The Pole of Inaccessibility

Published by A. Michael Bronston at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 A. Michael Bronston

ISBN 9781476358178

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Chapter 1

Beardmore Glacier Camp
Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range

Dr. Susan Engen lay hunched over the rough-hewn surface of the plywood table, cradled her forehead in her cupped palm, and breathed out an astonishingly descriptive string of obscenities as artfully and with as much conviction as she was capable of providing. Inhaling deeply, she made a vague attempt at calming herself, aware that the effort was in vain, but going through the motion anyway as a matter of habit. After the interval in which she was supposed to be composing herself had passed, she keyed the microphone again and spoke.
“Steven, I have no equipment!” she repeated emphatically. “We’re three weeks behind already, and now I have no equipment!”
“I heard you the last two times, Susan,” the voice from the other side said, annunciating the words in such a way as to project the impression that he was attempting to sound reasonable, yet firm in his explanation. “What I am saying is that all the paperwork shows that it did, in fact, ship.”
A pencil, which until then had been comfortably reposed in her lightly clenched fist, suddenly snapped, the sound making her jump. She looked at the broken lead core that lay within the tattered shards of wood as if wondering how it came to be in her hand, let alone to be exploding there.
“I know something shipped,” she explained as patiently as she could to the gray metal microphone. “It just wasn’t mine.”
“Oh,” Dr. Steven Atkinson, replied the chief scientist, the point she was making finally having penetrated all the way through. “What did arrive?”
“Does it matter?” she asked, exasperated. She wondered how someone of such supposed brilliance could be so dense when it came to deciphering the obvious.
“It does to whomever it belonged to before,” he pointed out, contributing a broader perspective.
She resisted the nearly overpowering inclination to provide an appropriate commentary to this extraneous observation with another profanity and settled upon reflection instead. Steven Atkinson was the chief scientist that year, a largely ceremonial position to which he was elected by the other PI’s, or Principle Investigators. The National Science Foundation awarded grant money to the PI’s, who then put together their projects budgeted by whatever funds had been granted and space arrangements that could be made for them on the continent. There were to be four PI’s working at the Beardmore Glacier Camp the summer of 1979, of which Susan Engen was one, representing Ohio State University. Dr. Atkinson was another. He didn’t hold any real power, per se, but he did have influence as far as determining priorities went, and she needed all the help she could get with that right now.
“I’ll send it back. Just try to find mine, please?” she asked nicely. When challenged with having to choose between asking for favors sweetly and browbeating obstacles into compliance, it was not always a foregone conclusion which course she would select. At this moment, she opted for the softer touch.
“All right, we’ll try and figure it out,” he answered over the airwaves.
“Thank you,” she replied, exaggerating in a heavy tone that was probably wasted on him. Vocal inflection didn’t translate well through the static and background noise of the high-frequency radio.
She took another deep breath, hoping this time it would help. When it didn’t, she got up and walked around the newly-constructed hut toward the heater, where the support crew were all sitting. They looked as if they were dangerously close to knocking off for the day, but she still had work to do.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked her guide, Jake, as she pulled on the oversize mittens. He had been yucking it up with the cook, the weatherman, and the mechanic while she tried to get things straight with Dr. Atkinson at the main base in McMurdo. They had been hard at it, building the hut over the last couple of days and it was a safe bet they considered themselves due for a break.
“Ready when you are,” he confirmed, which helped to settle her nerves somewhat. She didn’t need another fight that day, but was well primed should it come to that.
“Good, I’ve lost enough time already,” she said with more firmness than was strictly necessary since he had already agreed to going without a struggle.
While Jake prepared himself for the outside, Susan took the opportunity to take a better look at the wood frame and plywood shelter that would be her base for the next three weeks. It was spare but serviceable. There was no insulation, just heat from a stove that vaporized diesel fuel in a barely containable cycle of combustion, a design which had previously been known to make huts like this one spontaneously combust when handled improperly. A galley-it couldn’t be a kitchen with so much naval history behind it-consisted of a propane stove and some shelves. Some folding tables and chairs filled out the furnishings. It was still much more than she was accustomed to while in the field.
She hadn’t met the three support-workers with whom Jake had been sitting; she’d barely had time to exchange a hurried greeting with him. She looked them over from where she stood by the door. The weatherman in his navy greens was chewing tobacco and spitting into a beer can, some of the putrid drool clinging to his mustache. The cook was in a dirty T-shirt and sported a rat-tail of black hair hanging from the back of his head. The unkempt appendage that looked like an afterthought was tied up with a pink elastic band that was clearly begging for someone to take exception to it.
The mechanic seemed like a likeable sort, strangely intelligent and reserved, which struck her as odd for someone who would be doing that job in that place. Still, all kinds were drawn there, just to be there. She would have shoveled horse manure to be there if they had horses and hired people to shovel it.
If she were trying to clandestinely look them over, they showed no such reserve in regard to her. Women were still a rarity in that part of the world, which made her unique enough, but a PI not far removed from her twenties, who wore her long blond hair in a ponytail halfway down a particularly well-shaped back, was extraordinary. They wore the blank looks while checking her out that gentlemen such as these tended to assume when they don’t know what to make of a beautiful woman, especially one who seemed so out of place, and just happened to be one of the big-wigs. They were equally subdued by the incongruity of her soft features being the backdrop for her hard eyes. They were the blue-gray of burnished steel, and bore the testimony of a spirit no less firm.
Susan climbed on board the snowmobile behind Jake and they clipped along at a good rate, covering the short distance from the hut to the base of the mountain. There they ascended as high as they could before leaving the machine and setting out on foot. The cold wind felt fresh on her face, which she had purposely left uncovered. It stung with the sharpness that she knew would lead to frostbite if she ignored it for too long, but it felt so good to finally be out there and on the snow, that she endured it for as long as she could. 
Although Jake was designated as her guide, Susan immediately took the lead as they set out, following an exposed outcropping until it ended where a small glacier barred their way.
“That’s where I want to go, up there,” she said, pointing to a small ledge above them. “We’ll lay out this area tonight so the grad students can get started when they arrive without my having to direct them.”
“Whatever you want,” Jake said obligingly. “That’s your department.”
It was a small thing, but it was another encouraging sign that her guide would not be turning into a mule while she had work to do. 
They stopped to put on crampons-pointed steel attachments that were applied to climbing boots to grip the ice and keep the climber from slipping-before starting up the slope. She tightened the straps over the orange plastic boots, and then pulled the cuffs of her heavy nylon wind pants over the boots. She had previously put aside the standard issue red coat that all the civilians headed for the ice were given in New Zealand, and resurrected her old and nearly worn-out blue mountaineering parka. It was more comfortable than anything else she owned, and made her feel like coming home just to put it on.
“You’re good at this,” Jake observed, as they ascended the steep sloping glacier. “How do you get to be this good of a climber living in Ohio?”
“Not from Ohio,” Susan answered, kicking steps into the ice and speaking in short clips in keeping with the rhythm of her breaths. “College in Boulder, Colorado. We used to climb everything there was back there.”
“Aha,” the guide replied, Susan’s answer making perfect sense. “Then you don’t actually really need me here, do you?”
“Not so much,” she agreed, “but the others will. That’s at least one thing off my plate. Besides, the NSF isn’t going to let me run around out here without you anyway.”
“No, I don’t imagine they would,” the guide agreed.
Now that she was on the mountain and nearing the site where she intended to work, Susan finally started letting the frustration of losing her boxes of supplies dissipate as she focused on the task at hand.
“So how does a rock climbing geologist end up in Ohio?” Jake asked as he began setting anchors for safety lines to which they would attach themselves.
“The usual way,” she explained. “There was a guy. We went there together. I was in love with him; he was in love with a pretty young student. When I moved into faculty and it became apparent I wasn’t going to remain a pretty young student forever, he stopped being in love with me and found himself a new one.”
“Ouch,” Jake commiserated. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said, dismissing his concern. “To tell you the truth, it came as kind of a relief. It’s been over for more than a year now and I don’t have any regrets. Those kinds of distractions I can do without.”
“Amen,” was all the reply that Jake seemed to think necessary.
“So what’s your story?” Susan asked.
“Me? Witness protection must have gotten a little carried away. I think they’ve gone too far this time.”
“Is that right?” Susan inquired, laughing.
“Absolutely,” Jake said, unconvincingly. “Actually, I’m a climbing guide in the Tetons. Taking the winter off.”
“Came here to get warm?” Susan asked him, enjoying the banter.
“You’ve obviously never been to Jackson Hole in the winter,” he said. “This is warm.”

Susan worked rapidly, frenetically almost, as if trying to make up for lost time. She recognized the strangeness of working at such a pace on rocks that took millions of years to form, the incongruity manifest. But after five years of applying for grants, to finally be awarded a six-week window that summer, and having to watch three of them slip away while waiting for the weather to break, she was determined to salvage what was left of the season. And then they lose her equipment. Good god! What next, she wondered?
Five years she had spent at the Byrd Polar Research facility at Ohio State waiting for this chance. She never thought she could do anything for five years. And now it came down to this: a three-year grant. Not that she had three years. The Department Chair was coming open and that was this year; the only year. It could be decades before that happened again, and a decade wasn’t a time frame that she was prepared to wait. Susan Engen was on as fast a track as tracks get. She had to get this research done this season, get the paper published, and be given that Chair. It had seemed like a reasonable plan. But then, who could have predicted that there would be a three-week storm and that her crates would disappear? 
“What are we looking for?” Jake persisted in asking questions now that he had nothing to do but watch her work and make sure she didn’t fall off the mountain.
“Rocks,” she told him, without looking up from her notebook.
“Okay,” he said, the point being taken. “I can be quiet now.”
“Sorry,” she said, looking up with a mischievous smirk. “Everybody gets that one once. Couldn’t help myself. But in the simplest terms, we’re mapping the geology. What there is, where it is…with a twist.”
“What kind of a twist?”
“That, you are just going to have to read about in the papers.”

As she finished laying out the florescent yellow tape that marked the areas where she wanted her grad students to focus, Susan thought about what she had just said to Jake. She sounded much more confident than she felt. As if her plans weren’t grand enough already, there was more. Much more, which even the NSF didn’t know about.
When she had submitted her request for her grant, the proposal suggested that there might be mineral deposits in the area where they were working. She was pretty sure there would be. And while that information might be considered academic and interesting to some, she knew that it was only a matter of time before there would be those who found it more than merely academic. It was her intention to preempt any plan to get at the vast wealth that she knew would be there by forcing the issue, making the discovery, and driving the political battle to guarantee that it could never be touched. The mechanism for that campaign was already in place and awaiting her discovery. With luck, that would begin at the same time that she took over the department, a position from which she would have a global platform to enlist the scientific community to her side.
The enormity of her own plan dwarfed her, so much so that it seemed unreal, as if it were the memory of a story she had heard somewhere else, a long time ago. In moments of supreme confidence, which were actually most of them, she saw straight through to the end with no obstacles to bar her way. Then, at other moments, it all seemed so impossible. But those didn’t last for long. She was committed. It would all work out as planned. As long as nothing else went wrong.

Chapter 2

McMurdo Station
Ross Island, Coast of Antarctica

“Is there a Dr. Atkinson here?” the fatigue-clad figure in the doorway asked, looking at his clipboard.
“I’m Steven Atkinson,” the doctor answered, peering over the top of his reading glasses.
“You wanted to find out about some freight?” the soldier asked. While the Navy had owned the Antarctic program from its inception, the other branches of the military had, over time, gotten the opportunity to become involved in the operation. In this case, the Army managed cargo.
“That is correct,” said Dr. Atkinson.
“It’s definitely all there,” the cargo specialist assured him.
“It’s definitely all where?” Dr. Atkinson asked, more confused than ever.
“On the cargo line, Sir. Nothing’s lost.” As far as the cargo specialist was concerned, that should have settled everything.
“Now wait just a minute here,” Dr. Atkinson said, clapping shut the book he was reading and becoming agitated.” I saw the manifest myself. It showed everything as being shipped!” 
Dr. Steven Atkinson was not, generally speaking, an overly excitable person, but things that refused to make sense were anathema to his well-ordered, analytical mind and he would have none of it.
“That was an old one, Sir,” the cargo specialist explained. “The new one shows that it got bumped.”
“Bumped? By whom?” Dr. Atkinson demanded to know.
“I can’t tell you that, Sir, but I can tell you what went. It belongs to a Lieutenant. Richards,” the cargo specialist said, looking again at his clipboard. He was trying to be patient and accommodating, as evidenced by the use of the word “Sir,” which was not applied in a military context in Antarctica. 
“We don’t have a Lieutenant. Richards,” Dr Atkinson told the soldier, even more agitated than before.
“Well,” the specialist told him as he made his way out the door, “it sure looks like you do now.”

Dr. Atkinson zipped up his stiff new red parka and walked out of the prefab building where he was berthed while transiting McMurdo. It was only a few short steps from his building to the NSF headquarters, and his boots made a scrunching sound as they pulverized the volcanic ash underfoot to an even finer powder. He walked with the gait of a man who had done a great deal of walking in his time, most of it right there in Antarctica. He had been there every summer since the International Geophysical Year, the largest cooperative scientific venture ever, in which the nations involved in the IGY established permanent bases on the continent. That was in 1956. For twenty-three years, he had continued to come, and he was, by a wide margin, the elder statesman of the United States Antarctic Program.
The building that served as headquarters was an “A”-framed timber construction that looked like a mountain cabin and possessed a moderate amount of charm, a quality of which all the other edifices on station were notably devoid. The base was made up of an assortment of sheet-metal walled buildings, green tent “Jamesway” structures that looked like canvas Quonset huts, and modular prefabs that were assembled on site. The headquarters was known simply as “The Chalet”.
He strode past the administrative assistant towards the office of the program director, where he was accustomed to entering without the formality of being announced. The assistant, who was new, asked him on his way past if there was anything that she could help him with. When he didn’t stop to acknowledge her, she jumped up and chased him into the office, calling for him to wait.
“It’s all right, Marsha,” the director said to his flustered assistant, who retired with that assurance. Dr. Atkinson waited for her to leave and then took a second liberty by slamming shut the door.
“Who, Arthur,” he inquired with all the professorial haughtiness he possessed, “is this Lt. Richards?”
Dr. Arthur Fredricks, Director of Polar Programs for the National Science Foundation, sighed heavily. “How did you hear?” he asked.
“I haven’t heard. All I know is that I have one very unhappy grantee out in the field and the source of that unhappiness appears to be linked to a Lt. Richards. Is there something you’ve been waiting to tell me?”
The director took off his glasses and commenced with a chewing operation directed towards one of the earpieces. He leaned back in his chair that squealed from the weight on ancient springs, looking at Dr. Atkinson for a long moment.
“Steven, I think you had better sit down.”

Dr. Atkinson returned to the building next door with a far slower step and a decidedly more somber countenance. He rubbed his clean-shaven chin as he walked. Unlike many who came to the wilderness and forsook the niceties of dress and appearance, Dr. Atkinson was of the old school of explorers. It would take more than living in a tent high up on an icy mountain in sub-zero temperatures to keep him from shaving. It was a matter of order and discipline.
Merely a boardinghouse for those who were passing through, by the entrance there was a small lounge where the two other PI’s destined for the Beardmore Glacier were engaged in a round of cribbage. While Susan Engen and Dr. Atkinson were geologists, the other two, Dr. Daniels and Alistair Adams, would be searching for meteorites. Daniels would be covering broad reaches of territory high onto the Polar Plateau, looking for large chunks atop the ice. Alistair, on the other hand, would be sifting through dust and finding miniscule bits of extraterrestrial matter.
Dr. Daniels was older than Dr. Atkinson, being seventy-one years old compared to Dr. Atkinson who weighed in at 68, and if he hadn’t been at it in Antarctica as long as Atkinson, he was still far past the next most tenured person to follow. He had a long white beard, a wiry, active-looking frame, and deep-set eyes of pale blue that receded into hollows that bore testimony to many austral summers.
Alistair Adams was much younger; British, glib, and according to Dr. Daniels, more than a little insane. Daniels attributed this to his being part of the British program, which required its personnel to stay on the ice two full years per contract. The Americans maxed out at one, and for many, that was altogether too much. Alistair had spent nearly as much time on the ice in his two years as Daniels had in the last ten. It was the winters, Daniels thought. The winters ate you up.
“Why so glum?” Alistair asked, looking towards Dr. Atkinson.
“What?” Dr. Atkinson responded, looking up quickly. “Me, glum? No, I was merely thinking.”
“You should try and do less of it then,” Alistair advised him, counting the hand and moving the pegs. “It wouldn’t appear as if it agrees with you.”
Alistair and Dr. Daniels had been sitting in the lounge drinking coffee and playing cards, watching the day get underway for those with jobs to do. Their work was just about finished; there wasn’t much else they could do. What was left to do was being done by the grad students. For the next two days, they would have little to do but wait. It was the worst part of the season for all three of them. They each possessed active minds, and equally active temperaments, else none would be where they were. Alistair seemed to be taking the wait the best, which in and of itself was enough for Dr. Daniels to establish doubts upon his mental state-which he did. 
“Oh, one learns to take the long view,” Alistair said wistfully at first, before turning garrulous, though perhaps a little facetious at the same time. “Winter is quite nice, really. It is a fair time for reflection of all things mortal. It is the very glass upon which one can see the light of their soul shining back at them. It is a vigil that can be reckoned by the fortnight, and, therefore, that much more beneficial to one’s soul. Peaceful.”
“Like being dead,” Dr. Daniels said in response to Alistair’s soliloquy. He wasn’t trying to malign Alistair’s experience; it was rather that he dreaded that sort of confinement in the dark and cold for so long. He shuddered.
Dr. Atkinson settled into an armchair quietly, apparently going over schedules for summer operations, leaving the two to carry on the conversation.
“I had fun,” Alistair said, shrugging it off.
“Well, I’m just here to do my work, and then go home,” Dr. Daniels declared with finality. 
“I hope you do it well,” Atkinson said, taking an interest now. “You’ll have some competition this year.”
“What do you mean?” Dr. Daniels asked. 
Dr. Atkinson held up the page in his hand. “I have been reading this manifest of all the projects in our area this year, not just our own, but everyone’s. It seems the Russians are planning a trip to our general vicinity, looking for meteorites.”
Dr. Daniels lifted a shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. The area has not been overly explored as it is. Since we’re all required to make our findings available to all treaty nations, then it can only help. I welcome the assistance. I really am here only for the data.”
Alistair smiled. “Really? After all these years? What do you expect to find that you haven’t found already?”
“That which I haven’t already found and don’t already know,” Dr. Daniels said with unaffected sincerity. “I really would welcome their help.”
“Humph,” Alistair commented, unconvinced. “Never worked with the Russians, have you?”
“A little, yes,” Dr. Daniels replied. “I found them quite likeable.”
“Really?” Alistair wondered aloud. “Who’d have thought? I suppose I should like to give them a try, though, if I’m ever given the chance.”
“Well,” Dr. Atkinson said to the others, “it won’t be this year. From what I can tell, they will be outside of the perimeter that you have recorded as your area. Maybe next year.”
“Next year?” Alistair repeated aghast, before stating pointedly, “There will not be a next year. Of that I can assure you.”
“Did they clear up the cargo snafu?” Dr. Daniels asked, changing the subject.
“Yes, they did,” Dr. Atkinson said, seeming to sink further into his chair. “It appears to have been a simple error.”
“Good,” Dr. Daniels said. “Susan will be happy to hear it.”
“Yes,” Dr. Atkinson said, looking once again, as Alistair had pointed out, very glum indeed. “She’s going to be very happy.”
***

McMurdo Station was situated on the edge of Ross Island, a mountainous volcanic spire, rising from the ice, and capped with broken glaciers. It was adorned with an eternal plume, emanating from the uppermost peak, where fissures leading to the earth’s core breathed their sulfuric sighs. The base was exposed to both sea and ice, and was abused in turns from each quarter, an uncomfortable and inhospitable abode. It was a rough place that demanded that its inhabitants be hearty, a sentiment that many of those same inhabitants felt obliged to impress upon newcomers, as a matter of tradition.
One of those newcomers sat at a desk at the Naval Operations Command Post, looking over a dossier. His Navy greens appeared crisp and trim, a dead giveaway that he was recently arrived from the world. If they were fortunate enough to get washed in the coming weeks in the field, they would come to lay on his frame in a much more subdued manner. His martial air was belied by his mild countenance, which appeared almost whimsical, as he gazed with soft brown eyes transfixed upon the picture in his hand.
“That her?” the Captain asked, looking over his shoulder.
“Yes. Yes it is,” Lt. Richards replied.
“I guess you could have drawn worse duty than having to cozy up to that,” the Captain said jocularly. For an instant, the Lieutenant bristled at the meaning implied in his new commander’s jest, but he reminded himself that this was only a picture that he had been looking at, and Navy men would say what they said after all. Besides, you didn’t call out the Captain because you didn’t like what he said about some woman’s picture.
“Haven’t met her yet,” he said. “But yes, she does look nice.”
“Well, she’s not,” the Captain said. “From what I hear, she keeps a shit list a mile long, and you’re about to become a strong candidate for promotion to the top spot. It’s not going to be easy getting information out of her.”
“We’ll see,” the Lieutenant said.
“Sure. Just see fast, okay? This rat hole on the edge of the universe suddenly just became a whole bunch of peoples’ favorite topic. The days of making sure the penguins are happy are over. I’m going to need results, rapidly.”
The Captain then left him there, continuing to stare at the picture. He knew that he had a mission, and he knew what it meant. But looking at the photograph, clipped from an old newspaper article, he felt like he could see right through to her, and what was more, he saw her looking back. 

***

While the Lieutenant indulged himself in flights of fantasy directed toward the picture of the subject of his mission, an aircraft was inbound into McMurdo carrying Susan Engen’s two grad students who would be assisting her in the field during the season. It had been circling Ross Island attempting to land, but the weather had deteriorated to the point that the pilot was unable to gain the visual reference required to be able to put the C-130 down on the ice.
After the third go-round, the co-pilot informed her that she was out of fuel, a circumstance that had not altogether avoided her notice, and faced with the choice of running out of gas somewhere over the sea ice and making a blind landing where she suspected the ski-way was, she decided to just put the bird down and hope for the best. The groomed ski-way was lined with wooden markers on either side, but since the pilot couldn’t see them in the whiteout, she decided to make an open field landing running parallel to the strip. The upside was she wouldn’t slam into a series of wooden billboards at a hundred and forty miles per hour. The downside was she that would be dropping the skis onto an unprepared surface of unknown quality, the effect of which had previously been known to tear the ski-clad landing apparatus clean off the fuselage of planes like hers.
The loadmaster was told to inform the passengers to prepare for impact, and at her direction, they piled all of the hand-carry personal bags against the bulkhead as a cushion should the aircraft go in hard, and the passengers go ballistic within the frame. The eight tons of cargo that would be following them into the bulkhead was studiously ignored, there being nothing anyone could do about it anyway.
Having taken the four-engine turbo-prop airplane out over the ice shelf as far as she dared, she turned and took a long, low approach, attempting to bleed off as much speed as possible, while leaving a safe margin to avoid stalling. But as they passed the strip, she was still higher and faster than she wanted to be, and found herself heading back out to sea over the ice.
“Gotta put her down!” the co-pilot said, the steady tone she was reaching for devolving into a shriek.
“I know!” the pilot shouted back, but then added, “screw it!” and dropped the aircraft onto the ice.
The shock was reported through the airplane with a crack that rang like an explosion, but the structure held and the engines were thrown into full reverse as they skid to a stop, crashing through the waves of snow that drifted over the sea ice. The pilot turned the forward ski as the ship slowed to taxi speed in a wide arcing turn to make the return trip back to the airfield, when one by one, the engines sputtered to a stop, the last of the fuel having been exhausted.
“You girls done playing around out there?” the Captain’s voice asked over the radio.
“That the Skipper?” the co-pilot asked.
“Yeah, it’s the old bastard,” the pilot said on the intercom, knowing already the grief she was in for. The first all-female crew to fly into Antarctica was bound to meet with some sort of adventure to mark the occasion, as well as what promised to be never-ending ribbing from their male counterparts.
“That’s a-firm,” she replied. “We’re down.”
“Good. Now hurry up and get the hell back here.”
“That’s a negative,” she said in the matter-of-fact cheerful voice that was used for routine radio communications. “You want us, you’re going to have to come get us. Sir.”
There was a pause before a new voice came on and said, “Roger that. We are calling “Triple-A” right now. Have a nice day, ladies.” 
It was going to be merciless.

***

Inside the cargo bay of the C-130, the passengers sat in silence. Connie, the dark-haired, hazel eyed research assistant from Ohio State, stared wide-eyed and with open mouth at her travelling companion, Walt, who was Susan Engen’s senior grad student. Since it was clear they weren’t going anywhere quick, Walt unclipped the seatbelt and headed for a window to look around. There wasn’t much to see, so he climbed up onto one of the pallets of cargo and settled in for a nap. Connie’s heart was still pounding; she shook her head in wonder at Walt’s seeming indifference to their near-death experience, and she started to talk with the other passengers, recounting the events in the way that people do once the danger has passed.
Eventually, a Caterpillar D-8 showed up and towed the disgraced bird back to McMurdo. When the aircraft was secure, the passengers were loaded onto the lumbering personnel carriers that took them from the airstrip to the Chalet for their orientation on the continent. Walt was still half asleep, and Connie nudged him from time to time when his head rolled back and he began to snore. Dr. Fredricks ran through his welcome speech, which did not help in the effort of keeping Walt awake. The Captain ran through the list of prohibited activities, which was impressive in its length. He was nearly finished when one item caught Walt’s attention, and he opened one eye.
“…and under no circumstances is anyone to go out onto the sea ice with the intention of skiing, whale watching, or fishing.”
Walt now opened the other eye and looked at Connie.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” he said.
“You can’t. He just said that is what you can’t do.”
“He wouldn’t have said you can’t do it, if it couldn’t be done,” Walt explained rationally.
“Oh no,” Connie said, seeing that a plan was formulating in Walt’s head. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Too late. Let’s go,” he said as the group was dismissed.

“This is dumb,” Connie said to Walt. It was later in the day after they dropped their gear at the rooms they would be occupying. It was her way of concealing for both of them how crazy she was about him; finding fault with all his pranks, while at the same time, being thrilled to be included. “What if we get caught? What if we fall through? What if Dr. Engen finds out?”
“You’ve heard her spout about civil disobedience; she’d probably give us a medal.”
“I don’t think this is what she was talking about.”
“Sure it is. We’re resisting authority.”
“Oh brother, now I’ve heard it all.”
Before coming to collect Connie, Walt managed to raid the Bio-Lab where he stole a fishing pole, commandeered an Alpine snowmobile from the Navy, and purloined a case of beer from the back of the mechanics’ shop, where it was carelessly stationed in anticipation of the weekly safety meeting that was scheduled for later that day. He also took a cooler for the beer, in order to keep it from freezing on the trip across the ice.
It was easy to follow the tracks to the hut on the ice where the Antarctic cod were harvested for research, and there was a large hole carved out of the ice within the confines of the hut for that purpose. Walt cracked open a beer and baited the hook. Within minutes, there was a tug on the line and he reeled in the cod to the mouth of the hole.
As he lifted the fish through the hole, the water in the opening burst through in a sudden wave, drenching the two. Following the wave, came a wide-open mouth full of enormous teeth, especially the canines, which reached for the now airborne cod that landed in Connie’s lap. The Leopard Seal’s mouth followed the flying fish toward Connie, until its massive body got stuck in the hole in the ice, though the teeth continued to snap in an effort to get at the slimy creature flopping between her knees.
She screamed as she tumbled over backwards, while Walt picked up the chair he was sitting in and smashed it over the seal’s head. The seal, now seriously angry, lunged at Walt once, before slipping back through the hole in the ice.
“Get me the hell out of here!” Connie yelled at Walt, once the seal was gone, the thrill of the adventure having fully dissipated over the last seconds.
“Okay, okay, let’s go,” he said without resisting, knowing instinctively that she had a perfectly valid grievance, and that it would not do to argue with her. He stole a blanket from the shelf and wrapped Connie in it for the trip back, which helped to mollify her, slightly.
Along the path that the Alpine followed back toward McMurdo, there were several seals, not Leopards, but Weddells, enjoying the relative warmth of the sun on the ice. Far more docile than Leopards, the Weddells moved slowly on the surface of the ice, and looked cute and cuddly to human observation, especially the pups. A mother and her pup were situated by a reasonably large opening in the ice for that early in the summer, and Connie cheered up after her ordeal, looking at them.
“Isn’t that beautiful?” she reflected in an awed whisper to Walt, who was relieved to have her calmed down.
“Yes it is.”
As he was agreeing with her on the magnificence of the sight, the head of a Killer Whale silently lifted out of the water in a perfectly vertical motion, looking at what was on top. It then disappeared as silently as it had come.
“Wow!” Connie observed, thrilled. “That’s incredible!”
Before Walt could agree with her, the whale appeared again, only this time it burst violently from the water, its full massive bulk breaching the surface, before crashing down on top of the mother and baby seal. It grabbed the screaming pup in its front teeth as the ice exploded in every direction, the wave sending cracks in the sea ice radiating outwards.
One of the splits headed right for the Alpine where the two students were watching. It moved in slow motion with a “POP, POP, POP” sound as the opening got closer.
“Oh, shit!” Walt said, while starting the engine and dropping the shifter into gear, just as the ice beneath them began to give way. He gunned the throttle and sped away as fast as the Alpine could accelerate.
Connie didn’t have time to react to this latest misadventure before they were out of Harm’s Way, but she looked back toward the opening in the ice, where another whale had appeared. The two Killer Whales were playing tug-of-war with the baby seal’s bloody carcass while the distraught mother barked piteously. 
There was neither a quiet, nor invisible way to return the Alpine to where it was taken from, but Walt tried to act as covertly as he could in appearing nonchalant while parking the machine. By the time the engine stopped, they were surrounded and frog-marched into the antechamber outside the Captain’s office. Dr. Fredricks was already there.
“Send em’ home,” the Captain said, lighting a cigar just to irritate the Director. “Rules are rules, and that’s the only punishment we’ve got for rule breakers.”
“I know,” Dr. Fredricks said, “but there’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“They work for Susan Engen.”
The Captain groaned.
“You’re shittin’ me, right?”
“I’m afraid not. They are all the help she’s got.”
“Great. So we’ve got to keep them?” the Captain asked, though the answer was obvious.
The answer was so obvious that Dr. Fredricks didn’t bother to answer.
“Okay, then,” the Captain said, resignedly. “Send them in on your way out. I’ll explain the rules to them a second time.”
An up close and personal explanation from the Captain was usually all that it took for anyone to get their attitude properly adjusted, and to understand his expectations in full.

Chapter 3
Beardmore Glacier Camp
Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range

 Susan Engen lay in her down sleeping bag inside the green domed tent and looked at her watch. It was confirmed, morning. The first night in the field was always restless; it would take her some time to grow accustomed to the new environment. The twenty-four hours of glaring sun didn’t help. She knew she was overtired as well; the adrenaline of finally being able to get to work kept her going well into the night. She almost felt bad about keeping Jake out so late, but he bore it well and didn’t complain. She’d try to make it up to him today.
She looked around the tent to survey where she had left her clothes and boots. Once she unzipped the bag, she did not want to let what warmth she had accumulated through the night dissipate while looking for her frozen socks. When she had all her moves pretty well laid out, she tore out of the bag and pulled everything on as quickly as she could, before beating a hasty track toward the hut in the hope that there would be coffee.
She found Jake inside, mug steadily in hand, studying a map of the complex of mountains in their immediate vicinity. She poured a cup for herself and joined him. He was looking longingly at the peaks surrounding them.
“Want to have some fun?” she asked him.
“Doctor,” he answered, in a scandalized tone, “we hardly know each other.”
“Very funny. I was planning on doing some high altitude work right…” she said, looking and pointing at the map, “here. If you want, we can go for the top after that. As far as I know, no one has ever climbed it.”
He looked up at her to see if she was joking.
“Serious?” he asked, still uncertain if she was pulling his leg.
“Absolutely. Don’t get too worked up, though. It looks like an easy hike.”
She thought that might make a difference to him. A first ascent, however, was a first ascent, and there was no way he was going to miss the chance.
“I’m in,” he answered. “You sure you can spare the time?”
“Until the equipment shows up, all I’ve got is time,” she told him.
“Any news?” he asked.
“They said it was just a mistake. Sent the wrong stuff,” she said, frowning.
“Hmm,” he said, as if questioning the reply.
“What?” she asked him.
“The labels on the boxes were addressed to our camp. I just figured they sent some other projects’ stuff early.”
“They may have,” she told him, “but they said that it wasn’t supposed to come at all. They could still have it screwed up. That wouldn’t be any big surprise.”
“True,” he agreed.
“When we get back I’ll take a closer look at what’s there,” she said, ready to forget about it. “For now, I just want to see if this coffee is going to kick in. Then let’s get going.”

They crossed 12,000 feet after a short break, where they stopped for a rest and some quick refreshment that amounted to nothing more than some water and cheese and crackers. Above them was the summit, another hour of climbing or so, and as Susan had predicted, it was easy going, requiring no technical skills. Neither of them cared too much at that point. Just getting the chance to be there and take away a first was enough for them.
Susan looked out over the glaciers as they climbed. She could see well over the Polar Plateau onto the seemingly endless ice cap. The geologist in her had dreamed of this moment for so long; it was hard to take it all in. And, as if it weren’t enough to look at the sight that so few had ever seen, still she saw more.
What she saw when she looked out over the plateau were the savannas of the ancient Gondwanaland super-continent, drifting about for millions of years before cataclysmic collisions with other land masses caused a lifting of tectonic plates, driving the deeply-buried formations thousands of feet into the air to where they stood. She saw this piece, a new continent all its own, spinning off to the bottom of the world, where it would become buried under miles of ice. Never mind that it all happened at the breakneck speed of seventy millimeters per year. In her mind, she could see it happening in seconds, in real time.
As they approached the peak, Jake, who was in the lead, stopped and looked back at her. She understood the question in his movements.
“Go ahead,” she called ahead.
“Sure?” he asked, just to be sure.
“Yes, go,” she repeated.
He turned and walked the remaining steps to the peak. Once established there, he took off his pack and got his camera ready before Susan arrived. It seemed only fair that if he got to be first on top, at least her arrival should be recorded for posterity.
“Nice,” he said approvingly at the broad smile that came out just in time for the shutter. It would be one of those heroic-looking snapshots that become treasures.
“Here,” she said, reaching for the camera. “Let me do you now.”
“Again with these shameless advances,” he said, feigning disapproval as he pulled on his anorak. 
She could see a pattern emerging and decided right then that she had better either be more guarded with her choice of words or start honing her game and give back as good as she got. Watching her words was not something that was likely to happen, and Jake was as yet unaware that he was taking up a challenge to which he might not be equal. It was clear, at least, that working with this particular guide would not be lacking for amusement. She decided to let it go for now, and nail him later.
He stood with his back towards the polar plateau while she focused the camera. She snapped the shot, but continued to look past him into the distance, choosing to ignore his provocative remarks this time.
“What do you make of that?” she asked. He turned to look.
“Looks like a fog bank,” he said.
“Fog?” she asked, doubtingly.
“I know,” he said. “It’s not fog. Wind. There must be a storm out there.” 
“That can’t be good,” Susan said. “How long do you think it will take to get here?” 
“Well,” he said, doing the mental calculation, “assume it is moving around twenty miles per hour, and that’s a pretty good clip. How far is it to over there?”
Susan looked again. Her experience at mapping geology had made her fairly accurate when it came to judging distances. She guessed forty miles.
“Two hours then, for the ground blizzard. We’ll get hit here first.”
“Right,” she agreed. “We’ve been climbing for five.”
“Very good,” he said as if he were the professor and she the student. “And that leaves us?”
“Not enough time.”

They increased their pace from leisurely to rapidly, but not urgently. They were reasonably well prepared, and the mountain itself was not dangerous to descend. Time and temperature were the issues that would have to be dealt with. It had been a comfortable minus ten or so in the sun while they climbed. By the time they would be halfway down, they would be engulfed in clouds with wind chills approaching minus one hundred. 
Climbing down was in many ways more difficult than going up. Muscles resisted gravity in static effort. While they were climbing up, the work was aerobic, blood was pumped through the body, and oxygen burned hotly. The resulting warmth pervaded every pore. The opposite took place while going down. Heat was drawn from their bodies. Muscles became stiff from the tension.  Wind and cold only speeded up the process. They were fortunate; the climb had not been especially technical, and they walked as quickly as they could, trying to maintain a level of exertion. They were sure that they could return to camp before the wind and cold would win the battle against increasing fatigue, when their bodies would not be able to produce heat faster than the storm devoured it. There was no doubt that there was a point when the environment could win; there always was, but they were confident it would not be that day.
Soon after they had begun the descent, Mares’ Tails, cloud formations that were mere wisps of cirrus whose curved and feathered shapes denoted high winds aloft, began to streak across the sky, reaching out ahead of the tempest like the blowing snow streams on the ground. There was no longer any question about it being a low-level disturbance; they were in for a major storm from the birthplace of weather, the Polar Plateau. 
There were several snow-covered pitches they had climbed earlier that needed to be crossed before they could get back on rock and shale. They had been easy to negotiate in the still air; boots kicked steps into the hard crust easily and firmly. It hadn’t been necessary to rope and belay on the climb up. It became clear on the first one of these, though, that going down was not going to be so easy. The wind was already at a solid forty miles per hour and it required some degree of effort to keep upright on hard ground. They would certainly be blown off their footing on the hard ice. Since they were expecting an easy climb, they did not bring an excess amount of hardware along. A couple of snow stakes were all that they had for anchors, which was fine, but Susan found herself wishing that they had an abundance of those. If that were the case, they could just set the anchor, lower the rope, and then, using a figure of eight, self-belay to the ends of the rope. Then they could just pull down the rope, leave the anchor, and set another one. It was a messy way to climb and bad form, but in those conditions, it could be excused. Besides, they could always go back and retrieve them later.
Because of the fact that they only had the two stakes, there was no choice but to belay each other over each snowfield. The person on top would pound in the stake, attach their body to it through slings and carabineers tied to their climbing harness; then they would let out the rope, while the other negotiated the distance. When the climber reached the end of the rope, they would place the other stake, secure to it in the same fashion as the climber above, and then take in the rope, while the other person made their way down. This process took them four times as long as it would have if it was not necessary, and it required one person to sit stationary in the weather. They began to cool off much faster than they had first anticipated. The warm glow underneath the parkas was rapidly replaced by the deepening cold, where confidence can quickly turn to doubt.
The ground blizzard on the glacier had reached the face of the mountain that they were still far up upon. The wind drove the snow up the rock face and over the ridge. The fine powder of the driven snow crusted on frozen goggles making visibility difficult. This is where it begins to get interesting, Susan mused. Vision reduced, fingers freezing, core temperature dropping, decision-making starts to become difficult. In high alpine climbing, there is what is known as “the dead zone,” where the time that a human can survive is limited. The altitude on this mountain was not that high, though the temperature and conditions at the bottom were roughly equivalent to the peak of Everest on a bad day, except for the altitude. By the time they reached the final ice field that required roping, Susan was beginning to become seriously concerned. She put her hands on either side of Jake’s head and turned his face toward her so she could observe closely for exposed and frozen flesh. She didn’t see any.
“Do you see any on me?” She had to yell at the top of her voice to be heard.
“No,” Jake yelled back, shaking his head emphatically. “What about feet and hands?”
Susan’s feet were numb, but there was numb and numb. Her toes had been frost-nipped before and they hurt now just enough for her to know that they were still alive and would hurt a lot more when they thawed out. Fingers were starting to get bad, but the pain was reassuring. As long as they hurt, they were still all right.
“Okay.”
“Good,” Jake yelled, head bobbing up and down, giving a thumbs-up. Through the layers of hats and hoods, Susan could tell he was smiling underneath. The increasing seriousness of the situation had made his day. They had just had a first ascent of an Antarctic peak, but Susan knew that since it had been a day hike in the conditions they had climbed in, the potential glory that Jake should have been able to feel was qualified, at best. A first ascent, but with an asterisk by it; noting that a child could have done it. Now, he could feel like it was earned. 
Susan loved this about climbing, about climbers, and missed it being in Ohio, of all places. Jake was like so many of her friends back in Colorado. They all seemed to want to take these moments with them into the rest of their lives. It was too bad it didn’t work that way. Defining moments were more often just moments that passed and didn’t define anything but that one moment, certainly not the future. There was no carry-over. Jake reminded her of them in seeming to think that if he could achieve an extraordinary accomplishment, he would remain in that extraordinary state. There was something quixotic and romantic about it: doomed quests that had to be pursued even when the outcome was certain.
Susan began to move over the ice field. The wind was up to a steady fifty by then, with gusts over seventy. It was slow going. The anchor was solid enough that they could have leaned on it and walked backwards, rappelling down the slope, but it wasn’t necessary and many climbers, of whom she was one, only liked to rappel when it was impossible to down climb. One trusted their life to too many things that were not under their control. She chose to walk.
Stepping down the steep slope, her knees were bent, like she was sitting in a chair. She used her ice axe as if it were a cane, and she, an old codger, merely crossing the street. It felt as awkward as it looked, certainly nothing heroic. She was near the end of the pitch when an unusually strong wind gust caught the backpack she was carrying and threw her balance off, which allowed the toe of one crampon to catch on the ice, tripping her over her own feet. She would distinctly remember after it was over, while she was still head-over-heels in the air before the impact, how stupid it must have looked. When she did hit, it was on her left shoulder. She screamed once and then rolled back to an upright position when the rope caught because Jake had her on a tight belay. She knew the second of impact that there definitely was damage. She hoped it was just tendons and not bone. 
“All right?” Jake shouted from above, concern strong in his voice.
“I think so,” she called back, but the words were devoured by the roar of the wind.
As soon as she could get oriented in the whiteout conditions and figured out which way was up, she found her footing and traversed back across the slope so that Jake could have a straight descent in the fall line. She gingerly hammered in the stake and attached the belay, waving up the hill to him to start. Keeping the rope tight, but not pulling on it, was difficult with one good arm. The last thing she needed now was to yank him off his feet by taking in the rope too quickly.
Jake arrived without incident, and quickly coiled the rope. He tied it onto his pack so they wouldn’t have to waste any more time.  
“Let me see,” Jake said, reaching to help her take off her pack.
“No,” she said. “Not here. Let’s just go.”
“Are you sure?” Jake asked. “It’s another hour till we get back to camp. Up to it?”
“Of course I’m up to it. Is there an alternative?” Susan asked.
“Just being polite,” he said, relieved that she wasn’t seriously hurt. The mixture of humor and bravado was designed to help her buck-up for the return trip. It worked.
“Get the hell going and shut up!” she told him. “I’ll follow you.” 
Susan quickly became aware that she must have landed on her head, as well, since every step resonated from her frozen feet up through her shoulder, where it rang like a bell in her ears. By the time they got to where they unhooked their crampons, she was starting to have vertigo. She would remember little more of the last hour of the journey back to camp than a feeling like swimming. The whiteout conditions made walking feel like she was swimming in milk, in a space suit, against the current.
When they arrived back at the camp, the two unpacked and put the equipment away in their proper places before going in, despite the pain, because that was how it was done. The blizzard followed them through the door, and then they were left standing in the hut. They began the process of peeling off their frozen wind pants and parkas. 

