Blazing Ice (38 page)

While the others refueled, I sat at the comms desk readying our daily report. Heavy footsteps climbed the deck to the living module, and then tromped into the vestibule. Stretch entered the galley, staggering across the floor toward his bunkroom. Thinking better of it, he flopped down with a deep sigh onto the padded bench behind our long dinner table. His haggard expression bespoke absolute exhaustion. I'd never seen such a display.

“Oh, man!” he sighed again, involuntarily.

“Stretch, you look whupped.”

“John, I
am
whupped.” Stretch's eyes widened. “This snow is getting worse. I just watch the snow … watch the snow … watch the snow …”

To make our miles today, we ran a couple hours over. And I'd exhausted one man doing it, bringing him to the edge.

“I get the message, Stretch. I saw Brad pulling you. And I never thought I'd see that. Maybe we need to shut down for a day and just build road so that you can get up on it and go.”

“Oh, that would be nice,” Stretch nodded deeply. “Anything but this.”

Stretch needed rest. Lots of it. I couldn't ask him for another day like today. Building road might not be the best idea. We all needed a good meal. At dinner, I'd ask everyone to think about ways of getting Stretch down the trail.

Camp sat in the middle of a perfectly smooth white dish. Its edges curled up slightly around all our horizons. The air was dead calm. Flags hung limp. This morning, brilliant sunny skies stretched to all points.

And Stretch looked rested.

I began the briefing. “Just 'cause there's only fifty-one miles to go doesn't mean we're going lunging through this last bit of swamp. Our job today is do whatever we can to help Stretch … without exhausting any of us. Period. Listening to you guys last night, and adding some of my own thoughts, we have three alternatives.”

Greg interrupted. “What makes you think any one of them will work?”

Silence crashed over the galley. Greg scowled at me. Then his lips quivered, ever so slightly.

“Oh, our designated cynic has spoken … a fair effort, too.”

Greg buckled, breaking into an embarrassed smile. “You've exposed me, Boss. I was only trying to do my job.”

Brad broke in: “Do any of your three alternatives include the one where we just leave Stretch behind and let him come in whenever he pretty-pleases?”

“Whoa now, Bradley,” Stretch admonished him in patronizing tones. “We know you've got a girlfriend waiting for you there. She can wait a little longer.”

“Hee-hee. I'm just trying to make life easy for you old folks,” Brad grinned. Stretch was fifty-nine this year. Brad was in his early forties.

“Ahem. Can I get in here?” I cleared my throat.

“Oh all right,” Brad drawled.

“As I was saying,” I started slowly. Brad whispered “tee-hee” back at Stretch.

“Three alternatives. The first is build a road out thirty miles, with three tractors, and shuttling half-loads forward. Stretch and the D8 stay here for the day, we come back with
Fritzy
,
Red Rider
, and the
Elephant Man
. We leave the PistenBully up ahead for the night, bring the flagging crew back with us. Tomorrow we all go forward with Stretch and the last of the shuttle loads on a packed road. What do you think?”

“What? Give the old man a full day off?” Brad yipped at the big dog.

Stretch shook his head. He was okay. He wanted to move.

“The second: We get a three-tractor shuttle going. Brad and
Red Rider
pull Stretch all day long. Judy and I shuttle all day. We don't get a lot of advantage in speed, but we might make twenty-five or thirty miles.”

“Oh, poor old Stretch.”

“Bradley, you leave poor old Stretch alone. You're as bad as McCabe,” I cautioned, with mock concern.

“Brad,” Stretch challenged him. “You just don't want me to get there ahead of you and see your girlfriend first.”

“Oh, brother!” Judy voiced deep exasperation.

“That's right, Stretch,” Brad grinned. “I'm really worried about that.”

Russ said, “But then you'd still have one or two loads back here, and you'd have to come get them. You'd still be two days getting thirty miles.”

“Right, no advantage time-wise over the first plan,” I saw Russ's point as long as Stretch was good to go. I continued: “And the third one: a three-tractor shuttle, moving out in front of Stretch. Track pack what we can and see how Stretch manages on that. That's pretty much what we did yesterday.”

