2

by James Phelan

  Sam paused in his climb and caught his breath. He looked back. At the base of the mountain, the snowcats were parked close together to make a sheltered space between them. The wind was strong but the mountain blocked the worst of it. The sky was clear.

  So far.

  He looked up the mountain slope.

  Lora was ahead of him, a GPS unit in her hand as she trekked to Alex’s last known location. Dr. Roberts was close behind her, with Jabari and a couple of Guardians. They’d all stopped and were looking at the ground.

  Sam ran to catch up. They stood in a little semicircle, pointing at the ground and looking around. He pushed through to see what they were crowded around, the nerves in his stomach clenching at the thought of what he might see …

  Nothing. Nothing but snow.

  “What is it?” Sam asked. “What’s the big deal?”

  “A sign,” Lora said, crouching down.

  “We’re too late,” Jabari replied, pointing.

  Sam could then see what they were looking at—a little snow cave. It was easy to miss, just a small hollow in the snow. But it was man-made.

  “You think Alex did that?” Sam asked.

  “He must have slept in there,” Lora said. She pointed, “Look!”

  “What?” Sam said, seeing nothing but some little holes in the ground, as though someone had poked their finger into the snow at random intervals.

  “It’s a constellation,” Lora said. “See?”

  “Ophiuchus,” Jabari said, crouched down. “The thirteenth constellation.”

  “Alex must have left it here as a sign, a marker,” Lora said.

  Sam looked around, as though hoping to see Alex not too far away, wandering the mountain, ready to be rescued. But there was nothing but the white of endless snow and the contrasting grey of rocky mountain outcrops.

  Jabari walked off to the north, watching the ground like a hawk.

  “But …” Sam’s voice trailed off. “Where is he now?”

  “I’m not sure …” Lora said, powering up the satellite phone to talk to Eva back at Crawley Station. Sam could hear her asking to relay the updated information to Jedi, who was doing everything he could to track Alex’s location. Sam could imagine that perhaps somewhere high overhead an imaging satellite was scouring the frozen continent, looking through powerful cameras for Alex.

  Be like looking for a needle in a haystack or for a dot on the sun. Or a drop in the ocean.

  No. A speck in the snow—a single snowflake, somewhere on this icy, snow-covered continent.

  Sam looked down the slope to the three snowcats parked at the foot of the mountain range. The Guardians and station crew were fanned out, looking for any footprints that might show where Alex had gone. But Sam knew they wouldn’t have any luck. It was too flat and exposed down there—the wind would have covered any tracks by now. Even their own prints from just minutes ago were already virtually wiped out.

  “Sam …”

  He turned to see Jabari crouched away from the group.

  “What is it?” Sam asked.

  Jabari squatted close to the ground. “Footprints,” he said.

  “Really?” Sam looked hard and perhaps, at a certain angle, he could just make out the shape of the dents in the frozen snow. But they didn’t really seem any different from the ground around them, the snow and ice blown and blasted by the weather. “You’re sure they’re footprints? Looks like, well, snow to me.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Jabari said. “And someone else was with him—someone came across from the other side of the mountain and found him. Someone heavier, but with smaller feet. See?”

  Jabari carefully scooped out soft snow from the compacted-snow prints, revealing them with more clarity.

  “So there is!” Sam could see it more clearly now. There were two sets of prints, the shoes close to the same size but one set was double the depth.

  Hans? Is Alex captive—or is he working with him? Has my friend gotten too close to them these past weeks and become brainwashed by Hans’ goal of seizing the Dream Gate for himself?

  “Can you track them?” Lora asked Jabari.

  Jabari stood tall and nodded to her.

  “Do it,” Lora said. “Check in on the radio every twenty minutes. We’ll take the snowcats and get around this mountain on the south side, since the tracks lead that way. Keep in touch and we will meet up on the other side.”

  “You’ve had a sighting of something?” Sam asked, seeing Lora’s expression. “Something to the north?”

