Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

“I like to think that Steve hears that singing still. Well, that’s all I have to say, except that when we’re done here, we’ve got a barbecue going down by the Heavy Shop, and the first round’s on me!”

A great roar went up. A few others stepped to the summit to speak: Cupcake as the one who had been coming south the longest, then a few others, and then Father Skehan closed with a final prayer, and the moment fell away as the crowd dispersed into the snow.

Halfway down the hill, Dave Fitzgerald felt a jab at his ribs, a poke blunted by layers of down and polypropylene. “Hey, why didn’t you say something?” asked Wilbur. “You found him.”

Dave turned to see whether his workmate was looking on him with kindness or craziness. It was the latter. He sighed. “Just give it a break,” he said, and continued down the hill.

MAJOR MARILYN WOOD STOOD WITH MAJOR HUGH Muller at the foot of the hill, a tiny knot of camouflage brown and black as a sea of red and tan parkas flowed past them, hoping to spot Valena in the crowd.

“Did she answer the message you left for her?” asked Major Waylon Bentley as he moved through the crowd to join them.

“No,” said Hugh. “I put a note on her door in Crary. I’m thinking that she isn’t anywhere in town, but she hasn’t left the ice. Her name never showed up on the pax manifests.”

“She went off with that traverse to Black Island,” said Waylon. “But she came back, right? You’re sure of it?”

“I’m sure. I saw her. Then she went walkabout again or something.”

“Let’s ask Paul here,” said Marilyn, grabbing the arm of the helicopter pilot as he walked by her.

Paul looked up in surprise, as if he had been woken from a dream.

Marilyn said, “Any of you guys carry a beaker named Valena anywhere recently?”

Paul smiled. “In fact I did. Lovely girl. I took her up to Clark Glacier in the Dry Valleys yesterday.”

“Whew!” said Marilyn.

“Why, what’s up?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Hugh. “Any idea when she’s coming back?”

Paul shook his head.

“Whose event is she with?” asked Marilyn.

“Naomi Bosch. Glaciology. I forget the number.”

“Did you take anyone else up there?” asked Waylon.

“Just her.”

Marilyn asked, “Who else is in that camp?”

Paul rolled his eyes up in thought. “A couple of drillers and two graduate students.”

“Names on those students?”

“The new one I didn’t catch, but Lindemann I remember from other years. A bit of a sniveler if he doesn’t get the front seat.”

“Thanks,” said Hugh. With Valena checked off his mental list for the moment, he began scanning the crowd for another face.

Marilyn shook her head. “There are wheels within wheels with this puzzle.”

Waylon said, “This guy we’re looking for… did the service record give a photograph of him?”

Hugh said, “Everyone looks alike in these damned red parkas. Besides, I wouldn’t go by appearances, or the name he’s got on his parka. He’s here on a false passport.”

“Imagine,” said Waylon. “A dishonorable discharge, right here in Mac Town.”

“You think this guy knows Valena is on his trail?” said Marilyn.

“Let’s hope not,” said Hugh, “but assume he does. We’re just going to have to figure out how to reach her before he does, and pray that he’s not Dan Lindemann.”

ON CLARK GLACIER, NAOMI BOSCH LOOKED OUT THE flap of the cook tent. “It looks like it’s clearing. I was thinking we should ski down to the terminus of the glacier,” she said.

Twenty minutes later, everyone had bottles of hot water in their packs and rations of chocolate and granola bars in their pockets. The drillers had their skis on first and shot out ahead of them. Dan Lindemann and the other student followed second, and Naomi and Valena brought up the rear.

“I’m sorry I don’t have better equipment,” said Valena, noticing that Naomi was wearing gear that looked like it must be the latest, greatest thing.

“Never fear. We do things on the buddy system here. We’ll all swap off. Did you get much out of Dan yesterday?”

Valena stared at her. “You sent him to talk to me?”

“I did. He would have hidden in his tent until you left if I’d let him.”

“Well, he wasn’t all that informative.”

Naomi took this in. “Then I’ll have another talk with him, let him know that he has a choice: he can help or he can walk home.”

They skied away across the wide expanse of Clark Glacier, the fresh snowflakes glinting at them like a thousand separate gems. They were soon warmed from the effort and shed parkas into their packs, switching to wind jackets. As they left the center of the saddle, the glacier began to curve downward—the reverse of a ski slope, which has a concave curve toward its base—and the skiing became easier and easier until it was in fact too steep for the equipment Valena was using. Waving for one of the drillers to stay with Valena, Naomi shot away down a half-pipe-shaped chute that descended along one side of the glacier.

The wind had blown the snow away, revealing blue-green ice. The edges of Valena’s skis were too dull to cut into it, so she took off her skis and began to kick steps in the side of the pipe, working her way down. The others waited at the foot of the glacier, examining it, waving their ski poles as they discussed it.

She arrived at last, stepping for the first time onto the dry ground for which the Dry Valleys had been named. The surface was a fine trash of ventifacts—stones that had been polished into smooth facets by blowing grit—and broken on a much larger scale by the odd frost-fracture pattern called polygonal ground. Valena was in a world of magic, the coldest dry ground on earth. She wandered out across the patterned ground.

She knew the simple facts that had rendered these valleys ice-free—at this low elevation and in this location, the ice sublimated away faster than it could accumulate—but still it seemed strange. All but two percent of Antarctica was covered with ice, and the lion’s share of uncovered ground was here.

The terminus of Clark Glacier was a cliff about a hundred feet high and draped with icicles. Valena wandered closer. She could see layers in the ice, great festoons of strata etched by melting. She was just considering walking even closer to it when an icicle several times her mass detached with a ballistic snap and crashed to the valley floor, scattering chunks of ice like shrapnel.

“That one almost got you,” someone called from a position well behind her. “You might want to back up.”

Valena turned. It was Dan Lindemann. “Thanks for the tip,” she said. “Do you have any other key intelligence for me?”

Lindemann scowled. “Naomi says it’s my turn to babysit you.”

Valena closed her eyes to blot him temporarily from her world. She had heard this scornful tone a thousand times from cousins and schoolmates who would not accept her, but she refused to let it sting her as it always had. This was her place now, and he could not take it from her. When I open my eyes , she told herself, I shall see only a sad person who cannot sneer his way out of a wet paper bag. She opened her eyes. Dan Lindemann was still looking at her, but his demeanor had shifted from disdain to uncertainty.

She looked around to see where everyone else was, and to her horror realized that they were already climbing back up the glacier. She wanted to question Lindemann but not be left alone with him in a dangerous place. Hefting her skis onto her shoulder, she led the way.

Dan put on his skis and shuffled along behind her. “Too bad you don’t have skins for your skis,” he said. He made it sound like a taunt.