Clive Cussler - Polar Shift

As she hoisted her pack to resume the trek, Karla said: "I've been wondering. How did you transport the specimen all the way back to the camp? It must weigh hundreds of pounds."

Ito smiled and pointed to the packs he and Sato were carrying. "Inflatable rafts. We got the specimen to the river and floated all the way back to camp."

Ito smiled and bowed politely when Karla congratulated them on their ingenuity.

Sergei took up the lead, followed by the two women with the Japanese men taking up the rear. They struck off inland, away from the river. The topography changed from flat tundra to rolling hills and valleys, and eventually they were on the edge of the rolling foothills that ringed the base of the volcano. As they drew closer to it, the black, truncated mountain that they had seen in the distance began to loom above their head like an altar to Vulcan, the lord of the underworld.

They hiked along the shores of several small lakes and made their way around tussocks of cotton grass that marked boggy areas teeming with migrating birds. The temperature rose to around thirty degrees, but a breeze coming off the Arctic Ocean created a windchill factor that halved that, and Karla was glad that she was wearing her down parka.

The cold wind was no longer a problem, once they had descended into a ravine about thirty feet wide. Twenty-foot banks hemmed them in on both sides. A narrow stream a couple of feet deep ran down the middle, with plenty of room for walking on either side. They traveled along the winding gorge for two hours, and the composition of the banks began to change. Soon it became apparent that the ravine was an ancient mortuary. The river that had created the ravine had cut through layers of time to reveal scores of bones that protruded from the sand under their feet.

Karla stopped and picked up a bison leg bone that fitted perfectly into the socket of another bone she found a few feet away. The other scientists were not impressed. They barely gave the find a second look, and she had to drop the bones and hurry to catch up.

She was annoyed and frustrated at their indifference, but the reason for their casual attitude soon became apparent. As they rounded a bend, she saw that the low cliffs were composed almost entirely of bones of every size and species cemented together by the permafrost. She quickly identified pygmy horse and ancient reindeer fossils, ribs and femurs, along with massive mammoth bones and tusks. The graveyard went on for at least two hundred yards.

With great fanfare, Sergei announced that they had reached their destination. He dropped his rucksack on the ground next to the blackened ashes of a fire. "This is our base camp," he said.

The others left their bags as well, and continued along the ravine carrying only camera equipment and a few hand tools. As they trekked along, Karla thought about the baby mammoth back at the base camp. She was dying to test it. From its tissue and cartilage, they could perform radiocarbon tests to determine when it lived and died. The tusks would provide growth lines, like those in a tree, that would reveal seasonal differences and metabolic rate and migratory patterns. Seeds and pollen in the stomach contents would tell much about the biological world that existed thousands of years ago.

After hiking along the ravine for another ten minutes, they came to a section where there was a shallow cave in the wall of the gorge.

"This is where we found our little baby," Sergei said.

The ragged cavity was several feet across and about a yard deep.

"How did you get it out of the permafrost?" Karla said.

"Unfortunately, we had no water hose to melt the permafrost," Maria said. "We relied on hammer and chisel to extract the specimen."

"Then it was partly exposed?"

"Yes," Maria said. "We had to chop a little around the edge of the carcass before we could pry it out." She explained that they had rigged up a crude travois from mammoth tusks and dragged the frozen specimen to the river. It was floated back to the base camp and moved into the shed, where the temperature was below freezing even in the daytime.

Karla examined the hole. "There's something strange here," she said.

The other scientists clustered around her.

"I don't see anything," Sergei said.

"Look. There are other bones much deeper in the permafrost. They are evidently thousands of years old." She reached into the hole and scraped out some decayed vegetation and showed it to her colleagues. "This stuff is not very old. Your little elephant came into the hole more recently."

"Perhaps it is my poor English, but I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying," Sato said politely.

"Yes, what are you saying?" Sergei said with no attempt to hide his impatience. "That the mammoth is not part of its surroundings?"

"I don't know what I'm saying. Only that it is odd that the flesh is not rotting."

Sergei crossed his arms and looked around at the others with a triumphant grin on his face.

"I understand," Maria said. "I'm surprised we didn't see it before. This ravine still floods from time to time. It's possible that a flash flood washed the specimen away from a wall farther along and that the baby floated here, where it lodged in the hole and froze again."

Sergei saw that he was losing his conversational edge. "We're not here to look at holes," he said brusquely. He led the way about a hundred feet from the discovery site to where the ravine branched off.

"You go with Maria down there," he said, pointing to the left-hand branch. "We'll examine the other ravine."

"We've already been down this one," Maria protested.

"Look again. Maybe you'll find some more of your floating mammoths."

Maria's eyes flashed. Sato saw that a salvo was coming and intervened. "We had better make sure our hand radios are tuned to the same channel," he said.

With a verbal brawl averted, they all checked their walkie-talkies; and made sure the batteries were good. Then they split up into two groups, with the three men going one way and the women the other.

"What's wrong with Sergei today?" Karla asked.

"We got into an argument over your theory last night. He said it was all wrong. I said he wasn't giving you credit because you were a woman. He's such a male chauvinist, my husband."

"Maybe he just needs a little time to cool off."

"The old goat will be sleeping with an iceberg tonight. Maybe that will cool him off."

They both burst into laughter that echoed off the walls of the ravine. After walking several minutes, Karla saw why Maria had been so angry about being ordered to the left-hand branch. There were few bones to be found. Maria confirmed that the expedition had partially explored the other gorge and found it far richer in bones than the one they were in.

As they scanned the walls of the gorge, Maria's hand radio crackled. Ito's voice came on.

"Maria and Karla. Please return immediately to the point where the party split up."

Minutes later, they were back at the place the ravine forked. Ito was waiting for them. He said he had something to show them, and led the way along the tributary to where the other two men were waiting in front of a section of banking that looked as if it had been blasted open with dynamite.

"Somebody has been digging here," Sergei said, stating the obvious.

"Who could have done such a thing?" Sato said.

"Is there anyone else on the island?" Karla asked.

"We didn't think so," Ito said. "I thought I saw a light a few nights ago, but I couldn't be sure."

"It appears that your eyesight was working very well," Sato said. "We are not alone on the island."

"Ivory hunters," Sergei pronounced. He picked up a splint of bone from the hundreds of broken pieces that littered the ground. "I had no idea they had found this place. It's a sin. There's no science here. It looks as if someone has taken a hammer and chisel to it."