Colder Than Ice

by MacPherson, Helen

  “Let me clarify something with you, Dr. Winston,” Michela said in a dangerously calm voice. “You had a discussion with a member of this team, someone you know to be exceptionally enthusiastic, but relatively new to the continent.” Rick nodded. “Knowing he’s been eager to please since his arrival, you then discussed the likelihood of what might be also found around here.”

  Rick folded his arms. “It seemed only fair to let him know what else is possibly out there. Besides, things here are going at a snail’s pace.”

  “Have you any idea the danger you may have put that man into, or for that matter do you really care?” Michela turned to Rob as he made his way to the door.

  Rob held the door as Allison followed him. “I’ll check our lodgings, boss, and the ski-demons. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll check the dig site and the loo, in case he headed back there.” Allison closed the door behind her.

  Michela returned her steely gaze to Rick. “Dr. Winston, I swear to God this time you’ve overstepped the mark. You’ve potentially risked the life of one of my people. At least tell me you didn’t allow him to leave here without a radio or EPIRB?”

  Rick held up his hands. “Hang on a minute. I didn’t tell him to go anywhere. He’s a grown man, for Christ’s sake.”

  “You’re quite right. He’s a grown man and can make his own decisions. But I’ve a sneaking suspicion this is one decision he’d have never arrived at had it not been for you. Now, I’ll ask you again, did he leave here with a short-range radio and EPIRB, and for that matter, did he give you a direction?”

  Before Rick could answer, Allison and Rob, shaking their heads, walked back through the door.

  “That means he’s still out there. So, where was he headed, Dr. Winston?” Michela asked in deadly calm tones as she rose from the table.

  Sarah reached across the table and grabbed Rick’s collar, and winced from the pain in her back. “You bloody idiot. Have you any idea what kind of danger you may have put Ewan into?”

  Michela quickly leaned across the table and forced Sarah’s fingers open. “Stop that right now. Our main effort here should be finding Ewan.” After ensuring Sarah wasn’t about to resume her grip, Michela turned to Rob. “Can you get me a map and then make up an emergency kit? We’re going to have to go and look for him. Now, Dr. Winston, where did he go and what time did he leave?”

  Rick straightened his collar and stood. He cast a baleful glance in Sarah’s direction and then traced a line on the map on the wall of the hut. “He said this was the route he was going to take and he left about four hours ago.”

  Allison looked at the map and roughly measured the distance between the camp and Ewan’s destination. “That’s no more than a twelve to thirteen mile round trip.” She raised her eyes to Michela. “He should have been home hours ago.”

  Michela rapidly calculated the time to reach the extremity of Ewan’s location. “What was his radio frequency? Did he have his EPIRB turned on?”

  “He’s on a 94.20 frequency and, yes, I did turn his EPIRB on before he left. I don’t know what you’re worrying about, I’m sure he’s lost his way, that’s all.”

  Rob stepped up to Rick, his quiet voice barely masking his anger. “Mate, you could really do with a clue right now. There are a million and one things that could go wrong down here. Something as simple as a breakdown, without the right emergency shelter, could mean the difference between life and death. You really are some piece of work.”

  Michela intervened before Rob did physical damage, although her own fingers were itching to do the same. “This is getting us nowhere. Rob, go and prepare a ski-demon for travel and I’ll finish packing the emergency kit.”

  Sarah put a restraining hand on Michela’s arm. “I’ll come with you. If he’s injured he may need medical help.”

  Michela shook her head. “No one’s better suited, but you’ve only started to recover. Sitting behind me on a not very well cushioned snow mobile won’t help your back.” She held up her hand to halt any protest. “I’m sorry. You’re going to have to stay here. Besides, if Dr. Winston steps an inch out of line while I’m gone, I want Rob to hold him down while you sedate him.”

  Rick sat up. “You can’t do that. It’s against the law.”

  Sarah wheeled on him and winced at the sudden movement. “You’re not in Australia now, mate, you’re in Antarctic territory. If you think for a minute I wouldn’t take pleasure in sedating your sorry ass then you’ve got another thing coming.” She reined in her anger and returned her gaze to Michela, who was busy packing a small rescue pack. “You sure as hell can’t go alone.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Allison said.