“Let's just not make it such a long day,” Stretch added.

“That one snuck up on me. Greg, give us a twelve-mile lunch stop. We'll see what we can do afterwards.” I was already thinking less mileage. But this morning's banter told me if we were going to get twelve, we'd better do it while they were full of vinegar.

“Lunch at Pole minus 39?” Greg asked.

“Yes. Dropping two decades from the fifties to the thirties has a nice ring to it.”

The D8R lumbered south while the other three tractors ran ahead pulling half-loads. Turning back from the lunch spot, we ran back to retrieve the other half. Three times that morning we passed Stretch, coming and going. Stretch got tired of waving. Brad flipped the occasional gesture in deference to his maturity.

During the lunch rendezvous, I set a day's-end target eight miles forward: camp at Pole minus 31. While the D8R advanced, the three other tractors ran half-loads past camp to Pole minus 27, following Greg's flags.

As we approached his team at the end of the line, John V.'s voice broke over our radios: “Hey guys, check that out!”

I looked straight ahead. John V. was two miles up there, and probably he was pointing at something, but he was only a speck to me. “Check what out?”

“Look out your windows to your right,” he radioed back.

Then I saw it, too: low contrails in the sky off to our right.

Since we'd left the backside of the Transantarctic Mountains, the monotony of shuttling and rescuing tractors had merged with our unchanging horizon. We worked through our days in a collective torpor. Counting down miles was a navigational statistic that did not assure us South Pole Station laid ahead. The contrails were real sign.

I called back, “You think those LC-130s know where they're going?”

We dropped half-loads at the twenty-seven mile flag, then tracked back to Pole minus 31. Passing camp, we returned to our old lunch spot at Pole minus 39, and brought up remaining loads for the end of shift. The day closed with twenty miles made good. A four-mile stretch of track-packed road ran out in front for the next day's start. It might set up overnight, and Stretch might see better traction the next morning. Possibly he'd coax another half-mile an hour out of the D8.

“Doing all right?” I asked Stretch privately at refueling time.

“Yeah, I'm fine. I'm tired, but I'm fine.”

“Good. Glad we stopped at twenty today. Did you catch those contrails?”

“No, I didn't see anything,” he shrugged, not remotely interested in the news. “I got to watch the snow. I can't let it get away from me.”

Our four-mile road worked. The next morning Stretch covered it in one hour and twenty minutes, but the next eight miles over untracked swamp were worse than ever for him. While the other tractors shuttled monotonously, a bug-eyed Stretch alternately dragged and winched his load forward.

We made our twelve miles in time for yet another late lunch. There, at Pole minus 19, I sat once again at the comms desk. Stretch reclined on the padded bench alongside the galley table. He stared through closed eyelids into unpleasant prospects for the rest of the day. The others remained outside, basking under the high sun on a brilliant afternoon.

I looked over Stretch's spent form and wondered if he was done. He'd gone through his own private hell for days, but I had to know. The afternoon's moves, like chess pieces, positioned us for tomorrow. It all depended on what Stretch could do … and
would
do.

Bracing myself, I broke our silence: “Stretch, can you give us another six today?”

Instantly his eyes opened. The indignant look he shot back spoke: “How dare you!”

We stared hard, eye-to-eye. He could say “no” and that would be fine. But his pride might not allow that. Unmistakable malice showed on his face. He never said a word. He never took his steeled eyes off me. Finally came his slow nod.

“Pole minus 13 is a bit over a half day out of Pole,” I explained. “It'll take us the other half day to get settled in there. The next day is their holiday … and ours, too, now that we're invited, so I want to get to Pole minus 13 tonight.”

I was just noise to Stretch. His unblinking eyes stared back.

“Stretch, that four miles of track-packed road set up good for you. From here, take as long as you need to get yourself rested. You do not have to leave right away. Hell, take a nap!”

Stretch blinked.

