Джон Кэмпбелл - Frozen Hell

“Certainly,” Vane said. “If it is only a half mile away, then it can’t be very deep under the surface. We might even be able to reach it physically. I’m just damn fool enough to hope, and I’m going to set out tomorrow with ice axes and shovels.”

“Ye Gods,” Barclay groaned, “more digging? I thought I hated snow shovels, but since I’ve played with these non-magnetic darlings of yours in this blasted ice, my star detestation has become the ice axe.”

Barclay glanced toward the tool chest. The lid was up two inches or so, and the ends of three pointed ice axes showed, looking like teeth in a grinning mouth.

“You can always hope that it’s buried good and deep so we can’t possibly dig it out,” pointed out Norris. “And those beryllium-bronze tools aren’t so bad—the stuff will cut steel.”

“All right maybe for ice axes and butcher knives,” Barclay admitted, “but every blasted wrench and cold chisel we’ve got is made out of it. It hasn’t got the grip that case-hardened steel has. The Stillson wrenches aren’t worth a damn on a hardened steel tractor shaft. What I object to is making me use bronze-age tools on a machine-age tractor. Since the magnetic mass of the tractors make it impossible for you to work near them anyway, you might have let me have steel tools there.”

“Avoid duplication,” said Vane, spreading his hands sorrowfully. “Axiom number One of South Polar research. We had to use carbon dioxide in the Geiger counters for cosmic ray work because the argon bottle leaked and we didn’t have a duplicate. If you really want to lug an extra 150 pounds of steel tools around, that’s your privilege, I suppose. Speaking of duplication and digging—how many thermite bombs have we got left?”

“Three,” said Barclay. “I fell over all three trying to get at the radio set in the tractor. Three 25-pounders.”

“Well, if McReady’s storm holds off, we’re going hunting tomorrow. I think Norris better ride the sledge with the instruments, while we man-haul him. Sad experience convinces me you can’t watch a dip needle and your feet at the same time. This ice-dome may be bald, but it presents some nice cracks to fall into.”

McReady sighed and sat down on the edge of his bunk. “It’s my turn to cook this evening, I believe. If you birds will move that junk, I’ll set up the primus stove and we’ll see what the larder offers. I think I’m going to crack a few eggs. Everybody willing?”

“What, no pemmican? No rancid seal-blubber? We couldn’t stand for that omission.” Vane sprang to remove the magnetic apparatus. “By the way, Mac, do you suppose that they still have eggs, up there in the north, that lie down flat when you open ’em? Eggs that lie down together like the lion and the lamb, with both yolk and white flat?

“If you don’t like eggs that have been frozen, you don’t have to eat ’em. You can have that seal-blubber. And if you don’t like that, remember that the seal didn’t ask to be eaten. I just thought it might be a good idea to stoke up for work tomorrow. Either we dig for your blasted meteorite, or we have to lace down the roof against the wind. We’ll have a little variety tonight, and then tomorrow breakfast can be something different. How about cocoa and oatmeal?”

“Let’s see, didn’t we have that yesterday? It was oatmeal and cocoa this morning, but wasn’t it cocoa and oatmeal yesterday?”

“No, it was oatmeal and cocoa.” McReady assured him. “I fixed it. Barclay, will you start heaving the kitchen over here. Primus stove first—let’s go.”

Barclay started in at the top of the chest, and worked down rapidly. First the stove. Then the food crate.

McReady was first up next morning, and his was the joy of starting the copper stove to dispel the frost of the night. The Garry Expedition had tried, with fair success, a new system in Antarctic exploration. Since they were basing at the South Magnetic Pole, Big Magnet base had been, perforce, 350 miles from the nearest point accessible to ships. The entire mass of expedition equipment had been freighted in by the five planes. Even one of the six tractors had been flown in. But the impossibility of freighting 500 tons of fuel so far inland had forced Commander Garry to try to live off the country in this respect; Antarctica was known to have coal reserves greater than those of any equal area on Earth, excepting only the United States. The expedition’s tractors and electric power plant were steam driven, the heating and cooking stoves coal-fired.

The fuel found 20 miles from Big Magnet in the Magnet Range had, however, been a low-grade, high-ash bituminous coal. McReady’s task of starting the little stove was, in consequence, no easy one. Belches of smoke served effectively to force the others from their bunks into the chill temperature of the Secondary Magnetic Station.

“The temperature outside,” reported McReady carefully placing another lump of coal, “has fallen to -58°. The storm has arrived, the abnormal condition of the local weather. I might have known what it would be.”

“I don’t hear anything,” Barclay said.

“It’s a dead calm. Bar, my friend, I fear we dig today, unless the meteorite is happily placed very deep. Let us pray.”

“Damn. A dead calm. Oh, well, the temperature may go down, but that’s more comfortable than wind. Is it still dropping?”

“On its way down. It’ll be -65° by the time we get started.” McReady assured him. “Will you get some ice for the melter?”

Two hours later, the thermometer verified McReady’s prediction. From horizon to horizon, the blue ice of the bald plateau stretched out under winking stars, the calmest and clearest air they had seen since reaching this wind-swept dome. The northern horizon was barely washed with rose and crimson and green, the southern horizon black mystery sweeping off to the pole. The auroral lights wavered in shimmering curtains about them, intensified slightly off to the northeast, in the direction of Big Magnet base and the magnetic pole. The brightest stars had dancing crystalline duplicates in the sparkling ice underfoot. Off to the west, the ice contracting under the cold gave a ripping crack, and a succession of spreading, lesser reports as the strain was eased.

“Be hell if one of those relief cracks strikes through the camp,” muttered Barclay. “We’ve weakened the ice cutting into it here, so it might.”

“The seismic sounding showed the ice right here to be 1,200 feet deep,” Vane pointed out. “A 7-foot hole is just a little chip. By the way, the ice movement is toward the northwest, here, and we’re bound in that direction. There is probably a drowned mountain or hill backing the ice up this way; we may hit it.”

“Got everything?” McReady asked.

“Um. Let me get settled, and thank God that your storm was a flat calm.” Vane alone of the party had worn heavy furs. The others would be sweating in stout khaki trousers, woolen shirts, and mackinaws under wind-proof clothes. Vane, riding the man-hauled sledge would have the least pleasant task, that of sitting still and observing the magnetic instruments.

“I said an unusual condition would arrive,” McReady defended himself, “and it did. This is the first calm we’ve seen since we got here. I admit I gave the wrong interpretation, but there must be wind storms here at times. One might even say that this is a storm—a 35-mile-per-hour wind in the opposite direction.”

The men set off. The ice crampons chipped into the ice under their heels and made going not too difficult, but the age-scoured ice, gouged by the sand-like grains of ice borne on howling, unceasing winds, remained a rough and uncertain surface. The man on the sledge had to brace himself continuously at unexpected angles. Two deep crevasses, unbridged in this drift-free territory, forced them to detour for nearly a mile before returning to the course indicated by the dip needle and the spaced inductor-readings Vane made.