  “Jedi has managed to detect Hans’ boat moored there, a couple of kilometres out to sea,” Lora said. “And from what he can see on deck, they must have lowered a submarine into the water.”

  “So what—they’ve gone under the ice sheet?” Sam said, looking out at the flat expanse of white. From up here, he could just make out the blue on the horizon that was the sea. “But then why would Alex trek up here, on the mountain? And alone?”

  “Maybe they got separated,” Jabari said, readying to leave.

  Sam checked his watch, which showed a countdown on a small dial.

  Just under five hours until the storm hits.

  And still not much closer to finding Alex. But he was here. With someone else.

  And Hans is close by with a sub.

  “Can you really track them on foot?” Sam asked. The tracks seemed, by the direction that they were pointing, to head over the mountain pass and then down toward the seaward side to the north.

  But then where? Back to the coast? To the submarine somehow?

  Jabari tightened the straps on his pack. “I will try,” he said. “You stay with Lora,” he said to Sam. “See if you can get the vehicles around the other side of this mountain.”

  “I can help you,” Sam said, eager to trek with the Guardian despite the cold and wind that he knew would blast him as soon as they crested the ridge of the mountain.

  “No,” Jabari said, setting off, watching the ground as he tracked. He called over his shoulder, “I work faster alone!”

  13

  EVA

  “So maybe Alex is with Hans again,” Jedi said. “But if that keeps him safe, maybe that’s a good thing.”

  “Urgh, Hans,” Eva said, rolling her eyes. “Are we ever going to be rid of him? Actually, I wonder if—hang on a sec.” She turned at the sound of the door handle turning.

  Briony came in. Now that Dr. Roberts was gone with Sam and Lora and most of the crew, the head of the station was a woman named Briony. She was never far away from Eva, buzzing around and offering to help, coming into the lab every fifteen minutes or so to check in.

  “You OK in here?” she asked.

  “Yep,” Eva answered. “Just like before. Still OK.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yep. Just like before, thanks.”

  “You don’t need me to help out at all?” Briony asked, all smiles. “I know my way around communications equipment.”

  “Nope. All good, under control.”

  “Right, then.”

  “Great, thanks again.”

  Briony hovered by the door. “Well,” she added, “just come over to the habitat if you need anything—you know where I am.”

  Eva smiled. “Will do.”

  Briony left, looking a little deflated.

  “Wow,” Jedi said over the video feed from the Enterprise’s headquarters in Amsterdam. “She’s a little too anxious to help out, yeah?”

  “Ah, catching onto the weird Antarctic base vibe much?” Eva said, a shiver running through her. “Seriously, it’s odd around here. That woman is in charge of the station now. She’s been in and out of here constantly since the others left. I can’t decide if she’s trying to see what I’m up to and if there’s any news, or if she’s just that desperate for company.”

  “She’s probably never been in charge before,” Jedi said. “But remember, a lot of people know who you all are now. This race to save the world stuff affects people in different ways.
If you think she’s acting oddly, I’d stay alert—stay frosty!”

  “Will do,” Eva said. She looked to the empty doorway where Briony had stood. “She is definitely getting a bit annoying.”

  “These people have been in the cold too long,” Jedi laughed. “You’ll pull through. And what have you done with the others anyway? Where are Arianna and Gabriella?”

  “Scouting around the base, checking everything out. They should be back soon.”

  “Well, you should have the live feed from our eye in the sky any … second … now. Almost now. One sec. Shoot, gotta change cables …”

  Eva checked her watch, then frowned. “Sorry—live feed, you were saying?”

  “What is it?” Jedi asked, seeing her concern.

  “Now I think about it,” Eva said, looking to the door, “the others really should have been back by now.”

  It feels like something’s not right—we agreed not to be apart too long, to stay safe.

  We agreed on the time they’d return.

  “I’m going to go and check on them,” Eva said.

