“Then we are out of food almost two months earlier. The middle of winter.”
“Steve, are you suggesting that we just forget about helping anyone who needs help?” Al asked.
“No, I’m not. But we’d better be aware of the consequences.”
“Steve sounds like a convert to Dynamic Self-Reliance,” Carter remarked dryly. There was a flutter of laughter. “Ah, he has — he’s raised a point I’ve been meaning to bring up soon anyway. We’re going to have to start rationing. It’s a hell of a note, but it’s the only way we’re likely to get through to spring.”
“The implication,” Ben said, “is that you don’t want Al to fly anywhere if he might bring back inconvenient people.”
“Oh, Christ!” Carter snapped. “Don’t be pig-headed. If there were a hundred people at New Byrd, we’d take ’em all, and you know it. And we’d eat the bloody sweet peas in the greenhouse if we had to.”
“Carter’s right, Ben,” Steve said. “The problem with a flight is the risk of losing Al and the plane.”
“Great!” snarled Gordon. “We got a plane, but we can’t use it. That makes sense.”
There was a moment’s silence before Hugh spoke. “There’ll be no flight to New Byrd. The risk is too great for the benefit we might get out of it. And now I suggest we adjourn.”
That night Penny picked a fight with Steve as they lay in bed.
“You didn’t need to cross-examine the poor jerk. You could’ve just said what Hugh did.”
He lay very still beside her in the darkness. “Ben was getting support from Gordon, and Gordon represents almost half the people here. He could have talked the rest of us into the idea, before we all understood what we were getting into.”
“I still think it was crummy of you.”
Steve turned away from her, and she automatically moved with him to keep close to his warmth. It was hard to stay combative when her breasts touched the hard, smooth skin of his back, but she worked at it.
“Pen, you don’t understand. Ben’s idea is a good one. But it’s too risky. If we knew there were survivors at New Byrd, I’d volunteer to go with Al to help load ’em aboard. Gordon doesn’t give a damn about that; he just wants to get out, and Ben’s suggestion was a smokescreen for him.”
“Well, what’s wrong with getting out, may I ask?”
He sighed. “Even if Al could get all the way to the Peninsula, and then get in touch with home, there’s no chance now that we could be reached until September or October, especially with this weather and no radio. Then we’d be stuck here with no plane and no pilot; what if a real emergency breaks out during the winter? How could we get anyone out?”
“You’re talking complete bullshit. First, you don’t know that we can’t be reached until spring. Hell, it isn’t even winter yet, and they’ve been making winter flights down here for twenty years. Second, this is a real emergency. How could things get so bad that we’d have to send Al for help? And if they did get that bad — like the island was breaking up or something — what chance would he have of getting anywhere?”
“Okay, love,” he answered slowly. “Pretend you’re a hotshot pilot in a Hercules, sitting up in New Zealand at Harewood. You know there’s a couple of dozen people three thousand kilometres away who need rescuing. You don’t know exactly where they are. You can’t contact them by radio. You have no idea what the weather’s like anywhere between New Zealand and the South Pole. Your compasses are all cockeyed. Your plane’s electronics go bonkers now and then when another solar flare hits. And you and your crew have flown in the Antarctic before, so you know what you’re getting into. Are you going to roar off to the rescue?”
“If I had the balls God gave my grandmother, I sure would.”
Steve guffawed, turned over and hugged her.
“You don’t get off that easy,” she said. “There’s some other reason why you don’t want to send Al.”
“Two reasons. The first one you won’t like. I don’t want to leave. At least not till spring.” He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “There’s too much to learn here. And the risks of wintering over aren’t that high. I think most of the scientists feel the same, but we don’t talk about it much. The technicians want to get the hell out, and I don’t blame them, but we’ve got an opportunity here that’ll never come again, and I don’t want to miss it if I don’t have to.”
“I think that’s fine, Steve, but I don’t like watching you manipulate everyone just so you can stay and play with your seismographs.”
“The second reason is Al,” Steve went on, ignoring her. “He didn’t say much tonight, right? He’ll go if he’s asked, but he doesn’t want to. The poor bastard’s exhausted — and he’s the one who’s responsible for us. Not Hugh, not Carter, not anyone else. If Al makes a mistake, we’re finished. Tired men make mistakes.”
“…Okay. That I’ll accept.”
Thinking of Al made her think of all of them, of their fragility and transience. She could feel the strength in Steve’s arms as he held her, and remembered how that strength had sustained her in the long walk from the helicopter. All that strength could be mocked and annihilated by the blind violence of the ice and the wind.
Laputa continued its ponderous progress. When the drill at last reopened the hole through the ice, Will and Jeanne found that a strong current was running Grid South, away from the mainland. The water was extremely turbid: more meltwater than ever was coming off the continent under the glaciers, carrying millions of tonnes of clay and rock flour.
“If we continue on our present bearing, at our present speed of 4.5 kilometres per diem,” Will told a seminar in mid-March, “we can expect to reach Acapulco, Mexico, in two years.” There was enthusiastic applause.
Bad weather seemed to have settled in for good. Day after day snow and high winds made outside work difficult or impossible. Howie and Gerry tried another traverse, but bogged down in soft snow within three kilometres of Shacktown; it took them three days to dig out their Sno-Cat and crawl back in a near whiteout.
Daylight was going swiftly now. They would lose the sun completely in mid-April, though for some weeks after that there would be a long twilight until the sun sank well below the horizon. People reacted in different ways to the approach of winter. Some, like Suzy, seized any chance they got to get outside in daylight, even if the sky was overcast; others, like Ben, retreated to their cubicles to read, sleep and wait for the next day to come. Gordon Ellerslee did some quiet plotting.
On the afternoon of March 22, Al and Howie were doing some maintenance chores in the Otter’s flight compartment when Tom Vernon climbed aboard.
“Say, Al — when you get a minute — some of the guys want to see you — in the machine shop.”
“Got a poker game going?”
“No — just want to ask you something — any time you’re free.”
“Okay, give me ten minutes.”
John tramped out and Al turned to Howie. “Any idea what it’s about?”
Howie nodded his dark, shaggy head. “I think they want you to go to New Byrd.”
“Oh, for gosh sakes. Well, let’s get this finished first.”
A few minutes later they got out and walked across the oil-stained ice floor of the hangar to the machine-shop hut. Most of the station’s techs were there, crowded into the far end by the door that led down to Tunnel D. Gordon was sitting behind a desk, leaning against a wall solidly papered with old Playboy and Penthouse gatefolds.
“Hi, Al. Howie. You guys want a beer?”
“Sure,” said Al. Howie shook his head, and leaned silently against a filing cabinet. Someone found Al a chair, and he settled into it across the desk from Gordon. Simon handed Al a bottle of Kiwi Beer.