“Sure.” She looked at Ben. “Are you helping? I didn’t know you were a surgeon, too.”
“No, just an ex-medic.” He looked as wretchedly proud as a schoolboy complimented at his first dance by his date.
Katerina finished her tea. “Let us begin.”
They brought Ivan and Yevgeni into the lounge; the infirmary was too small to hold everyone during an operation. Then men drowsed, woke and drowsed again. Penny looked in on them once in a while; they would look up and smile at her and then stare at the ceiling. Though they had been bathed last night, they still stank of sweat and gangrene, and occasionally a whiff of it filtered into the mess hall.
Kyril lost his right foot, part of his left, and all the fingers on his left hand.
Yevgeni lost all his toes and the fingertips of his right hand.
Ivan, the last, lost his left foot, his right big toe, and most of the fingers on his right hand; he also lost his ears.
It was past noon when the amputations were finished. The three men slept drugged in the infirmary; the lounge and mess hall now smelled of ether. Nevertheless, there was a crowd in the mess hall when Katerina and Ben came in. Carter sat them down at a table and patted their shoulders.
“Did it go all right?”
“Yes, very well,” Katerina said briskly. “Ben was excellent. Very helpful. Quick and precise.” Her hand reached out and touched his, gripped it hard for a moment.
Gordon Ellerslee finished his supper that night, got up and went back to the serving line. “Let’s have some seconds of that super stew, Terry!”
“Sorry, Gord. That’s it.”
“Aw, the hell you say.”
“Come off it — we been on rationin’ for a week.”
“This ain’t goddamned rationing, it’s goddamn slow starvation. I go out to the drilling rig every day, I freeze my ass off, I need the goddamned food. Now, how about some seconds?”
There were almost twenty people in the mess hall. Their conversations stopped. “Hear, hear,” called Simon.
Terry folded his arms and contemplated Gordon with detached annoyance. Suzy stood next to him, her face taut. Penny stood in the door to the kitchen.
“You’ve put away three thousand calories today. Just like everybody else who works outside. I don’t hear anybody else bitching about it, except for that Kiwi asshole Simon.” Terry stared at Gordon’s big belly. “When that gut disappears — and that double chin — you might get some sympathy. But not from me. And you might even get seconds. But not from me.”
Gordon slammed down his tray and turned away, his face purple. Carter stood up and came over to him. “Let’s talk about it at the seminar, Gord.”
“Talk about more’n that,” Gordon growled. He stalked out of the mess hall and sat sulking in the lounge.
Carter opened the seminar with the usual routine announcements: tomorrow’s house-mouse and snow miners, Colin’s weather forecast and Laputa’s current position — about 1.7 kilometres Grid South-South-west of yesterday’s and 125 kilometres Grid South of their original location. He asked Katerina for a report on the Vostochni, and everyone applauded when she said they were doing well.
Will reported that the drilling hut was now back in full operation, thanks to Gordon and Simon, and the hole was within twenty metres of the bottom of the ice.
“This is important,” he said. “We need to know the exact thickness of the ice under us, and what its condition is.
“Something dicey is coming up,” he continued. He explained the problem he foresaw as Laputa approached the Ridge. The others listened in silence; then Howie raised a hand.
“If this is gonna happen, how come we haven’t stopped already? There’s a lot of ice up ahead of us, and it must be hitting the Ridge, too.”
“Good point. First, don’t forget the Shelf thickens as you go from the sea towards the land. A lot of the ice ahead of us is too thin to hit the Ridge. But over the last couple of weeks, you see an odd pattern in our rate of drift. We go a couple of kilometres one day, a kilometre the next and the third day we scarcely budge. A day or two later we move four or five kilometres, and then slow down again over the next few days. It looks to me as if each island is hitting the Ridge and grounding itself; then the ice behind it breaks it up into bite-size bits, and we all move three squares forward. Then the next island grounds itself, and so on.”
“Beautiful!” Sean McNally said excitedly. “All these bloody thick ice islands get chopped up, so the debris covers a greater area and moves faster — and the super-shelf forms inside a year or two. You’d think someone planned it.”
“I’m delighted that you appreciate the aesthetic elegance of my hypothesis,” Will grinned. “The Scots and the Irish usually understand each other in these matters. But it means we get chopped up, too, and probably in the next six weeks.”
Half a dozen people started talking at once. Katerina hushed them; Carter then pointed to Gordon, who had leapt to his feet and was determined to be heard.
“That settles it,” he snapped. “We gotta get out of this place, right now. Hell, another three-four days and we won’t even have sunlight. Al ought to leave at once for New Byrd; that’s what I think.”
“Wait a minute, Gord,” said Will. “Remember, I said your drilling operation is important.”
“Not now it isn’t.”
“It is. You see, we may be better off than we look. The bottom of the Shelf is as crevassed as the top — maybe even more so, now we’ve had such a pounding. Just maybe, the bottom of our little island may be, uh, rotten enough to break away without destroying the island. If—”
“If, if, if,” Gordon jeered. “What if it’s not?”
“We move to the mainland,” Hugh said quietly. “Perhaps to one of the Dry Valleys. And we winter there.” There was more uproar. Herm Northrop stood up. No one paid him any attention until he banged a beer can on the table.
“I don’t care where we go,” he said, “as long as we take the reactor core with us.” He looked wryly pleased with the startled expressions on his listeners’ faces. “It can’t be left behind if our island is going to be broken up. The core is radioactive enough to poison the whole Southern Ocean.”
“But you c-could s-seal it, Herm,” Colin said. “And it could b-b-be picked up n-n-next year.”
“Next year it might be at the bottom of the sea. Eventually the container would rupture. We simply mustn’t let that happen.”
Al Neal cleared his throat. “Herm, the core container is too big and heavy for the Otter. You’d need a Hercules.”
Gordon was on his feet again, jittering with impatience. “Goddamn it, that’s just another reason for sending Al out for help! I’m no ecology freak, but I sure don’t want to see those rods down on the bottom, warming up the Ross Sea. Hugh — Carter — you gotta send him.”
Hugh closed his eyes. “We’ll consider it, Gordon. Meanwhile, get that hole drilled.”
Jeanne had tentatively raised her hand a couple of times; now Carter nodded to her. She stood up, looking nervous.
“I don’t exactly know if this is the time or place to mention it. But there’s something else you might as well consider. I’m pregnant.”
There was a moment’s silence, followed by cheers, whistles and table pounding. Simon bellowed, “Good for Will!” and Will blushed violently. Jeanne blushed, too. Hugh and Carter glanced at each other.
“Does Katerina know about this?” Carter shouted above the noise.
“Yes, I know,” Katerina called from the door to the infirmary. “Please, more quiet.”
“Sorry, Kate. All right, all right, settle down, everyone.” Carter got them quiet and went on: “My own reaction to your news is, ah, modified rapture. We don’t need all the details—”