Black Ice (7 page)

With the money in place, and Sean on board, Lauren had selected the rest of her team.

Frank was her first recruit. Lauren had worked with him on three different Antarctic bases, and he'd become a friend, even a father figure in some ways. Lauren liked his unflappable personality and his gentle sense of humour, and his experience of constructing bases in the field was second to none. Murdo was an obvious choice too, mainly because in addition to being the best base chef Lauren had ever known, he had skills in plumbing and electrics which would be invaluable when it came to the rapid construction of Capricorn. Mel was—like Sean—a new face for Lauren, but the Kiwi doctor had come so highly recommended from her previous overwintering at Scott Base that Lauren was prepared to take the risk on her.

And that was Lauren's famous five—but for the design stage it was really Frank that she depended on. Together they devised a CAD program which would enable them to create a three-dimensional computer model of the proposed base, a virtual blueprint which would produce the final construction plan.

The two of them spent many hundreds of hours poring over the options, designing the base in a series of different modules—heavily insulated against the cold yet lightweight enough to be air transportable. Five personnel would need to live in Capricorn for one year; they would have to be fed, they would need hot water to shower, they would need a relaxation area with sofas and videos to watch during the long winter night.

There had to be a laboratory for Lauren, a clinic for Mel, a radio room and more. Their virtual design became more complicated by the day as drilling gear and cooking areas were incorporated.

The program allowed them to enter the three-dimensional graphic and explore the rooms and corridors of the base at will. In this way, problems could be rapidly resolved. A click of a mouse moved the accommodation quarters so they would be further from the cooking smells of the galley, a further click installed triple-glazed windows in every room.

There was a lot of guesswork involved: how thick would the walls need to be? What was the likelihood that drifting snow could block a crucial air intake? How many toilets did they need?

The internal workings of Capricorn were surprisingly complex—the plumbing, the electrical wiring, the heating ducts all had to be incorporated into the plan.

‘It's like looking at the veins and arteries of some creature,' Lauren told Frank as they threaded the pipes and cables along virtual walls and ceilings.

Lauren began to think of Capricorn as a living thing.

The other team members came in and had their say: Murdo the cook wanted more storage space for the many tons of food, Sean proposed a heating duct and better ventilation for his engine shed, and medic Mel pointed out that she couldn't run a functional clinic without a wall-mounted X-ray machine and a hot-water supply to a sink.

Finally, they had Capricorn nailed down to the last light fitting, the last nut and bolt.

In January, the middle of the Antarctic summer, precisely one year after De Pierman had delivered his cheque, Capricorn was boxed up and ready to fly. A lumbering Hercules C130 cargo plane stopped at a military airfield near London, and the prefabricated base—all forty tons of it, complete with supplies—was loaded into the cavernous interior.

From there they flew across the Atlantic, landing in Colorado where the giant freighter swallowed up the fifteen tons of engine and drill rig which Sean had carefully crated up. Next stop, South America, where the aircraft was fitted with skids, and then on to Antarctica, where they touched down on a smooth ice plateau exactly at the position Lauren had wanted.

Seven weeks later they had it built; Capricorn was bolted together, anchored against the wind and ready for work. Lauren was pleased with the design: it was warm, functional and sturdy enough to resist the ferocity of the elements. The official opening ceremony was simple: a red ribbon pinned across the doorframe of the mess hut, a magnum of champagne kept in an insulated bag to prevent it from freezing.

Lauren cut the ribbon with the scissors on her Swiss army knife.

‘I declare Capricorn base well and truly open,' she said with a beaming smile as the others looked on proudly. ‘It may be small, but from here we're going to do great things.'

The day held more excitements: late that evening, Sean got the Perkins engine running for the first time, earning a big cheer from the team, which had assembled for the great moment. He engaged the gears which powered the rig and gently let the rotating drill bite into the ice. The cutting surface buried itself smoothly, carving its way into the frozen ground with slow but steady progress. It produced a distinctive crackling noise as it went, the sound of sharp metal grinding into ancient ice.

