Ben Whitcumb was squatting at the rear of the wanigan, making stew on the primus stove. Will and Carter sat nearby; there was just room enough for Penny and Steve.
“Well, look who’s slumming,” Will laughed. “Come to see how the other half lives, have you?”
Carter passed her a bowl of stew and a spoon. “How’s the Nodwell holding up, Pen?”
“Pretty well. Mm — good and hot! You’ve a good cook, Ben. But it sure burns a lot of fuel.”
The wanigan shuddered as if something had rammed it. From outside came the crunching sound of metal scraping over ice. The lamp above Ben’s head swung hard against the wall; the floor vibrated for several seconds.
Carter leaned over and switched on the radio. “This is Carter. Anyone hurt? Anyone in trouble? Sean? Tim? Howie? Tom?” A fuzzy chorus replied: everyone was all right, but no one knew what had happened.
Steve crawled over Penny’s legs and opened the door. The others followed him outside.
The vehicles’ headlights glared through ice fog. Someone walked in front of the other Sno-Cat, and his shadow loomed up against the fog like a misshapen giant. The snow underfoot was fine and gritty, almost like sand, but Penny could still sense a trembling in it, far below the surface. Out in the darkness, beyond the convoy’s oasis of light, an irregular metallic banging arose: the sound of breaking ice.
“What is it?” Penny shouted over the engines.
“I think it was an earthquake,” Steve shouted back. “We’re in the middle of the goddam ocean!”
“Tsunami. The quake was probably back on the mainland, but it could’ve started a wave under the ice. I’m surprised there haven’t been more quakes — the whole continent must be rebounding with so much ice off it.”
Steve turned to Carter. “I think we should reconnoitre the whole area — see if there’s any crevassing that might get in our way.”
Inspecting the vehicles and sledges took almost an hour. There were more shocks, none as violent as the first, but each one made Penny want to scream and run. At last Carter sent her back to the Nodwell, where Katerina gave her cup after cup of hot water. It took her a long time to stop shivering.
Carter came on the radio around 2200. “Well, we’ve been through a real icequake, it seems, and no harm done. Some of the lads have made a quick trip roundabout, and there don’t seem to be any crevasses nearby. Even so, from now on we’re going to probe the surface before we move across it. I suggest we all get some sleep and be ready to move out at 0600. I’ll need at least five volunteers for the probe team.”
The snowmobiles stayed on their sledge; now men went out on skis, roped together and carrying long aluminium poles. From the cab of the Nodwell, they were gleaming green shapes that cast long shadows ahead of them as they advanced to the limits of the headlights’ beams. Then, having tested the snow, they would signal the convoy to move up while the process was repeated.
By noon of July 11 they had covered six kilometres, without incident but very slowly. Now, as the sky flamed red above them, they reached a crevasse field. The probers ventured cautiously into it, relying on the wind-crust to hold them up, and then came back to the convoy to confer with Carter. At 1300 he discussed strategy with the drivers.
“The field isn’t too wide, thank God. The snow bridges seem good and thick, but the quake probably weakened them. How about sending the D8 in first?”
“Okay,” Howie nodded. “Whoever comes after me, stay on one side or the other of my trail. If I drop a snow bridge, they can cross where it’s still holding up.”
The D8 growled ahead of the convoy and stopped beside an aluminium pole marking the far side of the first crevasse. The probe team followed it, and found that the snow bridge had settled by almost a metre. Tom Vernon, in the D4, crossed about a hundred metres to the right; Sno-Cat 2, about a hundred metres to the left.
Will got Sno-Cat 1 across, but the bridge gave way while the sledge was still on it. A gap appeared, almost two metres wide and fifty metres long; it crossed the tracks left by the bulldozers. Will edged forward until the sledge was past the crevasse, while Steve, Carter and Ben watched from the edge. Then Carter went back inside to talk to Sean on the radio.
“The whole snow bridge looks ready to fall,” Carter said. “You’d better get the crevasse bridge out, and use it to cross over.”
Sean, Herm, Don and Ray went outside and awkwardly slid the bridge off the roof of the Nodwell. Penny and Katerina watched them drag it to a part of the crevasse still concealed by snow.
“How is that going to hold up this monster?” Penny muttered. Katerina said nothing.
Just visible in the headlights, Sean waved. Carter’s voice crackled over the radio: “Any time you’re ready, Pen.”
She put the Nodwell in gear and slowly advanced. The ends of the bridge overlapped the crevasse by only two metres on either side; it was easy to imagine the surface giving way and dropping them into the darkness.
Sean stood on the bridge, guiding Penny on to it. He walked backward as the Nodwell ground slowly on to the narrow aluminium strip. Hallway across, the tractor shuddered as the snow gave way and the bridge sagged; Sean caught his balance, paused and then beckoned Penny forward again. They were across.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Penny said to Katerina. She scrambled out of the cab as the men crowded around her, cheering and slapping her shoulders.
“Excuse me, you guys.” She sidled around to the far side of the Nodwell. “I’ve really got to pee.”
They were in the crevasse field for three more days. It would have been less, but a blizzard kept the convoy immobile for a day and a half. On the afternoon of July 14 they finally reached a hard, flat surface and began to make up for lost time. Carter kept the convoy going until 0300 hours on the morning of the 15th; by then they had travelled over a hundred kilometres from Laputa.
Most of the party slept for twelve straight hours. Howie and Tom Vernon made some repairs to the D8, clearing the fuel line of the pony engine used to start the big bulldozer’s diesel. Early on the 16th, the convoy moved on.
For Penny, time began to blur. Sometimes the sky glowed red and gave a pinkish tint to the snow; more often there was only darkness and the glare of drift in the headlights. Sometimes there was the roar of engines, sometimes the moaning of the wind and sometimes an absence of sound that was more startling than ordinary silence.
They drove when they could, for an hour or for ten, and slept in catnaps or around the clock. The Shelf was rarely smooth enough for a long run; though there were few bad crevasses, the sastrugi fields seemed endless, and some low-lying stretches were treacherously soft.
No one talked much, except about food. They ate stew and meat bars and canned vegetables while debating the menu for their first meal in New Zealand. It would be a gargantuan feast: rare roast beef, fresh lamb, chicken and ham. There would be new potatoes drenched in melted butter, fresh peas and asparagus (never mind that it was winter in New Zealand) and exquisitely crisp salads. There would be fresh bread and rolls dripping with butter and honey, and great hills of fresh fruit. They would eat and drink and smoke, take long hot baths in deep tubs, and sleep in warm beds between fresh sheets until they felt like getting up to eat some more. After an hour or so of such conversation, they would crawl into their damp, sour-smelling sleeping bags and shiver themselves to sleep.
On July 17 the convoy stopped for maintenance and repairs. Steve and Will took advantage of the pause to fire some seismic shots; when they came into the wanigan for lunch, Carter and Ben gaped at them.
“You two look sunburned,” Carter said.