  “But the satellite feed is coming through any moment,” Jedi said. “You need to be here to handle the local radio calls to the search teams.”

  “I won’t be long,” Eva said, getting up.

  “Eva, they’re probably just not aware of the time. You have a job to do now, keeping Lora in the loop.”

  “You’re right, they’re probably just messing around,” Eva said. “But I have to be sure, Jedi. We promised each other. You keep an eye on things here for me, I’ll be back in a flash of the aurora australis.”

  Eva left the room, leaving Jedi at the other end of the line facing an empty chair.

  Eva walked through the tech wing toward the accommodation pods. There was no one in sight.

  Where is everyone?

  She stopped, just short of a half-open doorway ahead. The sign next to the door said TECH ROOM 2B.

  The voices coming from within were not her friends’. But Eva stayed and listened. She could make out Briony’s voice, as well as that of a tattooed guy she’d met earlier. And at least two other men’s voices.

  So there’s four of them.

  But what are they talking about?

  She leaned closer to the door to hear better. Then she did hear what they were talking about.

  They were talking about her.

  “We should put a person in there with Eva,” Briony said.

  “I can go Stealth and hide in there,” another voice said. “She’ll never know I’m there.”

  “That’s good,” Briony said. “Next time she’s out of the room, sneak in. She can probably spot Stealth Suits in motion, so be wary.”

  “She won’t leave the room,” the tattooed man said. “She’s smart. They’ll work in shifts, her and her friends, so that there’s always someone in there to talk to the others out in the snow.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Briony said, and even from outside the door, Eva could detect the smile in her voice. “I’ve already taken care of her friends.”

  Before Eva could react, she heard footsteps behind her.

  14

  SAM

  “Why are we stopping?” Sam asked.

  Dr. Roberts didn’t answer. Instead, he simply got up from his seat and went to the back of the snowcat’s cargo area where he started talking quietly to the rest of his crew.

  Sam turned to look questioningly at Lora, who was now travelling in his snowcat.

  “Must be too dangerous to go on,” Lora guessed, looking out the windshield at the frozen ground that spread before the mountain and headed to the sea. “Even though they have GPS, if you can’t see where you’re going out here, you could find yourself driving into a crevasse. And if the ice thins out, we could get stuck, or worse. These beasts are heavy.”

  “Fair enough. We don’t really want either of those things to happen,” Sam said, looking back as one of the crew exited the vehicle and trudged over to one of the other vehicles, no doubt to relay messages about how to progress.

  “Probably not.”

  Sam checked his watch.

  Four hours until the superstorm hits.

  Find Alex and the Gear before then.

  No pressure.

  “How long do we give Jabari out there on his own?” Sam asked Lora.

  “Not long,” Lora said, tapping her satellite phone, trying to get a better signal. “Not today.”

  “What else can we do?” Sam asked.

  “Not much …” Lora was preoccupied with the phone.

  Sam looked out the window at the wind that whipped up snow, spraying it against the windows, and a shiver ran through him.

  Least it’s warm in this tin can with the engine running and the heaters blazing.

  Outside, he could just make out the other two snowcats that had stopped alongside them, the big red machines stopped in the snowdrift that the wind kicked up, the mountains no longer shielding them from the increasingly wild weather.

  “Hey, has Jabari checked in yet?” Sam asked.

  Lora was still looking at her phone, twisting dials and pushing buttons.

  “Lora? It’s past the check-in time.”

  “No word from him yet, but now the phone’s not working at all. Must be this vehicle interfering with the satellite signal, or maybe it’s the storm front,” Lora said. “I’ll go outside and see if I can get it to work.”

  Lora left her seat and headed into the cargo bay, where all their massive snowsuits were hanging up.

  Sam drummed his fingers on his knees, tapping out a tune to a song he hadn’t heard in ages. He fumbled around for his phone in his Stealth Suit pocket. No signal.

  Man … how long are we going to be stuck here?