Lauren was struck by the fragility of the exercise; the drilling apparatus, which had seemed so bulky and impressive when she had seen it operating before, now seemed dwarfed by the landscape in which it had been placed.

Everything depended on the journey that bit was about to make through the ice. Could it resist for those seven hundred metres, or would it eventually shatter under the pressure?

It would take five months or more to find out.

Back in her room, Lauren collapsed, exhausted, onto her bed, the months of nervous tension catching up with her now the crucial construction stage of Capricorn was complete.

She opened her diary, thinking to write some momentous words to commemorate the great day, but all she could come up with was ‘Capricorn lives! V. happy.'

Lulled by the rumble of the big Perkins, lightheaded from the champagne, Lauren fell back on her bed and slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

17

‘I brought you a coffee.' Lauren had to shout to be heard above the engine noise which filled the drilling shed.

Sean's oil-stained face turned to her as he heard the shout, his features lighting up as he saw the drink.

‘How's she going?' Lauren handed him the mug.

Sean consulted the screen which sat beside the rig, the green display registering the progress of the bit.

‘One hundred and forty metres and sounding sweet.'

‘No breaks?'

‘Nothing. She's running fine.'

‘Still on target?'

Sean wiped gear oil off his hands and picked up a progress chart on a clipboard.

‘We've lost a week or so,' he told her, ‘thanks to losing that head. But if all goes well, we'll be done by the end of winter.'

Sean slipped the clutch on the huge rig gearbox, and the universal joint began to spin. Less than six hundred metres to go. Lauren felt a delicious shiver of excitement at the thought. Five years of planning and dreaming and now they were really making progress.

And what would the breakthrough bring? That was the biggest risk of all. Maybe there would be no life at all in the lake which lay undisturbed beneath the ice.

Maybe the whole enterprise would prove to be a total waste of time. Then her competitors would have a field day. Lauren already had her fair share of critics in the competitive world of glacial biology—and they would not be slow to pounce on a failure.

Somehow, Lauren was confident that would not be the case.

A call from the doorway. ‘Lauren! Radio call. Urgent!'

Curious to know what could possibly be important enough to make the normally placid Frank sound so stressed, Lauren followed him out into the storm and back to the main block, where she hurried to the radio room. There was interference on the connection, whistles and crackles from the storm. Lauren had to concentrate hard to hear the woman's voice.

‘This is Trans-Antarctica expedition control. We have an emergency, Capricorn. I repeat, we have an emergency. Do you read me? Over.'

The connection faltered as a storm of static erupted.

Lauren stared at the radio handset in surprise, wondering if she was hearing right. Who could possibly be reporting an emergency, and why on earth were they calling Capricorn? She raised a quizzical eyebrow at Frank, but he shrugged to indicate he was as lost as she was.

‘Let's start from the beginning,' Lauren replied calmly. ‘Who are you, and what is the nature of this emergency? Over.'

The voice paused to try and compose itself. Frank tuned in the radio reception, adjusting the digital control by a fraction to squeeze a little more quality out of the incoming signal.

‘My name is Irene Evans,' came the reply. ‘I'm the radio and logistics coordinator for Julian Fitzgerald's Trans-Antarctica expedition. I'm up in Ushuaia. Forty-eight hours ago we got a signal from their radio beacon. I sent an AAS Twin Otter down to the Blackmore Glacier to pick them up … it had a reporter on board as well. But the plane hasn't returned, and we fear the worst…' The voice diminished again so that Frank and Lauren had to strain to catch the words. ‘We think the plane may have crashed. Over.'

‘I hear you, Irene, and I remember reading a press report about Fitzgerald's expedition. But why don't you send down a second AAS plane to check out the situation? Over.'

‘That's what we're trying to arrange. But the weather's too unstable now we're so close to winter. As soon as they get a window, they'll go down, but, unless this storm drops off, they won't be able to land. Over.'

