Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

Building this landing surface at Pegasus was a satisfying challenge. It was built in layers, using the only road metal they had in Antarctica: snow. He and the other heavy equipment operators out of Fleet Operations used a 966 Cat loader with a snow-throwing attachment to coat the runway, then drove a Challenger 95 tractor up and down the runway pulling a Reynolds box, laying the snow out in a smooth three-inch layer. Next, they transformed the three inches of snow into an ultra-hard-packed, one-and-a-half-inch-thick surface of white ice by dragging 124 tons of weight carts behind the Challenger. The weight of the rollers caused a process that metallurgists called sintering, in which the structure of the fine ice crystals they called snow were compressed and reformed into a dense, interlocking crystal lattice hard and smooth enough to land jets. Each layer took about three days of working around the clock, and it would take ten layers to get the desired effect.

Building runways and dressing the flagged routes that led out to them was slow, exacting, and satisfying, his favorite kind of work, and the solitude of the long hours in the tractor in all that gloriously empty space was eased by a weather-tight cab and the Armed Forces radio station that piped in classic rock. But riding back and forth in the cold for nine hours a day, six days each week, built up an appetite. It looked like the Belgian waffles were the cure today, and hey, how about some eggs and bacon and a little dessert? He moved over to the sweets table. What was this little confection that the kind pixies from the kitchen had left for him? Looked like lemon bars. And oh, that fresh-baked bread, mm-hm!

Dave forked two of the lemon bars straight onto his tray and picked out a nice, thick slice of bread to chew on while he waited in line for a waffle. He snagged a little bowl of stewed fruit just in case all those folks who touted diet pyramids knew what they were squawking about, loaded up two glasses with milk, grabbed a fork and a knife, and turned toward the waffle line. Having slept in after an evening sipping Jim Beam and Cokes at Gallagher’s, he was hungry as a bear.

“Hey there, Dave,” said the chef as he reached the front of the line. “Fix ya up with a waffle here?”

“You know you can,” Dave replied. “Hey, you were doing purty well at the pool table last night at Gallagher’s.”

The chef winked. “Gotta shark me some extra dollars. When I get out of here I’m going to travel up through south-east Asia. Ride an elephant, all that.”

“Sounds great.” Dave gave him a friendly smile. The folks who worked in the galley were really decent. They took the job of feeding the horde of people who flowed through McMurdo very seriously and greeted each soul who stood in their lines with dignity and professional pride. He especially liked the omelet guy. He was older than the rest and had learned exactly how Dave liked his eggs, but waffles were only an option on Sundays.

“Here ya go, man. Check out the strawberries. They’re fresh!”

“They look wonderful,” said Dave, scooping several spoonfuls onto his waffle.

“Go for it. We got a whole load of freshies in from Cheech yesterday with that late flight. Cool, huh? Yeah, loads of lettuce, too; they’ll be up for dinner. Man, I’m salivating just thinking of it.”

“Me, too. I never was a fresh foods man before coming down here, but now I’d walk a mile in tight shoes for an orange or a banana. Hey, is it true that you sometimes get spiders and such on the lettuce?”

Waffle Guy grinned. “Yeah.”

“What do you do with them? Put them in the compost?”

“Oh, hell no! We keep them as pets!”

His waffle acquired and heaped with strawberries and whipped cream, Dave turned toward the galley to choose a seat. He craned his neck to see if Ben, the biologist he had enjoyed visiting with the morning before, was sitting up in the beaker zone. No luck. He spotted his roommate Matt at one of the tables where the heavy equipment operators tended to sit and headed over to join him.

Matt had his turquoise blue contact lenses on, which always had a startling effect. He drove various loaders and a mammoth forklift built by Caterpillar. It could lift enormously heavy loads, like the big metal shipping containers that brought materials in from the States and carried waste materials back. It had a big counterweighting butt emblazoned with a cartoon of Garfield and its nickname: Fat Cat. “Morning, Dave,” Matt said, without glancing up.

“Matt.” Dave settled down and shoveled into his eggs. For several minutes the only noises from their table were the soft sounds of munching and forks hitting china.

“Yup.”

“So, you goin’ to Black Island this week?”

“Hope so.”

“You gonna drive the Challenger, Flipper, or one of the snow machines?”

“Dunno.”

“Whatcha haulin’ out there?”

“Water.”

“You and me, we’re like an old married couple,” Matt said finally, as he pushed aside his plate and moved his coffee closer to his large chest. “That was four one-word sentences out of five, and a total of only two words over one syllable.”

“You ought to go back to teaching, Matt.”

Matt laughed. “But I hate kids, remember? That’s why I came here. You see anyone under eighteen in this room?”

Dave looked about him. “I’m not sure as I see anyone under thirty.”

“Over there by the milk machine. The DA who’s putting in the new box of nonfat.”

“What’s ‘DA’ stand for, anyway?”

“Dining assistant.”

“Oh. Thought maybe the D stood for dog. They work purty hard for their wages, and they sure are the bottom of the totem pole around here. They never go anywheres. Imagine coming all the way down here and never seeing the outdoors, even, except one day a week, and you’d get a different day off than everyone else, too.”

“You’re changing the subject. What do you think of her?”

“Aw, hell, Matt.”

“You like her?”

“She’s cute.”

“I know her. I could introduce you.”

Dave blushed slightly, a change in coloration that only really showed around his eyes, where the glacier goggles protected the skin from tanning. “A bit young for me, Matt.”

“What, you looking for long-term commitment and deep meaning? You’ve been here, what? Eight weeks? And you haven’t hit on a single female. C’mon, folks will think you’re gay.”

Dave grinned. “Think we’re gay, you mean.”

“No, really, man, you gotta start checking out the chicks.”

Dave looked around. “Half of them are gay,” he said, now trying humor to throw Matt off his case.

“Why, because they aren’t climbing into your lap?”

“You gotta admit some of the women here are tougher than both of us put together.”

Three more men walked up to their table, arranged their trays, and sat down. Dave idly took a census of their gastronomic decisions. Steve, a Fleet Ops comrade who had stood his share of shifts out at Pegasus, weighed in with a nice-looking cheese and black olive omelet, while Wilbur, who ran a loader on the road being constructed up past the layout yard, had decided on a big bowl of the homemade granola heaped with Greek yogurt, nuts, and stewed fruit. Joe, who was helping construct the floating ice dock that would service the supply ships, had gone for the waffles. As they forked their first mouthfuls of food and swilled their first ounces of juice, coffee, and water, Dave took a big draw on one of his glasses of milk, wondering what kind of nonsense the gang of three was going to come up with this time.

Steve delivered the first volley. “Any new babes to check out? I hear where yesterday’s C-17 made it in from Cheech, so it’s possible.” He glanced around the room, scanning the tables.