”
“God, I ache all over. And I’m starved. Let’s go get something to eat.”
The bunkhouses were so quiet that they supposed everyone had gone to bed early. But when they entered the mess hall, they could hear voices in the lounge: deep, serious male voices that made Penny hesitate to intrude. There was no boisterousness, no boyishness in the rumble of the voices, nor even much intensity. There was only the dispassion of men unwillingly but unavoidably in danger.
Penny and Jeanne slipped into the lounge. Almost everyone was there except Terry; even Hugh was lying quietly on a sofa. Carter Benson was standing by the blank TV projection screen, looking haggard.
“…and that about sums up the present condition of the station. Not good, but it could be worse. Our chief concern will be repairing the radio shack and getting the transmitter working again. Hullo, kids. Have a seat.
“Any more questions? Good enough. Steve tells me he’s had a chance to study the tapes from Remote 12, and he can tell us just what happened up there.”
There was a soft rustle in the room as men shifted in their seats, lit cigarettes or swigged beer. Steve got up.
“I’ll keep it short. You know Tim and I have been studying earthquake swarms, and that I suspected we were in for a major quake. I thought it might even cause a surge of the ice sheet — part of it, anyway. And in the last few weeks there were signs that the quake might be coming soon. We had meltwater under the Shelf, with radon gas dissolved in it. Also, pressure-wave velocities were increasing; that’s often a sign that a quake is due.
“What I didn’t realise until now is that the quake and the surge created each other. You see, when rock undergoes strain, it expands and opens up microscopic pores. That helps stabilise the rock. Then water percolates into the pores, and when the rock is saturated, the quake occurs. It looks now as if the ice sheet put a strain — a really enormous strain — on a series of faults on the far side of the Queen Maud Range. Tim and I are pretty sure the faults mark the edge of a plate boundary. Because there was so little liquid water available to soak down into the rock, the faults were locked, maybe for centuries. But meltwater began to form, partly from the pressure of the ice and, maybe, from the heat that the ice sheet has been slowly absorbing for the last ten thousand years, the meltwater began to soak into the rock, and when the rock couldn’t absorb any more, water began flowing out under the ice into the sea. So the ice sheet made certain that any quake would be a big one, big enough to create a surge.
“According to the tapes, the quake was centred between Otway Massif and Roberts Massif, just over the mountains. It was fairly shallow — only about fifteen or twenty kilometres down.”