  “It’s going to be a while before a signal gets through,” Lora said, rejoining Sam. “They said that the weather radar is showing this front blasting us for about an hour, and then there should be some calmer conditions. The front preceding the storm has electrical activity. We might even be able to see it.”

  “The aurora australis?” Sam said. “I saw the northern lights, the aurora borealis, in Canada once. It’d be amazing to see the southern ones too.”

  “I’ve never seen either,” Lora said. “Do they really look like bands of brilliant green lights shimmering through the sky?”

  “Yep, it’s quite amazing,” Sam said.

  “Hmm, all that energy, power, visible to the eye,” Lora said. “Charged particles colliding in the atmosphere. Something to do with the solar winds and the earth’s magnetic field lines? Tobias would know more—he’d certainly have explained it better.”

  “He’d explain it and it’d take him hours,” Sam smiled ruefully. “Plus we’d have to put up with his lame science jokes along the way.”

  Lora gave him a small smile. “I’ll go and tell the others, give them an update on the storm. Hang tight—back in a flash.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, looking out his window. “Don’t think I’ll be going anywhere.”

  Sam sat and waited, drumming his fingers, hearing another of the Crawley crew getting into their heavy snowsuit as Lora opened the rear cargo ramp door and a rush of cold rolled in like a wave. The hiss of the door opening on the hydraulics was drowned out by the wind. Sam shuddered against it, the cold trickling down his spine, ice crystals turning to water as they hit his warm face and hands.

  How you doing out here, Alex?

  Sam looked out his window, his arms wrapped around himself as he waited for the door to hiss shut.

  Will you still be my friend when we meet?

  Sam’s thoughts were interrupted by Dr. Roberts, who sat down next to Sam with a heavy thump. Sam shifted a little to his left so as to not be rubbing shoulders with the guy. His breath stank like sweet coffee.

  “Bad weather, huh?” Sam said, shifting over a little more.

  Dr. Roberts remained silent.

  “So, how much longer do you think we’ll wait here?”


  Silence.

  “Bad storm coming, I hear.”

  Still nothing.

  “Right, good chatting with you.” Sam got up from his seat and looked out the front windows of the snowcat. He could just make out the silhouettes of Lora and another crew member nearing the next vehicle. There was nothing else to see but a world of white. He watched as they rapped on the outside of the cargo door to let them in.

  Sam felt the presence of Dr. Roberts standing next to him, watching out the window too. Sam turned to look at him.

  Odd moustache.

  Sam looked back out the windows, seeing the cargo ramp of the neighbouring snowcat starting to lower. But then he did a double take and felt the air sucking out of his lungs.

  No sooner had the cargo ramp come down than the Crawley base crew member standing just behind Lora put something to Lora’s neck. Sam watched in horror as his friend fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

  15

  ALEX

  Alex had seen many unbelievable things in these last few months. This was one of them.

  No. This takes the cake.

  “This is …” Alex said.

  “Incredible, isn’t it?” Ahmed said.

  “But …” Alex did not know what to say.

  I am standing in an undersea world … like something from a movie.

  Ferns gently waved all around him. Ferns—like, green, leafy, tropical rainforest type ferns.

  In Antarctica!

  He looked back to where the submarine had surfaced inside the underground cave. On the rocky shore, near where the mini-sub was moored, was an old, rusted submarine. It was huge, with torpedo tubes—just like the one he’d seen on the bottom of the ocean.

  “The geothermal spring provides the heat, creating the steamy atmosphere,” Hans called out. “Is it not amazing?”

  “What about the light?” Alex said, looking up at the far-off ceiling that glowed in patches.

  “It’s ice,” Ahmed explained, “several metres thick in some places. It melts under this side—that’s all the dripping you can hear hitting the pools—and is replenished above. I can’t even imagine how long this ecosystem has been here.”

  Alex nodded. On all sides, the rocky ground was cracked and steam hissed from within.