  Michela turned to Allison, aware that the idea of being on the back of a snow mobile with her couldn’t be all that attractive. “Okay, but go and get your extreme weather gear on. It’s going to be cold on the back of the vehicle. Could you also ensure Rob packs enough rope for about a hundred yard drop and the rappelling gear as well? We may just need it.” Allison nodded and Michela picked up the radio from the table.

  “Ewan, this is Finlayson site. Do you read me, over?” She released the prezzle switch and received only the static of radio waves. “Ewan, Ewan, this is, this is, Finlayson site, Finlayson site, do you read me, do you read me?” Michela doubled everything, hoping the silence was no more than a bad connection. Again silence filled the room. “Ewan, it’s Michela. Do you read me? If you can, but can’t speak, press the prezzle switch twice over.” The radio remained silent.

  She placed the radio back on the table. “Either his radio’s run out of power or he’s not next to it.” Even as she uttered the words, she felt a chill. I’m getting a bad feeling about this. She turned on the portable-locating receiver for the EPIRB and she almost immediately got a signal keyed into Ewan’s EPIRB.

  Michela turned to the others. “At least we’ve got a pretty good idea of where he should be located. Sarah, Allison, and I will keep in contact by short-range radio. We’ll be on Ewan’s frequency in case he calls in. I’ll give you radio checks every half hour so you can plot our progress in case we have a breakdown. The EPIRB will be on at all times, so you should be able to pinpoint our location.”

  Rob entered the hut. “Ski-demon’s good to go, boss.”

  “Thanks. Sarah, could you get onto Wills Station and let them know what’s going on? Tell the Station Leader I’ll give her a full run down when I get back.”

  Sarah followed Michela out the door and to the now running snow mobile. “Not a problem. Just find him, okay?”

  Having added the necessary extra layers of clothing, Allison was ready to go. She handed a bundle to Michela. “I hope you don’t mind but I took the liberty of taking these off your bed.”

  Michela gratefully received her gear and put it on. After conducting one final radio check and confirming the EPIRB and the locating beacon were operating, the two hopped on the vehicle and sped off in the direction Ewan had taken.

  THEY MOVED ACROSS the ice as fast as could be managed while trying to search for someone, pausing only occasionally to check their bearing with the EPIRB receiver. Despite their cruising speed, there was no sign of Ewan or his snow mobile.

  Michela scanned the white landscape. By the strength of this signal, we should be on his location any moment now. So why can’t I see him? A chilling thought flashed through her mind. She pulled the vehicle to a fast halt and looked around.

  Allison tapped Michela on the shoulder. “Why have we stopped here? I can’t see any trace of the ski-demon.”

  “How strong is the signal?” Michela calmly asked, despite her growing sense of foreboding.

  Allison pulled the range finder from her jacket and checked the gauge. “This says we should be right on top of it, or at least within a three feet radius. Why?”

  Michela carefully surveyed the ground around her. “Ewan’s here all right, but I’ve got a bad feeling we’re in the middle of a crevasse field. Whatever you do, don�
�t get off the snow mobile, not for the moment anyway.”

  Allison looked around her. “A crevasse field?”

  “Yes. These ones are a little different to the ones in Mount Cook. The depth of the ice here means they can be very deep, sometimes over half a mile. The snow bridges that form across the crevasses aren’t all that deep, four or five yards or so. This means you can often be right in a crevasse field and never know it. Sometimes the bridges give way.”

  Allison scanned the landscape and saw a depression in the ground, mere yards away, hidden in the endless white. “Over there, at about two o’clock to where we are, it looks like there’s a break in the ground.”

  Michela turned her head. There was a definite break in the ice. She closed her eyes, a part of her not wanting to go and look down the crevasse, and yet knowing she had to. “I’m going to have to go and check that out. I want you to stay on the snow mobile; you’ll be my anchor. I’ll also get you to tie off an anchor rope to the ice. This’ll embed itself deep in the surface, hopefully with at least some degree of depth.”

