Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

“This particular lake is not underneath a glacier. And the microbes that live in it can be found most anywhere, but here there’s essentially nothing growing in or around the lake except these microbes.”

“You mean, like, there’s no vegetation?”

Kathy smiled. “You are new. Haven’t you noticed? Look outside the window. Tell me if you see any trees, grasses, even algae.”

Valena did as she was told. All she saw was ice.

Kathy said, “We do get influx of penguin guano, but we can easily identify that contribution and subtract it out.”

“Penguin guano?”

“Yes. The lake is at the edge of an Adélie penguin colony. However, the lake has not been kind enough to thaw yet this year, so in the meantime I am finding other projects to keep myself busy. In Antarctica, one must be adaptable.”

Valena sighed. “I’d love to see a penguin in the wild. Is it far to this lake of yours?”

“Fifteen minutes by helicopter, a couple of hours by tracked vehicle or snow machine.”

“Not a casual visit.”

Kathy shrugged a shoulder. Getting anywhere in Antarctica is a logistical undertaking. First you’d need to have your survival training, then sea ice training—you have to go over the sea ice, because cutting across land is too dangerous; crevasses and such, and the sea ice is not to be trifled with, either—and you’d need basic training on the use of a vehicle, presuming you have no helo hours. Then you’d also need someone to go with you, as one does not go anywhere alone here, and then there is the matter of permits—the colony is of course protected, so they require that you justify your visit on grounds of research—and then—”

Valena held up a hand. “That’s almost too much to take in.” “It is rather overwhelming, at first. It took me three seasons to really begin to learn the ropes.”

Valena stared at her feet. “This is my first season, and it looks like it’s going to be incredibly short.”

“I heard that Emmett left. What was that all about?”

“Something about that death in his camp last year.”

Valena thought fast, trying to come up with a statement that would not defy George Bellamy’s edict. She settled on being vague.

Kathy said, “I was afraid it might be that.”

Valena searched her face for information. Were you here last year? “I signed on late to this project and I really don’t know what happened.”

“So far as I know, the story goes like this: the deceased was a journalist from the New York Financial News. He arrived in Emmett’s camp without acclimatizing to the high elevation as he had been told to do. He developed altitude sickness—symptoms similar to pneumonia, but it will kill you quick—and, well, he died. There was a storm, so they couldn’t get him out in time. Storms are huge here. They stop everything dead.” Kathy stared out the window for a moment. “Sorry, bad choice of words. Anyway, when the winds dropped and they could get a flight in, the journalist’s body was brought out frozen stiff. In Antarctica, refrigeration of corpses is not a problem.” She shook her head. “It was terrible bad luck.”

Yeah , thought Valena. The worst kind of bad luck. The kind that’s contagious.

Kathy’s eyes briefly narrowed again in thought, then she smiled ironically. “It’s the original locked-door mystery. They all went in alive, and one came out dead. If there was foul play, it follows that one of them did it.” She shrugged a shoulder again. “Or all of them. Well, if I can help in any way…”

“Are any of the people who were in that camp here again this year? Anyone I could talk to?”

“I imagine so. I don’t remember the names, though. I was thinking more of help getting oriented around here. Where to find things, how things are done.”

“Oh. Well, one thing, how do you make a phone call from here?”

Kathy pointed at a guidebook that sat on the shelf above Emmett’s desk. “You mean back to the world? It’s all in there. But if an outside line is what you want, the dish is down.”

“The dish?”

“The satellite dish that carries the telecommunications. Some engineers are working on it this morning. They’re trying to increase the bandwidth without the expense of putting in a new one. Everything’s about resources here. Everything. It all has to come in by plane or ship from somewhere far, far away.”

“How about e-mail?” asked Valena. “Oh. I suppose that uses the same satellite.”

“It does, but you can pick up mail that’s already arrived and been put in a queue, and your outgoing messages will go out when the system comes back up. You can’t use your own computer until IT hooks you up to the system, but you can use the computers upstairs in the library.”

Valena shook her head in amazement. “McMurdo is a lot bigger and more complex than I imagined it would be.”

“This is a premier research institution. That requires infrastructure. And this base is the jumping-off point for myriad smaller field stations and field camps, not to mention the Pole. This whole continent is a research laboratory.”

A wave of sadness and frustration broke over Valena, and she looked away.

Taking this as a hint that the conversation was over, Kathy said, “Well, welcome to Antarctica, Valena,” and headed on down the hallway.

Valena lifted her gaze again to the office’s one small window. It looked out across the frozen sea toward the dancing run of mountains. High ice clouds had formed, painting a dizzying wave over the far-off summits. In the foreground, the four-jet-engine C-17 on which she had arrived dwarfed the smaller turbo-prop LC-130s, which rested in trim ranks beside the ice runway with their noses pointed eastward, their tall red tails lifted to the west. Even though it was still early morning, the sun was somewhere high overhead, casting short shadows to the southwest.

The scene was breathtakingly beautiful, a symphony of white and blue, but instead of lifting her heart, it seemed a tease, a chimera. All of this is so close, so tantalizing, and yet if I can’t get Emmett back down here…

Looking out across the cold wilderness she now began to comprehend the form that death took in this environment, for everybody involved. They were isolated from the world, and when the wind blew, they might just as well have been the first explorers with no radio, no planes, and no ship to save them.

Shaking her head in an attempt to dispel the ghosts of anxiety and loss, she left her laptop and backpack on the desk, re-locked the office door, and headed back up the ramp to the stairs that led up to the library.

Crary Lab’s library proved to be a broad, airy room with windows that ran all along the wall that looked out over the ice. She gazed through them awhile, again lost in the cold majesty of the scene, and then sat down at one of the computers that hummed in the center of the room. She hit a key on the keyboard to wake it up. Nothing happened.

A man who was sitting at a nearby machine turned toward her, reached over to her mouse, moved it a bit, and gave it a click. The desktop screen came up. “Cussed thing,” he said, in an accent that betrayed an upbringing somewhere in the American midwest. He had a beard and soft brown eyes that seemed telescoped back by his thick, steel-framed glasses.

“Thanks.”

He smiled and went back to work at his own machine.

Out of the corner of one eye, Valena studied the soft curve of his nose, the curly fringe of his mustache, his closely cropped hair shot with early gray. Almost palpable kindness radiated from him. Again, and a little more loudly this time, she said, “Thank you.”

He glanced back her way and gave her a wink. “You’re welcome.” He continued working.