“Your fear? I’ve been pissing my pants all day.”
A second flare went off, much closer now, and then two lines of orange light appeared: the ski-way. Al circled, dropped and landed with scarcely a bump.
Floodlights glared into the flight compartment as the Otter taxied up to the hangar, but Al and Will could just make out a group of dark figures milling about on the snow. The hangar doors drew open, and someone ran out with the winch cable. Two minutes later they were inside and the doors boomed shut.
Al got up and went in the passenger compartment. The Russians looked exhausted. He patted Ivan’s shoulder, and then went to open the door. He saw Katerina walking steadily and carefully, picking her way over the greasy duckboards. Despite her bulky anorak and trousers, Al thought she looked very small.
“Hey, Katerina!” he bellowed, his voice echoing off the hangar roof. “Come and say hello to your husband.”
“He is pretty tough, that one,” she said. “I thought he would be okay.” She climbed the four-step ladder into the cabin, her smile bright.
“Katya—”
She caught her breath when she saw him in the dim light.
“Ah, Vanya — Vanya!” She fell to her knees beside his seat, gripping his arms and kissing his cracked and blackened lips.
Much later that evening Katerina left the infirmary and went for a walk in Tunnel D. The walls glittered with frost. From the huts in Tunnel C came laughter and Max Wilhelm’s uncertain tenor rendition of ‘Your Cheating Heart’. The welcome-back party had moved from the lounge to the geophysics lab after Katerina had insisted on quiet in the infirmary. She was glad she hadn’t dampened the celebration.
She turned back and went into Tunnel B, avoiding the cold porch nearest to Hugh’s room; no need to disturb him — or his attendant — any further tonight. At the next door she went in and walked down the bunkhouse corridor until she came to the room shared by Max and Ben Whitcumb. She knocked gently.
“Come in,” Ben snapped. When he saw who it was, his expression softened.
“Hi, Katerina. Good to see you. Here, let me take your coat.”
“Thank you.” She sat down and looked around. The cubicle was crowded with books, boxes of fossils and cold-weather gear, but there was little to reveal the personalities of the men who lived in it. Ben had been sitting at his desk, reading a geology journal.
“I hope I am not interrupting?”
“Nothing serious. I’m reduced to reading Max’s stuff these days. How is your husband? And his friends?”
“Resting. They are all very glad to be here.”
“I’m glad, too. It’s like the old days, isn’t it? When we all used to help each other.”
“Yes. Not such very old days — you and I both remember them. Why are you not at the party?”
“Oh — I’m not much for parties these days. Too many people get on my nerves.”
“Yes, it happens. I want to ask you for a favour.”
“Sure.”
“You have medical training.”
Ben smiled. “Not exactly. Two years as an Army medic, that’s all.”
“It is more than anyone else has. Tomorrow I must operate on the men. I will need help.”
“Amputations?”
“Yes. I am afraid so.”
“Well. I’ll be glad to do whatever I can.”
“Thank you, Ben. I am grateful. About nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Katerina went down the service corridor to Tunnel A. She walked through the deserted mess hall and lounge, and noticed a light on in the microfilm room between the lounge and the infirmary. Will and Jeanne were sitting at two readers, scanning old articles and reports.
“Hullo, Kate,” Will said. “Your babies are sleeping like stones.”
“Good. And what are you two doing?”
“Reading up on the Ross Sea Ridge,” Jeanne answered. “This crazy man had two beers and dragged me away from that lovely party to fiddle with microfilm.”
“And what is the Rossy Ridge?”
Will pointed to a map on the screen of his reader. It showed the Ross Sea, the Siple Coast and Marie Byrd Lane, off to the Grid West of Shacktown. “It’s a range of hills under the Shelf. See, it starts here, near the Siple Coast, and runs Grid East all the way to here.” His finger touched a spot about two hundred kilometres Grid South of Shackleton Glacier. “It’s about five hundred metres below sea level at this point. In some places a little higher — high enough for the Shelf to ground itself.”
“Ah — I see what you are thinking,” Katerina said. “Our island is how thick?”
“Between five hundred and fifty and six hundred metres,” said Jeanne.
“And how far away are we from the Ridge?”
“Fifty kilometres. A little less than a month away,” said Will.
Steve had been working on repairs to the drilling hut and on digging two new tunnels for seismic equipment. Every night he pitched into bed and slept almost without moving; in the morning he would wake and make love to Penny with an urgency that first excited and then worried her. It was as if something — some feeling, some joy or fear — could be expressed only in her arms. They would murmur amiably for a while afterward, and then get up to resume endless hours of work. She saw him when he came into the mess hall for meals — which wasn’t all that often — and sometimes in the evening if she could get off work before he came lurching in to sleep.
The morning after the Russians arrived Penny and Steve both slept late; the party had lasted all night. Penny woke around 0900. Steve, beside her, was too still to be asleep. Next door Terry Dolan snored violently.
“Awake?” she asked.
“Yeah. Hi.” He kissed her.
“What’s on your mind?”
Steve yawned and stretched and said: “Winter.”
“Oh ho ho,” Penny murmured. “I thought you were looking forward to it.”
“In a way I am. But it’s getting close now. In two weeks we’ll lose the sun.”
“So what? I haven’t seen much of the sun for ages anyway.”
“It’ll feel different, believe me. It was rough enough here last winter, with just nine of us and plenty of food and knowing the first plane in would be landing by the middle of October. This year there’ll be thirty of us, on short rations, and no idea when we’ll get out. That’s what I don’t like — the uncertainty, and what it’ll do to everybody… If Hugh weren’t sick I’d feel better.”
She felt uneasy as she walked to the mess hall; it was as if whatever was struggling in Steve had almost come out, and she had forced it back inside. — Hell, if he wants to wring his hands and be a prophet of doom he doesn’t have to make me listen to it.
But it wasn’t that, and she knew it. She was afraid he was going to tell her he was frightened, really frightened for his life, and that was one thing she didn’t want to hear. The midnight horrors were all right for neurotic women writers, but not for him. Not ever.
Katerina and Ben were in the kitchen, drinking tea. Ben looked self-conscious when Penny came in and avoided her eyes. Usually she felt sorry for him, and sometimes his moony expression disgusted her, but this morning his crush on her felt flattering. At least Ben wasn’t grim and all-knowing, like Steve. “Morning,” she smiled. “Can I make you two some breakfast?”
“That is very kind of you, but no. We must operate this morning. Afterward, we eat. The men will not be ready to eat until tomorrow, except maybe some liquids.”
“Oh.” Penny was taken aback. “Well, you know, call me if you need anything.”
“Perhaps,” Katerina went on, “if you keep people out of the lounge this morning, and shut the door from the mess hall to the infirmary, it will be helpful.”