***

Susan sat by the fire trying to get warm while Jake did his best to figure out what damage was done to her shoulder. They had no doctor at the small camp, but he was trained as a paramedic, which allowed the expedition to not be assigned a Navy Corpsman as would normally be the protocol. There wasn’t much he could do other than to confirm what Susan already knew. No broken bones; plenty of bruised and torn ligaments. The question that it came down to was this: stay and bear the pain, or be evacuated on the next flight? That was no question at all. Jake, in his role of medic, also had the authority to dispense drugs which, he cheerfully pointed out, was a dangerous precedent. He was, in turn, informed that if she needed those drugs and they were gone as the result of a recreational boondoggle, he, himself, would in all probability die at Susan’s hand, bad arm or no. Even though he made light of her predicament, he was concerned.
“You really do need to consider, Susan,” he said. “How are you going to be able to work like this? With one arm practically useless, it isn’t going to be easy.”
“Well, I guess you may end up serving a purpose after all,” she told him before adding quickly, “and it isn’t going to be for that, either.”
He was charmed with how she caught on so quickly.
“Darn,” he answered. “But you’re the Doc, Doc. It’s your call.”
Susan smiled from one corner of her mouth, appreciating what he was doing. For all his banter and innuendo, he wasn’t really making a serious effort at finagling his way into her long johns. By keeping what could have ended up being an uncomfortable situation light and in the forefront, his exaggerated flirtations dispelled any tension that could have built up and caused a disruption in their working relationship. It was disarming in a way that almost had the opposite effect; it was, in a strange way, attractive. But she meant what she said; she didn’t need the distraction. Not now.
“Good. I’m glad we were able to get that straight. Now go see if there is a packing slip on those crates out on the line,” she said, pointing toward the door. “Maybe we can clear up the whole mess right now.”
He sighed, looking disappointed.
“We’re only together for one day and she’s already bossing me around,” he grumbled, as he got ready to go back out into the storm. “I’m starting to wonder if this relationship has a future.”
“Thank you, dear,” she called after him, laughing even though it made her shoulder hurt worse.
When he came back, he looked perplexed.
“Here’s the list from those crates. I couldn’t tell you what it all is, except for the one marked ‘explosive,’” Jake said.
“Really?” she asked, curious. “Only one thing explosives are for around here. Let me see.”
She looked over the list.
“I was right,” she said. “This is seismic equipment. Someone is doing a survey. Steven didn’t say anything about seismic in his abstract.”
“Whatever,” Jake commented, yawning. It had been a long day.
“We’ll see when he gets here, I guess.”

Chapter 4
Russian Station Vostok
Antarctic Plateau

Vladimir Sokolov prepared for the outside by adjusting his leather-lined goggles under his fur hat, and then tightly wrapped a wool scarf over all, concealing the prematurely gray hair that he allowed to grow long in the extreme isolation. The goggles covered deep-lined careworn eyes that appeared much older than his 47 years. The black leather coat was insulated on the inside with fur of some kind; the type of animal, he did not know. The pants were also made from leather. His mukluks, boots for polar travel, were cotton over felt. He tied them as firmly as he dared, enough to gain a small advantage in keeping his footing, but not so tightly that they slowed his circulation and led to frostbite.
When he was ready, he pushed the heavy steel door, which swung slowly on its hinges, screaming in protest in the brittle cold. His mukluks boomed on the snow, the very pack sounding like the frozen bits of ice were being torn apart one shard at a time. The sustrugi - snow that the wind has packed, sculpted, and then packed again for years on end - was firm under foot, until it settled under his weight as he walked, sending a low thunder reverberating through the surface. 
He grabbed hold of the guide rope that led to the instrument array. Even in relatively mild weather, meaning windless, he held the rope, for it represented the thin line between safety and the certain death that so many others had found. He did not want to learn to forget to do it by not holding the line when it wasn’t necessary. He held it so as not to forget the others who had wandered off into the darkness, never to be seen again. Even now that it was again light outside, he held it. It was something that offered tangible security; something not easily let go of.
He reached the instrument array quickly, not wanting to stay out any longer than necessary, and began to clear away the drifted snow from the receptors and cables. The snow that drifted between the telescopes was a powder, like dust. It didn’t actually snow much at Vostok or anywhere else on the Antarctic Plateau around the South Pole. The snow that drifted there was blown from far away, possibly thousands of miles away, and from many years past, traveling endlessly, like the sands of the desert. In its travels, the crystals that made up the snowflakes had long since been milled fine by the relentless wind.
As difficult as it was to be out “in the environment,” as he thought of it, he found it preferable to being inside. As a scientist, he had almost looked forward to the chance to study there. But with the cold, the food (if one chose to dignify it with the label), and the lack of proper equipment, he had had enough. And that was without the consideration that even in that distant outpost, there was the political element, though it was unquestionably less than it would have been in Moscow.
A physicist by training, he was unable to reconcile the political climate of his country with his personal observations. He had been trained to question certain things, and being told that he mustn’t question others was infuriating. Science, by definition, required freedom of thought, which was the one thing he could not have. His brilliance as a physicist kept him in good standing, up to a point, at the university where he did his work, but it was obvious that his enthusiasm for politics was lacking. His friends saw what he did not, that only the work he produced kept him safe, and that was uncertain at best. They conspired to get him assigned to Vostok as a way of saving him, though he didn’t feel especially saved through the experience.
The work, however, kept him going. Exertion in the pursuit of knowledge was the highest condition of existence, he believed. Just as motion was the essence of travel, it was work that was the essence of science. Reaching a destination signaled the end of a journey. It was the journey itself that he aspired to, not the destination.
Vostok Station was situated beyond the mountains, and endless glaciers that separated the highlands of the plateau from the coast, as close to the middle of nowhere as it was possible to get. The United States had grabbed the South Pole apparently in perpetuity, so the Russians were relegated to a less geographically recognizable place, the “Pole of Inaccessibility,” a suspiciously vague description that appeared to lend gravity to the title, perhaps as some kind of consolation for not getting the actual Pole. The name meant that Vostok Station was the furthest place from all the Antarctic coasts. 
When he finished with the equipment, he followed the rope back to the base. He went around to the other side of the main building from where he had come out. After taking another quick look around before going inside, he nodded imperceptibly to himself, noting that all was as it should be.
From that side of the building, he entered the galley. The heavy outer door swung open, allowing the frigid air to swirl through the room, instantly joining with the warm moisture inside the building, turning it into fog, and creating a small tempest where the two vastly different climates clashed and did battle. When the door was again closed, the storm began to abate, and as the fog dissipated, the frost-bound figure of Sokolov was left standing by the entry. He began the process of removing the stiff, frozen garments from his body, unnoticed by the others in the room.
At one of the tables were two laborers who had been genially sharing a bottle of vodka. As the contents of the bottle became less, each of the two, who had previously been so amicably dedicated to the project, grew steadily less enchanted with the other’s company and gradually settled upon a wide area of disagreement. It was concluded that they should dissolve their partnership instantly and fully. Both claimed possession of the bottle. 
Each lunged for it at the same time, missing, but sending the bottle shattering across the floor. By now, both were fully enraged and the one grabbed the broken bottle by the neck and addressed it towards his companion’s throat. The other, seeing the threat for what it was, grabbed the butchers knife that was lying on the table and prepared to parry the ensuing attack.
Everyone who was in the room saw what was unfolding and leapt up, taking defensive positions and arming themselves with whatever was available in case the melee were to escalate into a general conflagration. The sudden violent turn of events came to an abrupt standstill when each had staked out their positions relative to the others and they all waited to see what events would take place next.
As the combatants stood their ground, Vladimir Sokolov, now finished with the process of shedding his outer garments and hanging them on a peg, walked through the galley as if oblivious to the whole affair. He went to the urn where hot tea was always to be found, filled a cup, and put a stale biscuit on a plate. He then walked over to the table where the two had been drinking, placed himself between them with the knife pointing towards one ear and the broken bottle towards the other, then sat down and began to eat.
The drunken adversaries looked at him as if he were mad; and they were behaving in a perfectly rational manner. At that instant, the door to the communications room opened and a figure clad in a dark-grey turtleneck sweater, over which lay a well-trimmed jet-black beard, peered out over the room. 
“Is there a problem in here?” he asked calmly in Russian to no one in particular.
At the sound of the question, the weapons that had recently been so clearly in evidence, disappeared as if they had never been present at all. The bodies that had been frozen in action all began to shift, moving in harmony, as if choreographed, back to the positions where they had been before. The tension in the room evaporated as had the mists of the cold air sweeping through the open door, and calm once again prevailed.
When order was restored, the communications operator, of the sweater and black beard, whom everyone knew was much more than a mere radio operator, came to sit opposite Sokolov. Sokolov acknowledged his presence no more than he had the battling drunkards and continued with his tea and biscuit.
“I have heard from Moscow,” the radio operator, whom Sokolov only knew as Gregore, told him. “Your wish to extend the overland journey to collect meteorites near the mountains was approved several weeks ago.”
Sokolov bobbed his head once to signal that he had heard, but gave no other indication that he had any intention of engaging in conversation. His dejectedness had by then come to be such a tangible presence that none considered it to be to anything other than ordinary. Certainly not to the political officer who sat across from him. It was an air of forlorn melancholy; the look of which he had come to be exceptionally well acquainted. When it became apparent that Sokolov was not going to contribute anything to the conversation, he continued, “And the Americans will be sending their atmospheric chemist here any day now,” Gregore said to the granite-faced mass before him.
For an instant, Sokolov, whose cup was lifted towards his lips, held the cup before him. Catching himself, he continued on and drank the remnants of the brew without flinching. He nodded his head twice this time to indicate that he thoroughly understood. It suddenly struck him that showing too little interest might seem suspicious in itself, so he asked as innocuous a question as he could think of.
“The French?”
“Should be here at roughly the same time,” Gregore confirmed.
“And we shall be leaving?” Sokolov inquired.
“In about three weeks.”
Sokolov sat in stony silence for another long pause.
“Very well, then,” he said quietly, setting aside the cup and plate. “I will continue with the preparations.”
“Good,” Gregore said, smiling at this display of animation from the newly-invigorated figure across from him. He approved of a high morale on station. “We will have a very interesting journey back to the coast, I am sure.”
“Yes,” Sokolov agreed. “I am certain that it will be.” 

Chapter 5
Beardmore Glacier Camp
Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range

Susan Engen awoke to the sound of turbo jet engines whirling, and the screeching abrasion of skis bearing the weight of the C-130 vibrating through the snow pack. As loud as it was and as close, it sounded as if it were going to crush her tiny nylon tent; it still took a moment to break through the drug-induced haze. At first, she was confused as to how she came to be in that state at all until she tried to sit up and the injuries that had by then stiffened made their presence known, and she fell back into her bag.
“Oh, God!” she said, in a tone more of disgust than actual entreaty. “How could this happen?”
She didn’t wait for an answer; besides, she already knew, and forced herself to sit up. Dressing was excruciating, but she was goaded on by the cold that she was affected by far more markedly than she would have been because of the injuries and the drug hangover. When she was finally ready, she stepped out into the glare of the sun reflecting off the snow that blinded her in spite of the glacier glasses she wore. She managed to negotiate her way to the hut and entered it.
The incoming passengers from the flight were already inside. She saw Dr. Atkinson with Arthur Fredricks, the Polar Program director. Nearby were Alistair Adams and Dr. Daniels. Her grad students, Connie and Walt, had made the flight and they came to her as soon as they saw her. They had already heard about her fall.
As they expressed their concern and inquires as to her condition, she noticed a man who had come in on the flight, standing alone. His clothing set him apart right away. He wasn’t wearing the red parka and black cargo pants of the civilians, nor was he in the green-on-green of the Navy.  He had on a parka that was not dissimilar to her own, only it was new and bore insignias that she could not recognize from across the room. He saw her looking at him, and nodded to her with a smile that seemed friendly enough, but left the distinct impression that he knew a great deal about her, while she hadn’t any idea who he might be.
After greeting her students and assuring them she was fine, she went to the coffee pot where she found Jake watching the activity from the back of the room.
“How’s my patient?” he asked, solicitously.
“Lousy,” she answered, but with enough caffeine, felt that improvement could be on the horizon.
“I figured as much,” he said, nodding. “Able to sleep at all?”
“With all of that stuff that I took, that shouldn’t have been a problem,” she said. “Woke up a lot, though.” She adjusted the sling that he had given her.
“I believe it,” he said, continuing to look over the new arrivals.
Susan refilled the cup and then went and found Dr. Atkinson, who was still with Dr. Fredricks.
“Morning, Steven, Arthur,” she greeted them.
“Hello, Susan,” Dr. Atkinson said for both of them. “We were just hearing about your accident. I’m glad you’re not badly injured.”
She wasn’t sure how badly injured she was, or wasn't, but saying so was not an option. Dr. Fredricks would insist that she return to McMurdo for a thorough evaluation, and that could lead to a flight back to New Zealand. No. She would deal with it later. Besides, the worst it could be was torn ligaments or cartilage, and other than surgery, there wasn’t much to do about that but rest, and rest wasn’t an option, either.
“Thank you,” she said, then changing the subject, “Are my crates on board?"
“Already unloaded,” Dr. Fredricks said, with convivial geniality. The NSF, though made up of scientists, was a government entity, which in this scenario, served primarily as the host. They set everything up for the PI’s to come and do their work. Once they were on location, all the NSF had to do was to leave them alone. It was difficult for the former scientist to do; he was left with the vicarious conceit of pretending that he was a part of the groups working on the continent in order not to feel like an outsider in his own program. The PI’s all politely played along.
“Do we know what happened?” she asked.
Dr. Atkinson looked accusingly at Dr. Fredricks, who in spite of his scientific background, was still a fully capable political operator. 
“Yes, we do,” he told her, his persona making the subtle shift from the affable host to one burdened with grave and consequential issues. “As soon as the Captain comes in from the aircraft, we will be discussing that.”
“We need to discuss something?” Susan asked, putting aside the suggestion that she wait. “I thought it was a simple error.”
“And I apologize for misleading you in that fashion,” Dr. Fredricks said, in full bureaucratic mode now. “But it was necessary.”
“Steven,” she said, turning toward Dr. Atkinson, “what is all the mystery about?”
“You will know in a minute,” he replied. “There have been some changes to the roster of projects working from our camp this summer.”
“Oh,” Susan told him. “I guess that doesn’t really matter now that we’re up to speed.”
He chose not to answer and she didn’t press him. Another scientist using the camp wasn’t such a big deal. The door opened then and the Captain entered the hut. He strode in purposefully, wearing a flight jacket rather than the green parkas the rest of his crew wore. As Captain of the flight squadron that supported the Antarctic Program, he was also the Skipper of McMurdo Station. The Captain was in charge of all military operations, which were only there to support the NSF, but their presence there was steeped in tradition from the days of Admiral Byrd. He nodded to Dr. Fredrick as he spoke.
“They’re not happy about it,” he said, “but they’ll live.”
He had just told the passengers who were en route to the South Pole and then to Vostok that they had to stay on board. They wanted to visit the camp since the plane had stopped anyway. 
“Okay, then, let’s start,” Dr. Fredrick said, before calling for everyone in the room to offer their attention.
“I don’t know how much news you all have received out here about the situation in the Middle East. It’s been developing quickly, so what I say may already be out of date, but this is what we know. Iran has fallen into the hands of the fundamentalists in a revolution that has overthrown the Shah. They have taken the American embassy hostage and there are rumors that they will announce that the hostages will stand trial for ‘crimes.’ Iraq is already probing the Iranian defenses and an attack is widely anticipated.” 
He paused for a moment and looked at the Captain, who kept silent, so he continued. “It would be really hard to know whom to back in that fight. Iran hates us because we supported the Shah. Iraq is bent on conquest. Hussein has imperial ambitions.”
“That is correct,” the Captain agreed, jumping in now. “This is way worse than '73, if for no other reason than we are directly involved this time. There is a new element to all of this, too. Before now, Byzantine-type kings, sultans, caliphs, and whoever ruled the region. Then we had military dictators, like Hussein taking power. Now we have religious fanatics toppling the regimes. All three have two things in common. They are the worst kinds of sons of bitches, and they keep themselves in power by keeping their own people impoverished and hopped up on religion. Appears that this time, it bit them in the ass. There is not one democratically elected government in the region, except the Israelis, and there is, obviously, little hope of their talking reason to these fruitcakes.”
Susan settled down with Connie and Walt as Dr. Fredrick began to speak. She was still significantly cross-eyed, and force-feeding herself the black coffee, actively and earnestly prayed for the latest round of painkillers to take effect quickly. Not really paying attention, she had heard all about the situation on the news before deploying to the ice, until the last part. 
“Wait a minute,” she said, her inherently factious and contrarian nature shifting into automatic response. “First of all, whom do you think you have to thank for that? We supported a brutal, repressive regime for no other reason than because they were opposed to the Communists. Now you are unhappy that those people who suffered under him don’t like us for that? Thanks for the news, but you didn’t exactly need to come all the way out here to tell us that.”
The Captain looked at Dr. Fredrick, who looked embarrassed.
“Susan, when you submitted your proposal to the foundation for a research grant, you hypothesized about certain geological formations you expected to find here,” Dr. Fredrick said, carefully phrasing his answer in scientific terms. “A hypothesis based on previous findings, as well as what one might theorize, based on what has been discovered in similar locations.”
“Yes, that’s right,” she said, her brain still moving a step slow, but with growing unrest.
“Some of the things you suggested that you might find were mineral concentrations and fossil fuels. You said that there was a likelihood of super-concentrations of oil somewhere between here and the Ross Sea.”
“I specifically said that there was a great likelihood of some concentrations, a good chance of significant deposits, and a reasonable expectation that there may be large caches, but that was the merest speculation based on mathematical probability,” she said, backpedalling on the meaning of her hypothesis. “There is no evidence to support that supposition.”
“Not yet,” Dr. Fredrick pointed out.
“No, not yet,” she allowed. “But I still don’t see what that has to do with what is going on in Iran.” 
It was, however, apparent to all that she knew exactly what it had to do with it. They could see the emotions all trying to take hold at once: fear, anger, consternation. She was waiting for someone to say something to somehow mitigate the blasphemy she thought she was hearing. Dr. Fredrick looked relieved when the Captain handled it.
“What this has to do with that,” the Captain said, “is that we are now in full crisis mode. Despots and fanatics are positioning themselves to dictate our strategic destiny to us, and that is unacceptable. If the opportunity to locate and mine a new source of oil exists, then we need to do that now.” 
The statement brought a general uproar in the room. Dr. Fredrick jumped to his feet.
“Whoa, there, everybody. Hang on! That is not what is going to happen, at least not until a whole lot of other things happen first. All we are going to do this season is to see if we can identify possible locations and amounts. Then we will see what will happen next.”
“So how are you planning to do that?” Susan Engen demanded, her voice brittle. She forced herself to be calm. The plan she had laid out for herself was more than merely being threatened. She was now keenly aware that she was personally and directly responsible for this unfolding disaster. Her research, which was supposed to demonstrate why the continent needed to be protected, was now being used as an excuse for its demise.
“That is what I’m for,” the person she noticed earlier, with the insignia-clad coat said, smiling mildly. “Let me tell you all a little about myself. I am Lieutenant Richards. I’m in the Air Force, assigned to a research project with NASA, which has loaned me to the NSF to come here.”
The calm tone he employed helped to quiet the uniformly agitated group he was addressing. The announcement that he did research for NASA piqued the interest of the science community enough that they were willing to listen for the moment.
“What I do for NASA involves exploring the possibility of a future lunar station, and though that would not come to fruition for quite some time, the process is in place to work out the details of how it could. My role is to design systems to locate and exploit existing resources, such as ice, to use for water as well as separating the materials for breathable air and fuel for propulsion. It is assumed that seismology would play a part in that exploration, and that is why I have been sent here to help with this project.”
The opiates were finally starting to take effect on Susan’s badly damaged tendons. While reducing the considerable pain, they also helped to take the edge off her suddenly frazzled nerves. They also served to soften her inhibitions, and she found herself girding up for battle.
“Maybe the technology exists for that type of precision on the moon,” Susan interrupted him with, “but I assure you, it doesn’t here on earth. I know that much at least. When you say ‘explore’ for oil, that means drilling. And, there is no way, no matter how much is discovered, that this could be economically feasible. The technology to even extract it doesn’t exist.” 
She said this in the full knowledge that this was exactly what could be done, and why she had committed herself to stopping it.
“True,” the Lieutenant conceded, “and I assure you that no one is going to take these steps unless there is a very good chance that the oil is actually there.”
“Economically speaking,” the Captain said, taking over again, “you are partially right. Normally, we would allow a free market to decide when and how to explore. This is a security and strategic concern now. The government will make the decision, and contract and subsidize the operation after that.”
Dr. Atkinson had listened quietly so far. He was the chief scientist and there were things he needed to know.
“All right then. I take it the government has decided to do this, at least this far, or else Dr. Fredrick and the NSF would not have pulled all this together so quickly.” 
Dr. Fredrick nodded vehemently, grateful for the opportunity to get off the hook a bit. It was no secret where the science community stood on matters such as these. 
“How is this supposed to impact our field season here? Our resources are slim; time is precious. What exactly is it that you want from us?”
Dr. Fredrick handled it. “We are going to leave Lt. Richards here,” he said, sensing that the worst was over. All things considered, it looked like they were taking it well. “He has equipment and materials already on station. He and Dr. Engen will work together. The places described in her grant to be explored are also the prime locations the government wants to get data on.”
“What?”Susan exploded. She jumped out of her chair, knocking it over. “You are going to detour my project for… for this?”
“Not at all,” Dr. Fredrick said. “The Lieutenant will just tag along and do his work at the same time.” 
This picturesque description elicited a small smile from the Lieutenant.
“ No. No way. You are not going to use my hypothesis as the excuse to destroy the ecology. No way!” she repeated adamantly.
“Susan, I really don’t think that is going to happen - at least I hope not,” Dr. Fredrick said, turning a sharp glance at the Captain. “We will truly appreciate your help. You have two more years on your grant, and I will do everything I can to make sure you get whatever you need for the remaining two years.”
She opened her mouth to answer, but stopped. Two more years. It suddenly occurred to her that there was a threat veiled in that statement. Don’t help and there may not be another two years. She considered her position. For the first time in years, she was speechless. Her grant meant everything to her. By defending the environment, she was now going to lose her grant? She had the presence of mind to close her mouth and keep it closed. She nodded once and looked away.
“Okay then,” Dr. Fredrick said, clapping his hands as though he was breaking up a huddle.
“I thought that the treaty prohibited this sort of thing - that the whole continent was preserved for scientific research,” Dr. Daniels said, also trying to grasp the enormity of what he had just heard. He had been brought partially up to speed on the trip out from McMurdo by Dr. Atkinson, despite the firm admonition not to. A communications blackout was in effect, and in Dr. Atkinson's case, that applied to conversation as well.
“You are half right,” Dr. Fredrick allowed. “The treaty allows everyone equal access to information and to pursue their research, but it does not discount territorial claims. It does not address material resources at all. Deliberately, I think. It is my understanding that the United States would not allow language of that type to be included, not wanting to preclude that eventuality. There are no provisions against mining. The issues will be about sovereignty, not exploitation.” 
“Sovereignty?” Dr. Daniels asked.
“Absolutely,” Dr. Atkinson said, taking up the point and nodding thoughtfully. “While there are no prohibitions excluding the extraction of mineral wealth, there may be disputes regarding one’s rights to the claim itself.”
“The Kiwis claim this section,” Alistair reflected out loud. “And they are part of the Commonwealth. Are you planning on stealing our oil?”
“And the treaty neither confirms nor denies those claims,” Dr. Atkinson continued, ignoring the question. “It merely puts the topic on hold. It is ambiguous. If this were to proceed, the most likely outcome would be that someone would either contest the claim because they want it for themselves, or they would try to stop it simply because it goes against their interests.”
“The Russians,” Dr. Daniels suggested, which got a raised eyebrow from the Captain.
“This turmoil has to benefit them,” the Captain said. “They have as much oil as the Arab countries, but are so backward in their ability to extract it, that it can’t be profitable to export. When the price of oil spikes, they suddenly see something they’re desperate for, hard currency. I would expect them to contest our rights here, fiercely. The longer we can go without their becoming aware of our intentions, the better.”
Susan looked up sharply at that last statement, but said nothing. She had grown increasingly accustomed to the idea of being a driving force in the protection of the environment, only to find in the last moments that she had unwittingly managed to arrange for its demise. Now, a new strategy was starting to form. All, perhaps, may not be lost after all, she thought.
There was quiet in the hut as everyone tried to grasp the new reality they were faced with. It seemed like an opportune moment for Dr. Fredricks and the Captain to make their escape.
“We had better get going,” Dr. Fredricks said to Dr. Atkinson, making a sign to the Captain. “We have a group going to the Pole on board. Then we are making a call at Vostok on the way back, to drop off one of our people to assist the French there this summer.”
With a warning to all to keep silent about what they had just learned, they left.

Chapter 6
Russian Station Vostok
Antarctic Plateau

Vladimir Sokolov, along with the entire complement of the Russian base, met the American aircraft as it taxied to a stop. Although the courtesy call by the Americans had been planned long in advance, there was some confusion as to when they would actually be arriving. The repeated radio calls, first from McMurdo, and then from the aircraft itself, could not convince the Russians that the aircraft was currently inbound. When it passed overhead, everyone got the message. A ski-way was tolerably well prepared, confirmed by the flight crew who made a low-level pass to make sure it was serviceable. If they couldn’t communicate the simple fact that they were en route, they weren’t about to take anyone’s word for the condition of the landing strip.
The hasty reception was organized by rousting everyone out of the galley, the visitors having arrived in the middle of lunch. The American flight crew was ecstatic. It wasn’t every day that a Navy aircraft flew into a Russian base for “Distinguished Visitor” treatment. They brought piles of everything made in America they could find to barter with. Blue jeans and Navy uniforms had the best value. Russian fur hats and goggles carried the best exchange.
While the dignitaries were getting the tour, the one new permanent addition to the base was receiving his orientation. Sokolov had managed to arrange that the young American would room with him. The Russian helped by dragging his new roommate’s bags to the housing module, and having dropped them in the middle of the room, he pointed to the lower bunk, a concession that he, as host, felt obligated to make. Then he sat in the one chair and lit a cigarette, which made the American cringe. The Russian contemplated his new companion through the smoke.
“You are quite young,” he observed. 
Trevor, the new arrival, shrugged. “I have a masters’ degree in atmospheric chemistry,” he said. “I’m just working as a research assistant while getting my Ph.D.” 
Sokolov continued to look at him, wondering how much to say. He decided to make a conclusive test immediately.
“Who are the CIA in this group?” he inquired abruptly.
“What?” Trevor asked, caught completely off guard.
“Do not try to tell me you do not know.”
“We don’t have CIA in Antarctica,” Trevor said, flustered. “Jesus, I’ve never met anyone from CIA in my life.”
Sokolov looked disappointed; he was hoping this would be someone he could trust. Trevor looked back at him, confused.
“Honestly, we do not have CIA here - at least I don’t think so,” Trevor said with such sincerity that Sokolov decided to hold off making a judgment. 
“Maybe not. But you do have political officers. How did you get them to let you come here?” 
Now Trevor laughed.
“We do not have political officers,” he said, but he stopped laughing quickly enough when he saw the seriousness with which Sokolov studied his physiognomy.
Sokolov confronted the possibility that this was true. It would mean that what he had been told was a lie, but he suspected that already. It was his turn to shrug.
“Maybe not. We are told to expect this, you see. When we travel, we are always accompanied by such people. I visited your station at the South Pole last summer.”
“Really?” Trevor asked. “I just came from there.”
“Yes? Our group not permitted more than a moment’s separation from each other. This is typical. You and I must be careful of appearances,” he suddenly said, and with meaning. “It is inevitable that there be suspicion.” 
The Russian scientist was reasonably certain that his quarters were not wired. The station was considered secure for obvious reasons. Trevor was quiet for a moment, considering.
“We hear things like this, of course, but actually seeing it is different. It is completely different from what we are used to.” 
Sokolov looked at him intently.
“This is true? You are completely free of such things? At all times?” He had heard that from colleagues, but it was a much different story that came from the authorities. He had reason to disbelieve the authorities. His training required proof to convince him of most things, and this was too important to base his actions on wild speculation. 
“Absolutely,” Trevor said. His thought processes were also trained to work a certain way. “Not that this doesn’t create problems of its own, you know.” 
There were so many things Sokolov wanted to ask, to know, to hear. He knew that he had to keep his reserve, however, and tried to sound as if he were making disinterested conversation.
“Oh? There are problems with your governance?” he asked.
“Sure, always. Not that we would have it any different,” Trevor quickly added.
“There are always problems with this,” Sokolov said. “For us, it is like the weather. They come, they go. We do not say this, for we are very patriotic towards our government.”
“Huh,” Trevor mused. “I guess we are just as misinformed about you as you are about us. We hear that people in your country hate the government.”
“Our government knows what is best for us,” Sokolov told him, “and tells us quite clearly how we must act for our own benefit. It tells us many things. Very many things.”
Despite trying to sound conversational and detached, Sokolov could not, however, hide the outrage on his face, and Trevor’s face also began to betray that he, too, understood that this was not just a philosophical exchange.
“In our society, just having this conversation is against the law,” Sokolov said slowly, looking at Trevor with suppressed intensity.
“Then maybe we had better not,” the American said, smiling, but with alarm.
“You think not?” Sokolov asked, reverting back to his indifferent demeanor. “That would be your prerogative, if you should wish for it.”
“I think maybe we had just better to get to work,” Trevor said.
“That is, of course, why we are here, is it not?” Sokolov said, nodding sagely.


***

The track vehicle was warm enough to be comfortable, and Trevor could just see through the frosted window if he scraped it often enough. Sokolov opened the thermos that he had packed before they left and poured two cups without asking, knowing that everyone wants a hot drink when it was that cold. They were roughly two miles to windward of Vostok Station, Sokolov and Trevor in one vehicle, two other Russians in another. It wasn’t really far enough to be certain that the snow was uncontaminated by pollutants given off by the station, but it was as far as Trevor could get the Russians to go. It was probably fine, since the wind direction was almost one hundred percent reliable. And almost was almost good enough, but not quite. It would, however, just have to do.
Sokolov wasn’t really involved in this project, but he had been doing his own research on site for over a year and had it pretty well down. It was good to have something different to do. Trevor was watching the workers unloading the equipment from the other vehicle. This wasn’t actually the project that he was sent there to do, either. There had been many ice cores drilled at Vostok and the French team that was there during the summer was very good, thanks to the Swiss engineer who was running the operation. The equipment was slated to drill three separate cores. Trevor’s was last. Therefore, he had time on his hands to try something that he had thought about, but not mentioned to anyone else, other than Sokolov, yet. When he was a full professor, he hoped to get a grant to come back on a project of his own. Now, he could conduct his experiment on the side and possibly have a theme for his doctoral dissertation.
“How did you keep this a secret from our atmospheric scientist?” Sokolov asked him. “This would be just the type of research he would like to steal and claim as his own.”
“I told him that I was going to walk from site to site collecting samples and carry them with me for several miles.”
“Ah.” Sokolov thought for a moment. “We are not going to do that, are we?”
“No. We’ll dig a pit right over there. As you know, of course, the annual snowfall here is consistent to the point of being almost unnatural. It has long been understood that chemicals get trapped in the gasses that form the bubbles in the ice.”
“Absolutely. That is why the cores are mined.”
“Correct. What I am looking at is a recent record, maybe fifty or sixty years. The cores map certain climate changes from distant history. Since we are in a current period of rapid warming, I am going to take a year by year, much more detailed record of the most recent past. By doing a chemical analysis of each year individually, maybe even seasonally, I can reconstruct a nearly perfect model of what chemical changes occur along with climate change. By finding a pattern, I am thinking that I may be able to correlate them with the triggers that bring on climate change, making long-term climate prediction a possibility.”
“Not a bad hypothesis for a grad student.”
“Thanks, though I’m not technically a grad student. More of a research assistant while I work on my Ph.D.”
Trevor looked over his material list, sipping the hot tea. Sokolov didn’t do anything.
“Where did you learn English so well?” Trevor asked him.
“University.”
“Interesting. I don’t know anyone who speaks Russian.”
“That is because your imperial masters do not want your awareness of what is taking place in the larger world. The enlightened Soviet leadership, on the other hand, understands that when the working classes of your society rise up, they will require our assistance and we want to be prepared to communicate with them.”
Trevor smiled. At first he was alarmed when Sokolov would go off like that, but over the last few days he recognized that the Russian was just venting. He needed someone to talk to, and he was discrete in his indiscretion. He only did it when it was safe.
“Forgive me if I don’t start learning Russian.”
“I cannot do that. Most of the world’s great literature is in Russian and you will remain ignorant until you can read it in the original.” About this, Sokolov was serious.
“Then you will have to teach me,” Trevor said.
“Our political leader will find this an excellent use of our spare time.”
“Well, there isn’t going to be much more of that now.”
“More the pity, I suppose.”

Chapter 7
World Green Organization Camp
Ross Island, Coast of Antarctica


The Green Organization base reposed slightly beyond Scott Base, the New Zealand research station that was established just over the hill from McMurdo. It was there for a couple of reasons. First, the Kiwis were sympathetic to the cause, so it was a comfortable place to be. Second, they were close enough to McMurdo to keep watch on the Americans, and to make their presence felt. They were sure that they were having an impact, which was correct.
“Thanks,” the leader of that year’s expedition, who was known only as Frodo, said to the woman as she left the camp. The woman, a grad student from Santa Cruz, California, had brought a letter from Beardmore. She had been befriended by Dr. Engen before Susan had gone inland. They discovered they shared the belief that environmental activism was as important a thing as a person could do in life. They also resisted the sense that working for the Antarctic program was something close to being a part of the problem, but Dr. Engen was able to convince the young student that change was something that mostly happened from the inside out, with a few well-placed nudges. So now the newly minted activist enjoyed the sensation of finding herself acting as a clandestine agent, passing information to the partisans. Susan had sent the note through the “guard mail”, which were basically just bags that were picked up by the flight crews as they passed through and delivered to whatever station they were addressed to, whenever an opportunity could be arranged. It had never occurred to anyone that the internal mail was something that needed monitoring, and it wasn’t.
The camp was made up of modules that looked exactly like Christmas ornaments. While there could be no doubt that it was operated in a perfectly environmentally friendly way, it couldn’t possibly have looked more out of place. The casual observer would have expectations of what they expected to see and the unusual seemed somehow wrong. When considered logically, it didn’t appear any more out of place than anything else. Everything should have seemed like it didn’t belong except what was there naturally. He read the note.
“Son of a bitch!” Frodo rasped.
“What?” his companion, Crystal, asked. She was reading a three-month-old magazine that she’d taken from Scott Base. She was maybe twenty-two, and her blondish hair was twisted into dreadlocks, long before they became fashionable, and of which she would later be proud. She was from Belgium; the others were all Americans.
“Son of a bitch!” Frodo said again. He handed the letter over.
“Holy shit!” Crystal exclaimed, after learning the contents.
“I knew it!” he shouted, knowing that he couldn’t possibly have known, except that everyone knew it would happen eventually.
“What are we going to do?” she asked as the hatch opened. The other two members of the group came in. They passed the letter around, each complaining bitterly of the horror that was to be visited upon them. Upon reflection, however, it occurred to them that this was the very reason why they were there: to expose the crime before it could be committed, and organize a defense. As they were only four people, the only defense that could be conceived would be to get information out to their well-established media machine and to inspire international condemnation, which was what they had been doing all along.
“Let me think,” Frodo said. They all stopped talking and watched him while he did so. “We can’t get to where they are now, and I don’t want to wait until they get somewhere that we can. That means we have to act on what we know now.”
“How are we supposed to do that?” they asked.
“Pictures.”
“If we can’t get up there,” they asked, “how are we supposed to get pictures?”
“We’ll just have to use the ones we have. Don’t we have pictures of them drilling through the ice?”
“Yeah, but that is drilling through ice.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s the story that counts. Those will do.”  
This troubled the other of the girls, Sierra, who told him that it seemed kind of crummy to use phony pictures. She thought that they had the moral high ground. 
“We do have the moral high ground. That is why it is so important to get something out now.”
“It seems like a dirty trick,” she persisted.
“It’s what they want to do that is dirty,” he said vehemently. “We know that what we are doing is right and what they are doing is wrong. That is all that matters now. Come on, I’ll show you.”
They went out of the ornament and traversed the short distance to the sea ice where there was a seal hole. Several Weddell seals were sunning themselves around it. 
“Does anyone doubt that garbage from McMurdo is spread all over the ice?” he asked.
“Of course not,” they answered. “We’ve all picked up tons of it.”
“Okay then,” he said. He took the bag of trash he dragged along with him and spread it among the seals. He took out a camera from its bag and snapped two rolls of film.
“Bastards!” he said. “We need to stop them.” They put the trash back in the bag, not missing a single scrap.

***
 
The Director of the Russian science program, whose job was to oversee operations in Antarctica, took the memo because all reports that had to do with the program came through him, especially those with possible political ramifications. In much the same manner as his American counterparts, his job was mainly political. True, he was a scientist, but one whose lifestyle was guaranteed by the government, so their agenda was his agenda. He lived a far better life as a bureaucrat than as a professor. His main priorities were keeping the appearance of cooperation under the treaty in the forefront, avoiding embarrassing situations, and finally, actually doing science that would make good copy for the worldwide media. 
He read the news clipping with skepticism. These environmental groups were all crazy, he thought. They were all comprised of the offspring of a pampered and morally bankrupt middle class, looking for something to be passionate about. He immediately recognized the photos for what they were, ice cores. Still, why would they publish this? Crazy though they might be, they weren’t given to tabloid-style fabrications of the ludicrous. They clung tightly to whatever credibility they could muster. He pondered.
As he stirred his tea, he looked at the pictures again. It looked like a project a European group had done a couple of years previously, in Greenland he thought. Where could this story have come from? Why now? The German paper specifically stated that the information that the Americans were exploring for oil in the Antarctic, was acquired by a watchdog group on location, and then independently corroborated. The second part, independent corroboration, could just be fabrication, but then again, so could the original story. One of the two statements, however, had to have had at least a grain of truth to it, regardless of how exaggerated it might be.
Could it be that the Americans were going to start exploring, he wondered? Why not? A thousand reasons, not least of which was the fact that even if one could locate a source, the cost and logistics of removing it were prohibitive. If it weren’t, every country with a hint of a claim would have descended like locusts years ago. Wars would have been fought over territorial claims. But, he thought, what if someone was absolutely determined to mine the continent at any cost? It could be done. And why would one expend an unrecoverable sum of capital to extract mineral deposits when it was available at a lesser price? They wouldn’t, unless it wasn’t available anywhere else at any price. And that, he knew, was an experience the Americans had so recently not enjoyed. Interesting. He wrote a few lines on a piece of plain white paper and called his assistant.
“Get a telex to Vostok with this immediately,” he said. The assistant read the note while standing in front of the desk. He held the note without moving, but after he read it a second time, he raised his eyes to look over his spectacles at his boss. 
“Just send it. Please?”

***

“Jiminy frickin’ Cricket,” Chuck Stoddard muttered, a compromise to the oath that hovered on his lips now that it was no longer politically correct to say what he really meant in the Washington D.C. office. As the head of the National Science Foundation, it was Stoddard’s job to catch hell for whatever gaffs came out of it, but to be fair, it was also his job to take credit for things he had almost no knowledge of, either. This time, it would be just pure hell.
“We just barely decided to start thinking about thinking about this. How in the hell did it end up here?” he asked, waving the copy of Der Spiegel. Shoulders shrugged, heads shook; personalities that were drawn near to the source of power looked for metaphorical cover in their minds. He sighed, knowing the rhetorical question had no chance of getting answered here. He, on the other hand, would no doubt be offering answers to a Senate subcommittee in the very near future. And he hadn’t the damnedest idea what answers he would find. 
“When is the next time we can talk to McMurdo?” he asked. But before anyone could start to do the mental calculation, he stopped. “No, wait. That is the last thing we need now, open channel voice communications. I’ll send a plain-text message. How can we do that?”
An aid was ready with an answer.
“Remember that experimental satellite we turned over from NASA to Polar Programs? It still has a single channel operating. We can send messages on the VAX computer while the bird is over the horizon. It’s nearly extinct, but it still works.”
“Good. Can it be monitored?”
“Unlikely. There is the ULF if you want.” The ULF (Ultra-Low-Frequency) equipment was Korean War surplus that dated back before Admiral Byrd. It was slow, but reasonably reliable. He waved the suggestion off.
At that time, universities and other scientific organizations, principally, were using the Internet. Prominent people, such as the Director, regardless of their other technical acumen, still did not understand much of its workings. He picked up a lined yellow note pad and wrote in longhand.
“To the Director of Polar Programs, <stop>,” as if it were a telegram and not E-mail that he was writing. “Environmentalists have published accounts of our upcoming project, <stop>. Claim information uncovered from your end, <stop>. We will, if pressed, say that research is just part of normal geological mapping <stop>. Keep the damn lid on <stop>!”
He handed the pad over.
“Okay. Get this out and for Gods’ sake Let’s keep a lid on it here, too!”

