Crawford Kilian: Icequake: A Prophetic Survival Thriller

The mine wasn’t even interesting as snow — seven metres down was too recent. This muck had all been laid down in the last two hundred years; the real snows of yesteryear were down a lot farther, and it was the Little Climatic Optimum of the tenth and eleventh centuries that had brought him here.

While the conveyor belt rattled and flapped, Sean dug steadily, humming along with the Pachelbel tape on the cassette player he’d brought for company.

Bruce Robinson, the radio operator, came into Hugh’s office without knocking. Hugh and Carter looked up from an evacuation checklist.

“I just got almost a full minute from McMurdo.”

“Good man!” Hugh said. “D’you tell them Al’s coming?”

“Didn’t see much point in that.” He dropped a message form on Hugh’s desk. It took very little time for the two men to read it

“My goodness,” Hugh murmured. “Willy Field closed down. Ash and bombs falling all about.”

“It’s just Inner Willy,” Carter said. “Outer Willy’s a good twenty kilometres away — it must be open.”

“Yes, but they’re not likely to have a Herc sitting about — more likely they’re evacuating McMurdo itself, and hard-pressed to do it with the aircraft they’ve got. Well, Al will still go.” Hugh sighed and rubbed his long red moustache. “This has not been our summer, I’m afraid. Who’s minding the radio? Roger?”

“Yeah. We’ll keep trying to get back in touch with them.”

“And the helicopter.”

“Uh-huh.” Bruce looked at his watch. “They oughta be back in less than an hour. It’s 1100.”

Out at the drilling hut, engineer Gordon Ellerslee and mechanic Simon Partington cleared the hole of the last cables and pipes. Gordon packed away three samples of sea water in plastic flasks.

“That’s that,” he grunted. “Some other crazy bastard can drill the hole next year. I’ll be back in Alberta, bitching about the heat and the blackflies.”

“Come off it,” Simon laughed. He was a tall, thin New Zealander, fair-skinned and a bit boyish for a man of 30. Gordon was only a couple of years older, but looked more like 45; he was already balding at the temples. Plastic surgery hadn’t entirely erased the scars gained in a Fort McMurray beer-parlour brawl long ago. “You’ll be back,” Simon went on. “Same as me. Two weeks back home, and you’ll be begging to come back.”

“No wonder you Kiwis are a twelfth-class country. You’re all too dumb to find your own assholes with both hands and a map. Gimme a hand with this crap, will you?”

Howie was almost back to the hangar. A bit of wind had sprung up, and the ice fog was blowing away. He was looking out towards Grid North-East, trying to spot the helicopter on the off chance that it might be coming back early, when his eye caught a flicker of motion off to his left. He scraped a mitt across the inner windscreen; the heater wasn’t working properly on the left side, and the glass had frosted over. He squinted through the clear patch.

A wave was running over the surface of the Shelf. Howie could see it plainly; it lifted sastrugi into sudden prominence and dropped them again, making the surface twinkle. The wave was probably no more than a tenth of a metre from trough to crest, but it was there, moving swiftly from the mountains on the Grid North horizon.

As it passed the station, just a couple of seconds after he had first seen it, Howie felt a sharp jolt, as if the D8 had collapsed a snow bridge over a crevasse. There was another shock, and a third, all within five seconds. The bulldozer shuddered and skidded. Howie killed the engine, swung open the door of the cab and stepped out onto the right track. He jumped to the surface, his legs sinking into soft snow almost to his knees. The vibration could still be felt.

A hundred metres away Shacktown’s two radio masts collapsed simultaneously with a metallic clash. A moment later there was a louder crash, and Howie turned to see the drilling tower falling onto the shed. He looked up at the dome, only a few metres away, and saw Colin Smith staring blankly down at him.

A third crash made Howie turn again. Not far from the radio masts, a gap had appeared in the surface. Howie walked towards it, staying on the hard-packed surface of the ski-way. In a minute he stood at the edge of a rectangular pit. At the bottom, buried in powdery snow, was the ruin that had been the radio shack.

“Oh…” He kicked the snow, sending a miniature avalanche down into the pit. “Oh, shit.”

Herm Northrop’s chair threw him across the control panel, then slid back and fell over. The fluorescent lights flickered but stayed on. Herm got to his feet and gripped the edge of the panel, ignoring the floor’s vibration as he watched the readouts. If anything in the cooling system had been seriously damaged, he would have to go at once to emergency shutdown.

After what seemed like a long time, his electric kettle and teapot fell off a nearby table. Books cascaded from their shelves. Through the lead-lined door to Tunnel E, Herm could hear muffled crashes.

Thirty seconds after the last shock, the reactor building was creaking as it resettled itself; the floor continued to tremble slightly. Herm took off his glasses and polished them on his necktie. Then he righted his chair, sat down and studied the control panel slowly and meticulously. Everything was normal. He got up and opened the door to the cold porch, went through and looked down the tunnel.

Shadows pounced at him and retreated as the tunnel lamps swung back and forth. Boxes, crates and drums that had been stacked along the walls were piled over the duckboards. Far down the tunnel something fell with the sound of breaking glass.

Herm went back inside; his glasses misted over at once. “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” he snapped, yanking them off. He bent myopically close to the telephone and punched Hugh’s number. After five rings someone picked it up. “Yes.”

“Oh, is that you, Carter? It’s Herm.”

“Anything serious?”

“Oh, not really. The reactor’s all right. What was that — an explosion?”

“Damned if I know. Maybe it was Steve’s earthquake. Hugh’s out checking the whole station.”

“He’ll have trouble reaching me. The tunnel’s blocked.”

“Did it collapse?”

“Heavens, no. Just the stuff stored along the walls. It’s a pretty mess.”

“Good. We’ll get to you as soon as we can. But the end of Tunnel A fell in on the radio shack.”

“ No ! Anyone hurt?”

“Don’t know yet. I’ll get back to you.”

Herm put down the phone. Then he put on his glasses, retrieved the kettle and made himself a pot of tea. He had to hold the pot with both hands while he poured, and even then some of the tea spilled. Herm wasn’t sure whether he was scared or merely excited.

Somehow Suzy carried Terry from the kitchen to the infirmary. Katerina was in the doorway, zipping up her anorak.

“He’s burned. He’s burned. Oh God, he’s burned.”

Katerina helped carry him inside. Terry was in shock; his trousers were soaked with the soup that had splashed boiling from the kettles when they fell off the stove. Beans, rice, tomatoes and onions steamed on the table as Katerina carefully cut the soaked cloth away from his legs.

“Oh God, he looks terrible,” Suzy whispered. The skin on Terry’s thighs, groin and belly was heavily blistered and coming off in bloody patches.

“I have seen worse. Don’t worry, he will be all right soon. Please, now, Suzy, go back to the kitchen. I will call you.”

She worked steadily and rapidly. Terry was breathing hard and seemed only remotely aware of what was happening.

Katerina wished the floor would stop vibrating.