“I mean it. Take a nap. Russ and Judy will shuttle what they can from here, and from what's behind us, up to Pole minus 13. Brad and I and Greg's party will take loads forward to two miles out from Pole. We're going to build you a
road
all the way to Pole today. Tomorrow you will lead the heavy fleet in.”

Closing on Pole should have been exciting
for all of us. But its proximity had become irrelevant to making just the next mile. For Stretch closing on Pole was an endless bummer. For me, Pole was only a halfway point, oddly receding over our unchanging horizon.

The day the airplane came …
then
we got excited.

We'd just finished refueling the D8 after lunch at Pole minus 19. Since it had an eight-hour tank, we topped it up every mid-shift and at the end of each day. The operation required three or four of us. I was on top of the tank sled disconnecting the suction hose when a deafening roar overhead dropped me to my knees. I grasped for the ladder. The low-flying LC-130 passed close enough I could count every rivet on its massive airframe.

The others stood on the snow, just as surprised as me. All eyes followed its flight.

The northbound plane had come right out of Pole. Its flight path back to McMurdo should've taken it well off to our right. This one had diverted to fly over us.

And it didn't stop with one flyover. Just over our tracks behind us, the plane climbed gently through a broad left-banking turn and came at us again, this time from the west. We ducked for the second time. East of our track, still low, it banked once more, hard. Its left wing tip cleared the snow by inches, showing us its entire topside. Then it crossed over us for the last time, climbing back onto its McMurdo course, shrinking in the clear blue sky, then vanishing altogether.

Forget the contrails, Stretch; you got the whole airplane!

Dismounting the tank sled, I crossed paths with Greg. He approved, “That was impressive … even for the air force.”

Greg's team started south. Brad followed in
Red Rider
pulling
Snow White
. I followed with
Fritzy
pulling the flat rack. We took care to stay well to the right of the green flag line. For today, that gap of virgin snow offered Stretch a small measure of better traction than the cold, dry stuff our tractors churned into granular fluff. Our tractors
did
compact the snow, but it took time to sinter and form a pavement. Processed snow at Pole would set up “overnight.”

When we came abreast of the camp flag Greg planted at Pole minus 13, Brad swerved into the flag line. Now he laid his tracks just a foot to their right. I swung over to stagger my tracks right of his. That'd be just right for Stretch's road tomorrow.

The moment Brad swerved, the PistenBully appeared ahead as the familiar black dot. I wondered what their horizon looked like now. At Pole minus 13, we may as well have been at Pole minus 100. Unobstructed flat white stretched to the curve of the earth, and we tracked a straight line through the middle of it. But for the LC-130s appearance, we owned our horizons.

Amundsen owned his, too. All the way here, and forever. Scott owned his horizons until he spotted Amundsen's abandoned tent.

By Pole minus 9 a bright white
something
appeared on our horizon, to the right of our track. By Pole minus 8, it'd grown larger and shifted almost imperceptibly farther to our right.

By Pole minus 7, the white object resolved into a perfectly round ball, like a small moon rising. A structure appeared underneath it. The ball became a spherical dome covering the thirty-foot Marisat dish antenna. I was driving tunnel when the antenna had been erected. Back then the exposed dish perched on a square platform supported by four enormous steel pedestals. The protective dome was new.

The rest of South Pole Station slowly materialized from the snows ahead. New black dots appeared both right and left of our track: outbuildings of the station. All the time I'd worked at Pole, I'd never wandered this far away from it and looked back. Mental maps now told me which buildings they were.

Stretch might've made three miles already. Judy and Russ might be going for their second load
.

“Target acquired!” Greg squawked over the radio.

Greg stood erect on the snow, marine-like, with binoculars in hand peering stealthily over a horizon.

He'd spotted five black panels planted on the 132 W meridian. The South Pole surveyor had placed them two years ago. The panels marked the hold-back line, two miles short of 90 degrees South. By agreement, we'd stop there and request permission to come into the station. Since we'd have no idea of air traffic activity, we'd hold back until the station cleared us to cross the runway's extended centerline. A stuck tractor on the centerline could force an aircraft to abort.