***

The communications room at Vostok Station housed most of the computer equipment, as well as the radio. The Communications Operator would monitor guard frequencies, mostly American, on the radio, as well as taking messages from the Telex. At that time, they had limited, if any, means of connecting to the Internet, which was still an American invention that had only recently allowed public access outside of large institutions. 
Gregore, the operator, read the message thoughtfully. He didn’t believe a word of it; it didn’t make any sense. It was the fact that he was being charged with a surprise visit to the American camp that disturbed him. First, he was told to abandon the fantasy that he was a radio operator and to take charge of the operation. Second, he was to visit the camp, and observe what was going on, without directly asking if they were doing what it was suspected they might be doing. That was not as easy as it sounded. One did not post signs that read “Illegal Operations Being Contemplated Here.” One geologist making observations looked like another. How was he supposed to know?
He thought about whom he was to travel with and where they intended to go. It was not that far out of the way. He considered not telling the others why they were making the visit, except to make a treaty inspection, which was a mere social call. There was a quota or something, he would say, and they were one short. In the end, he decided to let the others in once they were underway. He would need other eyes searching, also. What was he supposed to look for, oil wells? 
Walking through the galley from the communication room, he picked up his coat and walked out into the blinding sunshine. Like all of those who had spent the winter at Vostok, the mid-summer sun felt pleasant and he went hatless unless he was out for an extended time, despite the minus-five degrees of temperature, Fahrenheit. Well, there was one upshot, he thought. Knowing that he wielded secret power was amusing for only so long. What was the point of having power if those around you didn’t acknowledge and respect it? Most of them did, of course, but his acting the part of a lowly operator allowed them to act like important intelligentsia and treat him like an inferior underling. An act it was, but a very unpleasant one.
He could see the French crew working on the ice drill to windward, the American with them. No, he would not discuss what he knew before setting out. Who knew what they talked about when he could not hear? Not that it had mattered before. There was nothing here that needed protecting, and the scientific data was to be shared, regardless. Still, it would be better to be safe.

Chapter 8
Beardmore Glacier Camp
Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range

From the ledge where Susan Engen was working, she could look down on the camp, the hut at the center, the brightly-colored dome tents adorning the otherwise bleak landscape; the cargo line extending out towards the ski-way. Jake was orienting the grad students, including Connie and Walt, most of whom had never stood on sloping ice before, let alone high up on a mountain. In time, they would be bounding around without ropes as if born to it. For right now, though, they listened intently, as if their lives depended on what he was saying, which they did.
She had heard nothing from the Green Organization regarding her message to them. That was no surprise; there wasn’t any way in which they would have been able to reply. She wasn’t completely certain that it had found its way to them at all. Hanging her hopes on a “Hail Mary” pass was somewhat less than comforting. She could only hope that the information was being put to good use.
The booming of the explosions from Lt. Richards’ seismic work down below continued to irritate her. She instinctively looked up whenever they happened, as if the noise and vibration would trigger avalanches. The sudden motion made her shoulder ache worse that it did already, and she subconsciously began to blame the Lieutenant for her discomfort. And that was without the consideration that working in the last great wilderness was supposed to be a peaceful experience. 
Having one good arm made working difficult; she needed to be able to write on her clipboard while using her instruments. Jake offered to help, but trying to explain to him what she needed done was harder than just doing it. Besides, he would have seen the set of not quite duplicate notes that she was keeping. While it was certain that he wouldn’t understand what they meant, it would have been awkward to explain why there were separate reports. Totally stonewalling that inconvenient Lieutenant might not be an option at this point, but a little disinformation could at least buy some time.
Jake had gotten the grad students secured and returned to where Susan was looking through the viewer on the theodolite, the telescopic viewer mounted upon a tripod that was used for mapping the geology. 
“All set?” she asked him.
“Doing fine,” he said, before settling onto a rock facing the sun.
He sat quietly, watching her work, picking up little pieces of shale and tossing them at a target he picked out a few feet away.
“Is this really going to happen?” he asked her. “Drilling for oil, here?” 
“No,” she answered, making a note on the page.
“How can you be so sure?” he asked. “They sounded serious enough when they talked about it. And they said it was your theory that gave them the idea.”
She looked over at him, closing the cover of the notebook. The raillery that normally crowded his deportment was nowhere to be found in his current demeanor. It was replaced with concern that he took no effort to conceal.
“Because I said so,” she told him, smiling comfortingly. “Especially because they are using my ideas.”
“I just wish there was something we could do. I feel like I need to do something,” he said, throwing more of the rocks.
She hesitated before answering, wondering how much to say.
“Just keep doing what you’re doing. Act like nothing has changed. There may be a time when there will be something to do, but for now, don’t do anything. Don’t even sound like you are against it.”
He looked at her with a different expression on his face now. She spoke as if she actually meant it: that there might be action to take, while he had sounded like someone who was merely regretting his helplessness.
“Why do I begin to suspect that something is afoot here?” he asked her.
“Because you’re a man,” she told him, opening her notebook again and getting back to work. 
“And all men are suspicious? So that’s how it’s going to be, huh? Okay,” he commented, slipping back into character.
“You know, you barely get to know a girl before you decide she’s up to no good,” Susan said, playing along.
He laughed, but shook his head with a sideways tilt, indicating he knew that any trust he was to place in her protestations of innocence would leave him disappointed.
“Somehow, I get the feeling that I would find myself vindicated in that belief in very short order,” he said.
She chose not to reply, but she didn’t need to. Her confident, though conspiratorial, look said all that was necessary.

***

Walt was bored. Sure, climbing on icy ledges on steep mountainsides in a remote wilderness was fun, for a little while, but the initial excitement had worn off.
“There’s nothing to do around here,” he complained to Connie.
It was a Sunday morning, a day when the P.I.’s tended to get caught up on paperwork and correspondence, and grad students and support workers did whatever it was they did whenever they were not doing their jobs. Most were fine with that.
“Want to take a walk?” she asked.
“That’s all that we do, do,” he replied. “No thanks.”
He went for a walk anyway, out to the cargo line, just seeing what was there, when a green wooden box caught his attention. It was marked with white stencils that read: “US Navy. JATO.” He didn’t know what it was, but there were all sorts of warnings about the danger contained inside and proper handling to assure that it would not explode. Now we’re getting somewhere.
He found something to pry the lid off and was surprised to find six carefully stacked rockets inside. Rockets, out here? If he had asked someone, the Lieutenant for example, he would have learned that JATO, or Jet-Assist-Take-Off, was used when a C-130 either had an excessively heavy load, was fighting too much friction, or was trying to take off in deep, soft, snow, and could not get enough airspeed to lift off. The rockets were attached, and when fired at the right moment, added, hopefully, enough additional power to get airborne. 
What they were for was not his concern. The possibilities of what they could be for, was. He went back to the hut, rummaged around as inconspicuously as he could, and then nonchalantly told Connie to get her coat and follow. They piled the material that Walt had scavenged onto a sled and towed it out to the mysterious wood box.
“Oh, no,” Connie said when she put the pieces together. “Not again.”
The Captains’ reprimand after their disastrous fishing expedition had done the trick for her, and she had no interest receiving a second one.
“Relax,” Walt told her. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Besides, this is harmless.”
The JATO rocket was strapped to the back of the sled, a crude, but probably effective, fuse had been devised, and a seat for the passenger was improvised in the front.
“When I say “ready,” you light it up,” Walt instructed.
"Okay," she said, though there was something in her voice that absolved her from any negative outcome.
As he was getting ready to board the vehicle, steps were heard on the other side of the cargo line, and they hunched down low and tried to remain invisible. Barely breathing, they waited for the footsteps to move past, but instead they stopped, and Jake’s head appeared over the top.
“What are you doing?” Jake asked.
Walt hesitated to answer. He still hadn’t made up his mind about Jake. On the one hand, being the guide, plus his close association with Dr. Engen, made him automatically suspect. On the other hand, he appeared to be completely crazy, an admirable trait. Since they were pretty much caught either way, he decided to make a simple explanation and see where it went.
Jake shook his head with a frown. He took his responsibility seriously, and would not allow anyone to expose themselves to danger unnecessarily.
“Too dangerous,” he said.
Walt silently cursed himself and his bad luck in having been discovered too soon.
“First of all,” Jake went on, “you have to move away from the line before you light it, since you don’t know how straight it will run. Second, you need to do a trial run without sitting on it to make sure it will work. Pile some snow on there to simulate the weight.”
“All right!” Walt said, grabbing a shovel.
Connie closed her eyes and shook her head at Jake’s faulty display of adult supervision.
When it was ready, Walt lit the fuse, and at Jake’s cautious insistence, watched from the other side of the line. They looked over the boxes as the fuse smoldered and appeared to go out.
“Should I go check it?” Walt asked.
“Wait a minute,” Jake said.
“I’m going to go check it.”
Walt went from behind the pallet they were watching from, and was halfway to the sled when it went off. The blast knocked him off his feet. The mound of snow that represented a potential passenger exploded into a mist as the sled itself was torn to splinters. The rocket, now free of what presumed to control it, spun in circles on the ice before taking off in the direction of the ski-way. In less than a second it hit the deck again, spun around and took off toward the hut. Its trajectory shifted as it began to climb, and it pierced the wall of the outhouse, just below the roof, where Dr. Atkinson had just seated himself.
From there it climbed high in the sky, and in another abrupt directional shift, came about and became oriented in a downward vertical line heading straight for the food cave. One of the first tasks to be accomplished in establishing a field camp was the excavation of the food cave. A trench was dug, shelving built, a roof was laid over it, and then it was buried under several feet of snow. Depending on the latitude and elevation of the camp, it might, or might not be deep enough to maintain the annual ambient temperature. Either way, it was certainly cold enough to keep things frozen.
The cook had just gone down to do his "shopping" for the next day, when the room exploded into smoke and noise. Turkeys flew off shelves, Brussels sprouts went ballistic, daylight and snow caved in upon his head. When the fire and smoke abated, he stood still, covered in frost and vegetable matter. Not known for being in any way temperate in his demeanor, he showed remarkable reserve, considering the circumstance. He merely nodded his head and whispered the words, “Someone is going to die.”

***

Connie and Walt decided that going for a hike wasn’t such a bad idea after all, with Jake joining them, and they explored one of the side ridges near camp until it seemed safe to return. They slipped into the hut quietly, mixing in with a group they had waited for to come along. Jake, being more experienced with this sort of thing, managed to allow for a half-empty bottle of whiskey to mysteriously appear on the edge of the galley table, the donor remaining anonymous. It was clearly a peace offering, was instantly accepted, and the unspoken pact consummated.
When the cook finished setting the galley to rights after the evening meal, he was in a much better humor, and took up his favorite pastime, which was badgering the weatherman. It was an ongoing sideshow; their perpetual altercation provided live entertainment for whoever chose to watch. The hut was full to capacity with everyone who was done with their day, but had not yet retired to the tents for the night.
Susan sat at a table with Dr. Atkinson and Alistair Adams, her maps laid in front of her. Lt. Richards watched the two combatants sparring for a moment, laughed with the others, then took a deep breath before settling into the folding chair at the table across from Susan. She turned her eyes up from the map for a moment, seeing him there, but went back to her studies without any other sign of recognition. He wore the smile he had acquired while listening to the two staffers hurling their insults, and kept it in place for as long as it could be maintained without the fear of looking stupid. Then he settled for a friendly, interested attitude as he peered over the inverted map.
“What are you doing?” he asked Susan as innocuously as he could.
“My job,” she told him.
He had tried over the past days to approach her in a similar vein, with the same essential results. She had refrained from outright hostility in putting him off, but could hardly have been said to be in any way approachable. Taking no notice of how he was received, he continued to attempt to find a breach in her defenses, hoping to find a way to open a dialog of any kind. He was perfectly well aware of how she felt towards the project he was tasked with.
It was hard for him. He found her to be even more captivating than he had expected when he was viewing her picture in the Captain’s office. Knowing that she despised him for what he was doing was bad, but not as bad as having to hide his feelings behind an altogether alien persona. He didn’t recognize the person sitting across from her, who was trying to befriend her in order to gain the information needed to fulfill his mission. He didn’t much care for that person, either.
“Same here,” he said, taking the pocket notebook from his cargo trousers. He made a show of looking at the page he had opened at random, while not looking at Susan. She corrected her posture in a sharp motion, punctuated by the scrape of the chair leg on the floor, but refrained from speaking.
Dr. Daniels, who would be departing for the Polar Plateau in the morning, joined this uncomfortable partnership without noticing the tension that kept each of them at bay. He was intrigued with the Lieutenant’s role in establishing a lunar base. He had studied the rocks that came back from the moon and spoke of going there himself.
 “Past my time, though, I’m afraid,” Daniels sighed, smiling wanly.
The Lieutenant, not wishing to be impolite, merely nodded. It was more than Jake, who had also just joined them, was capable of, to refrain from asking the question.
“When will it be?” he inquired.
“Maybe the year 2020 or so,” the Lieutenant answered. He didn’t know whether to be grateful for the interruption and change of subject, or resentful for the intrusion when he had Susan to himself.
“Oh,” he said, deflated.
“Thinking about going?” Lt Richards asked, smiling at Jake.
“If I could, absolutely, except I’ll be too old, too.”
“I’m afraid that’s right,” he said. “By about 50 years.”
“If I weren’t, though, what would it take?” Jake asked. “Who’d get to go?” 
Lieutenant Richards thought for a moment. “It wouldn’t be much different than this. More like the South Pole Station, really. There will probably be an enclosure with various modules that perform different functions. The personnel would be very much the same. You will have mechanics, plumbers, all of the trades. Cooks. If it were today, Dr. Daniels would almost certainly be a Principle Investigator,” he said, again being polite. That observation might have been true if he had said “twenty years ago.”
“Not just research, you know,” Alistair added. “If the ice that you are looking for is found, which, of course, it would have to be, the hydrogen could be separated for fuel. The lunar station would be a jump-off point to other points in the solar system, Mars, I should expect.”
“True,” the Lieutenant said. “That is one of the more attractive reasons for a lunar station.”
 “And if you don’t find ice on the moon?” Susan asked, suddenly very much interested. “Don’t tell me. You will have to work the process in reverse and transport the gasses to make water. And it takes energy to complete the process, does it not? You’re not going to be transporting diesel engines like here, I suppose. Go ahead, say it. Nukes. I can see it now - nuclear waste dumps all over the solar system. You people won’t ever learn, will you?”
Lt. Richards kept his silence, unsure how to answer. It had been discussed as a possibility. Everything had been discussed as possible. He knew how atomic energy was thought of by many people, but reasoned that it was misinformation and prejudice that led them to those beliefs, though it would hardly do to say that now, not to her.
“Not to mention getting it off the ground,” Susan continued, her accumulated anger now finding a conduit for release. “Here’s a beautiful picture to contemplate. The booster explodes two hundred miles down-range with a few hundred pounds of enriched uranium on board. The entire southeastern United States gets a nice hot shower. But wait, that’s not it. You contract with some poor country that needs the cash to launch from there. Make it sound like you’re doing them a favor. Then, when it happens, it’s just a bunch of natives who get toasted. No problem!”
“We can make containers that are safe from any catastrophic event, or we will be able to by then,” Lt. Richards said quietly. 
Dr. Engen laughed.  “Of course, you will. I have about as much confidence in that as I do in the belief that you can turn the Ross Sea into an oil field without having an impact on the environment. It isn’t possible. Just being here has an impact. We have an impact. Are you aware of our impact on the marine biology of the McMurdo Sound?” she asked, sweetly.
“No,” he answered, unsure where she was leading.
“Let me educate you,” she said bitterly. “It seems that we have polluted the Sound so much that the animals we have been studying there are starting to die off. So now we have new studies being done to examine how human occupation of an ecosystem has a deleterious effect on that system. Now, that’s science, huh? Set up shop in a pristine environment and study how your existence there destroys it. Beautiful.”
“Are you advocating not advancing science because science itself has a negative effect?” Dr. Daniels asked, fascinated. 
She hesitated before answering. “In some instances, yes.” 
Lt. Richards watched her from across the table. He knew she was directing her anger at him as the most likely target. That could not be helped, as he clearly represented everything she most cordially hated. Still, understanding her feelings wasn’t the same as being immune to them. He wanted her to see him, but she only saw what he represented, and that was something he didn’t really support, either.
Atkinson was surprised. “I can’t believe that. As a scientist, you have to believe that the increase in human understanding is the most important thing. It is only through discovery that we can gain the knowledge that will allow us to balance human life with the ecosystem in the long run.”
“I’m not so sure,” Dr. Daniels said, caught up in the abstruse argument. “Susan has a point. The effect of McMurdo station on the McMurdo Sound has to be considered a microcosm of the planet as a whole. It will require a total paradigm shift in how people view their world to change the effects.”
“Pretty hard to get the whole world to do anything,” Alistair said. “No one is going to want to change everything until it doesn’t cost them to do so.”
“True,” Dr. Atkinson allowed, “and developing countries who don’t share our prosperity won’t sacrifice the chance for it by putting restrictions on themselves for what could be considered abstract theory.”
“They are going to have to,” Susan said with finality. “No one is going to do anything until they are forced to, and that includes government. It is environmental activism that will get the people to push the politicians to act.”
The Lieutenant cleared his throat.
“What?” Susan asked, daring him to answer.
“Until those groups tone down the rhetoric and sound more credible, nobody in the mainstream is going to pay much attention to them. Hell, even the socialists spouting their party line don’t sound as immersed in their ideology. Not that there is anything wrong with the message,” he added quickly. “It just needs to come across as more reasonable.”
The others at the table admired his courage, if not his discretion.
“And what would you have us do?” she asked him, challengingly.
“Me? I would have our government make a massive investment into developing alternate forms of safe and inexpensive energy, then heavily subsidize the new technology until it can be commercially viable. Then we guarantee our own long-term strategic independence from oil-producing countries, clean up the environment, and produce a whole new industry for America to export at the same time. And we don’t have to ask Americans to give up their lifestyle as a concession to the environment. We create a new and better way to have the same things.”
Susan stared as if she were looking right through him.
“Are you serious?” she finally asked.
“Of course,” he said, calmly folding his hands on the table.
It had clearly never occurred to her that he, of all people, or anyone who wore the uniform, could possibly have such a view.
“Then why…?” she started to ask.
“Because I don’t want to see this place ruined any more than you do,” he said, “but if that is what it takes to guarantee our security until we don’t have to do those things anymore, then that is what we have to do. But I hope that we can eliminate the need for it, eventually.”
Dr. Engen continued to stare at him until she got up and walked out, an altogether different look suddenly having come over her, as if her most deeply held conviction had just been turned on its head.

Chapter 9
Beardmore Glacier Camp
Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range

The camp received notice the next morning to expect a German flight crew, which was going to be transiting the camp after dropping a group of scientists in a nearby mountain range. They had a reporter with them who was to meet a group of skiers attempting to reach the South Pole, by way of the Beardmore Glacier. The German media had the blessing of the NSF, and, therefore, its support, but the skiers were NGA’s and, technically speaking, were not welcome at any U.S. stations, and were banned from any sort of hospitality other than humanitarian assistance if they should find themselves in peril of their lives. In actuality, Non Governmental Agencies, especially adventure travelers, were welcomed as heroes by station personnel at all bases. 
The Dornier aircraft made as gentle a landing as could possibly be expected and taxied gracefully to a stop at the edge of the camp by the fuel bladder, where it seemed to have the expectation, politely, of being satisfied. It was an attractive aircraft, and the crew was either well matched to the plane, or else something of its nature wore off onto those who flew her. They appeared at the hatch with broad smiles, showing none of the natural reticence of people arriving as strangers at another’s home.
In contrast to the flight crew was the reporter who accompanied them. He wore a stubble beard of jet-black, which formed a broad arc around what could barely be perceived to be a chin recessed beneath it. His nose took on the aspect of an unripe and misshapen strawberry, or one that was beginning to turn color on one side, thanks to the sunburn on pale skin. The dissonant features distracted from what should have been his main attribute, the small, but piercing eyes that distrusted, and were distrusted, by all whom they encountered.
Jake was waiting by the fueling station for the aircraft to power down. As everyone else was busy, he formed the welcoming committee. Susan was presently on the lower reaches of the mountain, not needing his help.  
The pilot, who like the rest of the flight crew, was wearing bright-red mountaineering bibs under a red parka, went to a small cargo hatch in the rear of the plane, took out a package, and then followed the others into the hut. Assuming that Jake was in charge, he presented the package to him.
“Please accept on behalf of crew,” he said.
“Thanks,” Jake said, somewhat at a loss. “What is it?”
“Don’t know,” he was answered with a wink. “But, be careful whatever.”
Curious now, Jake opened the box and took out one of twelve bottles of clear liquid.
“We was coming south through Americas when stopping at Tierra del Fuego. Bernard there,” the pilot said, pointing to his crewman. “Got it off Indians.”
Bernard, the navigator, shrugged and smiled sheepishly.
“We understand it is illegal in the United States,” he explained, “which may have something to do with things appearing quite differently after a couple of shots.”
 That got the cook’s attention. He came over and began to sniff at the bottles with a connoisseur’s interest, and when he recognized that he held a rare and extraordinary treasure, he shook with an exaltation that came out as half snort and half laugh. He cradled one of the bottles in his arms as a mother would her firstborn.
“Sweet,” Jake said, approvingly. As a mountaineer of note, Jake had been able to secure the position of guide for Susan Engen’s project through the same application process, as either cook or mechanic might do. He was in the employment of the NSF by proxy, as the support staffers were all hired by a civilian contractor. Unlike the scientists, his purpose for being there, other than to get paid, was strictly limited to either fun, adventure, or both, and he categorized activities under those headings, though he allowed for the possibility of one overlapping the other. He did not, however, take those priorities any less seriously than the scientists did theirs. 
As a professional adventurer, himself, Jake understood the intimacies of frontier hospitality to an exceptionally high degree. It would have been an unforgivable breach of etiquette not to open up and polish off at least one of the bottles before engaging in any other business. That would not be a problem for him, since he didn’t have any other business.
“Prost,” the pilot said, looking Jake in the eye as was proper while toasting.
“Skoal,” he replied, which was not a technically correct response as it was a Scandinavian salute, but the Germans allowed it. Jake offered the bottle to the reporter as a matter of course.
“Scheiss,” the reporter said, scowling in what was not really a toast at all, but he took the bottle and applied himself to it liberally.
By the time the researchers from the mountain began filtering in at the end of the day, the hut was in a regular state of mayhem. Connie and Walt came in first, and being college students, were able to recognize a party when they saw one and required no prompting to join in. Dr. Atkinson came in next and was scandalized. He had already left for the day when the call came to alert the habitants of the pending visit, and it took several explanations to satisfy his inquiry as to how the camp came to be in this state. At the pilot’s insistence, he tried the liquor and in order not to offend, declared it to be not without merit, though he still considered the whole affair to be an entirely disreputable display. Alistair, however, was charmed. After two years away from civilization, he hadn’t lost his edge and soon had the students uproarious with his off-color anecdotes. Walt was trying to organize a Can-Can line on one of the tables.
Jake was still engaged in his role as Master-of-Ceremonies when Susan entered the hut. He saw her come in and, seeing how tired she looked, for a short moment thought he heard a whisper of conscience speaking to him. She wasn’t wearing the sling anymore, but her recovery was not entirely complete, either. As her guide, he felt responsible for her general well being, suspected that he had been derelict in his management of it, and decided upon an immediate rectification for any real or imagined failings on his part.
He considered the nearly empty bottle in his hand disdainfully and set it aside in favor of a fresh one. Before she could shed her parka at the door, he had his arm slung over her good shoulder, and gesturing with the bottle held firm in clenched fist, made glorious professions of pure platonic attachment. He poured forth all sorts of nonsense in a rush which made her laugh at his earnestness. The funnier she found it, the more ardent became his declarations. He gave her a loud and long kiss on the cheek.
“What the hell happened to you?” she asked, pushing him away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking deeply into her eyes and seeing right past them, not noticing that he was keeping his balance by leaning on her. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let you fall. Then you would still be okay.”
“I am okay,” she said. “You’re the one who’s a mess here.”
“No you’re not. I know you’re not. Not with everything going on. But we’re going to fix everything, right?”
Susan could see an ill-advised indiscretion coming as the door opened again, and Lt. Richards was there, stomping his feet and knocking off snow from his boots before coming in.
“You!” Jake roared over the din. “She’d be fine if it weren’t for you!”
The Lieutenant looked around the hut, trying to take in what was going on and find some sort of context for the unprovoked attack from someone with whom he had previously gotten on quite well.
“All right now,” Susan said, steering Jake away from the door, toward the back of the room. “You stop that, right now!”
She adopted the manner of the domineering spouse, which she took up in response to his farcical advances in the hope that it would get through to him. It did.
“Uh-oh,” Jake said when they were away from the entrance. “Am I in trouble?”
“You’re damn right you are,” she said, grabbing him by the collar. “Don’t you dare decide for me when I have a battle to fight, and don’t you dare try to fight it for me. I can take care of myself. Do you understand?”
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, sobering up for a moment.
“Give me that,” she said, grabbing the bottle away from him. “What is this crap anyway?”
“I don’t know, but it sure is good.”
She took a long drink from the full bottle. She held it out and looked at the label while it settled, and then brought it to her lips again.
“Not that bad,” she conceded. Suddenly, a drink seemed like a very sensible idea.
“Forgiven?” he asked.
“Get the hell out of here,” she said, but kindly. She kept the bottle.
When he was gone, Lt. Richards found his way to her.
“I’m sorry if I did, but did I do something?” he asked her. 
“No. I mean, yes,” she said. “You didn’t do anything yourself, but he is upset about what you are here to do. We all are.”
She didn’t want to have this conversation, but with Jake putting his foot into her mouth, she wasn’t left with much choice.
“I know,” he said. “I feel…”
“Stop,” she said before he could say it. “Let’s not do this right now. Here, take this.”
She held out the bottle for him and he was too much the gentleman not to take what was offered.
“Whoa!” was all he could say, after letting the mysterious distillation slide down his throat.
“I know what you mean,” she said, smiling and taking back the bottle. “What do you say to a truce for the night?”
“I never felt like we were…” he began before she interrupted him again.
“Just say ‘yes,’ okay? Please?” she asked him. She was tired and the stress of the previous weeks was wearing on her. A night off from worries would be a welcome distraction.
“Okay,” he said, but his eyes made it clear that he didn’t feel a truce was necessary, not on his part.
“Good,” she said, handing him back the bottle. “Thanks.”

The impromptu party continued on towards its natural apex when the door of the hut opened from the outside. There in the threshold stood the three forgotten travelers who were on their way south to the Pole. They were as surprised as the revelers in the hut.
“Hullo,” one of them said to the hushed room. “You don’t mind if we come in, do you?” he asked.
The room exploded in cheers and greetings. The three were pulled inside with poundings taken on the back. Their sledges and skis were left where they had been dropped and in minutes, they were as drunk as the rest.
The reporter looked embarrassed, but determined to make up for it by monopolizing the three as much as he could. As the party went on, he remembered that he should make a report and asked the weatherman who worked the radio if he could borrow the wireless. He was taken to the bench where the transmitter sat, entered in the obscure frequency he required to reach the relay that was set up, and made contact. He gave the particulars of the arrival to the voice on the other end, which took it all down. Then, he was asked if he could speak privately. The reporter looked around and saw that the weatherman was the only one within earshot.
“Americans all stink like pigs,” he said in German. When there was no response, he said into the microphone, “Go ahead.” He listened intently for some time before signing off. He was suddenly in very high spirits.

The camp came to life slowly the next morning. The three travelers had placed their tents just to the south of the hut and the ski-way. The three domed tents added to the brash overflow of color where the growing population made their sleeping quarters. They each had their own tent, wantonly disregarding common practice, sacrificing weight for comfort. Just as the early explorers had teams of men to make caches of supplies along the route, these modern pioneers had caches laid out by aircraft that had been chartered for the task. It was more a matter of finance than survival when it came to supplies, and they would not be in danger due to lack of food or fuel, unless some disaster was unexpectedly encountered. The extra weight was not something to be regretted, since their goal was somewhat more inclined towards enjoying the journey than merely living through it.
The aromas that wafted to the lee of the camp and over the tents occasioned a stirring from within as breakfast, something they had not experienced in some time, was served. The cook greeted them as they came in, still in the same boisterous spirit of the previous evening, which seemed inhuman to anyone who didn’t know him. Once started, it could be days until he came down. Once down, it could be days before he was again civil.
The reporter and the flight crew also came in, laughing off the lingering effects of the night’s festivities. They asked the skiers their intent.
“As much as we would like to stay a while,” the leader said, “we need to get on our way. Storms have put us behind schedule and we need to make up time. We will be packing up shortly.”
The reporter turned to the pilot of the Dornier.
“Do we need to leave right away? Since we are here, I would like to report on the camp and the science projects they have underway.”
The pilot shrugged. “Dat is fine for me.” Flying with a hangover was not altogether unfamiliar to him, but if he didn’t have to, he would just as soon not.
Jake asked the leader of the ski expedition to show him their route on the map and the two engaged in talking shop, each recognizing the other as a professional. He committed all that he heard to memory. One never knew when one might get the chance to put it to use, and he knew there was no such thing as useless information.
The reporter joined Dr. Atkinson over coffee. He, too, was a professional at what he did, which was to extract information without the subject knowing it was being extracted. Since the subjects generally were aware that the questioner was a reporter and, therefore, obviously probing for knowledge, it required a great deal of skill to uncover what one might wish to keep hidden. He would not find Dr. Atkinson an especially difficult target. As a professor, it was not in Atkinson’s nature to try to bury the truth. He didn’t say anything that directly gave anything away, but he didn’t have to, since the questioner already knew what he wanted to know and only required confirmation. It was what was not said while one was inquiring about certain things that told all. An easy story to write, thought the reporter. He took several rolls of film around the camp. With the proper words applied in just the right way, every picture could be made to tell a very damning story.
The skiers departed during the afternoon, hoping to get a few miles underfoot before camping again for what they referred to as the night. They would soon find themselves on the plateau, and not long after, would lose all visual reference except the sun and the horizon. The long haul over the highest and coldest part of their journey was coming. From there on, it would be a question of mental toughness. Not being able to see where they were going, or where they had been, would mean that they would navigate by compass mounted on the sledge harnesses that they drove, and a watch. Go for so long, stop; go again, stop; go again, and again…. Time would have to replace distance for the senses, which would not be able to realistically measure the ground covered by marches. By astrological observation, they would be able to mark on the map the actual distances traveled, but it would seem academic to minds that couldn’t confirm the knowledge in any other way. The Pole would be attained by so many marches: then one less, then one less, then one less…until they were there.
The Dornier lifted out of the valley later in the morning after giving the camp crew a quick tour of their neighborhood from the sky. They disembarked, the reporter got on, and they left. After the plane went over the ridgeline, those who waved goodbye went into the hut where the operator reported to McMurdo that the aircraft was inbound. They sat quietly until Jake looked at the cook, puzzled.
“It’s not exactly in your nature to buddy-up like that to transients. Why did you? Other than the booze, that is.” The cook gave the question earnest consideration.
“They were less like assholes than most who come through here, I guess,” he tried to explain. “Got me in a soft spot.”
“Me, too,” Jake painfully pointed out. “My head.”
“Good,” Susan said, walking by briskly. “Be ready in ten minutes. We have work to do.”
“Yes, dear,” Jake said. It wouldn’t be his first time working with a hangover, either.

Chapter 10
Russian Station Vostok
Antarctic Plateau

It was awkward for Trevor. Reading the letter that was intended for his fiancé over the radio was an uncomfortable exercise, especially with three bored Russians listening intently, each nodding as if in agreement with every sentence, though none understood a single word. Jake, who had promised Trevor to relay his letters for him, managed to say “got it” after each line without inflection, which made it as easy as it could possibly be presumed to be.
“There is a flight tonight. I’ll get this out to McMurdo. They will send it over the satellite to a guy who will mail it from there. Whole thing shouldn’t take more than a few days.”
“That’s awesome, Jake. Thanks, really.”
“No problem,” Jake said over the radio. “Beardmore is all clear.”
“Vostok out,” Trevor replied. He turned to his audience. “Enjoy that?” he asked. They nodded again seriously without comment. He sighed and headed for his bunk. Sokolov was not in the room and he stretched out on the bed. It was harder than he thought it would be. When he was offered the chance to work there, he didn’t hesitate. He told his fiancé that it would only be for a short time, and then the postponed wedding could take place when he got back. He’d expected to do his work, let time pass, and then go home. It didn’t work out quite the way he had hoped, however. Day and night cycles had gotten out of sync since there was no perceptible difference between the two, and once again, he was wide-awake in what should have been the night, tired beyond exhaustion, imagining the worst sort of fantasies. He was desperate to get home, terrified that if he didn’t, quickly, it would be too late. He tried to focus on something near at hand to take his mind off what he was sure was happening there without him, and couldn’t. He got up and went to the galley, where it was almost bearable to sit with the others and converse. He found Sokolov there alone.
“So, you’re leaving in a couple of days,” he said. “I sure wish I was.”
Sokolov waved his hand dismissively. 
“You have not been here long enough to have such thoughts. I would agree, however, that it was perhaps a mistake to have come here when you have such pressing business at home. I had no such complications. On the contrary, it was in my interest to be removed from there as quickly, and for as long, as possible.”
“What will it be like when you get back?” Trevor asked. Despite his preoccupation with his own thoughts, Trevor had come to think of Sokolov as a friend, and having discovered how the man felt about his life in Soviet Russia, he was concerned for the scientist’s welfare when he returned. He felt something akin to guilt; by having allowed Sokolov to express his frustrations to him, he was afraid that he had contributed to the Russian losing the ability to suppress them.
“The same as before I left. Nothing ever changes.”
“Not what I meant,” Trevor said, empathy helping to soften his own worries.
“I know.” They sat in silence for a moment, each nurturing their own concerns.
“You’ll have a pretty cool trip back, anyway,” Trevor offered.
“Yes. Quite cool,” the Russian said.
Trevor smiled. He used his Americanisms without thinking about it and Sokolov adopted them in a manner that defined incongruity.
“Say hello to my group if you see them,” Trevor said. His science project had people scattered at various bases; a pair were supposed to be at Beardmore for a time.
“We may. That reminds me. Give to me the radio frequency that you call them on so that I can contact them if we are close,” Sokolov said of the upcoming journey.
“Sure. Not the best site for what I do, there, I think. Not like here. But you have to try if for no other reason than to know that it isn’t any good.”
“A good approach, if you have the resources to go everywhere,” the Russian said. “However, it would seem appropriate to work the areas that have the most promise first. There must have been some reason why the site was chosen.”
“True,” Trevor admitted. “Just the fact that there would be support facilities available made it attractive. One benefit is that it is a very stable area, virtually no flow from the glacier. What it lacks in depth, it ought to make up in consistency. Another feature of the shallowness is that although the trapped gasses will offer a somewhat reduced record, there should be a higher degree of solid particulate in the cores.”
“Why would that be of importance?” Sokolov asked.
“Historical reference. Volcanic fallout could help to correlate dates. Less ancient meteor impacts would leave traces, maybe even massive deposits. Biblical events, such as the darkening of the skies, could be given a chance to prove themselves.”
“It is good to see that you do not have a problem with under-reaching,” The Russian scientist said dryly.
Trevor smiled. “Cross-disciplining is a major theme in our program. The vulcanists actually came to us to see if we could correlate their presumed dates. They were themselves approached by the theology people. Glaciology and atmospheric chemistry overlap so much that they are becoming the same discipline. You must see that in your work. Cosmic physics and nuclear applications overlap, don’t they?” 
Sokolov winced. “Do not remind me.” For an instant, the ghosts began to emerge and pulled their darkened veils across the Russian’s countenance before he stopped them. “Have you seen the machine we will travel in?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Only from here.”
“Get your coat.”
They went out into the blinding sun and walked over to where the huge machine was parked. They went around to the sledge that was attached to it with a ball-hitch, like a trailer to a truck. Erected on the skids was a large platform. On the platform was a heavy tent shelter that led Trevor to muse that this was the Russian Antarctic equivalent to the covered wagon. Inside was a well-ordered living space with bunks, a kitchen, and table. On a sledge attached to the Pullman car, as he unconsciously dubbed it, were supplies piled and tied down with cargo straps. The train was ready for departure as soon as the decision to go was made.
“It looks like a fun way to travel,” Trevor said.
“It is not such fun as it looks,” Sokolov replied. “Where the surface snow is soft, it is reasonably easy going. Where the sustrugi is hard, the pulling vehicle cannot flatten a road and the assembly rocks horribly from side to side. It is difficult to avoid seasickness at these times.”
“Oh.” The romance of an overland journey dissipated rapidly for Trevor at that time. Being sick from wallowing on frozen seas, while at the same time being sick with worry in the middle of absolute nowhere, was not at all appealing. A quick, direct flight was what he required. “Well, have fun anyway.”
“It is not for fun that we go,” Sokolov answered.


***

The Lieutenant waited for the grad students to go out of the hut to get their gear together for the day before he sat down at the table where Susan Engen was reviewing notations on a topographical map. She looked up over the rim of her glasses at him, allowing an almost imperceptible smile to slip across her lips for an instant. 
“May I?” he asked after he was already seated.
“Sure.”
She continued to look at her map while he thought about what he was going to say. She knew he was uncomfortable and was enjoying his discomfort. 
“Dr. Engen,” he began, before stopping.
“Susan works just fine,” she said. He nodded vehemently, as if he had just absorbed a most pertinent fact.
“Susan, right,” he began again. “Susan,” he began a third time. 
At his third awkward attempt, she giggled. “Just spit it out, okay?” 
“Right,” he agreed. “Well, what I’m here to do, you know all about that, of course.”
“I do,” she told him, with only a small degree of disapproval, which he had to consider as nothing less than encouragement.
“You of all people no doubt recognize that the chances of finding anything in this area are beyond remote.” She nodded. “The chances will be far greater on the coast and on the shelf,” he explained.
She cleared her throat as a way of informing him that if he was doing what she thought he was, he was going about it in the wrong way - a message that was not altogether lost on him.
“Be that as it may,” he said hurriedly, “and as we will be here for a little while longer, I was wondering if I could join you while you worked. Maybe help a little, in the meanwhile.”
“Wouldn’t that be something like going over to the enemy?” she asked him, but in a friendly tone of voice.
“You aren’t the enemy, Susan,” he told her warmly.
“No,” she said quietly, looking into his eyes. “You are.”
He turned his eyes away from her and looking down at the table, nodded.
“But I would love to have you with us and could really use the help.” He looked up again, brightly. “Just leave the bulldozers behind, okay?” she said.
“Sure thing.”

It actually did help, she thought. Having Lieutenant Richards handling the theodolite freed her up to write her notes, which made things a lot easier. Working with tools, then changing to paper and pencil at those temperatures, made what would otherwise seem like simple tasks very difficult. Her shoulder was getting better, but it still slowed her down. He was clearly expert enough with the instrument that she could trust him to take accurate angles on the correct points that she identified. She pointed to a spot on a ridge that had a black line running through it.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Igneous intrusive,” she said of the rock formation. “The shearing effect of the uplift of this fault has exposed it in relief. It’s like slicing off a chunk of wafer cake. You see each of the layers clearly, where once they were at consistent levels.”
He nodded. “Good spot for this.” 
She looked up from her notes and smiled. “You think so?” 
He remembered where they were, what they were there for, and the incredible expense and trouble it took to get there.
“Oh.” 
She smiled again. “It is as good as any place I have ever been,” she agreed. “Including places down here that I’ve heard of, but not seen.”
“And beautiful, too,” he added.
“Yes. Too bad that there are some who would like to redecorate it,” she noted.
He sighed under the thick scarf that he was wearing. There was no getting around it; if he was going to be spending time with Susan Engen, he would just have to take the bull by the horns and have it out.
“Susan, you know I don’t favor drilling here. At least I would prefer not to,” he said.
“I know that,” she conceded. “The difference is that you are willing to sacrifice it all for something, a position that could be considered noble except for the fact that it is predicated in naivety. Nothing noble will come of it. Just another place ruined so someone can make some money.” 
“I can argue against that, but what about what you believe? You want to leap directly from what has always been the way to some form of futuristic utopia,” he said. “At least I am offering a solution that makes sense, and is possible.”
“Theoretically possible,” she corrected him. “The problem with your theory is that it involves getting the people who have the most to gain to go along, and not take advantage. The fact is that people will only change when they have to, either by law, or economics, or force. In the end, it will be less painful for people to make changes rapidly and get it over with.”
“I know that how we live is going to change - it has to someday. But the potential end results are vastly different.” He tried to sound reasonable and not upset the delicate balance he had achieved. “I suggest a long-term plan that will enhance the quality of life and maintain a stable economy. Your view of the world sounds like you would place severe limits on people’s quality of life and stifle the economy.”
“A lifestyle based on consumption, you mean.” She, in turn, tried to sound professorial. “We’ve developed a lifestyle that equates quality with quantity consumed. Oil isn’t the only issue. It’s everything. Until we can establish a lifestyle that is consumption neutral, that doesn’t deplete more than we as a whole can regenerate, the problem doesn’t go away.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, earnestly trying to make the point without emotion coming into play. “We take our problems one at a time. When we put our collective will to solving any problem, we always get the job done. Why not take them one at a time?”
“Because that is the point of our having one ecology,” she said, glad to finally get to the heart of the matter. “This biosphere, in which we live, is a single organism. You can’t just chop off the head one day and then deal with all the problems created by that as you get around to them. Look at your own work with NASA. Say you do establish a station on the moon. You can only have so much resources, can transport so much food, make so much water. Then you get a few people up there who devour three times the amount of food you have budgeted and take half-hour showers when you can only make enough water for a two-minute Navy shower. The rest of the station sees their share of the station’s resources being decimated. Don’t they have the right to demand that the abusers modify their behavior?”
“That is a different situation.”
“How?” she demanded to know.
“Because it is like the military,” he explained. “There are different rules than in civilian life. Fewer individual rights.”
“That is because an individual who acts outside of a defined mode of behavior has a negative impact on the whole, right?” She had led the discussion many times in her classes. She knew how it went. “Otherwise, who cares?”
“So you would redefine what constitutes allowable behavior?” he asked stiffly.
“We do that every day in a free society. ‘Free’ doesn’t mean life is a ‘free for all.’ The very nature of self-governance dictates that government limits what individuals are free to do when one person’s actions impede upon another’s.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head adamantly. “That’s the easy answer, sure. Government can do all kinds of benevolent things for us, can’t it? Just give us the power, they say. You’ll see. Everything will be so much better. But I don’t want to live in that world. Sorry.”

 “You’re being paranoid now,” she said dismissively.
“And you are the one who is naïve,” he retorted. 
She laughed.
“What?”
“I don’t know. It seems funny that you are the one who is arguing against giving the government more power. That’s my line. I thought that military people loved government authority.” 
He shook his head negatively. “No. We go into the military and surrender our rights for one reason only: to defend yours.”
“Well, I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree,” she said, thoughtfully.
“Not true,” he said. “We are in complete agreement on the problem. We just haven’t come to a consensus on the solution.” 
She nodded her head. “I can live with that.”