Lauren and Frank looked out at the conditions, through a window which was shuddering with the impact as the wind and snow blasted against it. Frank mouthed, ‘No way' at Lauren and she nodded at him.

‘I understand,' Lauren told her. ‘We're sitting in the same storm here. Tell me, how many people are involved? Over.'

‘In total, five. The two pilots, a British journalist and the two members of the expedition. Over.'

‘What do Antarctic Air Service say about the situation? Over.'

‘They're increasingly concerned, particularly as the daylight window is down to a few hours a day. Their first thought was that the plane may have got damaged on landing, or that the pilots had put down then decided to wait out the storm. That's happened to them before … so day one and two they were confident we would get some radio message from the pilots to say they were OK. But we got no such message … all we have is the emergency beacon, still transmitting from the same place…'

Irene hesitated, perhaps fearing in advance what response her question would elicit.

‘I suppose what I'm really asking,' she continued, ‘is what your state of readiness would be if a land rescue was the only option. You are the nearest base. Over.'

Lauren looked at the massive map of Antarctica which was pinned to the wall of the radio room, her heart sinking to her stockinged feet as she contemplated the implications of such a rescue.

‘Stand by,' she told Irene, then clicked off the handset to talk privately to Frank. ‘Has she any idea what she's asking? It's forty degrees below freezing out there and barely enough daylight to see a damn thing.'

Frank tapped a finger against the side of his head as Lauren clicked the handset back on.

‘Where are they, Irene? Give us the coordinates. Over.'

There was a pause as Irene checked some papers, then the figures for fixing latitude and longitude came down the radio link.

Frank looked at the coordinates he had scribbled on his pad, making a quick calculation. He consulted the huge map, stabbing a point with his pencil.

‘They're here,' he told Lauren.

Lauren paled. ‘Stand by, Irene.'

She turned again to Frank. ‘I thought she said we're the nearest base? What about the Chileans at Cape Mackenzie?'

‘They've already pulled out for the winter,' Frank reminded her. ‘Right now we are the closest human beings to them by … oh, what would it be now … about six hundred miles.'

‘And how many miles from here to their location?'

‘You really want to know?'

‘Try me.'

Frank took an expert look at the map.

‘Well, you'd have to do a detour around the Simmons range, of course, and there's that massive crevasse area at the entrance to the glacier. More or less three hundred miles, I'd say, and a bloody dangerous three hundred miles at that.'

‘Three
hundred
miles? Each way? Jesus.'

Lauren resumed the radio communication.

‘Irene, every instinct inside me wants to help, but I still think that an air rescue is your best option. We are not one of the big national bases, we are a private research facility, five people, a handful of huts and a drilling rig. Total. A rescue at that type of distance would stretch our resources to the limit, not to mention putting my own personnel at extreme risk. It's a six-hundred-mile round trip to get to the location, through very hazardous terrain, in some of the worst conditions I've ever seen. I'm not even sure we have the snowmobile range to do that. Over.'

Irene's voice was bitter when she responded. ‘I suppose that was the type of answer I expected. I know there's no love lost between explorers and scientists in your world. Don't you care that there are people dying out there on that glacier? Over.'

Lauren and Frank exchanged a frustrated look.

‘Irene, of course I care about that,' Lauren told her, ‘and I'm not one of those people who think Antarctica should be exclusively for scientists. Explorers like Fitzgerald have just as much right to be here as we do. All I'm telling you is that I am not at all confident in our abilities to pull this off without further loss of life. By far the best and fastest solution is for AAS to get in there and pull them out. Over.'

Three thousand miles away, Irene was trying, unsuccessfully, to suppress her anger.

‘I've already told you they don't think they'll be able to put down. Winter's too close and the temperature is already too low. A land rescue is probably the only answer. And Capricorn is our only hope. You have to come to our aid, Lauren, or those men are going to die. Over.'