Джон Кэмпбелл - Frozen Hell

An incredible torch in the midst of a vast, blasted area of ice. A dazzling, blue-white stream of molten stuff tumbled from a softened rent in the side of the ship to roll down toward the mightier, towering ramparts of ice still undefeated. It struck them with a vast hissing roar, and they crumbled before it, tumbling into exploding steam as they fell into the growing lake of supernal fire. White-hot spheres of flaming metal exploded outward, to thunder downward through thousand-foot-thick ice.

The howling, rushing wind seemed to gain strength, thrusting the ice-smoke toward the distant Antarctic ocean. Great blocks of ice tumbled madly through the air. For a moment, resistant in blue white heat, withstanding even the lapping sea of molten fury, vast dazzling bulks stood out firm in the center section of the ship, huge machines of curving, dazzling splendor, shedding the rain of blazing metal from incandescent, adamantine backs. Then abruptly, they dissolved in a vaster, fiercer flame that sent darting rays through the towering, tottering glaciers looking on about the ship. The black, glistening rock of the ice-drowned mountainside glowed faintly red before that onslaught.

The wavering curtains of the aurora overhead jerked suddenly, spiraled in a mad vortex of shimmering light, and beat down a savage stalk to the incandescent fury. From the mountain, from the ice, vast angry tongues of lightning crashed against the molten pool. Lesser lightnings darted from the tractor, from the steel treads to the ice. Ice axes and shovels grew warm in the hands of the men, as thrilling shocks darted from wristwatches and metal buckles.

Along the mountainside, a vast motion of ice swept in. From the glacier to the south, pressed for ages by the weight of ice spilling over the mountain ridge a convulsion of billions of tons of ice thrust mile-long blocks of ice. The dwindling, flaming pool of metal vanished under a hissing, screaming bellow of tumbling ice.

The driving, rushing wind from the south whipped away a last trace of ice-smoke. It thrummed monotonously through the tractor rigging, cutting with a cold-keened edge. High in the sky, the curtains of the aurora wavered and moved in their immemorial fashion, against the rose-and-lavender wash of the setting sun.

Vane staggered to his feet. “It was a magnesium-aluminum alloy, hardened with beryllium and other metals.”

“There aren’t any more where that came from,” said McReady grimly, nodding toward the sledge. “What happened? We set off their fuel supply?”

Vane shook his head. “I think it was just the ship’s metal. An immense magnesium metal torch. Hundreds and hundreds of tons of it. That flare toward the end—when the engines went—I think it was the power that thing soaked out of Earth’s magnetic field ages ago, getting loose again with the final dissolution of the engines. The aurora felt it, the lightnings felt it—”

“The dynamo felt it,” Barclay called. “The coils are fused in a solid lump. The transformers and coils of the radio are also fused. Your magnetic apparatus looks as though you’d stepped in it. We can’t signal Big Magnet ’til we get back to the Station, if then. And they’ll be worrying about us, I imagine.”

“They saw that,” Vane nodded. “We’ll have to get back to the station at once, though they may guess that it would burn out coils here. There’s nothing more we can do around here, if we can leave. The crevasses—”

“The ice hasn’t moved much this side of the ridge.” McReady pointed toward the west. “But it will. We’d better go while we can.”

The tractor stirred, a cough of steam spurting from the exhaust. “We can talk that over later—if we move now.” suggested Barclay.

“Peaceful place!” Barclay shouted over the clatter of the tractor.

Big Magnet base lay in the sheltered hollow below, a dirtied stretch of drift-snow, lumped and humped over the buried shacks. Half a dozen stove-pipes smoked languidly, the dark soot moving off in startlingly slow spirals, in a manner seeming almost magical to these men returning from the wind-rushed bald plateau at Secondary Magnetic Station, the station that was no more.

McReady nodded vigorously. The clatter of metal parts and the hiss of steam made conversation too much of an effort. The howl of the huskies in Dogtown succeeded, somehow, in piercing the rattle of the tractor with a rolling, despairing note.

The Administration Building suddenly seemed to shake itself free of the snow, and half a dozen men stumbled outside, shading their eyes to look toward the approaching tractor and its trailed sledge. The spidery finger of the radio tower cast a long, broken shadow out across the roiled snow toward them.

“Imagine!” Barclay shouted. “No wind at all for as much as seventy hours running! I wonder if I’ll be able to sleep down here!”

“You can go back if you insist!” McReady shouted back. “I could still find something of interest out there, even if Vane and Norris’s pet project doesn’t exist any more!”

“Hold on! I’m turning!” Barclay stomped on the left clutch, and the rattle of the tractor changed its tone. The left caterpillar stopped, while the right continued moving. The clumsy machine lurched sideways, then turned toward the jumbled snow of the tractor garage. Five tarpaulin-covered masses, half drifted over, represented the rest of the Base force of mechanical ground transport.

More men were materializing from the Antarctic snow, popping up out of the scattered snow-buried shacks and heading toward the arriving party. The tractor ground and vibrated to a shivering halt beside its mates, and McReady clambered stiffly down from it. The air here at Big Magnet seemed positively balmy; it was -45°, but with practically no wind at all. Norris, Vane, and Blair were straightening up from the two trailed sledges, Norris and Vane from the first, Blair from the second. Blair wasn’t the only one who would ride on that second sledge; it had another passenger, who had now acquired the title of Scarecrow.

“I suggest we wait a while.” McReady nodded toward the men advancing across the snow toward them. “I’m feeling a bit cramped, and maybe the hard work of hauling those damned sledges over to camp would strain me.”

Vane grinned. “I guess they’ll help. Will you ask Bar for me just how it is he finds all the bumps on the trail? It’s a peculiar miracle to me that I didn’t part company with that sledge at least forty times during the last five miles.”

“That’s his secret. Blair, where do you want that little pet of yours taken? We might as well shift the rest of the load of that sledge to this one now and save double hauling.”

“I don’t know where I’ll want it taken,” Blair answered doubtfully. “I want it to thaw out as quickly as possible, but I can’t use violent methods. I think the best thing to do is to find out who’s night watchman tonight and decide from that. It’ll probably be either one of the meteor observers, the cosmic ray group, the magnetic group, or a meteorologist. If they’ve got the job, we can take the Thing to the appropriate shack and keep it warm for the next 36 hours running. It will thaw out in that time.”

“What if it’s aviation’s turn for night watchman?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to wait, then. They don’t heat the hangar at any time, let alone at night.”

Barclay laughed suddenly. “Blair, you’re going to be the most popular guy in camp when they find out what you’ve got on the ball. That Thing is going to be great company for the bird that’s got to sit up with it all night.”

McReady, Vane, and Norris joined in the laugh, but the little biologist was too serious about his find. “It’s no worse than those frozen seals and things, so far as I can see. It’s just as dead, and just as natural a thing—”