As the day was winding down and the researchers who had been working on the mountain began to filter back toward the camp, Susan Engen and Lieutenant Richards lingered. Over the past hours, he had helped her to move the theodolite several times, and when he did, their bulky parkas made contact unexpectedly, surprising each of them, as they were not regularly accustomed to the extra padding that removed the buffer that would normally be there. When it first happened, they each quickly and awkwardly apologized to the other. The second time, they laughed and whispered meaningless comments, like “Oops.” By the third time, they were anticipating the contact and were slow to disengage. Now that the students had gone, they shed all pretense and rubbed mittens over puffy nylon sleeves that made the whirring sound of nylon on nylon.
After another awkward interval, their heads bent towards each other and their goggles knocked together, eliciting nervous giggles all the way around. Susan gave up on physical intimacy for the moment and pushed him back to arms length.
“This is going to be complicated,” she said, referring to the nature of their relationship, not the technical aspects of getting around the volumes of clothing.
“It doesn’t have to be,” he said, with an earnestness with which he appealed to her to believe that what he said could be true. “Why should it be?”
“A million reasons,” she started to explain. “To be honest, most of them are professional. But there are personal reasons, too. I wasn’t looking for this. Hell, I was doing everything I could to avoid something like this. And then there’s you, of all people.”
He seemed to accept the “you of all people” comment as inevitable. He was not the sort of man who would normally allow any allusion to stand that would infer that he was in any way inferior. But when he was with Susan, he acknowledged and surrendered to her sensibilities regarding the environment and his supposed role in its demise. It was his “original sin” in their new relationship, and for which he was uncharacteristically willing to atone.
“And then there’s me,” he repeated. “What are you going to do about that?”
“You’ll see,” she said, reaching up with her head tilted to one side and avoiding another collision of the goggles. “I know just what to do about that.”

Chapter 11
Somewhere On the Antarctic Plateau

The Russian tractor had been plowing its way through the sustrugi, over the highest portion of the Polar Plateau, on its way toward the transition where the ice picks up speed and flows into the Beardmore Glacier. This was where the group would conduct the meteor search. Gregore held the map, produced by the U.S. Geological Society, on his lap, trying to pinpoint their location. The progress they made each day was tangible and satisfactory, but as they neared the transition where the ice was forced into channels, it would become more dangerous, and they would need to slow down. The funneling of stable ice into streams produced, without variation, fields of crevasses. Sokolov sat next to Gregore.
They both looked beyond the transition on the map to the “X” that marked the spot where the Americans made their base at the Beardmore. Though it was unknown to the other, they each planned a visit to the station, though for vastly different reasons. Gregore pulled on the driver’s sleeve from the seat behind him.
“We will stop here,” he yelled over the engine noise. The driver immediately let the throttle in, and the track vehicle slowed to a stop. He shut off the engine. “Good. Enough of this endless vibration.”
“We have made good time, this way,” Sokolov said. They had run almost constantly since leaving Vostok, the drivers taking shifts in attempting to sleep in the shelter on the platform.
“But we need to prepare for the next part,” Gregore told him. Sokolov did not think of disagreeing, since it was imperative that they make a stop sometime soon. “Tell the men in the back that we will take a break here to fuel and maintain the machine. We can make a decent meal also,” Gregore told the driver, who nodded and got out of the cab. Sokolov stretched as well as he could in the confined space.
“I will check the ski,” he told Gregore, who agreed. 
“When you are finished, come into the shelter,” Gregore commanded.
“Very well,” Sokolov said.
He took a shovel from the cargo bed and carefully removed the buildup of ice around the front ski. The ski worked as a steering mechanism, though not the only one. The main directional control was done by braking, slowing one or the other of the tracks, a maneuver that created drag on that side, pulling the vehicle toward the side on which the brake was applied. The primary function of the ski apparatus was to act as a shock absorber for the forward half of the machine. There was a large piston strut attached to the ski that performed that function. If it were to fail, the ski would become uncontrollable.
Sokolov worked quickly. There was an exposed bolt that was just out of sight enough to be missed in a casual examination, but without being well secured, it would eventually lead to the piston coming free. An excessively hard jolt would make it break loose. He figured it would hold for several kilometers, but then it would inevitably fail. When it did, the party would be stuck until a new part could be brought to them or assistance could be rendered. Being this close to the Americans, it would be absurd to do anything but call them for help. He loosened the bolt, his heart pounding in his ears, with a large crescent wrench, listening for anyone coming around the machine. When he finished, he put the tools back quietly and went into the shelter on the trailing platform. An unusually good meal was being served, considering the circumstances. Cabbage soup, salted beef, black bread from a can. It was reminiscent of home.
“Very well,” Gregore said to the group when Sokolov joined them. “I have waited, on Moscow’s orders, until now to tell you about a small alteration in our plans. Before we proceed to the area of scientific interest, we will make a treaty inspection at the American base. We go merely as a courtesy. We will not be there long, and will only announce our arrival just before we come in.”
Sokolov did not allow the surprise he felt to show on his face; at least no more than was expected.
“A treaty inspection?”
“Yes. It is our right as a signatory nation. A political statement.”
Sokolov acknowledged the statement as a matter of course, but he reeled at the news. All the risk he was taking was for nothing; the same result would have come from doing nothing at all. He thought that he might undo what he had started, but then he would have to take the same risk again. In fact, by sabotaging the piston, he might have ruined his chances of getting to the base. What if the equipment failure were to dictate a different course and the visit was cancelled? He must go back to replace the bolt. He stood up, as casually as he could manage.
“Relax, Vladi. We will leave as soon as we have another cup of tea.”
“But I…”
“No. Stay. We will go together in a moment,” Gregore said, trying to be friendly. 
Sokolov sat back down; as there was nothing else he could do.

***

The zipper on the flap of Susan Engen’s tent inched open, the clasp stealthily sliding for a few inches, and then stopping. A glance was given in both directions and when no one was seen, the zipper ripped through the rest of its course and the flap was thrown fiercely to one side. The male figure leapt through the aperture and the zipper was again torn shut. The sound of the booming footsteps receding into the distance telegraphed their story as clearly as if it were shouted from the roof top.
After a decent interval, the tent flap opened again and Susan emerged, walking unhurriedly into the hut. She went to the table where Jake was seated.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” he replied back to her before asking, “How are you feeling today?”
“I feel fine,” she said naturally, but she couldn’t help becoming defensive anyway. “How are you feeling?”
“Jilted,” he said, pathetically.
“Oh, good grief,” she said, while falling into the chair. “Already?”
By saying “already,” she meant that her secret was already being churned through the rumor mill. Jake shrugged and turned his palms upward, indicating that it was nothing less than what should have been expected, as well as pointing out that he was not to blame, all condensed into a single gesture.
“Would you like me to prepare a scarlet letter for your parka?” he asked.
“This isn’t funny,” she said forcefully, her temper getting the better of her, even though she knew it was her own fault.
“Oh, but yes it is,” he said, a mischievous glint now lighting up his eyes.
“For you, maybe,” she said, “but I assure you it isn’t for me.”
The dichotomy that existed in her feelings was hard enough for her to explain to herself; it was hopeless to think about how others would perceive her. Here she had found someone who was representative of everything she opposed, yet who, as a man, she discovered to be warm, open, charming; and correctable where the politics of the environment were concerned. She sensed that she would be perceived as a hypocrite, and that was not a pleasing thought. She pondered upon that image for a moment.
“Not a word,” she said. “To anyone.”
“Darling,” Jake told her, “I think that particular cat is already very much out of that particular bag.”
“Maybe not. Maybe you’re the only one with a mind that leaps to such conclusions.” 
He shrugged again, sighing.
“First, you make me a cuckold, and then you enlist me to help keep your secret. What kind of woman are you?” he asked, clearly enjoying the moment.
“The kind that will throttle you if she finds you spreading gossip - that’s what kind.” Conflicted or not, she was not about to lose her inexorable sense of purpose, even when she was on uncertain ground. 
“Couldn’t you have dumped me for someone a little less conspicuously from the other side? You could end up tarred and feathered, as well as having to wear the mark,” Jake said, persisting in driving home the dual message of his somehow being an injured party and highlighting her treason to her own cause. 
“He’s not on another side,” she said, disputing her own argument in order to defend her new found lover. “He doesn’t want this, either.”
“I see,” Jake said, judiciously. “What other revelations have you had during the night?”
“Nothing that needs to be explained to you,” she said, putting the proper exclamation point where it belonged in reestablishing the unequal nature of their relationship. She didn’t really feel that way; and she didn’t fool him for an instant, but by creating a diversion, she was able to retreat far enough to make a space where she could regroup her mental forces and prepare a new strategy for moving forward. 
“Very well then, Doctor,” Jake said. “I await your orders.”

Chapter 12
Beardmore Glacier Camp
Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range

After having received further assurances from Jake, promises extorted under threats unimaginable to an unafflicted mind, Susan found Connie and Walt and departed for the work site on the mountain. The Lieutenant followed with studied nonchalance to carry on with the work he was engaged in the day before. Jake remained behind with Alistair Adams and Dr. Atkinson, as they had planned to inventory the cargo line as the first step toward planning the final portion of the expedition. Jake was looking at them without speaking, a list of materials in his hand.
“Which one of you geniuses came up with this?” he finally asked.
Dr. Atkinson was offended.
“I did. Is there a problem?” he asked stiffly.
“Not at all, as long as you don’t mind becoming a permanent feature of the landscape,” Jake said.
“That is ridiculous,” Dr. Atkinson retorted. “I have been doing this since before you were able to crawl.”
“This is right. What we are going to be doing is something that hasn’t been done since the IGY, and it has never been done with light equipment. You can’t take all of this,” Jake said, spinning the paper through the air so it made a soft landing in front of Dr. Atkinson, who considered the action insulting.
“What specifically do you find to be the matter?” Alistair asked.
“You guys may be really smart about some things, but this doesn’t seem to be one of them,” Jake told the two Ph.D.s' who looked at each other and grinned.
“Very well then, old chappie,” Alistair said, patting him on the shoulder. “Since you seem to have the proper handle on things, we’ll leave you to go about your business. Cheerio. Call us when you have it all done. Carry on.”
The two scientists left him looking very smug, having pulled off the oldest trick in the book. If someone insists they can do a better job of something, let him. Not that he minded, really. He’d just been given the task of planning his own expedition across the Transantarctic Mountains. It was a first for the NSF, to allow a field party to return to McMurdo from the polar plateau by descending one of the longest glaciers. The science was invaluable, but the story that it would tell would be even more precious to an agency that survived on funding from a skeptical congress.
Who cared that it would be done with light equipment? How many people could say that they have traversed that country with light equipment? None. As far as he knew, only Sir Edmund Hillary had gone up any of those glaciers aided by any mechanical device, and that was with a very large tractor. If mechanized travel was good enough for the first man to top Everest, and the first man to traverse the Antarctic continent, it would have to be good enough for him.
Outside it had begun to blow. It was pleasant to be in the hut, though when the wind blew, it sucked the heat out through the many cracks in the plywood. The shelter wasn’t constructed to be of permanent quality, and it was equally stifling when the wind did not blow and the sun baked on the walls. The spindrift swirled outside of the clear plastic window, the sun making it brilliant; a kaleidoscopic vortex of countless prisms in motion. 
The journey would take them from the glacier camp back to McMurdo through the mountains not traveled since Robert Scott’s ill-fated, successful, though fatal, achievement of the Pole. As guide, Jake would manage the route, the equipment, and the consumables. He relished the thought of it. Keeping students from falling off ledges was fine work for the journeyman, but this was what he was born to do. Epic adventures untried in the annals of human endeavor. Rather than diving into the work at hand, he contemplated the satisfaction that would be afforded him from its successful outcome. His peers would be beside themselves with envy. He would assure them that it had been nothing, while feeding out tidbits of heroic descriptions of the trials managed along the way.
Snapping out of the reverie for a moment, he realized that if he didn’t get some work done, there would be no successful conclusion, and dedicated himself to paring down the list provided by Dr. Atkinson. 
“’Kitchen sink,’” he read aloud in disbelief. “There actually is an honest-to-God kitchen sink. Priceless.”
He tore through the item with a red pen and continued on.
“Let’s see. There’s me, Alistair, and Atkinson. That’s three. Susan is four, and four is a good number. Two tents, two Alpines. But now we have the Lieutenant. That ought to be good. So now we have three tents, three Alpines, and two people who, if things go one way, will be happily having a marvelous time of it in their own private little heaven. If it goes the other way, they make everyone else’s life miserable. Actually, it’s miserable for everyone else no matter how it goes. Shit. This is going to suck.”
He threw the pen onto the table and rubbed the stubble on his chin. Blossoming romance was always irritating, he thought, but it was doubly so in a small group when everyone else was forced to witness it whether they wanted to or not. It usually was not, unless they owned a sadistic streak that thrived on watching other people’s tender agonies. That happened sometimes on expeditions. This was exactly the kind of scenario which he had been taking such pains to avoid with Susan all along. If she were going to pull something like this anyway, it might as well have been with him, he thought. He’d worked hard enough for it, or against it, whatever. It didn’t matter. It was the principle.
Jake decided at that point to give the whole thing a rest and headed for the mountain to catch up with Susan’s group. He found them on an open face.
“Try not to step on that,” Walt told him. There was a string line laid out on the rock that he hadn’t seen.
“What is it?” Jake asked.
“Bones. We radioed our Paleo guy that we found something. He’s on his way.”
Jake stooped to look. It was difficult to see at first. He was sure he would have missed them if someone hadn’t pointed them out. They were small pieces imbedded in the sedimentary rock. They looked like they might have been birds. Jake asked him if that was what they were.
“No. At least not yet. These things are old. Before dinosaurs as we know them. If they are what I think they are, they are small mammals. Because of how they appear, people thought they were reptile for a long time, but later they were shown to be mammal. Or maybe it’s the other way around. They do look like birds. The whole thing has a lot of people all confused.”
“I guess I can join that group,” Jake said.
“It’s a pretty good group,” Walt said.
“What’s that thing?” Jake asked. There was a round rock with orange markers all around it. Obviously, no one wanted to miss that piece. There was nothing especially interesting about it at first glance. It was, in fact, remarkably unattractive, as far as rocks went.
“Possibly the most important thing we find this season. Those are fossilized critters from the dawn of time. The dawn of life, at any rate. These are what emerged out of the famous primordial soup. See these things here? They look like small invertebrates packed in with algae. This stuff is as old as it gets. You measure the age of these things in the billions of years.” Jake tried to feel the passing of billions of years by looking at the rock, but it didn’t do any good.
“How did it get here?” he asked.
“Probably came loose from the highest part of the mountain and was deposited here by glacier movement.”
 “Where’s the Doc?” Jake then asked the student.
“Up there,” Walt said, pointing toward a small outcropping above.
He began to climb straight up the mountain, bounding from ledge to ledge. It felt good to be ascending and he would have just kept going except that he soon met the pair on the higher ledge. The lieutenant was making notations while Dr. Engen was taking the angles.
“Hi, Jake,” the lieutenant called as he approached. He seemed to have forgiven Jake his tirade from the recent party, in recognition that it was partly thanks to Jake’s self-induced derangement that he was able to open the door to Susan’s heart. 
“Greetings, fellow thrill seekers,” Jake hailed them as he approached. “Having fun?”
Susan eyed him suspiciously, as if she were concerned that the question portended some mischief that he always seemed to have at the ready.
“We’re making progress,” she answered, leaving the ambiguity as to what her meaning was lingering in the air as a warning.
“So I see,” he replied, throwing the tactic right back at her, but without pressing the advantage. He nodded toward the florescent tape on the rock. “What are you marking?”
“More fossils. The place is loaded with them.” She couldn’t help flashing an accusatory glance at the lieutenant who dodged her gaze. Even Jake knew that the more signs of fossil deposits they found, the more credence that would be given to the theory that fossil fuels lay somewhere below. 
“So I hear,” Jake said.
“What are you doing?” Susan asked him.
“Just out for a stroll. Was working on the trip back to McMurdo, but then I needed to try and get some air,” he told them.
“Any luck with that?” Susan asked. She was still angry at him for enjoying her suffering.
“A little bit.”
The three of them just looked at each other, waiting for someone to say something, so Jake took the hint and went on his way. He carried his skis on his pack with the plan that when he got to the top of the spur, he would descend the slope that fell off the other side of the mountain where he knew it was relatively crevasse free.
He shook his head as he walked. Why does everything always have to get weird? he wondered.

“Jake knows,” Susan told Lt. Richards.
“About us?” he asked.
“Yes about us,” she snapped. “Is there something else he ought to know about?”
When he didn’t respond and only looked to her with a questioning look, she relented.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You didn’t deserve that.”
He nodded.
“I understand your frustration,” he said.
“Do you?” she asked, with an attempt at a laugh that succeeded only in making her voice waver for an instant. “Can you?”
“I can try. If you tell me how, I can try.”
“Yes, you can try,” she admitted. “But can I tell you how? That is a much more difficult thing.”
“Is it so hard?” he asked her. “What you hope for, what you want for your work, your life…that’s what makes you who you are. How can I not love that?”
“Love?” she asked, the surprise in her voice unfeigned. “It’s been one day and you’re using the ‘L’ word on me already?”
“It hasn’t been one day for me,” he said. “I think it started for me that first morning when you jumped up and fought so passionately about my project here, and my working with you. You were mad as hell, but I loved your spirit.”
“What, are you some kind of masochist or something? I could have scratched your eyes out right then,” she said, but with a half smile and with her eyes flashing blue from beneath eyebrows crinkled in amusement. Even with the wind blowing on the sunny side of the mountain, the rocks radiated enough heat that she could wear her goggles over her forehead on the outside of her wool hat. Stray strands of blond hair escaped their confinement like sparks that lit up her now bronzed face, darkened from the wind and sun. In the stark bleakness that made up all of the landscape, she stood in relief, impossibly beautiful.
“It isn’t my eyes that have scratches on them right now,” he said, rolling his shoulders under his parka. “My back is sore.”
Now she couldn’t hold back a laugh from deep inside.
“Oh, my,” she said in pretended embarrassment. “Was that me?”
“It certainly was, unless I am very much mistaken,” he said, wanting to build on this moment of lightness from her. 
“Don’t be so sure,” she said contemplatively, the moment already slipping away. “That may have been somebody else who thought they were me.”
And that gave voice to the fear that he knew was lurking beneath the surface for him; that the one who dug her nails into his back to keep from screaming into the silence for all to hear was a different Susan. The Susan who would lose the battle for supremacy within her; the Susan whose ambitions and passion for her cause would supersede all other considerations. The fear that his hopes were doomed from the start; that he could not triumph against such powerful forces aligned against him.
But he had to try. And he knew that expressions passionate in their fervor would only give strength to the voice that whispered into her consciousness, telling her that this was wrong. So he fought within himself, restraining from giving into the compulsion to go to her, to hold her, to tell her how much he needed and wanted and had to have. His weapons were few, and limited in their strength, and had to be deployed carefully and sparingly. 
He chided himself for having said what he did. It was an error in judgment and not only did it weaken his cause, it was insensitive; for he knew the confusion of feelings that she must be experiencing. He determined not to make the same mistake again.
“Well, if she happens to show up later, I won’t complain,” he said, knowing that this was his only option, to avoid meeting the other voice within her in open conflict where some conclusive decision might be made. Evade and skirmish was his tactical plan, the only one available to him.
“She might,” she said. “She just might.”

In the evening, when the shadows were on the other sides of whatever created them from where they were in the morning, the light seemed to become diffuse and it washed over the sustrugi. The camp was just far enough north of the Pole that the sun took an ever so slightly elliptical orbit through the heavens and dipped closer to the mountainous horizon just enough to extend its rays to where it gave the minutest impression that twilight was on its way. In the weeks to come, the sun would eventually succumb to the forces that dictated its course and it would slip ever further below the ridge until winter came to the continent and darkness would again descend upon the ice.
It was, however, just enough of a change to give the inhabitants of the camp the sense that there really was an evening, even though the sun still blinded from the reflection off the snow.
It was into this not quite evening that the expedition members, weary from their toils of the day, found their way to the tents to bed down for the night. Susan, rolling up her maps and stowing them in their case, left the hut where she found Lt. Richards hovering by the entrance to his tent.
“What are you doing?” she asked him. He seemed to vacillate, unsure of himself in a way she had not experienced before.
“I don’t know, to tell you the truth,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked him. She had an impish manner that came out when she was feeling playful.
“Because I don’t know what to do,” he said.
“About what?”
“You, to be exact,” he said. “I didn’t want you to think that I was assuming too much by just coming to your tent. I didn’t want to just go into mine because I was afraid you would think I didn’t want to be with you. Standing out here and waiting is stupid, because I look like an idiot. So, I repeat, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Well, that’s pretty much what it looks like, too,” she said, teasing him, but grabbing the lapels of his parka and pulling him close anyway. 
He looked around anxiously.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“What?”
“See who’s watching. I don’t want to do that. Everyone’s going to know anyway, if Jake hasn’t told already them, and I don’t want to pretend they don’t.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice suggesting that there were many questions, not to mention hopes, implied in the answer.
“Yes,” she said, smiling without any mitigating shadows fleeting across her eyes, a look of peaceful satisfaction he hadn’t seen from her before.
“Good,” he said. “Me too.”

Susan unzipped her tent flap and lowered her head to slip through the opening, having sent the Lieutenant to his tent to get his floor pad and sleeping bag. While he was retrieving them she pushed her things to one side to make room for him. She chuckled to herself at the thought of it. She was still wearing her mountaineering boots and all of the outer clothing. She would wait for his return to make up the bed and then carefully sweep out the snow that was inevitably dragged inside before even thinking of exposing socks to the risk of getting wet, a serious issue that could lead to frostbite. It was not exactly the setting for a steamy romantic adventure. Yet when she thought of last night, she shook her head and whistled. It had been incredible.
She couldn’t remember ever losing herself in the moment like that before. He really did have scratches on his back. Deep ones. But he didn’t flinch when her hands tore into his flesh, not at all. Rather, he slipped his hands under her arms and around her back so that his palms cupped her shoulders from behind, and the more she dug in her nails, the harder he pulled back on her shoulders, driving her closer to him until she relaxed her grip. Only then, and only after crushing her tightly as if he would never let go, did he begin to loosen his hold. He bent down and brushed his lips to where his fingers had clasped the tiny shoulders as if he feared he had hurt them and wanted to show that this was not his intent. Her lips had crossed his fingers that were now free to show that she understood.
The flap opened and he passed the voluminous sleeping bag through to her and waited for her to get it zipped together with hers. When was all in order, she gave the go-ahead to pull off his boots and to knock the snow off before coming in, which he did carefully, leaving his boots by the opening of the tent. She took off hers and placed them by his.
“Take off your clothes,” she demanded. “Now. Quickly.”
“Well,” he replied, deadpan: “That’s about as enticing an invitation as I’ve had all day.”
“Dummy,” she said, stopping to kiss him. “I meant so you won’t get cold. Get in the sack.”
“Keeps getting better all the time,” he said, but he followed her direction and in short order, he was inside the bag with her facing him, her body shivering from the cold nylon on bare skin. She clung tightly to him, trying to force the warmth of the two of them to multiply as only two bodies together can. Her breasts were firm against his chest, the cold making them rigid. She slipped gently closer, her abdomen finding his, wrapping her legs around his waist. There she stayed, waiting for the down feathers of the bags to accumulate the heat that was radiating from their bodies, waiting for the tenseness of the cold to relax and then to be able to breathe easier.
When her shivering stopped, she let out a long breath, and where her chin had been forcing itself into his collarbone, she now turned softly and laid her cheek against his breast. His lips moved slowly over her silken hair, making her sigh contentedly. That he could be so strong and firm and at the same time so gentle was something that gave her contentment, a feeling of she had not previously been well-acquainted with. She found herself sinking into that place where she had been the night before, but with the voice in her head still being listened to. 
Contentment. How could that have found its way into her heart, here and now? It was something she had never been challenged with before, so distant a threat did it seem. It was the one thing that could derail her ambitions; people who were content were not driven. Why should they be - they were content? Was that his purpose for coming into her life, to make her content and to thereby steal away from her the one thing that was most precious? 
She forced herself to abandon such thoughts and drove them away by suddenly reaching up and taking him by the nape she kissed him passionately, almost desperately, as if her life depended on not letting anything be more than that kiss. Her breath became a sigh, and the sigh became a whimper, and with the whimper came a tear that moistened the skin of his breast.
“Are you sad?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “I’m happy. I’ve never been happier.”
“I knew that,” he said, though it was clear that he didn’t. “I just wanted to make sure.”
“Thank you,” she said, knowing that he was lying and grateful for it.
She kissed him again, though not with such terrible need. This time it was with want, wanting to go back to that place she had found the night before. Wanting him to take her there again, asking him, imploring with her lips and hands that now held both sides of his head.
He seemed to understand what she was asking. He gently slipped his arm around her waist, lifted her from his side, and lowered her down beneath him. The hand that had raised her now stroked the curve of her arched back and down to her one bent leg. She moved her lips from his to the lobe of his ear, where she nibbled at it like a rabbit’s soft nuzzling, an affirmation that he was taking her to where she wanted to go.
“Now,” she whispered into his ear and without hesitation, he moved his hand to the small of her back and adjusted himself to her, gently, so that their togetherness was accomplished with barely a movement. 
“Yes,” she said, a general statement that covered all that needed to be said, and to which he need not reply. As they moved together, she sensed the swaying of the ocean waves though she was barely half an inch from the surface of the ice; the rocking that one feels after being at sea. It added to the vertigo that lifted her away into that distant place where dreams and senses became a single thing of colors and images swirling together.
At the moment when all became one, she clasped his back as she had before, only this time, he couldn’t refrain from allowing a gasp to escape. The sound brought her back enough to realize what she was doing to his already wounded flesh and she let him go, laughing as she watched him struggle between the awareness of the pain of his back and his awareness of her that he held in his arms.
“Sorry,” she said when he came to rest in her arms.
“That is something we are seriously going to have to work on,” he said.
“I know,” she said apologetically, but then added, “If you didn’t make me feel like this, then that wouldn’t happen.”
He sighed. “I’ll try next time and make sure that I don’t.”
She took his head in both his hands and looked him in the eyes.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Okay.”
She turned away from him now, tired from the day and joyfully spent from the night and tucked herself against him in the conjoined sleeping bags. As she closed her eyes, the contentment began to spread over her consciousness once again, but this time, she embraced it and allowed it to lull her to sleep.

Chapter 13
The Antarctic Plateau, Near the Glacial Transition

The driver let out the clutch, allowing the gear that drove the treads to engage at a cautiously low RPM, keeping the vehicle under what he thought was exceptionally tight control. It would never do to go blindly driving into one of the monstrously wide, and nearly infinitely deep, crevasses that were known to exist in that area. The map they had was a very old one, an updated version of one of those that were produced during Operation High-Jump in the 1950s. No one had thought it mattered that the maps were old, since the mountains were pretty much in the same place as they were in Admiral Dufecs’ time of the IGY. The crevasses were not, but no one was willing to place too much credence in what a map says about that sort of thing anyway, no matter how current or how good the quality.
At first, the highest peaks of the mountains began to appear over the horizon, growing ever taller, as the caravan moved closer to the transition where the ice sheet channeled into the glacier. By then, the peaks stood majestically over the river of ice, the tongue of the glacier pointing the way through to where it poured out onto the ice shelf one hundred miles downstream. Gregore was standing up, his body twisting through the window opening so that he could get a better view and direct the driver who hoped that he would fall out and they would have done with him. It was Gregore who had insisted on being the navigator and gave the driver directions, though it was the driver who attempted to point out that by not changing direction sooner, they had found themselves on the wrong side of a river of ice and were now faced with the choice of backtracking for a very long way or finding a ford. Gregore was now endeavoring to prove that he was right by finding the way through the morass.
“Go right,” he said, confidently.
“How hard right?” the driver asked. 
“Right, but not too hard.”
“How hard is not too hard?” the driver asked. Political officer or not, the driver would not kow-tow in the area of his responsibility to someone who knew nothing.
Gregore lowered his head enough to look through the window at the driver. “Right enough that you are no longer going in a straight line if you would not like to die an awful death.”
“Oh, that right,” the driver said as he pulled up on the lever that braked on the right track. The machine jerked to the right, the same action translating to the sled it was trailing, to the irritation of those who were relegated to riding in the shelter. Every time the vehicle lurched, Sokolov winced as he braced for the inevitable shock that would occur when the piston gave way. Each time it did not, he let out his breath in a long exhale.
“Vladimir, don’t look so frightened. You must have been down here too long. You should be enjoying this,” Gregore teased him, mistaking his pallor. The driver shook his head.
“It is your great intelligence that allows you to understand the stupidity in this,” he said quietly when Gregore stood back up out the window. “This is the purest madness.”
Sokolov didn’t answer and the driver continued to follow Gregore’s direction until they were nearly clear of the hazard. Once the vehicle passed through the disturbed area, it would be on a gently descending slope that settled onto the glacier.
“See,” Gregore said. “That was not so difficult. We are nearly clear.” He leaned back out the window, however, to make sure that they were, in fact, clear the rest of the way. He had not noticed until then that the crevasses he had previously observed were very easy to see because the aspect of their exposure did not allow them to have snow bridges form over their tops. That was a good thing because they were visible and plain to see. Now that the terrain had shifted, the drifting snow that was driven off the plateau was allowed to settle and form cornices that eventually formed into bridges over the tops of the crevasses, some so strong that a machine the size of theirs could have driven over them and those inside not notice that they had. That, in fact, is what they had twice just done.
They were now traveling on a straight track onto a neve, a snow field that is distinguished from a glacier in that it does not flow, when Gregore observed a sagging in the surface directly in front of them where a massive crevasse had a long bridge over it that was bending of its own weight. It was only visible because the sun did not reflect on it in exactly the same way as the surrounding area, making the depression seem darker in contrast. It took him a moment to realize what it was.
“Turn right,” he shouted at the driver.
“How hard...” the driver began.
“Hard, hard, hard, you idiot.” 
The driver understood the situation immediately and pulled the brake on the right side with as much force as he could. That action made the vehicle lurch drastically to the right, putting an extraordinary amount of pressure onto the forward ski. It was inevitable that the previously compromised piston would fail under such stress. When it did, the weight of the machine shifted to the ski and the sudden pressure made the ski dive and twist; then it caught enough to track and lurched wildly to the left. The sudden swing in direction made the driver loose his grasp for an instant on the brake, but that was all that it took. The yaw to the left was unchecked and the machine leaped onto the sagging snow bridge that had no chance of supporting the weight. They broke through and the tractor flew into the abyss. 

They were luckier than those riding in the shelter. Still traveling forward when it fell, the pulling machine was just long enough to span the width of the aperture and it wedged itself against the walls a mere twenty-feet below the surface. The sled, however, pulled onward into the opening, immediately aligned itself into a straight downward aspect, and breaking free from the tractor, dove downward into the unfathomable depths, those souls on board never having the chance to understand what disaster had overtaken them.
It was surprisingly dark only twenty feet down. Sokolov, who had been riding in the rear seat, was the most protected of the three and the impact left him shaken, but conscious. The other two were moaning softly in the front of the cab, but did not immediately respond when he called to them. He crawled forward in the dark, grasped Gregore’s shoulder, and gave it a shake. The Russian awoke instantly, light and thunder shrieking out from the dislocated arm.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Look to the driver!”
It took longer to bring the driver around. The fall had thrown him against the control bars in front of him and Sokolov suspected that he had several broken ribs. Sokolov was at a loss for what to do next. The first thing that he became aware of was that the engine was dead and that the extreme cold air was pouring through the shattered windows. Time would not be their friend for long. He stood up as far as he could and unlatched the bolt that closed the top hatch. Then he lifted it enough to be able to see directly upward.
“We are less than ten meters down,” he informed the others.
“What is the difference in that?” Gregore asked. “We have no better way to climb ten meters of sheer ice than we do to climb one in this condition.”
“It is certainly better than for those we were pulling.” 
Gregore thought of them for the first time. “Why?”
“Because I do not see them at all.” 
That brought the political officer completely around. “Let me see.”
Sokolov helped him to stand so he could look out the hatch, then to look out the window into the seemingly bottomless darkness. At the sight of the complete emptiness below, Gregore then directed his eyes toward the walls to see how well the vehicle was secured. It appeared to be firmly lodged in the ice, but it was impossible to know how well.
“This is not good,” he announced. 
The driver actually laughed at the understatement.
“No,” Sokolov agreed. “Getting out would be only the beginning of our problems.”
“Is there power?” Gregore asked the driver.
“Wait,” the driver said, working the switches. “Yes, but the engine won’t turn.”
“That does not matter.” Regardless of his other duties, Gregore was, in fact, a qualified radio operator. He tried keying the microphone and appeared gratified to hear static as a result. He then looked to the antenna and seemed less pleased. It had broken off and was dangling by its wire from the front of the engine compartment.
“We need to get a long line of wire onto the surface to act as a dipole to be able to transmit a decent signal unless…” He thought for moment. “Vladimir, did you not tell me that the Americans are working in this area?”
“Yes,” Sokolov answered, the irony that he could not keep out of his voice not understood by the others, who had other things to do than question him. “The same as we are. Meteorites. On the plateau and in the catchments.”
“It will be far easier to transmit VHF than HF. I can extend the wire to the antenna. If we can throw it onto the surface, it will give a range of one horizon, maybe thirty-five kilometers.”
“They may be that close,” Sokolov said. “If they have radios and they are listening and we are on the same frequency, we may have a chance.”
“I have all the frequencies they use. We need to get the antenna.” 
Sokolov looked at the black whip antenna hanging from the front of the machine. 
“How?” he asked.
“You go and get it,” Gregore said firmly. “Clearly we cannot. I will give you a rope.”
There appeared to be no other choice. Sokolov tied the rope around his waist and crawled over the others and through the opening where the windshield used to be. The cold metal hood was slippery under his feet. He lay down on his chest, trying to place as much surface area of his body in contact as he could to keep from slipping. It was still difficult.
“Keep the rope tight,” he called over his shoulder.
“I am.”
“Tighter,” Sokolov insisted. “Let me pull the rope from you. Don’t feed it out.”
“All right.”
He inched his way across the hood, trying not to look down or up. He did anyway and was rewarded with vertigo that made him feel that he was already falling. He still had to reach over the edge to be able to grasp the wire.
“Hold the rope firm now; don’t let any more out. I need to extend over the front to reach it. Do you understand?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gregore said. “Go ahead.”
The scientist took a deep breath and stretched his body, keeping his eyes on the wire. He felt himself start to slip.
“Hold on!” he yelled.
With his one good arm, Gregore braced for the fall. The rope was around his body and he thrust the fist that was holding the rope between his legs and squeezed with his thighs around his wrist to keep the rope from slipping. The sudden weight nearly pulled him through the opening, but he was able to hold on. Sokolov found himself dangling over the emptiness that reached up from below. He was surprised to find the antenna wire still in his grasp.
“Pull me back in,” he said quietly, as if a louder noise might awaken the danger that had him within its grasp. 
“Help me,” Gregore said to the driver, who despite the broken ribs pulled fiercely on the rope. When Sokolov was back in, he sank back into the rear seat and closed his eyes, fighting off the vision of the bottomless death that had nearly captured him. It was worse with his eyes closed, so he opened them and looked back into the front of the cab.
“Will it work?” he asked.
“I think so. That is the good news. The bad news is you will have to go back out to try and throw it onto the surface.”
Sokolov sighed in the back of the cab. “Give it to me.”
This time, he crawled out of the hatch on top of the cabin. Placing his feet on top of the seats, he was able to extend up to his hips through the opening, a position he found much more comfortable than being on the hood. 
“Would it be better to throw the antenna and leave the wire in a spool on the roof?” he asked. “Or have the wire hang down and let the antenna pull it up as it goes.”
“Neither. Throw the whole thing at the same time. The weight of the coil will help carry it over the top.”
“Very well.”
He practiced the motion of throwing the antenna assembly several times. When he was confident that he could do it on the first try, he took three deep breaths and let it fly. It carried well over the edge.

***

Dr. Daniels removed his thumb from the throttle of the Alpine, allowing it to come to a stop. He used his other hand to turn the key and kill the motor. He wondered for the thousandth time, why he didn’t rig some system that didn’t require his thumb to freeze holding the lever for hours on end, then for the thousandth time forgot about it. He looked around and unconsciously nodded to himself.
“We’ll camp here,” he told the group. The portion of the voyage that took them onto the plateau was past, and they had crossed the transition from the plateau onto the glaciers that flow to the coast. This was to be the last camp before returning to the hut. He decided to stop there to reconnoiter the catchment, a place that a glacier flows into with no outlet, where meteorites accumulate throughout the ages. He was looking for Alistair to see if it would be worth his making a trip. 
In an established routine, the students began to unload the sled, one of them arranging the tents, another undertaking the excavation of the cooking pit. Daniels himself took several bamboo poles, planted them in an X figure, then ran a wire from pole to pole. The antenna would be attached to the HF radio in his tent so that he could report in to the main camp. He forgot that he had the VHF radio underneath his parka where it stayed warm in order to extend the battery life. They used the VHF while they were working so they could coordinate the movements of each other. It would normally be turned off in camp.
“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Does anyone copy? Over,” he heard coming from under his coat. The clear sound from the hand-held radio jolted him to awareness of the harness on his chest. The students all looked at him with blank expressions. He fumbled with the zipper of the red parka.
“Station calling, say again your last,” he replied cautiously, keeping the alarm out of his voice.
“We have a Mayday,” Sokolov said over the radio. Since Gregore spoke almost no English, it fell upon the scientist to try and relay the message. “We are trapped in crevasse. Where are you?” 
“Where are we?” Daniels mused aloud before answering. “How the hell am I supposed to answer that?” He chose a different response.
“We must be close or I wouldn’t copy your transmission,” he replied. “Where are you? Who are you?” he added.
“We are from Vostok in transit to make a treaty inspection at the Beardmore camp,” the radio announced.
“Nice of you to tell us you’re coming,” Daniels grumbled off the air before he remembered. “Are you the group looking for meteorites?” he asked.
“That is correct.”
“We didn’t know about the inspection,” he told them.
“It was a last minute decision. I am sorry for that, but we now have more pressing matters.”
“Of course. Do you have your last known position and direction of travel?” He waved at one of the students to open the map. Then, to the others, “Pack the sleds back up. Except for the radio.”
“Our position is …wait one moment.” He had Gregore look for the position and relayed it. “We were traveling to the southwest on grid just crossing the transition.”
Dr. Daniels had the map now, and he followed the lines to the point on the map that represented the location he had just received, and made a pin mark on the spot. He whistled softly to himself.
“Okay, Russia. I have the position. We are around ten miles, or fifteen kilometers, from that location. What is the condition of your personnel?”
“Four are missing, presumed dead. Two injured, not too serious. One unharmed. We are around eight meters down.”
“Son of a bitch,” Daniels said to himself, again off the air. “Okay. Hold on. We’ll get things going. Depending on how it goes, we may be able to get there in a couple of hours.”
“Thank you. We will keep this frequency open,” the scientist said in closing.
“Do you think we can get there at all?” the grad student with the map asked.
“Not easily,” Daniels admitted. “However, we don’t have much choice but to try.” He then wired the HF radio to the antenna that had already been set up and hailed the camp on the Beardmore.

***

“Beardmore, Beardmore, Beardmore. This SR32, how copy?” the words spoke out over the radio.
Barry, the Navy weatherman assigned to the expedition, was at the console monitoring traffic in between observations that he called into McMurdo every hour when flights were anticipated. He had been on round-the-clock operations, snatching naps between the hourly calls, and was bleary from sleep deprivation. The voice brought him back to alertness and he was grateful for it, a momentary distraction from the monotony of his fatigue.
“Got you all fivers, Doc,” he said, trying to sound cheerful. He had a carefully developed reputation of always having a joke ready, but since they were almost uniformly all bad ones, he came to be treated as if it were he that was the joke, which was not his intent.
“Barry,” Dr. Daniels said, “is Dr. Atkinson there?”
“Probably somewhere,” Barry replied, trying to be helpful, but without actually helping.
“Yes, well, I can tell you to an absolute certainty that he is somewhere,” the ancient professor told him pointedly. “But the question is, where he is EXACTLY?”
Even over the radio, Barry comprehended that Dr. Daniels was in no mood for word games and asked him to stand by.
“I’ll go get him,” Barry said.
“Good,” Daniels replied. “No, wait. Barry, are you still there?”
“Let’s see, it’s been almost half a second, where do you think I’d be?” he asked, without keying the mic. Then he said, “Still here, Doc.”
“Good. Try to call McMurdo first. Tell them that we have a situation, and to try and get everybody together as soon as possible.”
“Who’s everybody?” Barry asked.
“Everybody they would want to have on hand if something really serious happened.”
“Gotcha,” Barry said.
After calling into McMurdo and rattling the cage of another weary weatherman who was at the communications console there, and who was handling Barry the same way that he handled everyone else, which Barry refused to tolerate, he went out into the frozen sunshine that burned his tired eyes. He found Dr. Atkinson unpacking his Alpine snowmobile with Alistair and Jake.
“Dr. Daniels wants you,” Barry said. “He sounds pretty worked up.”
“Worked up, is he?” Dr. Atkinson said with the voice he used for dismissing students' petty concerns. “Daniels isn’t one to get worked up so easily.”
 “Maybe not,” Barry told him, “but he is now. He had me round up everyone in McMurdo to stand by for a relay.”
“Humph,” Dr. Atkinson said, showing that he was not going to get excited after being dismissive of the idea that Daniels was. “That is somewhat irregular, I must say. Indeed. I suppose we had better go see.”
The three went into the hut, leaving Barry to follow, which he did after rolling his eyes and shaking his head. But he then went quickly before any of them could get to the radio, which he considered his domain.
“SR whatever you are, ah…32; this is Beardmore. How copy?” Barry said into the mic.
“I copy you just fine,” Dr. Daniels answered. “Does McMurdo copy me?”
“Don’t know. Let’s see,” Barry said. “Break-Mac Center, this is Beardmore. How copy?”
“Copy all, copy all Beardmore,” the voice reciprocated.
“Then you copy SR32?” he asked.
“Negative,” was the reply.
“Well then, what the hell was with the copy all?” Barry raged at the unkeyed microphone before slipping back into his professional radio voice. “Roger, Center. Please be advised that I am now acting as relay. Please stand by.”
“A-firm. Standing by,” the voice said.
“Go ahead, Doc,” Barry told Dr. Daniels. 
Everyone by the console settled down to listen. When he finished, they all sat in stunned silence.
“Barry, please give me the microphone,” Dr. Atkinson said.
“I’ll do it,” Barry said.
“No. I am the chief scientist on station; that makes me senior NSF person on location. Let me talk to McMurdo.”
“All right,” Barry said, not wanting to give it up.
“Arthur, are you there?” Dr. Atkinson asked, seeing if Dr. Fredricks was at the other end of the conversation.
“Yes, Stephen,” a voice replied. “I’m here with the Captain.”
“Good," Dr. Atkinson said. Then he took a deep breath and told of the events as he had them from Dr. Daniels.