  Michela pulled a hydraulic gun from the emergency bag and tied one end of her climbing rope to the anchor. “I’m going to rig myself up to check out the hole. Under no circumstances are you to get off the ski-demon, do you understand me?”

  Allison’s concerned eyes searched Michela’s face. “What happens if you fall through the ice?”

  “I should be okay. I’ll be on a rig and will be able to pull myself back up if anything happens. But, if everything goes to hell in a hand basket, I want you to start the ski-demon and very gently turn the throttle to get any slack out of the rope. Disengage the anchor and then use the vehicle to pull me up. We may be lucky at the moment, the snow mobile seems to be on reasonably firm ground. Hand me that bag will you please?”

  Michela took the bag from Allison’s shaking hands. She rummaged through it and pulled out the climbing equipment before handing the bag back to Allison. She put the rappelling harness on, hooked on the rope, and checked the xenon light on her headlamp. “Can you get out the mechanical ascenders and the xenon glow sticks?”

  Allison rummaged through the bag and pulled out two lightweight left and right-hand ascenders, plus a handful of glow sticks. She tore open the packaging for the xenon glow sticks and handed the ascenders and glow sticks to Michela.

  Michela nodded her thanks and stuffed them in one of the pouches hanging from the harness on her waist. “Is there a little hook and spool-looking thing in the bag? That’ll allow me to lower one of the glow sticks further into the crevasse if necessary.” Allison checked the bag and handed over the small spool as Michela checked her equipment one final time.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Michela gave Allison’s arm a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll be okay. I do quite a bit of rappelling back home when I have the time. Besides, I don’t intend to lose anyone on this expedition, not if I have anything to do with it.”

  Michela carefully stepped off the vehicle and gingerly made her way toward the crevasse, scanning the ground as she went.

  So far, so good. As she eased closer, she clearly saw the crevasse and the direction in which it went. This would be valuable information when the three of them later negotiated their way out of the field. God, let there be three of us finding our way out of this, please.

  Michela eased herself onto the snow, leopard-crawling the final yard to the chasm’s edge. She flicked the switch on the headlamp, allowing the xenon beam to illuminate the view. She systematically swept the hole with the light and paused at a ledge about twenty yards below. Scattered on the frozen landing were the unmistakable remains of something mechanical. Damn it. Given we’re the only show on this block, it looks a hell of a lot like the ski-demon I rode in on.

  She eased herself back from the edge, stood, and turned to Allison. “I’m going down.” After checking her harness and equipment again, she took the climbing rope and threw it into the crevasse. She faced Allison and slowly leant back till she was forty-five degrees to the ledge. She cautiously began her descent over the edge, at the same time using her crampons to take a bite out of the ice wall.

  The silence around Michela was almost complete, with only the occasional whistle of wind as it reverberated off the edges of the icy ravine. Her headlamp lit the way, its glow eerily reflecting off the cool blue walls. She shuffled across to the ledge she’d seen only moments ago from above and then eased upright before checking the metal and fiberglass wreckage.

  Any doubts to its origin were quickly dispelled. Sitting in its carry pouch, on the side of a piece of fiberglass casing, was an EPIRB. A piece of white tape was stuck to the transponder’s side, the words “FINLAYSON EXPEDITION” written in bold letters. Michela bowed her head. So you’ve found wreckage. That doesn’t mean the worst, not yet anyway. He may have fallen off and is somewhere below you. Even so, this would mean evacuating an injured person, and that’s going to be a hell of a lot more difficult, not to mention we’re not completely equipped for such an evacuation. Leaning over, she strained her eyes, searching for another ledge below her without success. It looks as if I’m going down again.

  Using her foot, she pushed the wreckage toward the ice wall, allowing her a firm step-off point for the next part of her descent. She stepped off the ledge and rappelled, scanning her surroundings with the high-powered beam for any evidence of the rest of the snow mobile or Ewan.

