“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you. Hi.”
“Hi. Look, I’d love to talk, but I’m pooped. Some other time, okay?”
“Penny, this isn’t what you think it is. I just want to talk for a while.”
“I don’t think it’s anything at all. And I don’t want to talk at all. Good night, and goodbye.”
Ben shrugged and stepped towards the door, but as he passed he gripped her shoulders and kissed her. Penny brought the heel of her hand up hard under his jaw, and he staggered back against the doorframe. He caught his breath, grinned uncertainly and shook his head.
“Well. Well. I can take a hint. Sorry to be a — nuisance.” And he sidled down the corridor.
Penny sat down on the edge of her bunk, breathing hard and a little high on adrenalin. Before it wore off, she went out and down the corridor to Don Treadwell’s cubicle. She rapped on the door and went in. Don was doing a watercolour of the greenhouse; he looked up at her, surprised.
“Hi. I want a lock on my door. Got one in stores?”
“I think I might, Penny. Have you lost anything?”
“No, and I don’t intend to.”
She began to realise that she must look a bit distraught, with her hair greasy and uncombed and her cheeks flushed. Don studied her with a hint of a smile.
“Well, there’s no point in lookin’ for a lock right now, because we couldn’t install it tonight, could we?”
“Why not?”
“Well, think of the noise. People are getting’ ready for bed, you know.”
“All right, all right. First thing in the morning, then.”
She wandered aimlessly from one hut to the next, proud of having coped with Ben and horrified of what might happen if someone like Gordon or Simon or even placid Howie decided to move in on her. Gordon would — and she —
Neutral, public territory seemed safest. She went into the mess hall. There was Gordon, sitting with Simon and Al; Penny nearly turned and ran, but Al beckoned her over.
“Hi, Pen. Thought you’d had enough of this dump for one day. Keep us company.”
“Oh — sure.” And she pulled up a chair next to Al, across from the other two. They were examining a map of Antarctica on which various pencilled lines had been scrawled.
“Brother Ellerslee’s got an idea,” Al said.
“Yeah?”
Al tapped a finger on the map. “Cape Hallett.”
Penny remembered flying over it on the way to McMurdo, but it had been hidden in clouds. There was — or had been — an American weather station there, and an airstrip for emergency landings. It stood on a corner of the continent overlooking the Southern Ocean at the point where it merged into the Ross Sea, and it was a very lonely place.
“We’re about seven hundred kilometres from Hallett now,” Gordon said. “About half as far as Vostok was when Al and Will flew there. If Al could reach Hallett, he could either radio to New Zealand, or refuel and fly on out.”
“If Hallett is still there,” Al said. “And if there’s a radio, and conditions are right, and if there’s fuel.”
“Even if there’s none of those things,” Gordon answered solemnly, “you could come back, or tough it out there for the rest of the winter. Hallett will be the first place they’ll reach in the spring — maybe even sooner.”
Al laughed. “So I freeze my buns while you guys sit here nice and snug, worrying yourselves sick about me.”
Gordon looked disconcerted; he tugged his nose as if, Penny thought, a good argument were lurking inside it. Gordon was, for him, deferential. She wondered why, when he usually blustered at everyone, and why he should be talking to Al when the two of them for some reason had said nothing to each other for weeks.
Simon spoke up: “There’s always a risk, Al. Sure, you’re the guy who gets stuck, and you always have been. You know that.”
“Mh.” Al raised his eyebrows. He looked down at the map between his big, blunt hands, and Penny felt she could read his mind: he was thinking of the long flight across the new Shelf, under a dark sky, with the yellow-green twilight low on the Grid South horizon. Or with a black, shrieking storm that blotted out everything, including himself and the plane.
And then across the ocean, she thought. Aloud, she asked: “Could you make it all the way to New Zealand?”
“No.” He pointed to a cluster of islands Grid South of Cape Hallett, far out in the Southern Ocean. “There’s a weather station at Cape Smith in the Balleny Islands. That’s seven hundred kilometres from Hallett. It’s only been there about two, three years, and the Kiwis may have shut it down. But… there’s an airstrip, and probably a few drums of JP4 It’s a gamble — sort of like drawing three cards to an inside straight.”
Al sat back and looked at the map. His face was unreadable. “Well, I’ll think about it.”
“Okay,” Gordon nodded. “That’s fair enough.”
July 2 started with a clear, star-filled sky, but the temperature soon rose ominously, and by noon another blizzard had come roaring down from the Southern Ocean. It blew itself out by evening, leaving high drifts over the station. Hugh sent out a whisking party, but they came back almost at once; it was impossible to work in darkness and blowing snow with the temperature at -30° and gusts up to seventy k.p.h.
“It’ll be better in the morning,” Colin told that night’s seminar. “Looks like a day or two of clear weather ahead. I think. Good whisking weather.” Everyone groaned at him.
“If we got good weather coming,” Gordon said, “I got a suggestion.”
“Let’s hear it,” said Hugh.
Gordon presented his idea for a flight to Cape Hallett. He was calm and deliberate; Penny thought he sounded a bit like Steve. When he finished and sat down, there was a moment of silence. Hugh broke it.
“Ordinarily, I would approve or reject a proposal like this one on my own authority. Under present conditions, however, I feel we ought to have at least a consensus. Plus, of course, Al’s opinion. Anyone want to speak against the idea?”
Penny looked across the lounge at Steve. He winked enigmatically at her and steepled his fingertips.
Will got up. “I think it’s daft. Most of us haven’t really seen what the surge has done — but I have, and Steve, and a few others. Al’s seen more than anyone. It was bad enough when we had daylight, but now — my God, not in a Twin Otter. A Hercules, perhaps. But not in a small plane like ours. Not until September, anyway, and maybe not even then.”
“Very good, Will. Anyone else?” No one spoke. “Anyone want to support Gordon’s idea?”
Hands went up all around the room. “Don.” Don Treadwell stood up, looking diffident. Penny couldn’t recall the last time he’d spoken in a seminar.
“I feel it’s dangerous, yes, but we have got no choice. We are on rationin’, but the food is still running out. We’ll have our last steak sometime this month, at this rate, and by August we’ll be out of potatoes, flour, rice — we’ll be eating canned fruit and survival-pack rations. We are going to be mighty hungry by spring. If Al goes, maybe we’ll get out of here before then.”
“If Al goes,” Penny said, “I want to go with him.”
The look on Steve’s face was hard to judge: he was surprised, but something else showed as well — alarm? Concern? Contempt? Relief? It took away most of her pleasure in causing a sensation; how could she have lived with a man for months and still not be able to understand him or predict his reactions?
“I think it should be me,” she went on. “Al shouldn’t have to go alone, and Shacktown shouldn’t lose anyone essential. That leaves me.” No one said anything. Penny saw some of the men exchanging looks. She left unsaid her main reason: that if she stayed, someone was going to get hurt.