When Dr. Atkinson finished relaying his story, everyone with him sat in silence waiting for a response. When one didn’t immediately come, he gave the mic back to Barry, who was incapable of sitting and waiting for a reply, so he began to speak.
“McMurdo,” he said into the mic. “Dr. Daniels is currently departing his location to begin rendering assistance. Over.”
By emphasizing the word ‘over’, he was implying that he expected someone to respond.
 “Roger,” a new voice answered. “Copy en route to render assistance ASAP. Over.”
“We’ll need to get something going from here, too,” Jake told Dr. Atkinson.
“Beardmore, you need to get a team moving from there, too, over,” the radio announced.
“That’s A-firm,” Barry replied.
“I’ll go get Susan and the Lieutenant and take them with me. You should stay here and coordinate,” Jake said to Dr. Atkinson.
“Susan?” Dr. Atkinson asked. “Why?”
“Because she is far and away the most experienced climber in camp,” Jake told him. “After me, of course.”
Dr. Atkinson thought about that for a moment.
“So you anticipate that you may have to go in?”
“We know they are a little ways down now. Dr. Daniels should be able to get them out on his own, but who knows what happens between now and then.”
“Yes, I see your point,” Dr. Atkinson said. “All right, but be careful.”
“Always,” Jake assured him. 

Chapter 14
Washington D.C

Chuck Stoddard held the newspaper in his hand at the National Science Foundation office in Washington. He was too thunderstruck even to be angry. How Der Spiegel got this one was beyond comprehension. There was no doubt regarding the authenticity this time. The photos depicted all of his grantees in wonton acts of drunkenness, and generally acting like idiots. The caption disregarded the fact that the reporter was there to cover the skiers passing. It was clear that the American personnel were debauching themselves in an exact characterization of what the group was supposedly doing to the environment. It was a marvelous piece of misrepresentation. That, of course, was beside the point. He was suddenly and acutely aware that his ass, as the common eulogy went, was grass. His one point of consolation was that the situation couldn’t possibly get any worse. It was then that his door opened and the Undersecretary of State came in with the Congressional Navy Attaché.
“Are you aware of the situation at the Beardmore Glacier?” the Secretary asked. Stoddard decided to take it up front. He threw the paper on the desk in front of the two.
“I am.” The two men looked at the paper, then back to the Director. The Secretary cleared his throat.
“Yes. Well, charming as that may be, that is not what we are talking about.”
“There’s more?” Stoddard blurted out. The Secretary looked at the Attaché who answered the question.
“That,” he told the Director, “is the least of your problems.”
“How’s that possible?” he asked.
“Thanks to your peoples’ ability to keep quiet down there, the Russians have no doubt concluded that they needed to come and see for themselves,” the Attaché said. “They had a science team in the area and diverted them to Beardmore in order to conduct a treaty inspection.”
“There isn’t much they can see,” the Director replied cautiously, finding something positive to cling to.
The Undersecretary waved that off. “They’ve had an accident. Word came through McMurdo. Two teams from the area are converging on the scene.”
The director was shocked. “Ours?”
“Both,” the Attaché said.
“Do we know anything about what happened?”
“Crevasse,” the Undersecretary said. “Big one. Several dead and injured.”
“They must be in an awkward position,” the Director mused, “coming to catch us at something they aren’t going to like, and then having to thank us for rescuing them.”
 “Moscow doesn’t know yet.” 
The Director looked up. “Doesn’t know yet?”
“That’s correct. That is why we are here,” the Undersecretary said. “We think you should make the call.”
The Director saw some hope. If he was needed for this, then maybe he wasn’t finished just yet.
“When?”
“Now.”
***

The same Russian official who had seen the first story in Der Spiegel now looked at the second. Despite the typical hyperbole that seemed to be the only manner in which that publication was capable of communicating, and the obvious misrepresentation of the photos, the grain of truth that he suspected was confirmed beyond doubt. They had a man on the ground there. Not even this paper would print something that they couldn’t back up, at least a little bit.
“It appears as if we were correct,” he said to the junior minister who had been sent over. “Our people should be there any time now; perhaps they already are. We should have good information soon.”
“It is amazing,” the young diplomat said. “How can they think that we will not contest this action? In the name of conservation, of course. If they do this, we will be left with little choice but to intervene.”
“And they still continue to insist that we act irrationally. I confess that I share your consternation. What do we do now?” he asked.
“I have been ordered to join you here so that you can contact them through this office. Because your position is generally considered by them not to be political in nature, we feel that we can express an ‘opinion’ that will get the message across without reflecting official policy or sounding overly threatening in nature.”
“While, in fact, it is both,” the official clarified. 
“Exactly.”
The man sighed heavily, not bothering to hide his distress. For a scientist to reach his position, there were many concessions that had to be made, and he had gone in with his eyes open. Despite his institutional atheism, he had to allow that a certain analogy fit. His soul had been sold long ago and now the evil one was coming to collect.
“Very well,” he said. “When?”
“Right now.”
He steeled himself for the unfamiliar role of diplomatic negotiator when the intercom on his desk buzzed. He looked at it like it had materialized out of thin air.
“Yes?” he asked, wondering who was foolish enough to interrupt him at this time.
“Director Stoddard from the National Science Foundation is on line one,” the box announced. The two men looked at each other.
“It may be that they know that we know and are attempting to preempt our making the first call so they can say that they were not trying to hide anything,” the junior minister said.
“If we take the call, then that will have worked, wouldn’t it?” the official asked, hopefully.
“You must not give them the chance,” the minister said. “Answer the call, then immediately inform them of our displeasure at what we have discovered.”
“Very well.” He picked up the receiver. “Hello, Charles. Thank you for calling. It is a pleasure to hear you, especially since I was just preparing to call you myself.”
On the other end of the line, the three men looked at each other.
“You were?” Stoddard answered and then waited for a reply. The other two men gestured vigorously at him to keep talking, but it was too late.
“Indeed, and I regret to inform you that we are most unhappy to learn about your country’s intended exploitation of the Antarctic continent. The treaty is intended to avoid this type of confrontation and it is very dangerous for your government to begin circumventing international law in this manner at this time. We have sent a group to your area to conduct a treaty inspection. I expect you will continue to comply with that portion of the agreement.”
The Russian junior minister allowed his lower jaw to drop before recovering enough to gesture the other man to stop. The official put his hand over the mouthpiece.
“You idiot! What are you doing?”
“What you told me to do,” he answered. “What else?”
“I told you to register an opinion of concern, not to declare World-War-Three. Calm down!” The minister held his breath, waiting for the reply.
In Chuck Stoddard’s office, the three looked at each other. He pressed the mute button.
“What the hell? These guys are pretty worked up,” he said.
“More than they should be,” the Undersecretary said. “Have we missed something? They are like, ten steps down the road. Tell him that you have read the article, that it is completely false, and then tell him we know about his people and then about the accident. Try to settle him down.”
“You say so,” Stoddard muttered skeptically. He pressed the button on the speakerphone to end mute. 
“Wait a minute,” the Attaché said. Stoddard pushed mute again. “That was as bellicose a statement as I’ve ever heard come directly from the Russian government. We can’t roll over on it. They will consider us weak and acting out of weakness. I agree that you need to calm him down, but you have to be firm while you do it.”
“All right.” Stoddard pushed the button on the phone again. “Doctor, we have seen the story in the papers that you have certainly seen by now and I want to assure you that it is absolutely false. However, that does not give your government the right to interfere where our interests are concerned. This nation will not be dictated to. I hope we are clear on that.”
The Undersecretary came half out of his seat, making a chopping motion with his hand across his throat. He mouthed the words, “Too strong!”
In two rooms on opposite sides of the world, the diplomats who were tasked with diffusing what had appeared to be a minor international scuffle were now deeply regretting their choices in allowing scientific bureaucrats to carry out dialogue of a diplomatic nature. What should have been a simple conversation was rapidly escalating into a major incident. It was, however, too late to stop it and they had no choice but to see it through.
“Dictate!” Stoddard’s Russian counterpart said over the phone. “You would lecture me on dictating a peoples’ destiny? The very act that you deny is an attempt to dictate our destiny to us. Our people will be at your camp shortly. I demand that your people disclose everything they are doing to them at that time. We will await their report.”
“Doctor, that is, exactly the reason I have called you in the first place,” Stoddard said. “We have been in contact with the group that is in transit to the Beardmore camp. It seems that they have met with an accident. I can’t give you the complete details but we have two rescue teams on the way right now.” He told them what he knew about what had happened.
The two Russians looked at each other in shock. What had started out as a complete disaster had suddenly taken a major turn for the worse.
“Could you repeat that?” the Russian asked. Stoddard did. The Russian covered the mouthpiece again.
“Could they have met with foul play?” the junior diplomat asked.
“I am beginning to believe that anything is possible, but please, let’s not jump to any more terrible conclusions. We will know shortly if there are survivors. If there are, then they can tell us the truth. If there are not, then we will have to speculate.”
“Very well then. I am sure, however, that we will take other action than just wait to hear what they say.”
“And you are no doubt correct,” the Russian scientist said, relieved that someone else would be making those decisions. Into the phone he said tersely, “We will conclude now. Please contact us the instant that you have more information.”
“You have my assurance,” Stoddard said. He, too, was relieved to be through.

***

The Alpine followed Dr. Daniel’s track as fast as Jake could drive, which made for a less than pleasant ride for Susan and Lt. Richards, both of whom rode on the train of Nansen Sleds, which were being pulled by the Alpine. The sleds were named after the famed Norwegian explorer who nearly a century earlier had sledged across the Arctic. Exceptionally well suited to working in the Antarctic, they were everything except comfortable to ride on at high speed.
Jake had piled all the rescue equipment onto one sled, then attached three others in tandem, in the hope that the missing Russians could still be rescued and brought back to camp. Then he drove up the track to the work site to find the two. He called to them to get on the sled.
“Why?” Susan asked.
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
In most parts of Antarctica, the snow accumulates so little that tracks made in the sustrugi can remain for years. Dr. Daniels' outward track was like a highway for them to follow, and they moved rapidly over it with little fear of the untoward overtaking them while en route. They sped as rapidly as the conditions would allow, and in a matter of a couple of hours, they approached the area where the accident had occurred. Then they slowed down, picking their way through the hidden crevasses. They were soon able to see Daniels' caravan of sleds, at what must have been the lip of the crack, where the victims had fallen in. They arrived just in time to see the last of the three Russians, who were riding in the pulling vehicle, coming over the edge.
“Good to see you,” Daniels told them when the engine stopped. One didn’t spend as many years on the ice as he had without having acquired the skills to extract a victim who was within a climbing rope distance of the top of a crevasse. The three Russians were now on the surface, and Dr. Daniels' students were making a camp to get them warmed up and treated for their injuries as best as they could. Jake went to look them over as soon as the sled stopped.
“What do we have?” Lt. Richards asked of Dr. Daniels.
“Three apparent survivors. Two injured, not too seriously. One okay.” They looked at the three Russians, who looked back, but so far had said nothing though they looked relieved to be out of the ice.
“Survivors? Does that mean there are some who didn’t?” Susan asked.
“So it would appear. The pulling vehicle got wedged fifteen feet or so down. These three were in it. They were pulling a sledge that went in behind it. No sign of them. This one is deep,” Daniels told the three.
“How many on the sled?” Susan asked.
“Four.”
They walked cautiously to the edge and looked over at the wedged vehicle. The pure emptiness below it was all the evidence they needed to verify the story. Then they approached the Russians, and wasting no time on introductions Susan inquired, “Is there anything you can tell us about the others?”
Sokolov answered since the driver spoke nothing but Russian, and Gregore only knew a few words of English.
“Nothing. We tried to call, but there was no answer.”
“Did you hear anything during the crash - anything at all that might give some indication of how far down they went?” Susan asked.
“I am afraid not. Between our own impact and the sound of the engine, there was nothing,” Sokolov told them.
Jake thought for a moment, and then looked at Susan.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It can’t go down forever,” she replied. “They’re there, somewhere.”
“True,” Jake agreed. “But how far?”
“The question is, how far can we go, before we have to turn back?”
“Exactly.” 
“How much gear do we have?” Susan asked Jake.
“Depends,” Jake answered thoughtfully. “How much protection are we willing to live without on each rappel?” 
“Wait a minute,” Lt. Richards said, realizing what they were talking about. “You’re not seriously thinking of going in there, are you? You can’t be.”
“I don’t see how we have much choice,” she answered. “Four men went down there. We may be able to save them.”
Jake hesitated while examining the Russians injuries for a moment, and watched Susan and the Lieutenant. He knew what the Lieutenant was thinking - had to be thinking - and felt sorry for him. He also felt relief that he didn’t have to feel that way, and silently congratulated himself on having the good sense to have avoided falling in love with Susan from the beginning. Then he considered for a moment, and knew it wouldn’t make any difference to him. What’s the point of being in love if you can’t descend into a bottomless crevasse on a daring rescue together? He knew that any relationship he was in that didn’t have that dynamic would be doomed from the onset anyway. Then again, just about any relationship he was in would be just as challenged.
“Say something, Jake,” the Lieutenant said.
Jake looked up and saw them both staring at him. He had stopped paying attention halfway through their discussion.
“About what?” he asked.
“Tell her that she can’t do this,” the Lieutenant said imploringly.
“Didn’t you already try that?” Jake said. He didn’t want to get in the middle of this and he knew better than to try and talk her out of it anyway. Besides, he needed her help. The victims needed her help. They had to at least try.
“Thank you,” Susan said. Then, turning to Lt. Richards, she said, “Don’t worry. We’re pretty good at this. We’ll be all right.”

Susan reached the bottom of the sixth rappel and twisted a hollow ice screw into the deep blue surface of the glacial ice. Since the walls of the crevasse were shear, smooth ice, there were no places they could find to stand for a moment and rest. This limited how far they were able to descend, since each rappel required a minimum of three screws, placed in what was known as an Abalakov, or V-Thread. If that were not the case and there were outcroppings of some kind to perch themselves on, they could use two screws per rappel, but since each placement was required to support the weight of both climbers, it just wasn’t possible.
 The blackness of the dark was nearly complete. It was an odd situation made odder, due to the fact that she hadn’t known anything remotely close to darkness for weeks. The crack of light from the surface was just barely visible some three hundred feet above. There was still no sign of the sledge, and the walls were still smooth and straight. It seemed as if it could go on like that forever. When she was comfortable with the placement of the anchor, she hooked a carabineer to the screw, and looped an extra pair of webbing slings through the carabineers. While they were short of screws, there was no lack of slings, and she didn’t want the last seconds of her life to be spent in self-recrimination for being stupid. She attached herself to the slings, took her weight off the rope, and moved it onto the anchor. When that operation was complete, and she was satisfied that he had done everything correctly (she was perfectly aware that most climbing fatalities were due to simple mistakes), she called to Jake to begin his descent.
“How does it look?” Jake asked from above.
“About the same,” Susan answered.
When Jake got to where Susan was anchored, he went through the same procedure with the easy, fluid competence of someone who had performed the task countless times. She watched him work, trying not to flash him in the eyes with the beam from the light that was mounted on her climbing helmet, instead pointing it towards where he was working, adding the light to his own. 
“Thanks,” he said when he was done.
“Don’t mention it, darling.”
Jake chuckled. “Save it. We’ll discuss all that later. Besides, I’m trying to be mad at you.”
“Of course you are,” Susan said, cajolingly. Despite the gravity of the situation, there was no avoiding the adrenalin driven thrill of descending into an environment few, if any, had ever been in. Again she was brought her back to her days of climbing in Boulder, when climbing for her was more a state of existence than an activity. Once she was on the rope her senses became sharper, her awareness greater, almost euphoric, though controlled and channeled. And the conversation always took on a jocular, almost bravado tone, though uniformly light and humorous. It was easy to slip back into that mode.
Susan watched the light from Jake's helmet as he descended deeper into the chasm, listening to the tinkle of the metal tools knocking into each other. After a few moments, the chinking of the implements stopped and the light seemed to go out.
“Go ahead and come down,” she heard from below. “I’ve got something.”
She began rappelling down to where he was. When she was nearly there, she saw what Jake had found.
“Is there anyone in there?” she asked. 
The sledge was wedged between the walls that began to narrow at that depth. It was upside down, and what was left of the tent portion was hanging from it.
“I can’t tell yet. Get situated so you can give me a belay.”
“Okay,” she said.
Susan used the last two screws to anchor herself. She then fed the rope out from her harness, which was the normal belay procedure, to Jake. If he were to fall, the stress would translate up the rope to Susan’s harness, and then to the screwed-in anchor. There is a chain of reliance: the anchor, the slings, the harness, the carabineers, the rope, the other person's harness. All of these must perform without fail. The climbers themselves are part of the chain, but mostly they provide the brains, or as Susan knew, the lack thereof. 
“I’m going to try and walk out and look over the other side,” Jake said. “That seems to be where everything in there ended up. Keep the belay tight.”
“Got it. Belay-on.”
Jake leaned on the rope, letting Susan provide enough tension on it so he could walk almost vertically downward. When he got to where the tongue of the trailing sled was, he balanced gingerly on it, stepping from there onto the main platform. Then he let himself sink over the side of the sledge.
“Okay, hold there,” he shouted up.
Susan stopped letting out rope. “What do you see?”
For a minute, Jake didn’t answer, but Susan could hear him ruffling around in what was left of the canvas that was piled at that end.
“Nothing,” he said finally. “Coming back up.”
When he was standing back on the frame of the sled, he stood for a moment.
“They’re gone. Everything’s gone.”

 “I guess we should start back up, then.”
There really wasn’t much else that could be said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Jake agreed.
Jake started moving back over the framework. It was more difficult walking up on the frame; his crampons were slippery on the cold steel. There were braces on the frame where the points of the crampons could grab tenuous hold, and he took a long step to reach one. The sled must have been precariously balanced; the pressure of the step was enough to make it shift and Jake had not yet gained a firm foot placement on the metal. The settling movement of the sledge was enough to make him lose his balance and he began to fall.
“Falling!” he called out, which was the correct thing to do, though it was perfectly obvious to Susan who watched his every move. Susan instantly changed her posture from belaying to bracing, grasping the rope in both hands and driving them between her thighs. Squeezing her legs together as hard as she could, she prepared to take the impact before it came. When it did, her grip on the belay performed perfectly. The stress on the system worked its way back up the chain. The rope held. The figure-eight held. The harness held. The slings held. The screws did not.
The first one exploded out of the ice and caught her in the corner of her mouth. She could hear the tooth break under her lip. The weight then transferred to the second screw, much of the shock already having been absorbed by the first one, but not enough. By the time it broke free an instant later, Susan was able to assess the situation. Making sure that she had her feet square against the ice, she waited for the screw to give out before she pushed away from the wall with as much strength as she could apply. She saw that Jake had fallen on the same side of the sled as she was on, and that their only hope would be in her being able to launch herself over to the other side of the steel tongue of the sled. And to hope that it held.
She waved her arms like a long jumper, trying to hang in the air long enough to clear the tongue. She made it by bouncing off her rear end and somersaulting ass over teakettle to the far side. Though she was still falling, she knew that if she were to live long enough, she would regret that last maneuver. She grabbed the rope that held Jake, and hugged it. As quickly as she could she placed a carabineer over the rope on both sides to make sure that she didn’t get pulled over the top, and they were secure.

Susan and Jake hung without moving, catching their breath.
“You okay?” Jake called from below. 
“Could be worse, I guess,” she answered. Her words were garbled from the blood in her mouth, but it was her hinder quarters that absorbed most of her attention. She would never again use the expression "pain in the ass," without serious consideration of what she was saying.
“Can you tie off the rope?” Jake asked.
“Hang on.” She anchored the rope that Jake was still hanging from and shimmied up the tongue until she was by the wall. The last two screws were still hanging from her harness. She twisted them into the ice and called for Jake to come up.
He climbed up the rope, using the Prussic loops that were attached to the rope. The Prussic maneuver is used to ascend a vertical rope. Two loops of small gauge rope are folded over themselves a couple of times, which makes a sling that tightens with pressure and loosens when freed. The climber who has fallen can use one loop on the rope to make a foothold. The other is attached to their harness. By shifting their weight back and forth, from the foot loop to the harness loop, a climber can ascend straight up the rope. 
 “You look beautiful,” Jake told her when he saw what the failing screw had done to her mouth. “Let me see what’s going on there.”
“I think it looks worse than it is. You can forget about examining me where it really hurts. I broke my ass on that sled.”
“I am the closest thing to a doctor there is around here, my dear,” Jake said, forgetting all about their current predicament, “and I’d be derelict in my duty not to make a thorough examination of any problems of that kind that arise.”
“Not going to happen. You ready to get out of here?”
Jake looked up. “Four hundred feet of pure vertical. This is starting to turn into a long day.”
“I would have felt bad if you didn’t get all you bargained for,” Susan said, glad to have the subject changed. “That was a pretty close one.”
 “When it’s your time, it’s your time,” Jake said.
“Maybe it was your time, and I just happened to be attached to the other end of the rope.”
“Ah, a conundrum,” Jake said, amused. “If it’s my time and we are on the same rope, does your being there postpone my demise and cheat death, or do you get to come along for the ride?”
“I think you make your own time and I’m not interested in having you make mine,” Susan said. “Pay attention to what you’re doing, and let’s get going.”
“Very well, then,” Jake said. “Belay on.”
By the time they crested the lip of the crevasse, they were both too tired to joke.

Chapter 15
Beardmore Glacier Camp

Barry, the weatherman, leaned back in the chair, his feet up on the table, earphones draped over his head, static filling the void. His hands were clasped behind his neck and he looked at the ceiling in the posture of one deep in contemplation. The only thing lacking was a coherent thought, but he was sure one would be coming soon.
“Beardmore, this is the Chalet, how copy?” the female voice in his ears announced. Barry fairly jolted out of the chair, his foot sending the mug of cold coffee across the room. He lunged for the volume dial with one hand and ripped the headphones off with the other.
“Nothing but 5’s, Chalet,” he answered after he collected himself and the appropriate apparatus required to make a response possible. Hearing a woman’s voice was the next best thing to having her there, and he tried to sound debonair.
“What news from the accident site, over?” Dr. Fredricks' assistant, Marsha, asked him.
“Just got word,” Barry said affably. “The ones who were on the trailing sled are toast. The rest are on the way back.”
Marsha paused before answering. There were some very unhappy officials where she sat, and they found nothing humorous in any of this.
“What is the ETA at camp?” she asked in a professional sounding voice.
“Couple hours, I guess. Not sure.”
“The Captain,” she replied pointedly, “is very concerned and I am coordinating between him and the NSF reps. Is there anything you would like me to tell him?” she asked sweetly.
“Negative,” was the only reply.
“Good,” Marsha said. “I have information for Dr. Atkinson. Is he there?”
“Negative there also,” Barry said. “Want me to copy?” 
She sighed off the air. “Okay. The Captain orders that there be limited contact with the guests. He will be on the next flight in the morning. A different Russian expedition will detour to your location to pick up the survivors. Until then, keep the different groups apart whenever possible. Copy?”
“That’s affirm. Thanks, Chalet.”
“Okay, Beardmore,” Marsha said. “Check in when they arrive.”
“Wilco,” Barry said positively. “Out.”

Did I miss something?” Dr. Atkinson asked. He came through the door just as Barry signed off.
“Not really. The Chalet wants to know what’s going on. Said something about keeping groups separate, if possible.”
“Keep groups separate? What does that mean?” Dr. Atkinson asked.
“Beats me,” Barry said, looking blankly at the chief scientist. “I thought you’d know.”
“I would think they had more on their plate than housing arrangements. Anyway, I suppose we’ll just have to sort it out. What else?”
“Captain's coming out in the morning.”
“Really?” Dr. Atkinson asked. “ Oh well. I suppose he has to show a presence as part of the job.”
“Go where the action is,” the weatherman agreed. “You got it.”
“All right then. Keep me posted.” 
“That’s what I’m here for. That and the weather.”
“Good work if you can find it, huh?” The chief scientist asked, feeling somewhat fraternal in the awareness that all members of the crew shared the dangers equally.
“The very best, Doc. The very best.”

***

The hatch of the ornament opened and Crystal, her dreadlocks frozen like candy canes, came breathlessly into the compartment. She looked at the group leader, Frodo, with eyes wide, catching her breath. He continued to look at the letter he had just written, and which he intended to post with a flight that a Kiwi was taking the next day. He let her stand for a moment until he found it convenient to look up.
“What are you all worked up about?” he asked her. He had grown into his role as leader, and as such, felt it important to remain somewhat aloof. It was especially important with this one, since she had by then been sharing his bunk for several weeks. He was determined not to allow his personal life to interfere with the mission.
“This!” was all Crystal said, holding out the copy of Der Spiegel that she had lifted from the Kiwi mess. On the cover was the picture of the Americans' drunken orgy with the South American liquor. The story referenced how the Green Organization had broken the story from the ice, and how the tabloid was able to gain independent confirmation on the ground. He was ecstatic.
“We got them!” he shouted, throwing his arms around her. She was as excited as he was about the story, and his happiness warmed her heart.
“Should I go get the others?” she asked.
“Yes. No. Wait,” he said, still holding her in his embrace. “It can wait a few minutes. Let’s digest the information a little bit before we decide what to do.”
She looked up at him knowingly. “Yeah, I think you might be right.”
“That’s my job, you know, to be right,” he said. It was only a short step to the bunk that was built into the wall of the ornament. They were nearly there when the hatch opened again, and Crystal jumped out of his grasp with a squeak. 
“What?” Frodo demanded of Thumper, who was the first one through. Frodo was not pleased with the interruption, though the orb was as much their shelter as his. His expression changed when he noticed the stranger behind them. The man was perhaps forty years old with deep crows-feet around his eyes; a bushy mustache marked his face. The flight jacket carried insignias that showed him to be a charter pilot of the type of craft that did much of the short-hop work that the big C-130’s could not. Frodo knew instinctively that this man was not someone he could intimidate, and he naturally slipped into the persona he reserved for dealing with one he considered an equal.
The pilot did not consider the leader of the environmentalists an equal. He was a pilot, and that was all that was necessary to say about that. He was, however, sympathetic to the cause and found the other female member of their expedition, Sierra, to be somewhat attractive. This made him pliable. The pilot had heard the environmentalist leader pontificate in the Kiwi bar and thought he was an idiot, though that did not make the young lady any less desirable.
There had been many discussions around the ornament in which the members of the team bemoaned the fact that they were limited to an area of operations that could only include the Ross Ice Shelf, and they were certain that their presence was required in many places that they could not reach. When Sierra, who, as well as Crystal was in her mid-twenties and was in fact quite pretty, began to perceive the interest of the pilot, she sensed an opportunity that required exploration. While discussing many things over the Irish whiskey, she hit the jackpot. He was even kind of cute.
“This is Max,” she announced to the others. “He has to fly a nearly empty flight to the top of the Beardmore to drop a part for some group out there. He can take us with him and make a stop at the camp.”
“Just a matter of fuel, is all,” Max said with a smile and a wink aimed at Sierra, his Australian accent sounding enchanting to her. Frodo nearly lost his breath at the unprecedented opportunity.
“Look at this!” he said to the two of them, handing over the paper. He was not quite as ignorant about some things as people perceived him to be. He was aware that, in his line of work, people were fueled by indignation and he was actually very good at inspiring it. Telling people why they should be offended was not motivating. Presenting the right information in the right way and letting them come to the proper conclusion on their own worked much better. In the tiny shelter on the ice, it was a foregone conclusion how they would react.
“I’ll be damned!” the Aussie said. “Bloody bastards really mean to do it. Look right pleased with their selves, too. Wallowing in it almost, pigs in mud.”
“That’s exactly what they do, everywhere,” Frodo agreed. “Unless we stop them.”
“Certainly give it a try,” the pilot said. He was aware that his personal indignation brought him closer to Sierra, and he now felt free to give her a little squeeze, which she did not refuse.
Thumper, the fourth member of the group, the source of whose nickname remained uncertain, sat sullenly in the corner. He watched with disgust the flagrant flaunting of Sierra’s charms toward the stranger. He wouldn’t have objected to using her sexuality as a tool toward obtaining an end; it was her obvious enjoyment of her role that bothered him. They were all just so many adventurers he thought, on a romantic journey. Not truly committed to the cause, like he was. He had already made plans for his departure from this silly group, but now decided to put it off for a while. Things might just be starting to look up.
“When are you planning on going?” Frodo asked.
“Tomorrow morning, early.”
“We’ll be there.”

***

The caravan of Alpines and Nansen sleds was making its way over the rolling waves of sustrugi toward the safety, warmth, and comfort of the camp. The injured Russian driver was made comfortable inside a sleeping bag from the survival kit and was secured onto one of the sleds. The others either rode on the snowmobiles or sat on a sledge. Gregore sat behind Daniels. He had ascertained that Daniels was the head of the group and he had contrived to arrange that he sit on the same sled. Although he did not have any means of communicating, he wanted it to be clear what his position was.
Jake let the Lieutenant do the driving on the way back. Susan sat behind Richards, arms around his waist. Jake chose the last sled in line, and made himself a place to recline, pulling a tarp over him to block the wind. Sokolov sat opposite him, facing backwards.
“Thank you for your efforts,” the Russian said. “It is terrible to lose one's companions in this way.”
“Not much choice, really,” Jake said, yawning. “You have to try, if you can.”
“Yes, one must try,” Sokolov said, trying not to inflect the irony that he felt. He had not previously had the time to reflect upon how his own selfish actions had led to the death of his innocent associates. His sensitive mind was appalled at the terrible responsibility that he bore for the tragedy. It had never occurred to him that his plan could go so badly wrong. A part of him wanted to confess that the whole thing was his doing, but that thought frightened him more than the act itself. He had no choice but to continue.
Daniels had communicated to the Russians that one of their transport vehicles would be at the camp the next morning to collect them. While this was not a situation that Sokolov had anticipated, it was not a serious setback, either. He would just have to act quickly. It occurred to him that this part of his scheme had not been well thought out; though of course there was no way it could have been. He would have to improvise. His problem was merely that he had taken it as given that once he was among the Americans, all he would have to do is announce his intention to stay, and that would be that. He knew now that this was a vastly simplistic perspective.
“Vostok, huh?” Jake asked.
“Yes, we come from Vostok.”
“Trevor holding up?”
Sokolov managed a smile. “At times, when he forgets where he is.”
“I thought so. The letters I posted for him kinda said it all.”
“Ah,” Sokolov said. “You are the one he spoke with on the radio. He was very grateful for your assistance.”
“Yeah,” Jake commented. “Good guy, but he probably should have stayed home.”
Sokolov didn’t know how he could respond to that so he kept silent while he watched the passing scenery. The mountains rose above the neve they travelled over. Closer by were nunataks, the tips of mountains that are covered in ice and protrude through the surface, like black pyramids rising above the plain. 
“How about you?” Jake asked.
The Russian hesitated before answering. Clearly a small-talk question, he could answer in kind, but that would not help his cause, and soon they would be to the Americans' camp.
“You know of where we are from, yes? You have heard things, maybe, about what life is like in Russia?”
“Oh yeah. We’ve heard.”
“And what have you heard?” Sokolov asked. If his government was correct, what the young mountaineer had heard was that it was a paradise, but he did not believe that to be the case. He knew that information must be getting out.
“That it pretty much sucks,” Jake said.
Sokolov wasn’t familiar with the common usage of the term, but there was no doubting what the context was in this form.
“Do you think one would like to live under such circumstances?”
“Not hardly.”
“And you would be correct in that opinion,” Sokolov confirmed. He would have preferred to explain his case to someone of more authority, but by the time he would be able to do that, it could be too late. This young man had risked his life in an attempt to rescue Sokolov's companions, and he had come to the conclusion that Jake was someone he could trust to do his best to help in any circumstance. He made the snap decision to place his destiny into Jake's capable hands.

Chapter 16
The Sky Above Beardmore Camp

“Look at that,” the copilot said.
“Look at what?” the Captain asked. The C-130 Hercules had descended from its cruising altitude, having passed over Beardmore South Camp and continuing due south over the plateau. The Captain wanted to get a look at where the accident had happened. They went south for fifty miles, then took a wide turn and passed over the crevasse field before starting the final descent into the camp. He allowed Dr. Fredrick onto the flight deck while he controlled the aircraft. He looked where his copilot pointed. 
“Ah.”
“What?” Dr. Fredrick asked over the intercom.
“There. Russian transport convoy.” The Captain descended lower towards the vehicles to get a better look.
“Looks like a miserable way to travel,” the copilot said.
“No shit,” the Captain said. “Give me my Herc any day.”
“Economical, at least,” Dr. Fredrick said. “If not somewhat laborious.”
The Captain shared a look with his copilot, unnoticed by Dr. Fredrick. She shook her head on cue, smirking. Scientists!
“How far are they from the camp and how long do you think it will take them to get there?” Dr. Fredrick asked.
“Ten, fifteen miles. Maybe an hour, two max.”
“Okay,” Dr. Fredrick said, nodding.
“I’m gonna bring her around for our approach.” To the copilot, he asked, “Current conditions on the ground?”
“Let’s get an update,” she said, then keyed the mic. “Beardmore, you copy?”
“That’s affirm, go ahead,” Barry said. He knew who was coming and was ready.
“Got your latest hourly?”
“Roger,” Barry said. “Observation as follows: Wind: Fourteen, from the northeast. Blowing snow. Sky: Alto-cumulus at fifteen thousand feet. Temp: One four, that’s fourteen. How copy?”
“Copy all, Beardmore. Thanks.”
“Not a problem,” Barry told them. He was always accommodating when the Captain was around. “Beardmore standing by.”
“What was the wind on the last report?” the Captain asked her.
“Zilch.”
He grunted. “Now we got fourteen out of the northeast and blowing snow.”
“And alto cumulous at fifteen thousand,” she added.
He thought for a moment while the aircraft continued to lower before saying over the intercom, “Let’s try and move things along down there, people.” He had no intention of becoming a permanent resident in that god-forsaken place. Airplanes were for flying and he wasn’t there because of the scenery. Even McMurdo, rat hole that it was, was far superior to this place; and that was where his squadron was berthed. If there was a storm brewing, then he wanted to get out, and quick. “Let’s make this short and sweet.”

***

Sokolov lay in the cot in the Jamesway. The breeze that had begun was keeping it from being unbearably hot inside, which it would have been were there no wind. The sun on the canvas burned through, however, and he could feel the radiant heat on whichever side was facing the wall. It was dark, as it always was, even when the lights were on. The dark green of the material walls absorbed any light that made any attempt to illuminate it, from within or without. The heat on the canvas enhanced the musty smell and it reminded him of being a boy and camping on holidays in the Steppes. That made him reflect upon what he used to think of, but was no longer, home for him. In the hollowness of his heart, there remained the memory of a family, all long gone and who were to be missed, though being back in the place where they once were would not bring them back to him. Still, there were moments of happiness he remembered and one could not entirely separate the place from the time.
He could hear the breathing of his two countrymen nearby. The driver was in pain and moaned in his sleep. Gregore snored under the influence of the narcotic that he had finally accepted. Shock, and the adrenaline of the accident, as well as the duty that was necessary to be carried out, had kept his suffering at bay, but when he finally gave in to it he surrendered completely and sank into the drug-induced stupor.
The scientist had to admit that he was impressed with the political officer's performance so far. He had long thought of him as being weak and venal, the embodiment of all that he despised about his soon-to-be former country. But the man had acted somewhat courageously, and with a commitment to duty that he hadn’t thought possible. When they arrived at the American base, Gregore, despite his injuries and being indebted for their rescue, told the Americans straight out that he knew of the plans to exploit the natural resources, shocking Russians and Americans alike. He registered his complaint professionally, then gave each of the scientists a bear hug and thanked them for saving what was left of his crew. Someone produced a bottle of vodka, frozen to the proper temperature, and Gregore saluted them in classic form before the drugs and fatigue overtook him.
In the relative quiet, he tried to calm his heart and to keep the fear from taking hold. Yet again he chastised himself for being simplistic in his expectations. He thought that his message had been delivered in as adroit a fashion as might be expected and that someone, perhaps the mountaineer from the crevasse, would have come for him, and that would be that. Now, as he listened to the pounding in his chest, he cataloged the innumerable reasons that they might give themselves for denying his request. And the fear continued to grow. Why had no one come? Would they, in the end, signal their willingness to free him from the destiny that otherwise would be his, or would they refuse him for reasons that he might never know? There was nothing he could do but wait and count the passing moments. It would not be long, he thought, but that was not how it seemed at the time.

***

The Twin Otter aircraft was flying up the Beardmore Glacier at little more than a thousand feet off the deck. It was high enough for the Aussie pilot to feel secure and low enough for his passengers to feel like they were flying through the seracs, standing blue towers of ice, themselves. In the right hand seat was Sierra, who had made the journey possible, to the chagrin of Frodo. He was clearly irked to be relegated to the seats behind, but he was on the plane, and that would have to do. The pilot smiled at Sierra as she looked in wonder at the endless morass of fractured ice below. 
“Okay,” he said, getting the groups' attention. “Here’s the drill. When we get on the ground, I want to make sure that we don’t get sucked into a tea party kind of thing with them where they can give us a bunch of bullshit. All we need is to document our being there in pictures that prove what they are up to. With that we can orchestrate worldwide condemnation of the whole thing. I’ll distract the ones who come out to see what’s going on; you guys hold up the signs and get the pictures of where the drilling is being done.”
“Should we try and wreck it, the drill?” Thumper asked. Both of the women were shacked-up, as was Frodo, while he had to share their camp in close proximity with them, alone. A little sabotage would go a long way toward mending his feelings. Frodo contemplated this.
“I don’t think so. Not that I wouldn’t like to, of course,” he added quickly. “In other operations, we can fight a guerrilla war and defeat them through attrition. Here, we have to work with them. When the world finally pressures them to stop the damage, they will need us to steer them in the right direction. If we go too far, then we will only make that harder.”
Thumper didn’t answer, but looked out the window expressionlessly. He had found himself a part of this group after working with the organization in other places where the niceties were a little less observed. Even then, he thought that the whole outfit was a bunch of dilettantes who enjoyed their status as pseudo-revolutionaries. Holding up signs. Please. He had come to the studied conclusion that trying to save the environment by taking pictures and holding up signs was about as effective to the cause of saving the planet as praying was by those who thought that they had ended the war in Vietnam by having prayer meetings.
No, he thought, prayers and wishes were things that were answered by those who took action. Hoping for things to occur was a waste of mental energy. He had been giving it a great deal of serious thought and was decided. When this mission was over, he was going to go somewhere, quietly, and begin to contact those whom he knew felt the same way. He, as well as they, knew that those who worked to destroy nature for profit could only be made to stop by removing their motivation, and that meant making war on the exploiters' ability to be profitable. Holding up signs. What an embarrassment. But soon…and very, very, quietly.

***

Barry, as always when there was the possibility of an incoming aircraft, was on hourly’s while the rest of the crew slept. Or attempted to sleep. Or pretended to sleep. He went outside to smoke; the civilians wouldn’t allow it inside, and kept the coffee pot primed. He didn’t really mind. The console was his station. His. He knew that he wasn’t commanding the bridge of a carrier, but this job, be it ever so humble, was his. 
The engine noise from high above was fading into the distance, but that only meant that soon it would turn and come back in to land. The Captain would come. The Russians would leave. Then life would go on as it always did. Everyone would go back to bed and after they were rested, they would all start to pontificate again to whomever would listen. Barry was proud of the fact that he never paid much attention to anything any of these geeks said. It only encouraged them, and he wanted no part of it.
The door opened, jerking him out of his reverie, and he realized that he had probably been half asleep himself. He turned to see who it was and groaned inwardly. The cook came in, getting ready to start breakfast. He braced himself, amazed at how in one instant he could be enjoying the satisfaction of one who had command over his own domain, and in the next, feel like the very life was being sucked out of his ears, one drop at a time.
“What’s the matter with you?” the cook demanded to know, seeing him wince.
“The aliens came and ate my brain when I wasn’t looking,” Barry told him.
“Not possible,” he was told.
“Why not?” Barry wanted to know, intrigued in spite of himself.
“You never had one.”
And so another day began.

