“Oh God, he looks terrible,” Suzy whispered. The skin on Terry’s thighs, groin and belly was heavily blistered and coming off in bloody patches.
“I have seen worse. Don’t worry, he will be all right soon. Please, now, Suzy, go back to the kitchen. I will call you.”
She worked steadily and rapidly. Terry was breathing hard and seemed only remotely aware of what was happening.
Katerina wished the floor would stop vibrating.
The drilling hut was half-demolished by the collapse of the tower, but Gordon and Simon were unhurt and got outside without much trouble. The wind was picking up a little; snow drifted around their feet.
“Bloody masts are down,” Simon observed.
“Bitch of a job to get ’em back up again. Hope they leave it for next year. I’d like to get outa here.”
“So would I. Well, let’s see what the hell happened.”
As they rounded the hangar, they saw Howie approaching the personnel door.
“You guys all right?” he panted.
“Sure,” Gordon said. “Bet it’s a mess downstairs.”
“Didja see the wave comin’ across the Shelf? Weirdest thing I ever saw.”
“All we saw was the bloody hut falling down around us,” said Simon.
“Well, there was a wave. I’m not shittin’ you.”
As Howie yanked on the door, a sound like far-off thunder rolled down on the wind from the mountains.
Hugh was racing all over the station, but the radio shack was his main worry. The metal roof plate above it had fallen right through the top of Hut 1, along with several hundred kilos of snow; Bruce and Roger were somewhere inside. Several men were already frantically digging into the debris. Ground drift was increasing, blowing more snow into the tunnel, but within half an hour a narrow passageway had been made to the other side of the roof plate. Ray Crandall, the smallest man available, had crawled through to the ruined hut.
Roger Wykstra was crouched under a desk in the darkness. When the flashlight glared in his eyes, he said: “About fucking time. Who is that?” Roger’s long, thin face was blue with cold, but he looked more irritated than frightened.
“Ray. Where’s Bruce?”
“Under that wall. I think he’s hurt. He was yelling for a while, but he’s been quiet for a long time.”
“You okay?”
“Thought you’d never ask. Yeah, I’m all right.”
“Can you get out of there? Need any help?”
“Yeah, I can get out. Do you think it’s safe?”
“Hell no. But it’ll take both of us to get Bruce out.”
“Christ. I sure don’t want to bring any more crap down on us. Well—” He crawled out. It was impossible to move except on hands and knees, and in places they had to crawl flat on their bellies. It was intensely cold, and Roger was wearing only jeans and a sweater.
They found Bruce pinned between the floor and the fallen wall. Ray crawled in on top of him and heaved the wall upward just a few centimetres. Roger gripped Bruce’s arms and pulled cautiously. Bruce gasped and screamed.
“My arm, you dumb bastard! Leave it alone!”
“Which one, which one?”
“Left. Jeez, it must be broken.”
“I’m sorry,” Ray said shakily. “God, you scared me when you yelled like that.” He was a gentle, timid man, more at ease with computers than with people, and he dreaded upsetting anyone.
Painfully and slowly they dragged Bruce clear and got him to the passageway. Ray turned him over and slid him headfirst to the men waiting on the other side.
None of the huts had been knocked off their stilts, but their interiors were in chaos. The labs had been wrecked, and several irreplaceable instruments had been smashed. A pipe leading from the water reservoir had broken, flooding much of Tunnel D and turning the duckboards slippery with ice. Hugh Adams clambered over piles of tumbled crates and fuel drums for several minutes before finally reaching the stairs leading up to the hangar.
Here, at least, there had been little damage; the vehicles and the Otter were unscathed. As Hugh was finishing his inspection, Carter arrived. The geophysicist’s round face was tense, but he showed no sign of panicking. Hugh was glad of that. They went outside and walked around the surface buildings.
“Doesn’t look too bad,” Carter said. “The drill hut’s not as badly damaged as it seems — a week’s work ought to put it right. The ventilators all seem fine.”
They headed down the ski-way towards the pit in Tunnel A. “It’s the radio shack and the masts that worry me,” Hugh said. He sounded out of breath. “We’ve got to get the roof plate back in place as soon as possible, and put up at least one of the masts.”
“I agree about the roof — leave it like that and by next year the tunnels will be filled with snow. But why bother about the masts? It’s not really necessary if we’re about to evacuate.”
“I doubt that we’ll be able to — for some time. Oh, we’ll send Al off, but it’s not likely the Americans will be able—” he caught his breath again “ — to give us any help.” He turned to look at the mountains, but they were lost in windblown snow. This was more than just ground drift.
“We’ll be in the milk bottle soon,” Carter said. “Al had better hurry.”
The ice trembled under their feet, and the wind carried more strange thunder. “Steve ought to be pleased,” Hugh murmured. “He called this one bang-on.”
They reached the edge of the pit and looked down. A couple of men, unrecognisable behind sunglasses and frosted beards, were still digging out the roof plate. The edge of the tunnel had collapsed, allowing the plate to fall. Hugh studied the raw edge of the pit.
“It’ll be awkward getting the plate back up,” he said at last. “But it can be done. If only the radios aren’t too badly smashed. Hullo down there — that you, Tom?”
One of the men looked up. His beard was flaming orange: it was Tom Vernon, the station’s diesel mechanic. The other man was George Hills, the carpenter, wearing an often-patched anorak.
“Hi, Major,” John called out. “What is it?”
“I want every available man out here right away — to — get the plate back up. And hurry! It’ll be Condition One in half an hour.”
“Right,” Tom nodded; he and George turned and disappeared down the tunnel.
The job went faster than anyone expected. The plate was winched up behind the D8 and manhandled into place in less than ten minutes. Hugh had expected that the collapse of the tunnel wall would mean a sloppy fit, but the edges of the plate still overlapped the tunnel by a comfortable margin.
“That’s because the tunnel’s a lot narrower than it was when the wall caved in,” Carter said as the plate was almost in place. He pointed down: “See? There’s hardly any space between the hut walls and the ice.”
“Hm. We’ll keep an eye on that, and shave away the ice if we have to.” Hugh paused and caught his breath. “God, I’m done in. I’m going downstairs for a bit of a rest.”
“Good idea, Hugh. Hell, get some sleep if you can.”
“Maybe.”
Snow swept thickly around them now, in flakes so fine and dry that they glittered like dust motes in the dimming sunlight. As Hugh turned, hunched against the wind, Colin Smith materialised out of the growing whiteout.
“Hugh. I got Al on one of the old Angry-6 transceivers, just a couple of minutes ago. He was only about twenty-thirty kilometres away. Then I lost him.”
“Who’s running the rig now?”
“Reg Lewis.”
“Well, keep at it. He may still be receiving even if we can’t hear him. Bloody old sets are damn near useless anyway.” He walked back to the hangar’s personnel door, taking each step very deliberately. In the machine shop he paused for a moment and then went to the phone.