  As she strained to see further down the chasm’s length, her frigid brake hand slipped from the iced rope and the rope raced through the karabiner at a frightening pace. For what seemed like an eternity she fell, as she struggled to regain control. Experience finally overcame fear and she managed to grip the rope, performing an emergency lockout to halt her fall.

  She hit the ice wall with a muffled thud, winding herself in the process. As she fought to force air back into her lungs she swung and twirled like a yo-yo parallel to the crevasse’s walls. Waiting for her momentum to slow, she watched the light’s strobing effect off the smooth surfaces. What’s that? She squinted and finally stopped moving.

  Slightly below her and to the left, the opposite wall was splattered with red, like a single-colored abstract expressionist painting. She struggled to keep down dinner, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat. The impact had been tremendous, causing blood to be spattered as far as she could see. Looking above her, she could just make out the ledge she’d been on only moments before. Obviously the snow mobile had plummeted through the lightly packed snow, its first impact being the icy outcrop above her. From there, the force of the impact must have dislodged Ewan, before he free fell and hit the opposite wall.

  Bowing her head, she fought back tears. Focus, Michela, focus! You can’t afford to lose it now. First things first. See if you can see any trace of his body. She locked out her rope with a prusik knot and pulled one of the cylindrical glow sticks from her pouch. She bent it in half, in turn breaking the gas vial in the cylinder and releasing a light from the plastic container. She hooked one end of the plastic light to the small spool and lowered it into the darkness.

  Lower and lower it went, the light casting an unnatural glow off the icy walls. Swinging the small light like a pendulum, Michela strained to see any evidence of either Ewan or the additional remains of his ski-demon. At one hundred yards the light reached the maximum length of its cord, with still no evidence of man or machine. If he survived the fall, the elements and loss of blood would have certainly killed him.

  Michela, on autopilot, wound in the glow light and contemplated how to break the news to the others. More importantly, how can I get Rick out of the camp before someone, possibly Rob, does him bodily harm? She knew that Rob and Ewan had formed a steady friendship, relying on one another for support when they felt they were being “overwhelmed by women,” as both jokingly put it.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Rick had the living crap kicked out of him. Michela stopped herself. No. No matter what Rick’s
involvement is in this, at the end of the day Ewan made his own decision to come out here. As far as she was concerned, the indirect responsibility for his death would always rest with Rick, but any coroner would rightly see Ewan’s death as no more than death by misadventure. And the bastard gets away with it. I hope you don’t sleep well at night once you find out what you’ve done, you damn low life.

  Michela returned the spool and glow light to her pouch. She then pulled out her left and right mechanical ascenders and another length of rope. The mechanical ascenders small teeth gripped the rope, allowing her to ascend using one for each hand. As an added precaution she belayed the ascenders to her climbing rope, and attached loops for her feet, allowing her to climb, much like a caterpillar would move up the stem of a plant.

  Michela’s ascent was slow and labored. Halting at the ledge where she’d found remnants of the snow mobile, she took a ragged breath. The free fall had been physically draining and the shock of Ewan’s death had emotionally shaken her. She closed her eyes for a minute and leant against the wall with her crampons locked into the ledge. You may reach the top, Michela, but we’re not out of this yet. You’ve got to find a safe way out of this field. Then we’ve got to get back to camp and break the news. Forcing herself to relax, Michela focused on her breathing, disciplining it into slow and deep breaths. She relaxed her clenched jaw and rotated her neck, attempting to remove the stress in her shoulders. She shook out her aching arms, centered herself, and resumed her climb.

  Finally, she broke over the crevasse’s ledge, sprawled over the snow, and tiredly pulled up her rope. Avoiding Allison’s gaze, she looped her rope before making her way to the ski-demon.

  Allison looked expectantly behind Michela. “Did you find him?”

  Michela disengaged the anchor and the other end of the rope and stowed the equipment. She then took Allison’s hands in her own. “He didn’t make it. He’s dead.”

  Allison blinked and shook her head. “He can’t be. This morning he was helping me on the dig. Are you sure? How did it happen?”