The sound of the aircraft passing overhead woke the sleeping members of the expedition and, understanding what it meant, each got up quickly and made their way towards the hut. Lt. Richards was in Susan’s tent, but in his own sleeping bag. They started off the night together, but every move each of them made only made Susan’s multiple injuries that much worse. Her barely healed shoulder was sore from the long climb, her tailbone was badly bruised, if not broken; her jaw was throbbing from the ice screw exploding out of the wall of the crevasse… It was a shorter list to catalog what wasn’t hurt.
The Lieutenant got dressed first to try and avoid jostling her, and he went into the hut, where the full complement, minus Susan and Jake, were already assembled. The Russians were still in their bunks. The Doctors Atkinson, Daniels, and Adams were huddled over Barry at the radio as he communicated with the inbound aircraft. He joined them there.
“What’s the news?” he asked.
“Skipper’s on his way in,” Barry said, using the naval descriptor for his commander, since the Lieutenant was one of them.
“When?”
“Now.”
Jake came in while they were talking. He asked the same questions, and got the same answers.
“I suppose that will be it, then,” Dr. Atkinson said to the others. “The Russians will be here shortly, and then be on their way.”
Jake was filling his mug from the pot when he heard this.
“Minus one,” he said to them.
“Minus one what?” Dr. Atkinson asked.
“Russian,” Jake said, stirring the powdered milk into the coffee and biting into a biscuit.
“One Russian?” Dr. Atkinson said, not following what Jake was saying. “How, one Russian?”
“More like which, than how. Of course, how might be a pretty good question too,” Jake allowed.
“Can someone please explain to me what he is saying,” Dr. Atkinson pleaded in his most exasperated lecture-hall voice, and holding up his palms.
“Jake, what are you saying?” Lt. Richards inquired when none of the other Ph.D.’s could translate.
“The guy I sat with on the sled. Says he wants to stay.”
 “Stay?” Alistair Adams echoed. “Nobody stays, not if they can help it, anyway. What you mean is that he doesn’t wish to go with his people.”
Jake replied by pointing his index finger straight up, then flipping it down in Alistair’s direction.
“Good God,” Dr. Atkinson said, finally catching on. 
Susan had joined them by this point, gingerly settling into a seat and wincing from the pain.
“Which God?” she asked; not having heard what led the lead scientist to make that exclamation.
“You really need to let me take a look at that,” Jake said, his solicitousness betrayed by the bemused smirk.
“Over my dead body,” she told him once again.
“And this is something you were going to tell us when?” Dr. Atkinson shouted, ignoring their exchange.
Jake shrugged. “I forgot,” he explained.
“Did you say anything back to him?” Lt. Richards asked, understanding immediately the potential consequences.
“Sure. Mi Casa, Su Casa. Seems like a pretty good guy. Why not?”
“Why not what?” Susan asked, realizing there was more going on than she knew.
“Your guide has just granted asylum to a Russian defector!” Dr. Atkinson complained to her, as if she were responsible for him.
“Just wait a minute, Steven,” she said. Then turning around, she asked, “Jake?”
He shrugged again, and she responded by closing her eyes and groaning deeply.
“Good God,” she said, repeating Dr. Atkinson’s sentiment.
“Yes,” Dr. Atkinson agreed, nodding his head towards her. “Precisely.”
“We’re going to have to handle this carefully,” the Lieutenant said, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “They aren’t going to like our letting one of their people stay.”
Susan looked up sharply. “You can’t be seriously thinking of allowing this to happen, can you?”
The Lieutenant gazed at her with a questioning look for an instant before saying, “I don’t see how we can in good conscience refuse him. Can you?”
“I sure as damn well can,” she said. “This is the one place on the planet where cooperation trumps politics. This person can destroy 25 years of accumulated good will in an instant. We can’t risk that.”
Dr. Daniels agreed. “It would be a disaster. The harmony we have developed here with the Russians is a beacon of hope in an ever darkening world. This could end it all, right here.”
 “They must have known,” Susan said, thinking it through. “That’s why they were coming. They found out about this project and were coming to investigate. I knew that something like this would have to come of such an idiotic idea.”
“Susan,” Lt. Richards began to say, the pain in his expression clear, “be that as it may, this is really about just one person. One person, who is reaching out for help.”
“No, this is much, much bigger than that. Bigger than any one person.”
“I see,” Lt. Richards said, quietly though stiffly, looking at the other scientists, but speaking to Susan. “All the talk about science benefiting mankind and saving the planet becomes just so much chatter when it gets in the way of your agendas.”
“Agendas!” Susan shouted, jumping to her feet in spite of her bruised tail. “You’re going to lecture us about agendas? It’s the agenda that sent you here that is going to end up destroying the whole program!”
“You know how I feel about that,” Lt Richards said, “and how I feel about all of you.”
This time he spoke to all the others, but looked only at her. She started to speak, but turned her back and held one elbow in the palm of her hand, knuckles of the other on her chin.
The sound of aircraft engines interrupted the rapidly escalating debate to everyone’s relief, and the scientists except Susan went out to look. When she didn’t turn back around, a dejected looking Lieutenant followed them. Jake was stretched out in a chair with his feet on a table, staring at Susan.
“What?” she asked by way of interrogation.
“When was the last time I told you I loved you?” he asked.
“Aagghh!” she raged at the ceiling, her fists clenched and shaking all over. Then, she, too, exited the hut. Jake continued to sit, relaxed in the chair.
“No?” he said. Then, looking at Stan the cook, he said, “What about you?”
“Can’t remember,” Stan said, his folded elbows resting on the galley table. He pointed his thumb at Barry. “He did, though. Right before you came in.”
“Good,” Jake said, nodding approvingly. “That’s very good.”

Chapter 17
Beardmore Glacier Camp

“Keep her turning,” the Captain said to his copilot.
“Ay, Ay,” she said in reply. The C-130 was off of the ski-way, the engines turning as described, and ready to throttle up at a moment’s notice and depart.
Dr. Atkinson and Dr. Daniels met the plane, standing to windward to avoid being engulfed in the driving snow that was kicked up by the propellers. The Captain didn’t bother to greet them over the roar of the turbo-powered engines. He motioned them to follow and headed straight for the hut. Dr. Fredrick merely looked toward Atkinson, and followed the Captain. Lieutenant Richards waited for them at the door.
“All right,” the Captain said when the five of them were seated at a table. The crew circled around in order to better hear what was said. “Where are we?”
“The three are asleep, or at least in their bunks, in the Jamesway. The far end has been reserved for them, as you had requested,” Atkinson reported. 
The Captain looked up. “What do you mean, as I requested?”
“Why, the message that was passed to Barry, of course.” Dr. Atkinson turned toward the AG who was seated at the radio behind him.
The Captain placed his elbow on the table and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger with his eyes closed. He let out his breath slowly and tried to stop the spinning in his head.
“Keep the groups separate. Is that the message you are referring to?”
“Of course,” Atkinson said, perplexed.
“And that’s what you’ve done? Given them the end of the J-way?”
“It seemed like the best spot,” Atkinson said.
“And contact with them otherwise? Were the groups kept separate then?”
“I would say not. They needed medical attention. Food. A short meeting.”
“A meeting. Good. A meeting. And what did you discuss at this meeting?” 
“I was confronted in a very forthright and polite manner about what apparently has become common knowledge around the world, and I answered in kind,” the chief scientist said with as much dignity as he could garnish.
“They knew?” Dr. Fredrick asked gently, knowing the answer, already but wanting to hear how it was expressed. 
“Yes, they knew. Not too happy about it, as I am sure you might have expected, but their appreciation for our coming to their rescue tempered what might have been said otherwise.”
“Well thank goodness for that,” the Captain said, his sarcasm undisguised. “Anything else?”
Dr. Atkinson looked at Jake, who returned the look, but with no clear expression.
“There is one other thing.”

“They are coming,” the Russian driver told Sokolov and Gregore. “This sound I would know anywhere.” 
The sustrugi was transmitting the sound of the tracks through its structure, as was the wind carrying the rumbling of the engines. It was a distinctive sound, different that the lighter Sprites that the Americans used.
“Good, then,” Gregore said, sitting up stiffly. “We should get ready.”
Sokolov didn’t answer, but got to his feet and methodically began to put on his outer clothes. The others could not see the tenseness in how he moved; how the worry that had been growing in his mind made him lightheaded. He would not have been able to speak for the dryness in his throat. The night had passed with no one coming into the Jamesway except those who went to their own bunks. While he looked forward to the next few moments with a dread bordering on paralysis, he also knew that his destiny lay in their outcome and so was anxious to see what they would bring. He helped the driver to sit up and slipped the thermal jumpsuit legs over his feet.
“Thank you, my friend,” the driver said to him. A couple of weeks ago, the mechanic would not have addressed him so, but the circumstances, coupled with the proximity with which they had found themselves, gave him license to speak with familiarity.
“It is nothing,” the scientist managed to reply. “It gives me pleasure to see you well, or at least better.”
When they were all fully clothed and the few belongings they had salvaged were collected, they went out the door. The tractors had come to a stop between the hut and where the C-130 sat with propellers turning. Their eyes were slow to adjust to the light; two of them had been on sedatives and in the dark tent for several hours. 
Two track vehicles similar in design to the one that had taken them into the crevasse were coming to a stop near the hut. Sokolov looked toward the building from which people were pouring out; many more people than there were before. He saw the military uniforms of the flight crew and thought of going over to them and demanding an answer to his request when the sight of another aircraft caught his attention. It was making a steep and fast descent. It landed on the strip and taxied toward them as if in a hurry, but did not come to the main part of the camp. It stopped by a dome-shaped structure near what looked like the drilling equipment the French scientists used at Vostok to extract the ice cores. He wondered, hopefully, for a moment if its arrival had something to do with him. Surely his plea for asylum would not go ignored. That just could not be possible.

Having had a moment to calm herself, a skill which she had had ample opportunity to practice of late, Susan began to ponder. If the Russians were coming to catch them in the act of exploring for oil, that meant that her message had been delivered to the Green Organization, and that word had gotten out as she had intended. She began to see that this was exactly the event she needed to stop this project and use the righteous indignation that must surely be building throughout the world to push through her plan to close Antarctica to mineral exploitation for all time.
The question was how? Her timetable had been predicated on the idea that she would gather her data, present her findings in an orderly fashion through scientific publications, and enlisting those who saw the possibilities into a coalition. That was clearly no longer an option. Things would move quickly now, and if she didn’t find a way to get in front of it, it would all happen without her. No one would believe that all this was taking place without there being a certain knowledge that the caches existed, making the need for hard data no longer necessary.
But what to do? A moment ago, she perceived the arrival of this Russian defector as a threat to everything she held dear. Now, she wanted to shout his presence from the rooftops. How many had died in his coming there, four? And for what? Enough said. All she needed to do was get him out of there. But how? If the NSF, and the Navy even allowed it, it would have to seem like another accident, anything to keep it from becoming public knowledge. That could not happen.
She walked while she thought, and found herself between the hut and the drill site when she saw another airplane landing and heard the Russian transports coming into camp. The C-130 was making so much noise that she didn’t hear the approach of the small plane until it was on the ice. She wondered who it could be.

The Otter came to a stop and the engines powered down. Max, the Aussie pilot, quickly unbuckled himself and reached across the aisle to open the hatch and lower the steps. The group then disembarked as rapidly as they could and began to spread out, each to accomplish their part of the mission. The pilot climbed back in after the others departed, keeping the motor turning, just like the C-130 on the other side of the ski-way. A rapid exit seemed as if it might be in order.
Frodo and Crystal saw Susan running toward them, and went to intercept her while the other two went to stage their demonstration by the ice drill.
“What are you doing here?” Susan shouted to Frodo over the engine noise.
“We got your message. We hitched a ride up here to get more proof. What else is going on that we need to know about?” Frodo asked, direct to the point. He knew that he only had moments to carry out the raid before there would be trouble.
“A lot more that I don’t have time for,” Susan answered in the same way, for the same reason. “There’s something I need you to do. It’s important.”
“Tell me.”
“Give a guy a ride out of here, and get him off the continent ASAP. Can you do it?”
“What’s his deal?” Frodo asked. “Does it have to do with the oil research?”
“Sort of. He will bring a lot of publicity along with him. You’ll know what to do once you talk to him.”
“Okay, get him,” Frodo told her. Publicity was the currency in which his trade was carried out, and when someone dropped a pile of it in his lap, he wasn’t about to refuse it.
“I may need some help,” she said, looking around. “Here, come with me.”
Susan led them around the back of the hut to where she could look around the corner. The Russians were just leaving the Jamesway. Without being seen by anyone else, she waved her arms at Sokolov and motioned for him to come. 
Sokolov nodded to her, then tapped Gregore on the shoulder. 
“Before we leave,” he said, gesturing toward the outhouse, “I will join you by the vehicles.”
Gregore nodded back to him. The other Russians went to meet their countrymen; Sokolov turned and walked to Susan and Frodo.
“Go with him,” Susan said without preamble when the Russian arrived. “He has a plane.”
“Are you with the American government?” Sokolov asked him.
“Excuse me?” Frodo replied, looking at Susan, confused.
“Not exactly,” she answered for him. “But if you don’t go with him now, you’ll have to travel overland.”
She maneuvered her way around the real story to avoid having to explain to Frodo, who might get cold feet, and euphemistically described the consequences of not going now. Sokolov looked around him to see who was there, looking like he might be wavering himself.
“Hurry!” Susan exhorted them, and they were off.

Susan entered the hut in time to hear the Captain finish his tirade, the last of it being directed at Lieutenant Richards.
“So, where were you during all this?” he asked, sarcasm not affected. “Making cocoa? Tucking them into their bunks?”
Lieutenant Richards stood with his chin up, looking at the wall, clearly not intending to dignify the inquiry with a response. Jake sat next to the Captain and seemed to echo the question with his eyes and smile.
“It wasn’t his fault the guy asked the question,” Susan said, surprising all of them, though for different reasons. “None of us even knew until a little while ago.”
“Huh,” the Captain said, looking at the two of them in turn as if trying to discern their thoughts, or more pointedly, the nature of their alliance. “This is interesting. It would appear as if the two of you have developed a healthy working relationship after all.”
Jake nodded affirmatively with the Captain, as if he too were discovering this for the first time.
Susan's cheeks were rosy enough from having been out in the cold to avoid the detection of a blush. She would have flushed from anger anyway as she blustered back at him.
“Considering what I think of the insane reason for his being here, and what has come of it already, I guess you can say that.”
“That’s more like it,” the Captain said, finding the comfort of fulfilled expectations. “So, what’s your call? Do we snatch the Russian, or send him home?”
“Personally, I don’t think you have a choice,” she said disingenuously, since she knew at that moment that Sokolov was climbing into the Otter. “The only way to salvage what is left of international cooperation in Antarctica is to come out with a complete mea-culpa about your intentions. Taking one of their people isn’t going to make the Russians any happier about what has happened.”
 “Huh!” the Captain repeated. “Who’d-a-thunk it. I actually agree with you on something. Not about apologizing for what we’re doing, but this is not the time and place for that type of confrontation.”
“You can’t send him back,” Lt. Richards said. “Even if it is the expedient thing to do, it goes against everything we stand for.”
“I don’t know what you stand for, but I stand for completing my mission as an officer in the United States Navy. And this does nothing but complicate the mission.”
At that moment, Susan’s mission was to waste as much time as possible, and she did so in the best way she knew how: debate.
“Of course, the Lieutenant makes a good point,” she said, smiling at him and feeling sorry for his predicament. She had come to disassociate him from his job, loving him in spite of it, choosing to believe that he had been trapped into his part as much as she had hers. “In the question of ideals verses interests, the more noble position would be to err on the side of ideals.”
“Yes, well, as noble as that sentiment may be, other people get to decide what my ideals are at this time,” the Captain told her. “My job is to look after the nations interests.”
Susan had spoken counter-intuitively to her own feelings, since she tended to be one who perceived interests and ideals as the same thing. For example, it was in the interest of humanity to not destroy the environment. Her ideal was to defend it at any cost necessary. The type of conflict that Lt. Richards was describing was to her a naïve, almost childlike view of good and evil. It was endearing in its way, but not something to be truly taken seriously.
“I can see that, but…” she started to say. The Captain cut her off.
“You can see what you want to. Right now I’m going to bid farewell to our new friends.”
The Captain led the way through the door. He pulled the fur-lined hood of his green nylon parka over his head and adjusted his sunglasses. He saw the Russian transports with people standing around them. Then he saw the Otter, which was unexpected, and then he saw the Green Organization by the drilling rig.
“Oh, for the love of frickin’ Pete,” he said. “Not now!”
He strode off in their direction with the step of a man who seemed happy to have found a legitimate target on which to release his accumulated anger.

Thumper held the sign while Sierra took the pictures. They changed positions, Sierra posing, smiling broadly, and Thumper taking the shots, making sure that all the artistic bases were covered. 
“Okay,” she said, “let’s get out of here.” He ignored her and opened the large backpack that he had brought along. He took out a razor knife and a sledgehammer.
“What are you doing?” she asked him, surprised by the unscripted action that he had begun.
“Watch,” he replied.
With the knife he slashed through the canvas wall of the tent that covered the equipment that operated the drill. Tearing a larger swath through the material after making the original cut, he went inside and surveyed the layout. There was a large spool of braided wire that held the bit, which was operated by a sophisticated looking winch, which was controlled from a panel of switches and dials. This was what he was looking for. He took the hammer and began to smash everything that he could. It would not take much to make the machine inoperable.
Sierra watched in fascination and horror. She could see what he was doing, but the impact of it was outside her immediate understanding. It seemed like some sort of hallucination, like hearing a dog sing "The Ode to Joy." It was only a matter of seconds before his work was done.
“Now we can go,” he told her, surveying the damage calmly, professionally.
“Jesus…” she said, spellbound by the sight.
“…had nothing to do with it,” he finished for her while he put the pack back on. “He’s completely off the hook, as are you. I’m sure that’s what you will all want to hear. We wouldn’t want anyone to have to take responsibility for doing anything now, would we? Not when everyone can just keep on talking forever. Don’t worry about it.” 
She looked at him like he was a stranger. All the time back at the ornament, he had kept quiet, mostly; watching her, and the others. It had been as if he made up a part of the audience for whom she performed the drama of her life.
She followed him out of the tent, silently, knowing that things were seriously changed, and that there would be more changes to come.

“Hey, you, stop!” the Captain yelled, loud enough to be heard over the engine noise. He started to run toward the drill site, where the retreating saboteurs were leaving. They heard him, and, in turn, started running back to the Otter. They made it there first and Sierra climbed on board. Thumper swung the sledgehammer at the Captain, not earnestly trying to make contact, but with enough sincerity to convey the impression that he would not brook interference.
The Captain backed off a pace and looked through the hatch. He saw Frodo inside, and yelled to him.
“Now you’ve done it. This isn’t a game anymore, you goofy bastard. You don’t get to pull something like this and then have us just roll over. You’re done!” he yelled.
Frodo hadn’t seen what had taken place at the drill site, and thought that the Captain must be talking about Sokolov, who was sitting next to him, and who must know something very damaging to the Americans to get that kind of reaction.
“You’re the ones who are finished!” he yelled back. “Everyone is going to know what we’ve done here to stop you. You won’t be drilling here anymore!”
“Oh yeah? Well, when I get my hands on you, you’re going find yourself headed stateside in chains. An attack on American property here is an attack on the nation. You’ve just declared war, you idiot!”
Max slammed the hatch shut before any more pleasantries could be exchanged, and immediately gunned the engines, sending them hurling toward the ski-way.
“What did he mean by that?” Frodo asked Sokolov. “Attack?”
“I do not know,” Sokolov answered, bewildered. 
“So, what do you know about the drilling?”
“I do not know anything. What drilling do you speak of?”
“The oil drilling, of course. Why else would we be here?” Frodo asked, exasperated.
“For me, I thought,” Sokolov said, more confused than before.
Frodo looked at the Russian as if he were an imbecile, before starting to sense a pit forming in his stomach.
“Wait a minute,” he said, affecting calmness. “Who, exactly are you, and what exactly are you doing here?”
“I am Vladimir Sokolov. I am a Russian physicist from Vostok who has requested asylum in America. You did not know this?” Sokolov asked in disbelief.
Frodo stared at him with a blank expression, until he grasped what had happened.
“I’m going to kill her,” he said softly. “I am going to find her again someday, and then I’m going to kill her.”
“That still doesn’t explain what he meant by saying we attacked them,” Crystal said.
“Ask him,” Sierra said, pointing with her chin toward Thumper, who said nothing.
“Looks like he’s not talking,” Frodo said. “Maybe you can fill us in.”
There was a brittle quality that came to his voice when he felt like he was losing control of a situation, which bore a semblance to bitter sarcasm. It was nearly breaking at this point.
“You ask him - you’re supposed to be in charge here,” she told him as she looked away, mistaking his tone for reprobation of herself.
“I’m sorry,” Frodo said, managing a forced smile which contrasted with his wild eyes, which still carried a hunted look.
“We just got done with the pictures,” Sierra said, relenting, “and he pulls out this hammer and smashes the place up. Cut it up, too.”
Frodo snorted through his nose while arching his eyebrows over closed eyes; then he muttered something to himself.
“Didn’t we discuss this before we landed?” he asked, trying to act the part of leader again.
“Oh, yeah, we discussed it all right,” the saboteur said, finally deciding to speak. “You can keep on discussing all you want, too. I’m done discussing.”
Frodo started to speak, but stopped. No one else spoke either, until Sokolov looked at each of them, still amazed as if transported into another reality.
“May I ask you the same question that you have just posed to me? Who are you, and if you did not come for me, what was the meaning of your being there?”
“We’re people who discuss things,” Thumper said. “We fly around and have discussions. It’s very effective. Everybody has a wonderful time, too.”
“Would you shut up?” Frodo yelled at him.
“Of course,” Thumper continued, “there are those times when no one wants to discuss anything. They can be very interesting as well.”
Sokolov murmured a curse in Russian, which no one on board understood, but the gist of it wasn’t hard to recon. 
“We are environmental activists,” Frodo said, proudly. “We are here to expose the Americans' attempt to exploit the continent for mineral extraction.”
“Oil,” Sierra explained.
“I am aware of what are minerals,” Sokolov replied to her, the fear from his escape having dissipated and his consternation turning into anger. “What I am not aware of is how I came to be with you, and what you intend to do with me now.”
“Do?” Frodo said, his attention now fully engaged after nearly lapsing into distraction. “I’m not doing anything with you. First, that witch, Susan, cons me into thinking you have something to do with the oil drilling, and now this idiot (he pointed at Thumper, who smiled contentedly) has the whole navy coming down on me.”
“I assume that you are not going to drop me off on the next street corner,” Sokolov said, giving in to a sarcasm that flowed from the broken dam of his reserve. “Where are you going?”
“McMurdo,” Frodo said sheepishly. “Unless there’s somewhere else we can go?”
He addressed the question to Max, who seethed behind the controls. He shook his head in the negative. This wasn’t what he had bargained for either.
“The American base of operations. Excellent,” Sokolov said. “Maybe you can just drop me off, then.”
“They’ll want to send you back,” Frodo said, starting to see it. “That’s why Susan wanted you to come with us. They have enough problems with us catching on to what they’re doing without the Russians coming down on them. They’ll send you back and act like it never happened. That’s what she meant by publicity. We have to get you out so you can tell the whole story.”
“I don’t want to tell stories. I don’t know of what story you want me to tell. I want to go to America and continue with research at university.”
“Sure, sure,” Frodo said, now on more familiar footing. “And they are going to want you, badly. Especially after you’ve helped to save Antarctica from ruin, scientific cooperation from extinction, maybe even stopped a war. You’re the only one who can do it. It was providence that brought us together.”
Frodo didn’t much believe in providential occurrences, but he knew how strongly others did. And weird shit did happen, after all.
“You believe they would send me back?” Sokolov asked, visibly shaken by this suggestion. While his experience in the Soviet Union had taught him to be wary of all, his isolation also left him woefully naïve about the motivations of foreigners, and unequipped to navigate his way through the strange maze into which he had been dropped.
“I do. But we have friends, millions of them, who support the environment and a peaceful world. We’ll get you out, and into friendly hands.”
Frodo laid it on pretty thick, but he saw his words take effect. Even that arrogant pilot who would have killed him with a glance a moment ago was softening around the eyes. He pressed his advantage.
“We came here today to fight the good fight, and while things didn’t go completely according to plan (he shot a bitter look at the rogue saboteur), I believe that fortune has offered us an opportunity to do some real good. I think I have an idea of how we can proceed.”
He had no idea how he was going to get out of this, but he saw how the others seemed to regain their trust in his leadership and commitment to the cause. He knew he would come up with something. He always did.

Chapter 18
Beardmore Glacier Camp

It didn’t take the Captain long to come to the conclusion that the Russian did not find his way onto the Aussie aircraft by accident, nor did it require a massive leap of inspiration to figure out how. He’d take care of her in a minute. Meanwhile, he had some other Russians to deal with, and he knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. How was he to explain that a group of tree-hugging fruitcakes had kidnapped a visiting scientist right out from under his nose? The short answer was that it didn’t really matter. They wouldn’t believe a word of it anyway. Now he had to manage the consequences of having taken the refugee himself, without actually getting anything out of it. Maybe none of them could speak English.
Gregore was gesturing with his good arm in the general direction of the retreating Otter as the Captain approached, and shouting in angry Russian. He had seen what had happened and assumed that the Captain was responsible.
“Okay, Nellie,” the Captain said, too pissed himself to care about anything the Russian had to say, even if he could have understood it. “Get your knickers out of their twist and put a cork in it.”
“Who is this Nellie, and what is knickers?” asked a Russian who came in on the vehicle to pick the others up.
“You speak English?” the Captain asked him.
“Does it sound like I speak English? Where have you taken our man? You have admitted that you are exploiting the Soviet Unions’ peaceful cooperation in an attempt to colonize the Antarctic with imperial intentions. Do you think that taking our people will help you? We demand that you bring him back immediately.”
Gregore had been shouting at the Caption through the entire exchange, but now paused to listen to his English speaking comrade, who translated what was said for him. When the translation was finished, he turned back towards the Captain and resumed shouting and shaking his fist at him.
“Can you do something about this?” the Captain asked the translator, holding his arms out helplessly, with palms facing Gregore. “So we can talk?”
There was another exchange in Russian, but this time when it ended Gregore lifted his head proudly, though silently, and glared at the Captain.
“Thank you,” he said appreciatively. “We didn’t take your guy.”
“You deny…”
“Yes, yes, I deny. Can you listen for a minute? A group of enviro-maniacs must have gotten hold of the same misinformation that you guys did, and showed up here the same time as you. And I just happen to be lucky enough to have one of them who works for me (he exaggerated) who convinced them that taking your man would somehow help them. They are terrorists; you can see what they did to our equipment,” the Captain said, pointing to the drill site.
The Russians had seen the attack on the drill, and were now discussing the situation in a more contemplative tone.
“What are you going to do to catch these terrorists?” the translator asked.
“Well, we haven’t gotten that far yet.” He turned back toward the hut and saw Dr. Fredricks walking his way. “But I think that in the same spirit of friendly cooperation that we have always shared in the Antarctic, we would invite whomever you would like to send to join us in McMurdo while we pursue our options.”
There was another discussion and Gregore listened to the translator explain. He nodded once, curtly, and it was decided. He and the translator would come to McMurdo. The others would proceed to Vostok.
“Good,” the Captain said, relieved to have gotten off so easily, and with the added bonus of there being no talk of defections. He was more than happy to pin the whole mess on the Greenies, with Susan Engen as their accomplice. Maybe he could solve a number of inconvenient problems all at the same time. And everyone said this post would be boring.

***

“Thank you,” Lieutenant Richards said to Susan when they were alone.
“Don’t mention it,” she said, slipping her arm through his. “I like sticking up for you. Will you be in trouble?”
“Me? No. Just stated an opinion, that’s all. I’m not really in the Captain's command anyway, since I’m only on loan for this project. I really do think we have to help this guy, even if it is right here, and right now. If you only stand for something when it’s convenient, then you’re not really standing for anything at all. You can see that, can’t you?” he asked her, looking into her eyes, hoping to see that she understood that the human element always superseded any other cause. Allowing helpless individuals to be sacrificed for what was supposed to be a higher purpose, by definition, disqualified that cause as being unworthy. Only a cause that stood for the individual was worth making the sacrifice for, he thought.
“Yeah,” she said, slipping her arm back out from his and looking at the ground. “There’s something we need to talk about - about that very thing. I don’t know if you’re going to be happy with me, or mad.”
“What do you mean?” he asked as the door flung open and the Captain came in, followed by the Russians and Dr. Fredricks.
“What she means is,” the Captain said, not really knowing what was being said, but taking the opportunity to jump in anyway, “that she has not only been complicit in the kidnapping of a foreign national, but she has also aided and abetted a terrorist group in carrying out an attack on American property.”
“What?” the Lieutenant asked incredulously.
“What?” Susan shouted, a full octave higher.
“You both heard me right the first time. Just ask these guys, if you don’t believe me.”
The Captain pointed towards the glaciologists who followed him in, who then settled into their seats, an abject melancholy hovering over them like a cloud, their season having been ruined.
“I don’t understand,” the Lieutenant said. “What is it that’s happened?”
“Go take a look,” the Captain said, seemingly not willing to spell it out. “Her friends left their calling card at the drill site. Told me they did it to stop your project here. Now where do you think they heard about that?”
The Lieutenant didn’t answer, since it was clear what the Captain meant. He wanted to come to Susan’s defense like she had to his, but he didn’t know if she had something to do with what was being described or not. After a moment's hesitation, however, he realized it didn’t matter and chose to speak anyway.
“These are serious accusations to make against anyone, especially a Principle Investigator in the NSF. Do you have any proof of what you say?”
“Do I need any?” the Captain asked, looking straight at Susan who had remained uncharacteristically silent until then.
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” she said in a voice that proclaimed that this was her story and she was sticking to it. “But I am going to go see what happened at the drill site.”
She walked out without any further conversation, the Lieutenant following her after staring down the Captain for an instant.
“What was it you were starting to say before?” he asked while they walked, his voice calm. She smiled at him, in recognition of the fact that he was staying calm for her sake.
“I was going to tell you that when I saw that the Green Organization had arrived, I put Sokolov with them and convinced them to take him with them.”
The Lt. stopped short in his tracks.
“You did what?” he rasped.
“It was a spur of the moment thing, and I admit that I wasn’t looking at it in exactly the same way as you were, but the same result will happen. He will get free. Are you mad at me?”
“No,” he said. “Not yet, anyway. I mean, I don’t think so. I still don’t really know what all’s happened.”
“Well, that makes two of us. Let’s go find out.”
They walked briskly into the strengthening wind, to the tattered tent that once shielded the drilling apparatus. The drifting snow was already reclaiming the destroyed machinery, making the wreck of it appear so much more complete.
“Oh, my God,” Susan said, her voice hushed, speaking only loud enough to be heard over the wind. “I can’t believe this. It isn’t possible.”
“I’m afraid it is,” he answered in the same tone. “I wouldn’t have believed it either, though. This isn’t a protest. This isn’t even a statement. This is just vandalism.”
“It’s just so, pointless. These guys didn’t have anything to do with the oil search. It’s just science. Why would they attack science?”
“And if they were part of it?” he asked her, knowing where her loyalties lay. “Would it have been an acceptable target? Is this how the debate is to play out from now on?”
“That’s not fair,” she said. “You know I would never condone this sort of thing, don’t you?”
“I’d hope not, but while we’re being fair, you have to admit that sometimes the things you say make it sound like it’s exactly what you would condone. Maybe not this, but in the right time and place, something like it. Someone just went a little further, this time.”
She didn’t answer, she just shook her head and walked through the tent, gazing at the destruction, her head down. Even her posture through the bulky clothes showed that she was mourning for what was lost. He didn’t say any more, knowing that the accusation had hit home. Any more would only be gratuitously piling on to what must surely be a growing sense of guilt that she had somehow brought this calamity upon bystanders who bore no standing in her quarrel with, him? He was the real target of the attack; that was plain to see. Or what he represented.
No, he would say no more. She would either see it herself, or she would not. He loved her, and if love could be defined in a word, the word in this case was hope. It was a hope that went beyond the need for reciprocity, though that was a beginning. If there was to be hope, it would require that she see past her own prejudices, her most deeply held beliefs, and see that he, too, believed in something, and that that thing also had merit. For he could not surrender his own beliefs in the hope of having her, as precious a thing as that might be.  
He watched her and waited, looking for any sign of what she was thinking; the hope strong, then fading; fading, then strong. But he waited, saying no more.

***

The Otter touched down at Williams Field, the landing strip on the permanent (or at least that’s what they thought at that point in history) ice shelf, where they could, for a while anyway, go unnoticed. The Navy was still using the strip on the annual ice, where wheeled aircraft could land. Willey Field, as it was known, was a ghost town, even by Antarctic standards. In the not-too-distant-future the annual ice would float away and Willey Field would once again become a bustling hub until air traffic ceased for the winter. At that moment the field was manned by a cook, an electronics tech, and an equipment operator, whose job it was to keep the base operational until it came back into service. 
“Out,” Max said, after taxiing the airplane to the base.
“What do you mean, ‘out’?” Frodo said.
“I mean you get your arse out of my plane, then I get the hell out of here. Now.”
“Out of here to where?” Frodo asked.
“Terra Nova, to start. See if I can B.S. some petrol out of the Italians, before they get wind. Then on to Oz. Take a nice long vacation, I recon. I’d have to be stonkered to stay here.”
“I see,” Frodo said, only seeing that Max was speaking Aussie to make his point more firmly. He wondered why they couldn’t all go on, but if Max had any intention of making that an option, he would have said so before showing them the door. There was nothing for it but to get out.
“All right,” he said to his crew. “Let’s go.”
“I’m staying,” Sierra said, looking at Max, who smiled and nodded.
“Me too!” Crystal said, looking at Max hopefully. Now he grinned broadly and nodded again.
“Me three?” Thumper asked, but without much enthusiasm. 
Max’s grin now turned surly.
“Out!” he repeated.
Frodo opened the hatch and led the way for Sokolov and Thumper. As soon as they were clear of the wing and out of the way of the propellers, Max throttled up and taxied toward the ski-way. The three of them stood watching for a moment, until each realized they wanted nothing more than to be rid of the others. Unfortunately, there was no immediately recognizable means of escape. By then the three navy crewmen who were manning the station had come to greet them.
“Hi! How are you? What’s going on? You want to come in?” they all said at once. “We have food. It’s not great, but there’s a lot of it. Who are you? Where you from?”
It was clear to the three newcomers from the way the three inhabitants were all talking at once and not waiting for answers to their questions, that they were so starved for conversation, apart from each others, that they wouldn’t let anyone else get a word in. 
Frodo spoke for all.
“We need to get to Scott Base as soon as possible. Do you have a snowmobile or something?”
He said Scott Base rather than McMurdo since that would be his best chance. The Kiwis were always supportive of the cause.
The three looked crestfallen.
“You don’t want to stay? I can make pizza,” the cook said enticingly.
“This is an emergency,” Frodo said, allowing a tone of desperation to slip into his voice. “It could be a matter of life and death.”
He didn’t feel obligated to add that the life and death that potentially hung in the balance was his, since it wasn’t their business anyway.
The three crewmen now began arguing about who got to make the drive back to Scott Base. They weren’t technically allowed to abandon their post except in an emergency, but they were granted the freedom to decide what constituted an emergency, and this seemed like it would do.  The electronics tech won, pulling rank, which the others resented. They piled into a pickup truck, Frodo getting in the front, Sokolov and Thumper outside on the bed.
The road to the sea-ice transition was kept plowed, the track marked with flags stuck into the rough ice. Just beyond the transition was Ross Island, and then only a few hundred meters to Scott Base. Frodo dodged the questions from the driver as best he could throughout the trip, re-examining his position. He had intended to take Sokolov to Scott Base and see if they could help to get him out, but after being abandoned by his crew, he decided that this round was over and that he best look to his own survival.
“Thanks, man. Do me a favor though, would you? Take these guys to McMurdo?” Frodo asked through the open door.
“Sure thing!” the tech said, glad to have a reason to keep going.
“Just one,” Thumper said. “I’m getting off too.”
“You mean you don’t want to go on to McMurdo?” Frodo asked him, without more sarcasm than was due. “Don’t bother coming here, I’ll turn you right over to them.”
“Don’t worry,” Thumper said, shouldering his pack. “I’m done tagging along behind you.”
“What are you going to do, then,” Frodo asked, softening a little. “Not an easy place to disappear into around here.”
“You don’t think so? Actually, there’s all kinds of ways a guy can get lost. I have a few tricks.”
“Well, good luck then.”
He held out his hand to Thumper, who only hesitated for an instant, then took his hand before heading back in the direction from where they just came, toward the camp of ornaments and the stash of supplies he had hidden for just such a contingency.

***

Frodo slipped around the back of the base, not wanting to be seen by any more people than was necessary, since he didn’t know how quickly information was traveling, and what form it would take. He skirted the open bay where heavy equipment was serviced, and slipped through the kennels to where Geoff, the dog handler, would be. Though their usefulness was nearly obsolete from an operational perspective, the huskies were kept as a revered link to the past, and trains of dog sleds traversing the ice was a glorious sight. 
Geoff held an injured paw in his hand, rubbing balm into a tender pad that had been scraped raw by the rough snow. The dog was howling loudly to the others who responded in kind, though not with any sort of real anxiety, it seemed more as if she was making the most of the special attention she was receiving, which had the effect of driving the others mad. Geoff tried to sooth her while he worked.
“Quit yer bitchin, would ya? You’d think I were cutting it off for all the bloody racket. Bloody hell, what a nuisance!”
After seeing that the coast was clear, Frodo walked into the dog hut.
“G’day Geoff,” he said in his best Kiwi accent.
Geoff nodded appreciatively.
“Not bad, not bad, though you sound more like a bloody Aukker on the piss.”
“I’m still working on it. Geoff, I need to disappear for a while, like permanently.”
“You wouldn’t be the first,” the Kiwi said, mindlessly.
“I’m serious. There’s been a misunderstanding, a big misunderstanding, and the Navy thinks I’ve gone terrorist on them.”
“Did you now?”
“No, I did not,” Frodo said indignantly. “It’s just that I’m not going to get a chance to explain myself and, well, it might be a little hard to explain. Is there any way out of here that wouldn’t attract attention?”
The Kiwi cocked his head once, indicating it was tough one.
“Not right now. All our people are coming and going on the Yank planes. A couple weeks and we’ll have some flights into Willey.”
“I need to go away for a couple of weeks then,” Frodo mused out loud.
“We’re going out with the dogs tonight. Might come with us, if you’ve a mind to.”
Frodo’s eyebrows arched and his lips pursed as he contemplated.
“Where are you going?”
“Follow the coast, check in on some penguin rookeries. Cape Roberts, Cape Day.  Terra Nova. A regular tour, I daresay.”
“How long?”
“Just about the right amount, I shouldn’t wonder. Are you in?”
Frodo smiled a mischievous grin.
“I am totally in.”

Chapter 19
McMurdo Station

The skis of the C-130 touched down on the sea ice landing strip and taxied gently to a stop. This was to be the last flight onto the annual sea ice before moving to Willey Field, the sea ice showing signs that it would soon be breaking up. It was not a long flight, but Susan had ample time for reflection, which she used to advantage. The Captain had ordered everyone, at least those associated with her, to break camp and load up after the ‘demonstration’ by the Green Organization, and the spiriting off of Sokolov. She, Jake, Connie, and Walt were joined by the Russians, and Lieutenant Richards. The Captain flew the plane, and his co-pilot, though she hadn’t witnessed the events, had enough sense upon seeing her boss to keep the chit-chat to a minimum. Dr. Atkinson and Director Fredricks came as a matter of course.
It was a somber ensemble that arrived in McMurdo, none more so than Susan, who had spent the time in trying to reconcile her ever resilient sense of the righteousness of her cause, with the damage done to the other object most precious and dear to her heart, scientific cooperation among nations. She concluded that it was her arrogance that was to blame for setting certain events in motion (though not the main one, she reminded herself), and that realization made her humble, an altogether unfamiliar sensation. 
Lt. Richards sat by her during the flight, and in the shuttle that took them to the Chalet, but largely kept quiet. When they arrived the Captain spoke to the Director for a moment, telling him that he was going to Mac Center to check in with his people, and to keep everyone together at the Chalet until he returned. The Director repeated the request (which bore the distinct impression of being an order), and they went in. The two senior scientists took the Russians into the Directors office, and Susan was left with her crew. It was not lost on her that the Captain left Lieutenant Richards with her instead of taking him along, and that made her feel even worse.
“Now what?” Walt asked.
Susan didn’t have an answer, but she knew what she expected to happen.
“We get done with whatever it is we’re doing here, and get the hell back to work.”
“All our samples are still in the field,” Connie said, seeing past the optimism. “How will we get them home?”
“We’re going back,” Susan said again, as if it were merely a matter of willing it hard enough.
“I’m hungry,” Jake said, with his usual ability to focus on the most pertinent issue.
The lieutenant actually smiled.
“Jake makes a good point. Life will go on, and we with it.”
“You think so?” Susan asked, not willing to be cajoled into joining the budding hope fest.
“Well, there’s one thing,” Lieutenant Richards pointed out. “Not much chance of anyone digging any oil wells in the near future.”
“Or it goes the other way,” she said, just to stave off any reason to feel better, “and they go full speed ahead, now that there isn’t anything to be gained by being circumspect.”
“Sure,” the Lieutenant said, knowing what she was doing. “That’s still a possibility.”
She admitted to herself that what he said was probably true, but that didn’t mean it was over. This was one battle, not the whole campaign. Her goal was to shut down the possibility that these kinds of battles need ever take place in the future, and that achievement was still a long way off. She got up and walked to the window, just because she was feeling restless, and looked out over the snow pocketed volcanic ash to see a truck coming to a stop. She gasped when she saw who got out.
“Holy crap!” she proclaimed before catching herself, and then silently, but urgently, waved Lieutenant Richards towards the window. She held a finger to her lips while nodding towards Director Fredricks closed door. They all came over to see Sokolov indicate questioningly towards the Chalet and to see the driver nodding positively. He was preparing to walk right in.
“Whoa,” Jake added to the conversation.
“Dude,” Walt said, affirming Jakes comment.
“No way,” Connie said, less as a commentary on the extraordinary turn of events than as a complaint that she was apparently in for more adventure, which she fervently hoped to be done with.
“He can’t come in here,” the Lieutenant said, stating the obvious, but in a voice that indicated he wasn’t ready to voice an alternative.
“Oh no,” Susan said, looking past the truck toward the Navy command building. The Captain had just closed the door behind him and stopped to zip up his coat before heading toward them.
“We have to do something,” the Lieutenant said, looking at Susan. “The Captain will see him any second.”
“I know,” Susan said. “But let me handle it. I’ve gotten you into enough trouble already. You need to stay here.”
“But…” Lieutenant Richards started to say.
“No ‘buts’, Susan told him. “Stay.”
She reached up and kissed his cheek.
Jake shook his head and grimaced. 
“Floozy.”
“Quit complaining, I’m taking you with me,” she said, grabbing him by the sleeve.
Sokolov was at the door by the time they came out. She put his arm through his and started to lead him away.
“Oh no,” he said, brought up short by the sight of her. “Not you again! No, you trick me once. No more.”
“It wasn’t a trick. You’re still in danger.”
“More danger from you, I am thinking. I will take chances here.”
She not only didn’t know how to respond, she didn’t have a plan. She looked at Jake for an idea. He accommodated.
“Just look,” he said. “Come over here. Crouch down.”
Jake pointed to the window where the two scientists and the Russians were discussing the situation. Sokolov pulled off his billowing fur hat to be less conspicuous, and peered through the glass as Jake had requested. His eyes went wide and he slipped down and out of sight.
“Do you see now?” Susan asked him.
“Yes. See now,” he replied, the active animation that had carried him through to this point evaporating, the effect of so many changes in fortune taking their toll. “So. It is finished.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jake said. “But it will be if you don’t move now.”
“Yes, yes, I go. But to where?”
“That’s a pretty good question,” Jake allowed him. “As far as anyone knows, you’re en-route to wherever Frodo and his gang are headed. Now that I think of it, why aren’t you?”
“They are more crazy than you people. Pilot let all off except girls. Then leave.”
“So, the others are here?” Susan asked.
“Two men. They are not liking each the other so much, I think. I do not know what happens with them, but I believe they are not together,” Sokolov said.
“Then no one knows any of you are here,” Susan said. “That’s good, I guess. We just need a place to hide you until we figure something out.”
“Got to be Scott Base,” Jake said. 
“I know, but if we disappear, they’ll come looking for us too,” Susan said.
“They will for you,” Jake said, “but no one cares about me. Tell them I went to get something to eat, which I am. It’s just going to be at Scott.”
“What will you do when you get there?” she asked.
“Go to the galley. Food’s better over there anyway.”
“With the Russian?” she clarified.
“Oh, I know a few people over there. People come and go all the time. He’ll be fine.”
She reached up and gave him a kiss on the cheek, just like she did for the Lieutenant.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Hmph,” he said. “You’re always getting me to do things for you with the promise of what’s to come, but it never does. I don’t know why I keep trying.”
“Because you know there never could be anyone but you, and that I just need time to figure that out.”
“Well, alright. I guess that’s true enough. Okay, we’re going.”
“Go already!” she said, seeing the Captain walking toward them. She slipped back into the Chalet just in time.

***

“Geoff,” Jake said, his head peeking out from around a corner.
“Mate!” Geoff enthusiastically said in reply, rising and setting aside the mahogany calabash pipe he pulled from lips encased in black grizzle. “Is there a body attached, or has just the head come to visit?”
“Momentarily concealed,” Jake said, stepping out from the shadowed corner. “Can’t be too careful, you know.”
“Too right, laddie. I thought you were still in the field, what brings you?”
“The prospect of a good meal, Geoff. The prospect of a good meal.”
“Probably be able to accommodate that,” Geoff said affably. The Kiwis, hospitable by nature, were especially so in the wild. There was an unspoken, but fully understood, commitment by all members of their expeditions to remain cheerful and pleasant, come whatever hardships may. Hardship always seemed to be less harsh when shared with the Kiwis, a consequence of their ever positive outlook.
“And something else,” Jake said at the height of their comradely exchange.
“Bugger it,” Geoff said with amused suspicion, reaching for the still smoldering pipe and sitting back down. “I should’ve known.”
“You should have, but I won’t hold it against you.”
“All right then, out with it.”
“It may be easier to show than tell. Allow me to demonstrate,” Jake said before calling to the half closed door. “You can come in now.”
Sokolov, who waited just outside for his cue, entered. He still wore his leather outer gear and fur hat. It was a dead giveaway that he was from Russia. No other country that worked in the Antarctic wore such garb. The Kiwi pulled a deep breath of the acrid Cavendish, his affable air now gone.
“G’day,” he said politely, but cautiously. “I expect you’re a little far from home.”
“Aren’t we all Geoff?” Jake mused sagely on the Russians behalf. “But we, we Geoff, we have a home to go to. This gentleman no longer does.”
“No home to go to, eh? I should have thought that would have been your story,” Geoff said to Jake, allowing a hint of irritation to hover over his reply. “Pray tell how I am to resolve that bit of inconvenience?”
“Nothing complicated,” Jake said. “Something simple, like say for example, passage out of here.”
“What do I look like, a bloody travel agent?” Geoff said, slamming down the pipe. “Blame me if I don’t start charging for services rendered. Now I know why I work with the dogs, they’re not so bleedin’ needy. Are there any more coming? Should I call the porters to come collect the baggage?”
“There’s more?” Jake asked, looking surprised that the even tempered dog handler was in such a huff.
“That Greenie, Frodo he styles himself. Came asking for the same thing. A regular exodus it’s starting to look like, if you ask me. What did he do?” Geoff asked, pointing the mouthpiece toward Sokolov. “Is he a terrorist too?”
“Not that I know of,” Jake said. Then, turning toward Sokolov, asked, “Are you a terrorist too?”
Sokolov sighed deeply, shaking his head in amazement. His expectation of life in the free world was painted with images of intellectual exchanges among deep thinking individuals who sought the perfection of the mind. Surely that was what freedom to think and express must lead to. But how to explain this? This was a world gone mad.
“No, I am not a terrorist.”
“There you go,” Jake said, turning back toward Geoff.
Jake continued to cajole Geoff, whose natural inclination was to be of service if he could, though he be much put out in the process, and he let himself be convinced in time. Sokolov left them to it and found his way to the crates where the dogs lived while in station. They made much of him, nuzzling the steel mesh of their enclosures, pawing and howling for his attention. He smiled and spoke to them in Russian, telling them they were good dogs, what beautiful coats they had, and how brave they must be to have such adventures as they did.
“I am not like you, I think,” he told them. 
No, he was not brave, he thought. Once the decision was made, the decision that he could not not act, he looked forward to what he had to do with dread. And at each step, when confronted with imminent failure, he lost his nerve. But to be fair to himself, he admitted that he got it back again when the next opportunity presented itself. So now he was to ride and run along with the dogs, to where and what, he knew not. But being with the dogs gave him courage, and he did not have the awful feeling in his stomach now. In fact, he began to feel something quite different, an anticipation to go and see and move. He would see where he was going when he arrived there. And that made him eager to go, to see where that might be.

Chapter 20
McMurdo Station

The Captain was preparing to bound up the steps to the Chalet where Susan and Lieutenant Richards were waiting to distract him when the boom of an exploding fuel drum sent them diving for the deck. The Captain was first to recover, and he looked up to see a mushroom cloud rising over the yard where the vehicles not in service were parked, and where the fuel for them was stored. It was up the hill from where they looked, and the Captain was sure that he saw a figure scurrying away that he recognized. It was Thumper.
“What the hell?” the Captain asked before answering himself, “They’re here, dammit.”
“Who’s here?” Susan asked.
“Your friends.”
“My friends? How do you figure that?” she asked. 
The Captain began to answer, but Lt. Richards interrupted.
“It looks like he’s got flares, and is using them as fuses. We need to get someone up there.”
Another drum went off, then another.
“We will,” the Captain agreed, but then added, “That means the Russian is here too. Good.”
They followed him into the Chalet, where the Captain made straight for the office where the scientists and the Russians waited for him. Connie looked at Susan with a frightened look on her face. Walt looked like a Border Collie, afraid he would be left behind while there was something fun to do. She shook her head at them, in a ‘not now’ manner, and followed the Captain into the office.
“Okay,” he said to the room at large. “They’re here. We’ll get them; you can get your guy (he said to the Russians), and we will get ours (he nodding menacingly towards Susan).”
“But what is that going on up the hill?” Director Fredricks asked.
“They’re picking up where they left off at Beardmore. I’m going to put a stop to that right now. Wait for me here.”

***

Thumper admired his creativity in arranging the drums in a circular fashion, so that with the burning flares, from a short way off, they looked like candles on a cake.
“Make a wish,” he said to himself. Just then, the first one exploded.
The shock wave knocked him from his feet. The second one singed his eyebrows off and left his parka blackened and smoldering. He crawled away on all fours like a crab, until he was behind an outcropping that shielded him from the growing conflagration.
“Whew-hoo!” he said, laughing. “That’s pretty fun.”
When he was collected enough to move, he went to where he had stashed his equipment, skis and ice-climbing gear, and began to make his escape. There were a series of crevasses nearby, up the ridge and along a snowfield, where he had made his camp. It was nearly hidden from view, the entrance into the crevasse, and a short way down was a ledge which was enlarged by his having carved out a half dome. There was a bottomless latrine for his convenience, and the tent fit perfectly into the enclosure. It was only a matter of fuel and supplies, other than that he figured he could survive until winter. He hadn’t thought any further than that.
It never occurred to him that he could be caught in his hideaway. He watched the bumbling of the Navy and the scientists in McMurdo, and assumed they were all completely inept compared to his skills in the wild. What he hadn’t taken into account was, although the Navy appeared like any other ineffective government agency in their capacity of supporting the program, they were in fact still the Navy, and they were exceptionally well equipped to deal with the type of problem he had just thrown at them. Before he could slip down the rope to his camp he was surrounded by snowmobiles with a Coast Guard helicopter hovering overhead.
The Antarctic Treaty forbade weapons on the continent, and there were no implements to bind a prisoner with either. No one had ever been taken prisoner before. Since Thumper fought with his would-be captors, and gave the impression that he had no intention of surrendering in that fight, he was subdued by wrapping his ankles and wrists in duct tape. When he continued his resistance by hurling insults from his only remaining weapon, they taped over his mouth as well. It was in this condition that he was delivered to the Chalet.

“Where are they?” The Captain asked beginning his interrogation.
“Where’s who?” Thumper asked, smiling.
“I’ll tell you what,” the Captain said, smiling too. “Let’s dispense with the bullshit. We both know who, and what you are, and what’s going to happen to you now. I’d think you’d just love to have the biggest soapbox on the planet to scream your story from. I don’t give a crap about that. Go ahead. But your story can only grow bigger by giving us the Russian. There’s no way to get him out of here, you know that. Let him go before he gets himself killed.”
Thumper thought quickly. He was more than a little miffed that all the Captain wanted to talk about was Sokolov. He thought that he’d earned a pretty big spot on the enemies shit-list, only to find that he was being treated like a common nuisance, and one who was supposed to turn stool pigeon, no less. Now wasn’t that just perfect. Not only did he find himself in league with a bunch of morons, now the enemy couldn’t even be bothered to know that he represented a vital threat to their earth killing policies. That’s just great.
He looked at the Captain and thought it over. If his so-called allies didn’t really care, and the target of his hatred didn’t really care, why the hell should he? What happened to Frodo was of no consequence to him, and seeing the girls finding themselves ensnared along with that airhead pilot could only be a bonus. And he really didn’t have any idea what happened to Sokolov. While he had no reason to care one way or the other about Sokolov, he had nothing against him either, which was a lot more than he could say for everyone else of his Antarctic acquaintance. He knew one thing, though. Sokolov wasn’t going to Terra Nova, or he would already be there, along with the Aussie and the girls. ‘Why not’, he wondered. Why not cut the guy some slack?
“They’re at Terra Nova,” he confessed.
“Terra Nova?” the Captain replied. “What the hell kind of crap is that? You’re here, they’re all here.”
“I’m the only one here. The only reason they came was to dump me. I guess my sparkling personality put them off. Bastards threw me out.”
“Well, isn’t that just a frickin’ shame. Terra Nova, huh? For?”
“Gas, then out. May already be out. Wouldn’t that just be a frickin’ shame?”
Thumper watched the Captain pondering his words, and wondered if he believed a one of them. Probably not. But then, Thumper wondered, since no one took the effort to care about anything else anymore, he probably shouldn’t lose too much sleep about this either.

***

“He says Terra Nova,” The Captain told Director Fredricks and Dr. Atkinson. “They dropped him off, or kicked him off, then went there.”
“Do you believe him?” Director Fredricks asked.
“Not for a minute. Do you?”
The others pondered the question in silence.
“I didn’t think so.”
“So, what is there to be done now?” Dr. Atkinson questioned. “What do we tell the Russians?”
“Nothing yet. Contact Washington and see what they think, then decide how much to share,” the Captain said with an air of command, suggesting that he was in his element and as a naval officer was trained for this sort of thing. Dr. Fredricks, though the senior NSF person on station, and therefore the titular head of all that transpired within the American sphere, deferred to the Captains proposal with a nod. 
“Very well. I will draft the message right now.”

***

Chuck Stoddard walked briskly down the corridor of the building that housed the NSF Polar Sciences department in Washington DC. He was dressed in a tuxedo for a gala event that evening, celebrating the advancement in international cooperation that the sciences had helped to foster. There would be more diplomats than scientists at the event, most of whom considered science as merely the medium for the real important work, diplomacy. He felt like a prop, and was almost happy to have an excuse to bail.
“This is definitely going to be a banner day in the annals of science advancing diplomacy,” he said to himself sarcastically as he negotiated his way through the halls, and he wasn’t talking about the dinner party. He had just gotten word that a SIT-REP, a situation report, from the ice had landed on his desk.  
The tuxedo seemed a completely inappropriate uniform for the task at hand, and his worried brow stretched the already taught skin of his forehead further, making the receding gray hairline appear that much more distant. A younger man who indulged himself in self-importance may have been allowed a fantasy about a James Bond reference, but for Chuck Stoddard there was not much to fantasize about except an early retirement.
The Naval Attaché and the Undersecretary of State were already waiting for him in his office. The Secretary was dressed as he was; the naval officer smirked in amusement at their costume.
“Have you read it yet?” Stoddard asked.
“Yes,” the Undersecretary said, “but you go ahead. Then we’ll talk.”
“Alright.”
He read the report silently. It detailed how the rescue had been effected, the berthing of the Russians at the camp, the inexplicable attack by the Green Organization with whom the NSF had jousted for years, but never violently. Then he got to the part where Sokolov had been spirited off after asking for asylum.
“Are you kidding me?” he wondered out loud.
“Ah,” the Undersecretary said. “I see your getting to the good part. Continue.”
Stoddard looked over his glasses at the two for some kind of sign. There wasn’t one, so he carried on, this time reading aloud.
“We captured one of the terrorists who wishes for us to believe that they have taken the Russian to Terra Nova. We believe this to be misinformation to cover the others, and that they must have gone in the other direction, heading toward Chile. We have committed to the Russians that we would help to ‘rescue’ their kidnapped man. What are your instructions? Fredricks, he signs it.”
“We cannot offer asylum in that environment,” the Attaché said. “Certainly not today, of all days.”
“No,” the Undersecretary agreed. “But kidnapped? Why should they kidnap a Russian scientist?”
Chuck Stoddard shook his head.
“Not like them. They want publicity that embarrasses us. Why…” he wondered until he suddenly got it. “Oh.”
“They think bringing attention to him will focus attention on the project,” the Undersecretary agreed.
“Which it will,” the Attaché said. “But which is worse, bringing attention to something that is already out of the bag, or admitting to the Russians that one of their own has tried to defect?”
It was clear to the others that this was a purely rhetorical question.
“Let them keep him,” the Undersecretary said definitively. “He won’t be able to damage us any more that we already are. Let’s, however, make every appearance of cooperating with the Russians. Tell them they’ve gone to Terra Nova like the guys says. When we don’t catch him there, it’s no harm, no foul. We stay on good terms with our Soviet friends.”
“I absolutely concur,” the Attaché said, smiling slyly.
Chuck Stoddard shrugged his shoulders once and sighed.
“I’ll message them back right now,” he said, happy to be done with it.
“I’ll make sure they keep the bar open for you,” the Undersecretary said jovially. They all felt they had done a good nights work.

***

“Well what do you know about that?” the Captain said. “For once those Washington guys seem to be getting it right.”
“So we just tell them something we know perfectly well not to be true?” Dr. Atkinson asked haughtily. 
“Welcome to the world of diplomacy, Doctor. It may not be pretty, but that’s how it’s done.”
Dr. Atkinson looked accusingly at Dr. Fredricks, who averted his eyes, and made a gesture which was enough to say that being in a bureaucratic position in a scientific organization had its compromises, but which had to be allowed.
“Tell them to come in,” the Captain said to Marsha, Dr. Fredricks’ assistant. She left the room, only to return an instant later.
“Gentlemen,” the Captain said convivially to the wary looking Russians who entered the office. “We know where they are and where we can find them. They have gone to the Italian base of Terra Nova, which is not far from here.”
Gregore waited for the translation before answering.
“They say they have taken him to the Italians?” he asked the interpreter. 
“Yes, that is what they say.”
“Do they have any better idea of why?” he asked. The interpreter turned back toward the three Americans.
“Why would there be terrorists here, in Antarctica, and why would they chose to abduct a Soviet citizen? This puzzles us deeply. Have you no idea?” he asked.
The three Americans looked at each other for an instant, as if making silently queries amongst them as to how they should respond. Dr. Atkinson, clearly displeased with having been made a party to the subterfuge as an unwilling accomplice, spoke first, trying to absolve his part with at least one honest answer.
“It is our belief that these environmental activists (refusing to refer to them as terrorists as the others had, regardless of the destruction that had been wrought), seized upon the idea that they could bring attention to their cause by creating a sensation. The media frenzy that is sure to follow will suit their purposes in exposing the project (he appeared to choke while speaking the word) which you yourselves have come to examine. In this I heartily wish them success,” Dr. Atkinson said glaring at the Captain, and at Dr. Fredricks in defiance.
“I see,” the interpreter said with introspection. He then relayed what had been said to Gregore, who nodded silently before requesting that they be given a radio and a closed room so they could confer with their comrades at the Russian base of Mirnyy. It was granted.
“What do you think?” the interpreter asked when they were alone.
“It is the most outrageous bald faced lie I have ever heard,” Gregore said without emotion, but who crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair. “It is preposterous to suggest that these protestors would kidnap a Soviet scientist for any reason. No. This is not possible.”
“So you believe the Americans took him after all?”
“No. I do not believe that either.”
“Then what?” asked the interpreter.
“I believe that our comrade,” he emphasized the word ‘comrade’ with a deriding sneer, “merely took the opportunity to commit treason.”
“What!?” the interpreter said in disbelief. “Vladamir? Never!”
“You have not experienced a winter alone with the man. He was sent to us just so that he could not do something like this. I have seen it in him. I should have expected it.”
“Then what do we do?”
Gregore began to dial in the frequency that he knew was monitored at the Russian base of Mirnyy, but which was not on the Americans list of frequented channels.
“We do what we always do. Report, and wait for orders.”

Chapter 21
Moscow

Chuck Stoddard’s Russian counterpart was seated at his heavy wooden desk that was polished to a purity of craftsmanship that enabled him to see his reflection in its finish, and this filled him with satisfaction. The desk was a relic of imperial times and symbolized a power of a different sort in his age, but it was power none the less, which he had strived for and achieved. It was a personal tragedy of the first order that he was soon to be separated from it. That was his unbiased assessment.
The electronic epistle he held in his hand did little to relieve him on that score.
“What does it say?” his assistant asked.
The Director of the Russian science program blew out from between his lips.
“That, you must see for yourself.” He handed the Telex over the desk.
“This is outrageous!” the assistant said upon completion of scanning the message.
“Yes, there is much outrage to be had on all fronts. However, please be specific.”
This was a signal to the assistant that his superior wanted him to break the situation down to its essential factors and give him an assessment of each.
“First, Gregore believes that the man is attempting to defect by going with the environmentalists. This seems unlikely since he was already with the Americans. If he wanted to abandon his country, he could have done so right then.”
“Maybe not so easily,” the Russian director said. “It could be that he tried, and was refused. With what is happening between us and the Americans right now, I would think they have to refuse him. Or, proceed very craftily. But, continue.”
“Second,” the assistant went on after the interruption, “this environmental group seems to be taking on a new character. The making of noise that satisfied them before no longer appears to be enough. They could become dangerous to us too.”
“I think not,” the Director said with a dismissive gesture. “They only attack wealthy countries, because wealthy countries have choices, which we do not. Besides, they know that we will not play games with them the way the western countries do. They are not so foolish.”
The assistant appeared to equivocate on this point, as if to say that the recent actions of the Green Organization should be taken as proof that they are that foolish. But he did not argue the point.
“Third, the Americans say that they have gone to Terra Nova, and that they can be intercepted there. Gregore is quite clear that he believes this to be a deception, though he does not give an explanation as to why.”
“Interesting,” the Director mused. “Why, if they had no part in this, would they feel obligated to make a deception?”
“To embarrass us politically somehow?” the assistant suggested, choosing a perennially safe answer.
“No. There is something we are missing.”
Both the men sat quietly now, pondering the situation. 
“Well,” the assistant said after a moment went by. “Either we try to recover the traitor, or we do not. That seems to be the essential question.”
The Director nodded.
“If we retake him then we risk condemnation in the world at large, while now we appear to be the victim of an Imperialist plot to corner the global oil supply. If we do not try to get him back we send another message, a message that may inspire others. Both are bad choices.”
“Unless it is to rescue him from the terrorists. That would be the only humane thing to do,” the assistant offered craftily.
“I don’t see how that helps us, we still have the inevitable question of if he went of his own will and that is not a question I would like to hear answered in front on strangers.”
“So, we make sure we don’t actually rescue him. He is of very little value to us militarily; his work has been separated from actual programs years ago. We let him go, and make the appearance of attempting to rescue him at Terra Nova like they would have us believe.”
The Director smiled.
“I believe you will go far in this department, my young protégé.”
The assistant smiled with glee, as going far within the department, and surpassing his superior, was his only goal.
“So, we tell Gregore that his orders are to make a show of pursuing Sokolov to Terra Nova, as a concerned countryman would, to rescue him in his plight, but to be sure that no ‘rescue’ actually takes place. Correct?”
“That is correct.”
“I will prepare the message right now.”

***

“Terra Nova?” Susan asked Jake. “By dog sled?”
“It gets better,” Jake said, allowing the anticipation to grow.
“Well, what gets better?”
“Frodo’s with him,” Jake said, expecting this tidbit of intelligence to cause a sensation.
“The Green guy?” Lt. Richards asked.
“As green as they get,” Jake said triumphantly.
“When?” Susan asked.
“Already gone.”
While Jake continued to fill in the Lieutenant on the rest of his visit to Scott Base, listened to intently by Connie and Walt with whom they had been rejoined, Susan found a chair that was apart from the others and sat down to consider. Her field season had been diverted, her grant was dissipating with the loss of precious time, data was not being collected... The result of the data was to make a compelling argument for preserving the pristine places of the world, starting with the most pristine of all, the Antarctic. Now, it appeared as if that argument was moot. Politics, not preservation, would stymie the exploitation of the southern continent. It was a victory, but a weak one, since it would not be an encompassing shift in attitudes that would have a cascading effect on other future plans to despoil the resources of the Earth. 
And the victory was not hers, not really. She had a role in the exposing of the plot, but that was about it, and that, she had to admit, bothered her. It had never occurred to her that ambition played a part in her motivation. She contrasted herself with Lieutenant Richards. He performed his role in a plan that he had no love for, even seriously disagreed with; from pure disinterested loyalty. That was his job, and he did it. Before now she would have thought him a mindless automaton, a cog in the machine, but in getting to understand him better was able to see that he too had a higher motivation, a willingness to sacrifice something he considered precious, if something even greater can be saved in the future; and to do so without ambition.
That became an example for her, and she concluded that there was still yet a role for her to play that could result in something positive coming out of what, to her, had to be considered a failure. An act of compassion, which was not the sort of thing that came naturally to her, would make up for some of the loss.
“Steven said that Thumper told the Captain the Russian was already there, at Terra Nova. I wonder why he did that?” she questioned aloud.
“I’m not sure having reasons for things is that guys’ strong suit,” Jake cautioned with an air of authority on the subject.
“We’ll have to make them think he was lying, that they actually went to South America,” she continued.
“You think anyone is going to believe us?” the Lieutenant said, sounding somewhat plaintive. Until recently, everything he said was not only believed, but considered highly valuable.
“No, but actions speak louder than words. We’ll make a diversion.”
Walt nearly jumped out of his chair.
“I’ll do it!” he said. “What do you want to do? We could steal a plane. Do you want to steal a plane?”
“Oh my God,” Connie said, exasperated. “Thank Heaven you don’t know how to fly one.”
“You do, don’t you?” Walt asked the Lieutenant. “You’re in the Air Force, you work for NASA! You can do it.”
The Lieutenant saw Susan looking at him with a questioning look.
“Yes, I could,” he told them, guardedly, “but I am not going to be hijacking any aircraft.”
Walt looked dejected.
“Well,” Jake said in a tone of equanimity, “we don’t actually need to steal one. “
“We don’t?” Walt said, now fully engaged in whatever it was that was going on.
“No. What we need is for theirs to not fly for a couple of days.”
“That’s easy,” Walt said. “I’ll do it. Can I do it?”
“Walt, please,” Susan said, trying to settle her grad student down. “What then?”
“We go fishing for Red Herring. Send them on a goose chase. Make them believe that the Russian has gone somewhere onto the peninsula on his way to Chile so that they look there, while we intercept him on the way to Terra Nova with a plan to get him off the continent.”
“What kind of plan?” Susan insisted.
“Damn, woman,” Jake chastised her sternly. “Do I have to think of everything?”
“You don’t have one, do you?”
“Not yet,” Jake admitted.
“Well, I do. It seems pretty clear that whatever I do or say, everyone is going to believe the opposite. Is our gear still out on the cargo line?” Susan asked Jake.
“If we had fuel, we could leave right now.”
“Oh! Oh!” Walt said, holding his hand up as high as he could, as if he was in a classroom and had the answer to a particularly difficult question.
“Young man,” Jake said, usurping Susan’s position as the professor. “I believe we have hit upon a challenge commensurate with your skills. Proceed.”
Walt looked at Susan for an instant, giving her an infinitely brief opportunity to contest the order, and when she didn’t take it, he bolted out the door. Connie watched with open mouth his exit, and then turned toward Susan for a brief instant herself, before she too dashed from the room.

***

Vladimir Sokolov sat on the sled watching as the dogs leaped out in front of him. On one side Geoff jogged along, on the other side, Frodo. The Russian marveled at the conditioning these two must have to be able to keep up with Huskies, though they were slowed by the sleds that were weighted down with gear. The two ran along to help the dogs in their toil, holding on and pushing as they trotted. The dogs were harnessed in a fan-hitch configuration rather than in tandem, and they were spread out along side each other in Greenlandic style, as Geoff preferred the maneuverability afforded with that setup, thinking it allowed the team to wheel to the right or left in a tighter radius. This he felt was a decided advantage when encountering crevasses, despite what others complained of, that having the dogs all spread out would increase the chance that one or a couple of them could stray into the hidden menace. The dogs, he however found, had an uncanny ability to sense the danger and bypass it. Geoff had tried to make the Russian comfortable on that point, upon which he was found to have much anxiety.
There was a cacophony of sound that accompanied their passage. At the onset the dogs barked wildly, their enthusiasm to be going infectious. Once underway, the dogs quieted except for their panting, but the sled groaned under the weight and from the cold. The sustrugi, as always, rasped with the friction applied to the brittle surface. The handlers called their instructions to the Huskies. The humans conversed over the noise with each other. When they stopped, the silence was remarkable in contrast.
The sky when they started was again that almost surreal azure that seemed to have the depth and texture of thick glass. The light that filtered through gave dimension to the things of their limited universe; ice, rock, dog, and man, that normally wouldn’t be apparent to their sight. And those added dimensions passed beyond the physical senses, the sight of everything in this uncanny light also filled their eyes with a sense of the ineffable, as if they too were lifted to a higher place in the purity of this light.
In this light Sokolov observed his companions and the straining Huskies. He was inclined to love the dogs for themselves in any light, but in this light they looked as if they were Gods’ own dogs. It had been decades since he had allowed himself to ponder God, there being altogether too many subjects upon which he was embattled with his government already, but in this light he dared to think, and wondered if he were now somehow closer to the Supreme Being. It was supposed in his country that as a man who studied the mechanics of the physical universe, he would have dismissed any though of a higher power as unscientific and superstitious. On the contrary, he felt like every discovery brought him closer to the God of his fathers, and further from the godless state of the socialists. The more he learned of the harmony of nature, the larger the place he saw carved out for the one thing that tied it all together, that set it in motion, and that gave it meaning.
Some of this beneficence even shone onto his travelling partners. Frodo became almost a sympathetic character, as in this light his better nature was illuminated, and the meaner elements remained opaque. Geoff regained his simple and pure affability. He recognized that Sokolov, despite his lengthy tenure on the ice, was decidedly out of his element and made every effort to make him comfortable. Sokolov began to find the world making sense again, which only added to the incongruity of his perception. To find the world making sense and meaning in its most inhospitable place was in and of itself contradictory. But it was a contradiction that he was coming to appreciate.
Frodo relayed to Geoff the details of his encounter with the camp at Beardmore, why he went there, how he ended up with Sokolov, how they parted and consequently found themselves together again. Hearing the story told from the perspective of the environmentalist allowed the Russian to see the strange man in different way, and while not altogether approving of him, he understood his passion.
Geoff responded by making good natured jests of the affair, designed to poke fun at Frodo, but without the intention of causing him any real discomfiture. He enjoyed the story for its entertainment value without commenting on the ramifications implicit in the outcome.
The dog teams first made their way to Cape Royds where Shacklton had erected his hut on the expedition of 1907. After spending the dark of winter in that hut the expedition hauled their materials to McMurdo on the precise track that the teams now followed. They found the hut exactly as it was left in the midst of the Adelie Penguin rookeries of which it was surrounded. They didn’t stay long. The peak of the summer was fast approaching and the sea ice could begin break up at any time. As it was they were pushing their luck on that score, but only needed one more day to cross the open sea ice, and Geoff was confident. They turned to the west and headed for the coast of the Royal Society mountain range and Hogback Hill where the glaciers that wend their way from the Polar Plateau finally broke upon the winter ice, their tongues protruding into the Ross Sea. After that it was straight north following the coast to Terra Nova Bay. It was easier to travel on the annual ice for as long as it lasted. The hope was that even after it broke up there would be enough still attached to land for the trip there and back. If not, it would make for a rugged trip over broken glaciers and even dry land.
The group made camp the first night on the sea ice halfway from Cape Royds to the coast. Through the night the groans of pressure being translated through the ice resounded just below their ears as they lay in the tents. There was a perceptible rise and fall as the waves moved underneath. This settled the question, there was little time left and the coast must be obtained as quickly as possible. They broke camp earlier than they had intended and ran for the mountains. Soon leads, fingers of open water, began to appear on the surface and Sokolov thought they were finished, but Geoff only rearranged the dogs into a tandem formation, and the lead dog leaped over the openings with the others following.
Once they reached the Hogback they ascended the Wilson-Piedmont glacier, which ran parallel to the coast. From there they watched as the ocean opened up beneath where they had stood only hours before. Sokolov momentarily lost the sense of well being he had acquired, but seeing the indominatable Kiwi laughing at the perceived danger as if it were exactly what he’d planned, Sokolov again began to relax. He came to the conclusion that these people he was with were either insane, or very, very adept at this mode of surviving. Perhaps one depended upon the other.
When they stopped to camp the second day there were clouds streaming across the sky and the now open sea was whipped to green foam. The dogs were tethered a distance apart from each other, so each could dig out its hollow where it curled up to stay warm. By getting the bulk of their body mass below the top level of the snow they could tuck paws and nose underneath, with only the thick fur exposed to the wind. The drifting snow soon covered the huskies with a shield against the blow, and the dogs slept comfortably in their cocoons. 
Geoff, Frodo, and Sokolov shared a tent, a large mountaineering dome that was supplied by Frodo. Geoff wanted to take a Scott tent, the canvas and wood traditional shelter of the Antarctic explorer, but Frodo prevailed in the argument on the grounds that it was lighter and the dogs needn’t be overworked for traditions sake. It was also roomier, which turned out to be a good thing, since they were to be hunkered down for two days before the weather would permit them to move.
Sandwiched as they were side by side in their sleeping bags through the storm with little to do but feed the dogs, eat, and melt snow for water, Sokolov began to lose the reticence that had been so long instilled in him. The dog handler spoke in the melodic tones of the unaffected New Zealander, which inspired both confidence and confidentiality. He and Frodo talked incessantly, but neither pushed the Russian to speak himself, as it seemed obvious that he kept quiet not out of any ill feeling towards them, rather there was some powerful constraint on his ability to do so. But after an interlude when neither the activist nor the dog handler had anything to say, Sokolov ventured to fill the void.
“When I was 16 years of age, I was taken from the school where I was being prepared for the university and was marched to the Polish frontier to fight the Nazis. It was January of 1945 and the division I was with was the first to enter Warsaw. The devastation we encountered was indescribable. But as we marched through the terrible winter I shared a tent, not such a tent as this one, but still a tent you see; with two other boys of my age. While we were alone in this tent we never spoke of the horrors we had witnessed on the journey. We spoke only of our homes, our lives, our loves, and our families. It was not so different from this, when we were in this tent. It is strange to say of that most horrific of times, but I miss those moments in that tent, and remember that part of the nightmare fondly.”
“That’s what mates are for, Mate; to see you through. Sounds like you had some good ones, I’d dare say,” Geoff ventured kindly.
“Yes, they were,” Sokolov agreed with a sigh. “One was killed in Germany; the other was promoted but then later sent to the camps of the Gulag. He was never heard from again.”
“But you did go to the University, after that?” Frodo asked, trying to move the conversation away from its unpleasant turn.
“Yes, I went there. And I graduated with high honors. So much so that I was placed in the Directorate that was tasked with developing atomic weaponry. I had no say in the matter, but my feelings on this subject could not be concealed and eventually I was sent to where I could still do valuable, but less sensitive, work. I wonder that I did not join the fate of my tent-mate in the Gulag system.”
Finding that Sokolov was both an objector as well as a founder of nuclear energy was fascinating to Frodo, who had many questions for him. In this fashion much of the time under the wind driven tent was spent. It took some little while for Sokolov to be able to speak without measuring, censuring his words. But he eventually found himself falling into camaraderie with these two new tent-mates, and when the conversation shifted away from his past, he began to join in when their discourse shifted to less unfortunate circumstances.
“By the by,” Geoff asked Frodo, “what of the girls?”
“Gone,” said Frodo without too much remorse for his loss. “Can’t say I blame them. That whack-job Thumper sure made things hot for us.”
Neither of his two companions felt it necessary to debate the level of wackiness requisite to be part of that tribe, and courteously kept silent.
“Still,” Frodo went on after a pause, “I’d rather not have gotten so unceremoniously dumped for that Aussie.”
Geoff made a firm sign of affirmation.
“Always a bugger when an Aukker gets the better.”
“Well, you know, I have spent worse time in worse places with less enjoyable company,” Frodo said, the tone of his voice in the tent suggesting there was a wink going along with it, “but I’m not sorry to be looking out for just myself right now. Damn, it’s good to be free!”
Both Sokolov and Geoff burst with laughter.
“So this is the freedom I struggle so hard to find,” Sokolov said, joking for the first time in as long as he could remember. “Very good, then. I will endeavor to be worthy of it.”
“Don’t laugh, Mate,” Geoff said, laughing himself. “It doesn’t get any better than this, seriously.”
“It’s true,” Frodo agreed. “Wherever you go, whatever you do, there’s always something that gets its claws dug into you that keeps your time from being your own. Just being out in the open air with nothing to worry about but your days’ destination is as free as free gets.”
“I’m glad you see it that way,” Geoff said approvingly, “since your continued freedom after the days’ destination is still very much in question, in case you’d forgotten.”
“I had actually, and I intend to continue to do so,” Frodo said, contentedly dismissing this triviality. “Tomorrow’s always another day.”
The conversation carried on in this vein until each began to doze off. During the second night the storm began to abate and as he drifted in and out of sleep, Sokolov dreamed of endless horizons of white, the barking of the dogs, and the gentle rocking of the sled as it moved on into forever. It was a very comfortable dream, and he slept as peacefully as he ever had.

Chapter 22
McMurdo Station

Connie caught up to Walt who was peeking out from behind the door of a Quonset building at a group of men dressed in ‘bunny suits’, the full length red coveralls that mechanics wore while working outside. All that the suit lacked was a white puff in the appropriate place to look like a child’s rabbit costume. Some ears couldn’t hurt either.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Don’t know yet. Just seeing what is going on right now.”
“Oh,” she said. “What is going on?”
“These guys are working on a truck. Looks like they’re almost done,” Walt said, without explaining why that was of interest.
“And?” she prodded, trying to extract more information.
“This is a workshop. The workday is almost over. Workmen hang keys on pegs, they don’t put them in their pockets,” Walt told her.
“Oh,” she said again. “So…?”
“Exactly,” he confirmed.
It was the same shop from where he had stolen the beer earlier in the season, and there was another case in the spot where the other had been, waiting for the men to finish their day. Walt felt it would be practically unforgivable to not steal it again just for humors sake, but as he was on a mission that was nearly almost legitimate from a certain point of view, he fought the temptation. He was saved by the clock striking five, and the men took the case and headed toward somewhere more comfortable to consume it.
“Let’s go,” Walt said when they were gone.
He dashed across the floor to where he saw the mechanic hang the keys and grabbed them with a swipe. Connie ran to the passenger side and slipped in. They coasted out of the garage and turned down the hill. There was still a commotion going on up the hill where Thumper had set off the explosion. While it would have been almost too easy to have gone there to get the fuel before the fire was started, it didn’t hurt that most of the attention of the station was focused up the hill. Walt drove slowly over the ash roads through the base, looking no different than any other scientist might on the edge of Antarctica.
“There should be fuel at the airstrip,” Connie said, trying to get into the spirit.
“Yeah, but it would be JP8 or DFA.”
“What the hell are those?” Connie asked.
“Jet propulsion; don’t know what the 8 is for, or diesel fuel. Arctic blend.”
“So where do they keep the gas?”
“A couple of places. Finding it isn’t a problem. It’s doing it in style that counts,” Walt said, driving around to the back of the Navy Operations Center. Next to the command post was the Captains private quarters, and by which there was a drum mounted on skis which contained fuel for his private use. It had a ball hitch on the front for towing.
“That’s better,” Walt said, driving slowly by and trying to look inconspicuous while doing recon on his target. “Much, much better.”
“No such thing as the easy way, is there?” Connie asked, her voice answering the rhetorical question for him.
“This is easy. Doesn’t make it any less fun, though.”
He circled around one more time to be sure the way was clear before backing up to the fuel barrel and attaching it to the truck. He drove away slowly, smiling broadly and waving happily to everyone they passed.

***

Lt. Richards strode into the Flight Operations Center looking like the consummate professional officer that he was. Since no one knew him except the Captain, who was busy back at the Chalet, he neither expected nor received any notice, nor was he challenged by any of the other staff. He first checked in on the weather center and read the forecast that anticipated the gathering storm in the Ross Sea. Good. That meant that further flights would be shut down until it passed. With that being the case, it became only necessary to rewrite the past, which was far easier than creating a future.
In the communications room he nonchalantly examined the outgoing flight manifests for the day. He paged through a couple until one caught his eye. There were a pair of aging bases in what was referred to as West Antarctica, in an area that the Chileans claimed as their territory. The United States had gone to great effort to actively debase that claim, most notably by building stations there and refusing to acknowledge the Chileans as their host. The Chileans, by contrast, tended to show up at the camps at regular intervals, giving the appearance that they considered the occupants as their guests, uninvited or not.
As the time approached for the bases to be abandoned, the Chileans turned up more often, shamelessly taking measurements and inventory of what they thought would soon become their own. For a reason that was not immediately obvious from the manifest, a group had flown to McMurdo with intentions posted that indicated a stop at one of the bases before returning to Tierra Del Fuego. They looked like very likely prospects for incrimination.
Flight manifests were taken very seriously by all parties, since they were often the only link to discovering if someone were alive or dead, accounted for or lost. They were always managed with accuracy. For this reason Lt. Richards found it to be highly unlikely that anyone would suspect that the forgery he was about to commit could possibly be a forgery. Besides, if there were to be a forgery in this case, it would be to hide the Russians’ presence, not record it. And the Chileans could not have any more known they were doing anything untoward by carrying an extra passenger than they did now.
Simply adding a name to flight that was already in progress would not end up being sufficiently helpful, there needed to be an incident which would require the manifest to be reviewed. Unfortunately, the flight would have to meet with some disaster more or less grave. The Lieutenant mollified his conscience by reminding himself no real harm would come to the innocent Chileans, at least he hoped not. 
He slipped the page out of the binder on the flight following table, made a quick change, then inserted it back in before anyone could see him. Then he made notes on a small pad with the crafts call signs and (real) passengers. Then he continued on his way through the facility before exiting through the rear door.
“So?” Susan asked him.
“Done.”
“Good,” she said. “Let’s go see where we are with the fuel situation.”
They walked down the hill toward the coastline where their equipment was lined up on the ash beach. They found Walt finishing fueling the Alpines and filling the spare Gerry cans. Connie sat on the seat, tucked deep into her parka. Jake was supervising.
“All ready?” Susan asked him.
“One completely outfitted expedition at your service. We were loaded to traverse from the Beardmore camp to here. We are just as ready to go anywhere else now. Name your destination.”
“Well, since we lost our own overland journey from there to here, I feel like they kind of owe us one,” she said, seemingly to justify her intentions to those who supported her. “There are going to be some pretty pissed off people around here soon, if this goes well anyway.”
“Darling,” Jake said to her. “It would appear as if the answer to that is to not be around here any longer. Are we going or not?”
She didn’t answer immediately, but bit the tip of her glove.
“Connie and Walt,” Susan said firmly. “I want you two to stay here. There’s only so much that can happen to me, but you two could end up getting expelled. I can’t ask you to do that.”
Connie looked up sharply at that, as if she had been granted a longed for, though not much expected, furlough. Walt looked crestfallen, but determined to fight.
“If we get left here, there won’t be anyone to blame except us. You can’t!” he explained.
“Fear not, my young apprentice,” Jake told the distraught grad student, patting him on the shoulder. “There is much yet you can accomplish here.”
“There is?” both Walt and Susan asked at the same time.
“Quite.”

***

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” the heavily accented voice burst over the guard frequency. It was heard simultaneously by the flight followers in McMurdo and by the Chilean Twin Otter, the sleeker and more versatile cousin to the Dornier Aircraft.  “This is Lima-Alpha-India-One-One-Niner. We are going down near the Patriot Hills with three souls on board. Mayday!”
The two pilots that were flying the Otter looked at each other in stunned disbelief. LAI-119 was their call-sign, it was they who were calling in the Mayday. The co-pilot keyed the mic.
“Eh, pour favor? Please to say again?” was the confused transmission.
But before a reply could be made to LAI-119, McMurdo responded.
“We copy Lima-Alpha-India. Copy you are in distress. Can you give your ‘Papa’? The ‘Papa’ was their position.
“Se, Se,” the voice said and it went on to list a group of coordinates.
The Chileans kept trying to get through, but it was clear that their radio did not have enough power to reach all the way to McMurdo. So, they copied the coordinates and the navigator drew them out on the map.
“This is where we are!” he said, shaking his head. 
“Impossible,” the Pilot said. “Could it be someone else?”
“Someone who doesn’t know who they are? And who thinks they are us?”
“True,” the Pilot agreed. “But..?”
But before anyone could answer McMurdo came back on.
“Okay, Lima-Alpha-India. We have you. When you put down try to make contact with an ‘All’s-Well’ and we will figure it out from there. Good luck.”
“Gratzie,” the voice said in an Italian accent before catching itself and hurriedly added, “Gracias, gracias. Muchos gracias.”
The Chileans did not know what to make of this mystery, but they agreed that if there was an answer to it, it may be found on the ground at the location of their supposed accident. They began to descend.

***

“Gratzie?” Connie said, her voice rising. “Gratzie?”
“I couldn’t think,” Walt said. “I drew a blank.”
“Oh, let’s just get out of here before something else happens.”
The helicopter was parked just behind the Chalet, and the two of them had been able to sneak onto it without being seen. Powering up the radio was not overly complicated, with some prior instruction from Lt. Richards. They carried a battery operated drill that Connie ran while Walt talked that lent the kind of background noise usually associated with an aircraft in flight. It appeared to have worked.
They backtracked around the ‘Jamesway’ camp, the tents where most of the tradesmen lived while on station, past the machine shop where they had so far stolen a case of beer, one truck, and a drill. Walt replaced the drill and called it even. Then they scrambled up Observation Hill so that they could look out over the Ross Ice Shelf to see if they could spot the caravan of Alpines and Nansen sleds. They could just barely make them out as the oncoming storm blew snow drifting over the ice.
“I sure wish we could have gone with them,” Walt said, sadly.
“I’m sure glad we didn’t have to go with them,” Connie said at exactly the same time.
They both laughed and looked at each other, their glance lingering for just an instant.
“I’m even more glad you didn’t either,” Connie said, just barely above a whisper.
Walt looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time, and his eyes widening, jaw dropping. He stammered something, suddenly at a loss for words. But she slipped her arm through his and didn’t say anything as they watched the departing train as it disappeared into the deepening clouds.

***

“I knew it,” the Captain said, looking over the manifest. He had been called as soon as the distress call was made and as a matter of course examined the paper that listed the souls on board, flight plan, and cargo. 
For an instant he found himself nurturing a suspicion, but it just as quickly dissipated when he considered the Chileans. He figured that someone asked them to give Sokolov a lift and that they thought nothing of it, as long as the proper protocol was maintained. Besides, he wasn’t that impressed with the Chileans, they seemed more like scavenger hunters than true scientists. Maybe someone had paid them off.
Regardless of why they did it, it played into his hand admirably, and he did not waste time taking advantage.
“Should we launch a SAR?” the watch officer asked him. A SAR is a search-and-rescue operation.
“A SAR?” the Captain asked back. “What for?”
“The ‘ship-in-distress’ message we just received?” the officer replied, looking at the Captain confusedly. “The aircraft that was going down?”
“Ah, don’t worry about that,” the Captain said, shocking the officer further. “Let the Chileans deal with them. They’re the ones who inflicted them on us in the first place. See if you can message them and tell them they need to come look for their guys.”
When the appalled officer just stared at the Captain with eyes wide, he clapped her on the shoulder and said, “Just do what I tell you, Okay? Good girl.”
From the Operations Center the Captain went back to the Chalet, his green parka swinging open despite the wind of the growing storm. He walked briskly, looking forward to the next task at hand. He decided that this was actually kind of fun. He entered into the hall where Connie and Walt sat looking dejected and contrite.
“Alright you two,” he said without preamble. “Tell me again where your boss has gone?”
Walt looked at the ground and Connie sniffed as if she were fighting back tears.
“Terra Nova,” she said, wiping her sleeve noisily across her nose.
“And why?”
“I don’t know,” she said pathetically.
“Don’t give me that,” the Captain said; his demeanor stern. “Besides, I already know. She has the Russian, doesn’t she?”
Connie hesitated, but then nodded her head in the affirmative, the sight of which made Walt turn his back to her, kicking the leg of a chair as he did so.
“Okay, fair enough. As far as I’m concerned you kids didn’t do anything wrong and I don’t blame you for trying to protect your boss. I’d do the same thing. For now, just get yourselves berthed and lay low till we figure out what to do with you. Now get going.”
The two of them avoided each other’s eyes uncomfortably while they shuffled out of the Chalet until the door was closed behind them. Then Walt gave her an enthusiastic high-five.
“Nice job!” he said to her.
She threw her arms around his neck, jumping off the ground, thrilled to have done something more than just tag along for the ride.

The Captain pondered the information the two grad students had offered him while settling into a chair. It was pretty smart of Susan Engen to set up her own students to confirm the diversion she was making. But she didn’t know that he already knew that the Russian was already bound for Chile. What she couldn’t know was that he didn’t care. Now that she was creating the illusion that Sokolov was en route to Terra Nova, he had an even better excuse for pursuing him in the wrong direction. Very good.  He walked across the hall to where the Russians were waiting.
“It’s confirmed, Terra Nova,” he said.
The Russians looked at each other, their expressions not revealing their thoughts, but their eyes betraying that whatever thoughts there were between them, they each understood the other perfectly. Gregore nodded subtly to the translator.
“Excellent. If we depart now, will we arrive before them?”
“If we depart now,” the Captain said, “we won’t be arriving anywhere, except into the side of a mountain. We’ll have to wait out the weather.”
“And yet, it would appear as if the weather did not delay those whom we wish to pursue, yes?”
The Captain thought quickly, but gave no indication that he was playing at subterfuge.
“If my first thought was correct, they would have arrived there too long ago for us to be able to catch up to them at all. However, what the captive terrorist told us is proving to be only partially true. The Greens that you saw attacking the field camp, and spiriting off your guy, didn’t take him with them. They left him here, not sure why. Dr. Engen, of whom I spoke to you, has taken him herself.”
“Susan Engen? Taking Sokolov to Terra Nova? Have you gone mad?” Dr. Atkinson said in complete consternation to the Captain, who immediately regretted saying anything in front of the scientists.
“I’m afraid so, Doctor,” he said, appreciating his own acting skills. “You know how she is about causes. I guess it’s the stray puppy syndrome. She’s adopted herself a Russian.”
“So they journey by land?” the Russian translator persisted in asking, looking anxiously for clarity on the subject.
“If you want to call it that. But yes, by snowmobile. And no, I do not want to follow them on a miserable overland trip. I’m going to wait out the weather, then fly there.”
The Captain watched the Russians as they discussed his proposal, and listened to the scientists voicing their disbelief, but he waited for the tone of acceptance of the facts that was the same in all languages. When he heard that he told all to get settled into lodgings and await further notice.

***

Susan drove the second snowmobile, following Jake as he led the way through the storm. Lt. Richards sat behind her on the seat, looking over her shoulder. There had been an argument, though a small one, about who should drive, and the Lieutenant received a lesson in dealing with Susan when her mind was focused on something she wanted. The message was simply ‘stand down or stand clear’. 
With the annual sea ice having broken up in recent days, the three had no choice but to follow the edge of the permanent ice shelf. They traveled through the storm without fear, only because the route was well marked and broken in by regular traffic by scientists working the area. The route from Cape Armitage to Cape Chocolate on Salmon Bay was flagged and safe. There they would turn due north and eventually intersect and follow the path of the dog teams until, hopefully, they caught them. Though the Alpines moved at a far faster rate than the dog teams, they had a much longer track to follow. And the group that included Sokolov, Frodo, and Geoff had a significant head start.
Susan felt reasonably sure that her ruse will have worked. Her reputation alone should have been enough, but experience should have taught the Captain to distrust anything she said and to expect that anything she did would be to lead him in the wrong direction. He would have to conclude that she was misleading him now, and determine that if she were acting as if she were taking the Russian to Terra Nova, he could be sure that Sokolov could be anywhere but there. Susan was, at the moment, quite pleased with herself.
It was cold driving into the windblown snow, but she didn’t want to stop. She had been aching for the opportunity to be going somewhere, and while this was not what she had intended for the conclusion of her field season, it would have to do. She could forget about the remaining three years on her grant anyway, she might as well go out big since there was zero chance of ever being welcomed back again anyway.
They made camp at Butter Point, which was on the edge of an area of sea ice called New Harbour. On the other side was Hogsback Hill, where the dog teams had come ashore. The ice appeared to be stable even with the main part of the sound having been blown out. Jake said that he thought the storm would abate in a few hours, and they were due for a break anyway.
Making camp in an Antarctic storm after sitting motionlessly on the back of a snowmobile for several hours is a challenge. Cold muscles are reluctant to move. Simple feats seem superhuman with a metabolism that has slowed, begging for sleep. They worked like drones, focusing on setting the tents, cutting blocks for the latrine. When the two tents were secure the three of them looked at each other uncomfortably.
“You can still change your mind,” Jake said to Susan, breaking the silence and nodding towards his tent. His banter sounded flat in the wind and on tired ears, to the effect that it did not sound like joking at all.
“I can still kick your butt,” she replied gamely, adding an element of levity that his comment seemed to lack.
“Ah,” Jake said, nodding gravely. “That’s true. I’d forgotten. Well, good night then.”
Jake disappeared into his tent and Susan and the Lieutenant into theirs.
“That was a little harsh,” Lt. Richards said to Susan when they were inside.
“What was?” she asked.
“What you said to Jake just now. For all the joshing, I still think he has some feelings for you, and that they may be hurt.”
“Feelings?” Susan said, scoffing. “What makes you think he has feelings? He’s an oaf; a funny one, but an oaf.”
Susan laughed as she said this, she was joking after all, but Lt. Richards sat stiffly and uncomfortably wrapped in his sleeping bag anyway.
“I’m not arguing his case,” he said as a disclaimer, “but you can be pretty casual about tramping on peoples sensitivities sometimes. That’s all I’m saying. Go easy on him.”
“So what, do you feel trampled on? Is that what this is about?”
“No, I don’t. I just think it must be hard on him, all of us in close quarters like this, and you being with me. It’s hard on a guy. I know what I would be feeling if it were me in the other tent.”
Susan let out her breath and sank down with a groan.
“So, what do you want from me? Am I supposed to go jump into his sleeping bag now, so he doesn’t feel left out? Is that what you want?”
“Of course not.”
“Well then, quit complaining.”`
At some point during the night the wind slackened, but it didn’t stop completely. Jake was the first to emerge from the shelters and he stretched as he looked out over the landscape they could not see when they stopped. 
“Anybody else getting up today, or am I it?” he said to the other tent.
There was a rustling of nylon and the sound of zippers, before the other two came out and joined him in the stillness.
“Did you make coffee?” Susan asked Jake, who stood silently and watched her and the Lieutenant getting their things in order.
“Sweetheart,” he said in as dignified manner as he could assume, “as you can see I make a great many allowances for you, but that would be an excess of affection under the circumstances, don’t you think?”
Lt. Richards looked at Jake uncomfortably, and then busied himself with digging out the Alpines.
“Which circumstances are you talking about?” Susan couldn’t help but ask. She thought about the Lieutenants’ admonishment of the night before and wondered if Jake were in fact masking his thoughts with innuendo and if she were wounding him by responding in kind. It wasn’t that she was unaware that she had a propensity to be blunt, but it still seemed unlikely that Jake would be affected by it. 
Jake sighed.
“Ok. Have it your own way then,” he said.
Nothing had changed in the way that Jake said the things he did, and Susan wouldn’t have noticed anything to be different except for the Lieutenants comments to her, but she recognized that there was something missing in the way he spoke to her. He almost did sound as if he was speaking truthfully. She preferred it the old way.
“That’s alright, Darling, I’ll do it,” she said, playing her part to see if she could get him to respond like he always would have. He merely nodded. 
There was a discussion as to whether the conditions were acceptable to continue the journey, and it was decided that they would remain where they were for a few hours and see if the weather would improve. It wasn’t bad, but they would be traversing an area that required visibility and it would be less risky to wait for the storm to clear out. Susan took the opportunity to explore the geology of the escarpment against which their camp was abutted. She took Jake with her; Lieutenant Richards went back into the tent.

Lieutenant Richards pulled his sleeping bag up to his hips, overlapping his parka, and leaned against a duffle bag of equipment. He went about examining his notes to pass the time, he still considered himself employed in the project with which he had been tasked, and began to draw conclusions from the data he had recovered. There was something that seemed to be not quite in line with what his other observations were and he was puzzled. Next to him was Susan’s pack with her field notes lying open and he looked for her pages that aligned with his to see if he could clear things up. The differences were subtle, but different enough to precipitate vastly opposing perspectives on what the net findings implied. He set the papers down and stared at the tent walls, his expression showing contrasting emotions, the eyes wide with disbelief, the cheeks and mouth hanging with a sadness that understood all too well.
Susan entered the tent when she and Jake were back from taking stock of the local geology. She saw his expression and asked him what was wrong. He held up the offending paper. 
“Oh,” she said. “Going through my things? I might have expected that from Jake, but you?”
She spoke in a joking manner, as if to make light of her new predicament, but her eyes showed something akin to fear, the fear that something she didn’t want to change was suddenly being torn apart.
“I wasn’t snooping. I was going through my notes and something seemed wrong. Yours were right there and I wanted to see if I could figure it out. I did,” he said, looking away from her.
“That was before,” she started to say, her voice pleading for understanding. “That was before, before everything. You know how it was before.”
“I know you never approved of my job here,” he said, “but I never thought you capable of lying to me, and continuing to lie after, well, after everything.”
“I wanted to tell you, and I didn’t do it anymore after I knew how you felt about what it means to find the deposits here. You didn’t want to find anything either. Do you blame me for trying to make sure that you didn’t?”
He shook his head in the negative, in a sign that could have been determined to mean that he did not find fault, but that image was soon dispelled. 
“Blame?” he said. “How can I blame you? You were only doing what you thought was right and being who you are. The fact that I would never do the same thing towards you only makes us different. I guess we are different, in ways that are more difficult to bridge than I thought.”
“And you don’t call that blame?” she said, her voice rising from the angst of being condemned for doing the only sane thing someone in her position could. “You were sent here to destroy this place. I wasn’t going to allow it. Even you agreed that it couldn’t be allowed to happen. Ok, I didn’t tell you what I was doing. I’m sorry. But don’t treat me like I’m some kind of ogre and you’re some kind of saint. I’m the one who has been on the right side of this all along.”
“You are not an ogre, and I am not a saint. But you are always just so right all the time. So right in fact, that doing what you think needs to be done absolves you from any responsibility to act decently, even toward me. I’m sorry too. I’ve never wanted to be so right that I could act that way; especially not towards you.”
Susan declined to see the justice in his argument, and began to bundle her things together.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Somewhere else!” she yelled at him.
“There aren’t many places you can go,” he pointed out reasonably.
“I’ll find one.”
She left the door of the Lieutenants’ tent flapping in the wind and tore open Jake’s, throwing the bedding in on top of him.
“At long last,” Jake said without turning over to look at her, “you return. If only you knew with what anticipation I’ve dreamed of your coming back to me. I may even forgive you, in time.”
“Don’t start with me,” she said. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Doesn’t it matter if I am? Besides I’m serious.”
“Oh good God, that’s all I need.”
“Interesting you should point that out,” Jake said, twisting in his sleeping bag to face her. “I have been pondering that very question. It’s just what you need, for me to make an honest woman of you. Not that I haven’t tried, you know, but the soil I’ve tilled has so far not proven to be fertile. But I think it can be.”
“Do we really need to do this right now?” Susan said, tears welling up in her eyes, and a sob escaping despite her attempt to hold it back. “Can’t you see I’m dying here?”
It was plain enough to see that what she said was true and Jake, abandoning the demeanor he wore only for her, sat up and put an arm across her shoulder.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s got to be hard, even though the outcome was inevitable from the start. But you bucked the odds and went with your heart, or something sort of like one anyway, and that’s admirable.”
“What do you know about it?” she asked, though she was sorry for the harsh tone immediately.
“Darling,” he said, “how thick do you think these tent walls are? I know exactly how many times you roll over in your sleep at night. I know that you murmur something after you do before making a single snore and falling back asleep. I’d have to be deaf not to hear you yell.”
“Well then, if you know so much, was I wrong to do what I did? You were there the whole time. Hell, you encouraged it.”
He thought for a moment before answering.
“That’s true, I did. But that was before I got to know him as a person, and just thought of him as an ‘it’.”
“So, how do you think I feel?” she asked him, implying that if Jake saw it that way, she must do so infinitely more.
“Doesn’t that answer your question for you?” Jake said, quietly.
“I know,” she agreed. “I feel like crap.”
He nodded agreement without verbalizing the sentiment.
“You can get over that,” he said. “But that doesn’t solve the problem of what he told you a few minutes ago. You are different. Not just in opinions about things, but you’re different types of people. You may be drawn together by a kind of magnetism, but that’s the problems with magnets. You align them in ever so slightly a different way and they repel just as strongly as they attracted before. Your alignment was bound to shift at some point.”
Susan leaned back and looked at Jake for some sign that he was toying with her, then turned back the way she was before, the two of them sitting side-by-side.
“I know. I guess I’ve always known,” she said. “Thank you for not making light of this, at least not right now. You know, you’re a pretty good friend after all.”
He made much of sighing deeply and frowned.
“I know. I can’t help it.”
“Well, it won’t kill you,” Susan said, again regretting the tone she took with him, which had become a habit. If it turned out that his attitude towards her was an act, what did it make hers towards him? It worried her that her ability to play the harpy came so easily.
“That, my Dear,” Jake said, “remains to be seen.”

Chapter 23
Russian StationVostok 

The days after Sokolov had left Vostok were hard on Trevor, his friendship with the Russian had helped to fill the hours with something other than contemplating his isolation. And then, Jake had mysteriously left Beardmore; consequentially he had no one with whom he could converse, even over the radio. His worries were eating at him, and he was about all ate-up.
The tragedy of the crevasse hung over the station, the pallor that he already felt was reflected and magnified by all around him. It was known that the survivors had been rescued and taken to Beardmore, but what had taken place after that was not. At least not until the track vehicle caravan arrived, bringing with it the injured driver and those who had passed through Beardmore. Trevor, along with everyone else, was there to greet them.
The procession came to a halt before the galley module. The rear door of the structure on the trailed sledge opened, and men hurried to help the invalid. From the cabin of the lead vehicle there stepped a man who required no insignias on his apparel to announce that he carried authority with him. The crispness of the black leather coat, the richness of his hat, his stature which projected a challenge to any whom might misinterpret; he looked over the group as a shepherd dog might his flock, without any particular affection for those under his protection, but which spelled woe unto those who meant to do them harm.
“Where is the spy?” he asked after taking in the scene.
He was answered by the space that was immediately created around Trevor, who did not understand the question, nor the response.
“Good. Bring him inside.”
There were apologetic looks from those whom Trevor had, if not become friends with, were at least silent companions who overcame the language barrier with gestures and signs. They waved at him to follow the new commander.
“What’s going on?” he asked, but no one answered.
The Russians led him into the galley and into the radio room that was the base commanders’ personal space.
“Sit,” he was told.
Trevor sat uneasily and waited for someone to speak. Both of the Russians were new to the base, and they looked at him with blank unfriendly stares. Finally the new commander spoke.
“Is it the custom in your country to repay hospitality with treachery?”
“Huh?” Trevor asked, his jaw dropping down and eyebrows raising up, elongating his face into frightful distortion.
“What I asked is,” the Russian questioned him in a haughty voice and looking down his nose, “when you are a guest in someone’s home, is it your practice to seduce your hosts’ wife or daughter under his very roof?”
“Does somebody here have a daughter?” Trevor asked stupidly, not understanding where this conversation was leading.
“Daughters? No. But sons, yes. We are all sons of the Fatherland, one of whom has been taken from us. Now do you understand?”
“Is it about the accident?” Trevor asked innocently, but he was beginning to grasp that this was something quite sinister, and while he had no idea what was going on, began to suspect it had to do with Sokolov.
The two Russians looked at each other, each gauging the others credulity. One shook his head in a barely perceptible side-to-side motion. The other nodded in an equally subtle fashion.
“It is of no matter,” the Russian said. “The mistake in allowing you to come here to corrupt our people is evident. Since we cannot try you as you deserve, it is pointless to waste time in this manner. Pack your things, and hurry. There is an Italian aircraft stopping to refuel in one hour. It will take you wherever it is going, so long as it is not to a Russian base. Be gone!”
Trevor rushed from the galley more than a little confused, but with mixed emotions. To be accused of something, even if he didn’t know what it was, by the Soviets was frightening enough, but he also felt elated to be going, even if he didn’t know where. Wherever it was, it was closer to home, and that was what he was desperate for. He packed hurriedly.
 Organizing his personal effects required little more than stuffing them into a duffle bag. His scientific samples were far more problematic, since it was necessary that they remain frozen all the way back to his lab. The Italian Otter was fueling when he asked the Russians what they intended to do with them.
“We do not fail to live up to our agreements. They will find their way to McMurdo in due course.”
But they did not say how, or when, that would happen.
Once the Otter was airborne, Trevor asked the pilot where he was going.
“What? You’s a-don’t a-know where you’s a-goin and you’s a-getting on an airplane-a anyway? What-a-you, a-crazy?”
Trevor acted out his consternation with gestures since the coat, hat, and goggles made subtlety impossible.
“It seemed like when was more important than where, though I still couldn’t tell you why!” he shouted over the noise.
“Who cares a-why, just so long-a it’s a-outta there,” the pilot said, glancing at Trevor from the side, a look that summed up the reality of living at Vostok.
“That’s for sure,” he agreed. “So where are we going?”
“Terra Nova. Not so a-bad as the a-Ruskie base. Notta so bad.”
“Will I be able to get to McMurdo from there?” Trevor asked, concern creeping into his voice. The pilot shrugged.
“Sure, someday. Why-a not?”
Trevor knew that the pilots’ choice of words was intended to convey the idea that he would surely find his way to his destination, but they had the effect of making him feel like just the opposite was true. Even with sunglasses on and earphones covering half of his face, the pilot could see the young man in the seat next to him was quite forlorn. He made an effort to cheer him up.
“I tell you a-what. I show you something like-a you never see before. On-a the way. You like-a this.”
The aircraft healed over to the right before straightening back out as the mountains came into sight. Terra Nova was on the coast at the bottom of the glacier, but where they were heading now was over the Taylor Valley, the driest place in the world, where it had not rained or snowed in millions of years. It was an extraordinary sight after weeks of nothing but ice and snow. The pilot saw with what fascination Trevor looked out the window, so he decided to make the trip more interesting for both of them. He descended until they were just off the deck, with the rock walls of the valley speeding by. Trevor grasped the hand-rests unconsciously, his knuckles showing white and his backbone straightening up firmly.
“Is very a-yes, no?” the pilot asked, taking his body language as a compliment.
“Yes. It’s very, very yes. We can go back up anytime now. Thank you.”
“Ah, no yet. Wait until bottom.”
Trevor didn’t like the sound of ‘bottom’, but he was beginning to see where the bottom was, the Ross Sea extending out from the coast where there was a strip of glacier at the bottom of the valley. They were heading straight for it, Trevor’s grip becoming firmer.
“Don’t you think it’s time to pull up?” he asked
“Not-a yet. Almost.”
In the midst of the glacier there were two black lines that appeared like hyphens on a blank page. As they came closer the hyphens opened up into dots and dashes that were moving. It wasn’t until they were right on top of them was it clear that the lines were made of dogs, men, and sleds that  all went scattering or tumbling over in response to the terrifying roar that went over them.
 
“What-a the hell was that?” the pilot asked, heading out to sea to make a wide turn to make another pass.
“I don’t know, but I sure hope we don’t meet them later,” Trevor said, trying to contain his anger at the pilot for scaring the dog teams as much as he scared him.
“Take another look.”
As the wide turn they made took them over the water and was bringing them back toward land, the Otter straightened up and followed a course that led up the coast. To their surprise, not far from where they expected to see the upset dog caravans, they passed over another train of sledges pulled by snowmobiles.
“What-a you know? Busy place, this glacier. Never see so much.”
“Let’s try and not freak them out too.”
“Sure, okay.”
They flew over the snowmobile train at a less threatening altitude, and in acknowledgement received a friendly wave. Only a few miles past them was a scene of canine pandemonium, with sleds and materials scattered across the surface of the ice. There were gestures of the arm from them as well, though decidedly less friendly.
“Crazy,” the pilot said, commenting on the situation as if the whole world of his observation was mad, all except for him.
“Crazy,” Trevor agreed, though with less conviction. He shook his head and continued to mutter, “Crazy, crazy, crazy.”

***

After the Otter had passed overhead, it was only moments until the three riders on the Alpines could see the wreckage of the once tidy caravan strewn across the ice. It was clear to them what had happened, and that none of their fellow travelers were amused. Jake was.
“Funny place to hold a yard sale,” he heckled Geoff as he glided to a stop beside him. “How much for the dog?”
Jake gestured towards an exceedingly unhappy Husky that was trying to free itself from the tangled leads and was biting at Geoff’s hand as he tried to get it loose.
“Don’t you begin any of your nonsense, or you’ll be in it also,” Geoff said menacingly towards Jake, who ignored him and continued to chuckle at their plight. “Bloody bastards better hope I never catch them.”
“Well, you’re going to have to move faster than this if you’re ever going to. I suppose we’d better get you straightened out.”
“What happened?” Susan asked. She had never met Geoff, but she knew Frodo of course, and her momentary meetings with Sokolov had produced memorable results. But for the moment she addressed herself to the New Zealander. Things had proceeded so rapidly, culminating with her sudden estrangement from Lt. Richards, with whom she was barely communicating in a forced and frigid monotone, that she found herself disconnected from her own thoughts, unsure of how to engage these two very different people whom she felt that she had propelled towards whatever it was they were approaching. Only Jake seemed to be in high spirits, as if the more screwed up things got, the happier he was.
“That Italian Rat-bag put a fright on the dogs. Now we’re all balls-up. And this Dag,” he said pointing at Jake and not being able to contain a chuckle of his own despite trying very hard, “thinks it’s a bloody laugh.”
“Tell me how it’s not,” Jake replied, and the two of them began to argue the merit of finding humor in their situation. Susan was grateful for the distraction. Lieutenant Richards went to help Frodo right the sled, while Sokolov collected the scattered flotsam that had been ejected in their fall. She looked in wonder at each of these men, all of whom she had managed to become engaged with in various degrees of complexity. Geoff she did not know, but she had arranged for his becoming an accomplice in her schemes. Frodo would have been doing what he was doing anyway, but it was her actions that brought him up to the camp. She couldn’t take responsibility for Thumper, but now Frodo was a fugitive, and she felt she had a hand in that. Sokolov, despite being where he was for the moment was at least free, also for the moment, and she felt some degree of vindication in that. She looked at Lieutenant Richards with an overwhelming sadness. Was Jake right, that the forces of nature were working against her, that no matter how hard she tried to align them they would always be shifting on their poles, sometimes finding an inexorable attraction, at others creating an unbridgeable gap? 
And then there was Jake. Jake, whom she had taken for granted as someone who was only there for her to use as she saw fit. There was some truth in that for which she felt little remorse, his job was to do what he was told, up to a point. But to be co-opted into her plans or to be treated as an amusing, though inconsequential tool was not part of the job description. Even so, he not only bore with her, he encouraged her, and took her often abrasive handling of him and of their working together with an unfailingly good humor. And it wasn’t because he was some simpleton who only colored his world in favorable hues, he chose his demeanor deliberately, seemingly having examined the reality in which he found himself living, and deciding that taking life too seriously was giving it too much credit. He made his world into what he wanted it to be.
As she watched the two guides going about their verbal joust, she realized that she was not so different from him; she too tried to create her own reality as well. The difference was that when she looked at the two versions side-by-side, there was no comparison. His seemed enchanting in its simplicity and compelling in its appeal. And hers now felt self-centered and mean.
And now all of these people were caught-up in events that she had set in motion, but which she could not control, nor could she predict their outcome.
“So,” Frodo asked with exaggerated politeness, “how is it we are again graced with your company?”
“Trying to help you,” Susan said. Then, gesturing towards Sokolov, she added, “and him.”
“I see,” Frodo said, without actually seeing. “What makes you think we needed your help? From what I can tell, what we needed most was to be left alone to disappear.”
“Well, that’s what we thought too, until we found out that Thumper gave you away, told the Captain you were headed to Terra Nova.”
“Thumper!” Frodo said. “All Thumper knows is that he’s lucky we didn’t hand him over and ask for forgiveness ourselves. Of course, that was before the rest of the crew threw me under the bus with him. Thumper. So, he got caught, huh? Damn. He knew the girls went there. He knows we weren’t with them. He must have told them that to put them on the wrong track. What do you know about that?”
“You mean he didn’t know?” 
“He knew we could be almost anywhere but there.”
“Interesting. Anyway, we managed to make the Captain and the Russians think he was lying, and that you guys were headed for South America by appearing to come this way with you.”
“Is that a fact?” Frodo asked, turning to see where the sudden engine noise was coming from. As all of the people of both the dog team and snowmobile expeditions looked skyward they saw the unmistakable outline of a navy C-130 as it flew overhead on approach into Terra Nova Bay. 
“Well done, then,” he said, disbelieving sarcasm not disguised. “Well done. You’ve come through in the pinch once again. I don’t know how we can thank you enough.”
Susan stood with her eyes rolled back under closed lids, letting out a long and agonized groan. She shook her head once before walking back to the Alpine where she sat down, resolving not to speak or in any way try to influence anyone, on any point, ever again.

Chapter 24
Somewhere Over Terra Nova Bay

“What the hell?” the Captain asked himself.
“Don’t know, Skipper,” the co-pilot said. She knew not to interject conjecture into the dialog when the Captain asked rhetorical questions.
They were there, right where he thought they would be, except something didn’t look right. What was with the dogs? It should have been just a couple of Alpines and some sleds. He began to feel uneasy. Susan Engen’s decoy, that he was happily following, would not have been so elaborate. Something was wrong.
“It appears as if you were right,” a voice was yelling above the engine noise and outside his headset. He turned to look through his sunglasses at Dr. Atkinson, who came onto the flight deck with Dr. Fredricks after seeing what he had just seen himself. Damn, he thought. No pretending that didn’t happen. He thought for a moment.
“Take over,” he said to the co-pilot. He slipped off the earphones and gestured to the scientists to the cranny behind the Engineers seat, whom he dismissed with a jerk of the thumb.
“We need to talk,” the Captain yelled above the noise. The scientists wore the earplugs that all passengers wore within the un-soundproofed fuselage, and they had to strain to hear. The Captain did not, he was accustomed to filtering out the back-round noise of the aircraft.
“Did the Russians see what you saw?” the Captain asked them.
“They did,” Dr. Fredricks said, bobbing his head to accentuate the response, over compensating for the difficulty in hearing.
“What did they do?”
“Nothing. A lot of eyebrows going up and down, but that’s about it.”
“Alright,” the Captains said in as subdued a manner as he could while still being heard. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s possible the prisoner may not have been lying after all. That’s a problem.”
“So the Russians will get their man back after all,” Dr. Atkinson said, his stern look silently accusing the other two.
“Look,” the Captain said, gesturing with a pointed finger to accompany his hard tone. “Is that what I want? No. But at this point it’s up to us to make the best of a bad situation. It’s unfortunate, but that’s how it is. I expect you two to deal with it, without screwing this up any worse than it already is. Got it?”
He looked from one to the other, waiting for some kind of affirmation that made them accountable to that warning. He received cold nods, and gave one back as a receipt.
. “Good. Well, since it looks like they are going to get what they want after all, we might as well get credit for having given it to them. Go tell our guests we will be landing shortly in Terra Nova and that we will arrange a reception for those guys on the ground.”
The two scientists said nothing, but with grim demeanor left the flight deck to comply.
The Captain took his seat, nodding to the co-pilot that he again had control. He always thought better with the yoke of an aircraft in his hands. He watched Terra Nova base slide by beneath him without changing altitude. He listened vaguely while his co-pilot copied the current weather conditions on the ground, registering the information unconsciously, calculating his approach. He could carry on for a few more minutes before beginning a wide arcing turn that would put them on a glide path into the station.
There was only one answer, the problem was that there were too many questions. The Russian and Susan were clearly in the same place below, but appeared to have arrived there by separate means. Why the devil would she have done that? Why make it so abundantly clear that this was a ruse, only to have it not be? Didn’t make sense. Unless, of course, none of these people had any more of an idea of what they were doing than he did. Now that worried him. Clear motives and conscious actions were things that could be understood, and countermeasures could be devised to deal with them. But random events that happened without anything guiding them could lead anywhere, and it could not be predicted where that was. There was just no planning for that.

The Alpines led the way, followed by the by dog sleds. There was absolutely no question of trying to go anywhere else and it was decided amongst all parties that the chips would just have to fall where they may. Terra Nova it was. For Sokolov at least, there was the hope that the Italians would not be co-opted into going along with any unholy alliance that the Americans and Russians had agreed upon. He made up his mind to appeal to them. Everyone agreed this seemed like the best option.
Frodo was not looking forward to meeting the Captain again, but he was assured by the others that since he could not be held accountable for Thumpers’ actions he had not so much to fear. With this logic having been accepted he regained some of his confidence and began to almost look forward to the confrontation.
Neither Jake nor Geoff had risked much besides their jobs, Geoff less so since the Kiwi’s weren’t likely to find much for which to recriminate in his behavior. And Jake didn’t grieve much, he had accomplished most of what he had come to do, with the exception of traversing the Beardmore. But he did bag a first ascent, and that would have to be enough.
The one most clearly miserable in the entourage was Lt. Richards. His professional conduct was sure to be frowned heavily upon, the Captain would make sure of that, but that meant little to him at the moment. His failure to succeed with Susan was a far more immediate and penetrating ailment. Their attraction was too strong to be denied by the laws of nature. Like the opposing poles of the magnet they were drawn inexorably together, but when faced with their similarities the opposing force just became too much. 
Susan, on the other hand, was an enigma for all to contemplate. From the moment when the C-130 flew overhead she appeared to become emotionless. Not the stony faced lack of emotion that is often the face of turmoil within, she seemed to become perfectly…normal. It was as if none of what had taken place over the last weeks had occurred, and that was the strangest of all. Everyone of them in the party was aware that she had some hand in their being where they were, and while none expected any display of contrition, her seeming disassociation with their common reality seemed to be unfathomable.
Except to Jake. He remembered the first thing she had said to him, that she didn’t need the distractions that getting involved in relationships and causes other than her own brought. And he had come to know her too well. If it seemed as if she had exorcized the last weeks from her existence, it was because she probably had. Her strength was in her ability to mold reality to match her will. It had always worked with the future, who says it couldn’t work with the past? Or some such reckoning. He figured she had settled on a plan and that this time nothing was going to deter her from accomplishing it.
It wasn’t long before they saw the Italian base in the distance, looking like a smaller version of McMurdo, on a flat section of dry land and rock, away from the glaciers. On the airstrip was a Navy C-130.
“Let’s go in,” Jake said. No one had any other comment, but Jake said to Susan, “you drive.”
He sat behind her on the Alpine and positioned himself so he could whisper in her ear, albeit with somewhat more amplitude.
“Don’t do it,” he said.
“Don’t do what?” she shouted back.
“Whatever it is you’re going to do. You’ve done enough. Everything you wanted to stop is going to be stopped. Leave it.”
“And then what?” she asked, and it became even clearer to him.
“You might consider leaving this life of moral turpitude and just marry me. You know it’s inevitable, eventually. Why not just do it now?”
“Are you freakin’ crazy?” she yelled over her shoulder at him. “You’re worse than nuts, you are completely insane!”
“So? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I’ll think about it. Where the hell did this come from anyway?”
“I’m serious. Seriously serious. I know you think I’m a goofball who doesn’t actually have a functioning brain, but the truth is you’re so dammed wrapped up in your intellectual superiority you’ve forgotten how to be a little goofy.”
“You don’t think I’ve goofed things up enough?”
“Not the same and you know it. You know, the world can get along on its own without your having to rescue it for a while. Take a break. We’ll go climbing somewhere. Or lay on a beach.”
“Oh my God, you are serious.”
“Didn’t I already tell you that?” he said in her ear from the rear seat of the Alpine.
“Well, it’s a little hard to believe, you know. It is you we’re talking about here.”
Though she said this through her face covering and over the noise of the engine, Jake could tell that she was taking him seriously, in a fashion, and that her speaking to him like she did showed it. 

The C-130 had come to a rest in the parking spot next to the Italian Otter from which Trevor and the pilot emerged. The leadership of the base were there to greet the Americans who had called to inform them of their arrival, but not of the reason why. Trevor recognized the senior scientists and joined them, his confusing day getting only more so. When Gregore emerged from the airplane with a Russian he did not recognize, he actually began to get worried. He still didn’t know what events had led to his expulsion from Vostok, but he suddenly got the sense he was about to find out. He queried Dr. Atkinson for enlightenment.
“Politics. Damned politics inserting itself into our field season. The whole year is ruined.”
“I’m sorry,” Trevor said. “but could you be a little more specific? One doesn’t learn much about what is going on in the rest of the world at Vostok.”
Dr. Atkinson, still overwhelmed by the unfolding events, answered in bullet points, and in a clipped and harried voice.
“Susan Engen, depending on whom you ask, has either kidnapped or arranged the defection of a Soviet physicist, who survived an accident with a crevasse. The Green Organization, whom hither to this time had managed themselves quite reasonably, has gone completely mad and has engaged upon a campaign of destruction across the continent. The Captain, whose role was supposed to be that of logistics coordinator, seems to be reveling in the chaos, as it appears to be providing him with an opportunity to fuel a potential conflagration. Is there anything else you wish to know?” the Doctor nearly shouted at Trevor bitterly. He glared down his haughty nose at the young scientist for a long moment before his expression became quizzical. “Wait just a minute, what are you doing here?”
“I don’t have any idea,” Trevor said. “A bunch of Russians turned up at Vostok accusing me of doing something to Dr. Sokolov and the next thing I know, I’m in a plane coming here.”
“You know him?” Dr. Atkinson asked. “Of course you know him. What in Hades has gone on up there. Did you have something to do with this?”
“Of course not,” Trevor said, stealing a glance in the direction of the Russians. “At least I don’t think so. All I know is that things were hot for him in Russian. That was why he was sent here. Other than that, I don’t know anything.”
“Humph,” the senior scientist commented, seemingly reserving the right to remain skeptical. “Either way, it appears as if we are going to find out.”
They both looked toward the ice road that lead to the edge of the taxiway where the trains of dogs and Alpines came to rest.

The two groups stood facing each other, each made up of individuals of vastly different interests, motives, and objectives. All seemed to be waiting for someone else to say something before committing themselves. Susan held up a mitten and glanced up and down the line of people in her party, a gestured that asked them to wait for her before saying anything. It also said to each of them, though she had avoided any expression of it before, though they all had their own situations to unravel, she was a common thread that ran through each of their various knots. They looked back at her and waited, except for Lt. Richards, who only stared at the horizon. 
“Captain,” she said, nodding at the Navy officer. “Gentlemen,” she said to the others. “I am here to tell you that I, and only I, am responsible for any actions that might be construed as inappropriate on the part of anyone in this group, excepting the Russian who requires no excuses. The guide (she gestured at Jake, who bowed) was only following my orders. The Lieutenant (she gestured at Lt. Richards and smiled sadly), was following yours. The Kiwi’s (she pointed at Geoff, who looked away) are only here doing their normal work but were duped into acting on my behalf. Frodo has been in the right all along, and had no part in whatever Thumper did, as I’m sure you all know by now. What we want to know is why you are here, and what you intend to do?”
There was an awkward pause.
“Whether or not your Russian needs excuses is not your call to make,” the Captain said, finding himself backed into a corner he didn’t want to be in. “Richards is the Air Force’s problem, not mine, so I don’t care. You’re these guys’ problem (he gestured towards the other Scientists), thank God, so I’m done with you. That bonehead (he pointed towards Frodo) is the United Nations problem, since I don’t get to control what they do here. But the Russian, now he’s a problem. So what are we going to do about that?”
The Russians, who had remained silent until then trying to assess their options, concluded that they needed to keep up the pretense of wanting to rescue their companion. The interpreter expressed his pleasure in seeing Sokolov well, a gesture the veracity of was not wasted on anyone. 
“He wants to come to America, and we’re going to take him,” Susan said firmly. “Sorry.”
“Wait,” Sokolov said, looking at both the Russians and the Captain. “I have had a change of heart. I no longer wish to go to America.”
The different parties all looked at each other not knowing what to say. Each wanted out of this predicament, but didn’t know how.
“I think maybe I go to New Zealand,” Sokolov said, looking at the dogs and at Geoff. “Maybe live quietly in the country.”
Susan turned around to address him privately.
“Are you sure? I know we can make this happen. Are you afraid of what might happen to you there?”
Sokolov was quick to settle that point. “ I am not afraid, not anymore. In fact, I have come to lose much more than just my fears over the last days. I have lost my rage, which I so carefully nurtured until now. Rage is a hard emotion to maintain with such companions as these (he gestured towards the dogs), and such freedom as this (he waved towards the horizon). It is gone, and I cannot manufacture more.” 
Sokolov's words penetrated deeply into her heart. Manufactured rage, was that what she had? Was that the fuel that drove her, something artificial that she produced as an expedient to propel her forward? She suddenly felt exposed, as if discovered in a fraud, perpetrated upon her by no one other than herself.
Jake's friendly mocking of her ambitions leapt into her mind in the realization that he understood her better than she did herself. She was also surprised in that instant to discover that he liked her in spite of this knowledge, something that she, if she had been in his position, might have been less inclined to do. It was not a very likeable trait, self conceit and aggrandizement. And in using a cause, however worthy, as a platform to promote her own position…it was a wonder that he tolerated her at all. And yet, he not only put up with her, he pursued her. It was as if he found her deepest flaw to be her most endearing feature. She knew he was crazy, but this was a brand of crazy that had much to recommend it.
Susan continued to look at Sokolov, her thoughts divided.
"You're willing to give up your career for a quiet life?" she asked him, though it may have seemed that she was asking herself the same question.
"Career?" he asked. "My career has been to do as I am told. Now I wish to do nothing but what I feel I should. What may come later is not something I care to think of right now."
"Okay," she said looking at the Captain. "He wants to go to New Zealand. Do you have a problem with that?"
“I have no objections, if you guys don’t,” the Captain said hurriedly to the Russians, clearly hoping to capitalize on an unexpected though viable escape to his dilemma.
The translator spoke it over with Gregore, who nodded once, and it was decided. The Italians, once they understood, volunteered the Otter that brought Trevor from Vostok to take Sokolov to New Zealand.
“Let’s go with him,” Jake whispered to Susan. “Connie and Walt can get all your stuff back to Ohio. There’s nothing you can do in McMurdo, you’re done there in any case. Why don’t we just go?”
Susan looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time, studying him earnestly to see if she could in that instant confirm that her sudden awareness of his perception of her was real or imagined on her part. She allowed a moment for the calculating part of her thoughts to give way to something less cold.
"Are you sure about this? You know how I am, do you really think you can continue to like me like I am?"
He sighed deeply with a gesture of exasperation.
"Have I not done anything except prove that all along? If you can't believe that now, then you can't ever believe anything."
She paused only for her last resistance to falter.
“Okay. Let’s do it. Only…just give me a minute.”
She went to where Lt. Richards was standing alone, awkwardly waiting for this parley to come to an end. It was clear that his time with Susan was over and, while his disappointment was evident, he didn’t show his pain as an expression of anger or disgust. He was merely proud and quiet.
“Hey,” she said to him, taking him by the arm and leading him away.
“Hello,” he said stiffly, but not unkindly, like he appreciated that she had suffered too.
“I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” she said.
“Sorry? Please be anything but sorry. I can’t be. I can be anything but sorry.”
“I just meant…”
“I know,” he said. “You behaved honorably and have no cause for regret, at least I hope not. Maybe it was too far to come, too wide a gulf to cross. I can’t say.”
“Honorably?” she said, snickering. “That’s the word you come up with to describe how I’ve acted. Honorably? Honestly, I don’t know if I understand you any better now than I did before, but I like you better. I like you a whole lot better.”
She reached up, put a hand on the back of his neck, kissed him once, and walked away.
“Okay,” she said to Jake. “Let’s go.”
“You hussy,” he said. “What makes you think I still want to go after that?”
“Just get your butt on the plane and don’t talk back to me.”
“Oh God,” he said shaking his head and frowning. “I’m doomed.”

 The End