Ninth Cycle Antarctica: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 2)

by JC Ryan

  Later in the flight, with everyone getting a bit cranky from being cooped up in the plane, the talk turned to what they’d do with their last night in civilization for a while. Robert Cartwright had spent a little time exploring New Zealand and was suggesting they take in some of the nature paths, especially since they wouldn’t see anything naturally green again for five months. JR, however, had recovered at last from his indigestion and was advocating a bar trip, since they wouldn’t have that chance again for five months, either. There was nothing to prevent the group from splitting up according to the members’ preference, so in the end, some did one and some the other.

  JR, Misty, Carmen, Antonio and the Russian, who’d been dubbed ‘Roosky’ because JR found his name difficult to pronounce, were bar-bound not long after the group had been transported to their hotel. Mikhail Stefanovich Maxhulin, aka Roosky, as the oldest and therefore presumably most responsible, was enjoined by Summers to make sure the group got back to the hotel by midnight, as they had an eight o’clock flight and a forty-five minute drive to the airport. Roosky wouldn’t dare miss the flight, for reasons of his own, but he hoped to find a willing woman for the evening. Vodka wasn’t all he’d be missing for five months, unless one of the young and lovely girls on the expedition would agree to warm his bed.

  Misty persuaded JR not to overindulge for a change, reminding him what a terrible experience flying with a hangover was, so it was relatively easy for Roosky to shepherd them all back to the hotel with twenty minutes to spare. Misty’s bed went unslept in, though, as she joined JR, abandoning the stuffy Englishman for the familiar JR. Her roommate, Carmen, noted her absence with disapproval, but said nothing.

  The nature group all turned in early, themselves thinking of what they might be missing for the next five months--sleep in a warm, comfortable bed.

  ~~~

  After that night and part of the next day in Christchurch to allow the team to stretch their legs, they again boarded their chartered aircraft for the final leg of the flight, to a landing strip near McMurdo called the Annual Sea Ice Runway, the only one of the three that operated at various times in the area that was open as early as October. It was serendipitously also the only one that would accommodate their chartered airliner.

  By noon the following day, the Rossler Expedition for Discovery of Ninth Cycle Artifacts was approaching McMurdo station, with all souls crowding the windows of the plane as they approached the ice-clad shoreline. Even JR, cynical as he pretended to be, could not fail to be moved by the contrast of incredibly blue ocean to sparkling white shore. They were blessed with a sunny day and no wind to achieve that remarkable welcome to their home away from home. Transport to McMurdo was awaiting them at the landing strip, as promised. A short ride in several small Sno-Cats would deliver them to McMurdo just in time for lunch.

  McMurdo Station had been originally constructed in the mid-1950s, but expansion and modernization had resulted in a surprisingly comfortable, though utilitarian, facility. The Rossler Expedition was among the first to arrive for the summer scientific research season, so there was plenty of room for them all, a condition that wouldn’t last throughout the summer. Depending on whether they doubled back here for any reason, members of the expedition might find themselves paired with complete strangers as roommates, but for now, only those who wanted to stay in the same room had to. The rest had private rooms since they’d only be there a few days, but always subject to an unexpected roommate.

  On the other hand, plentiful food was free for the taking, with the polite reminder that they should eat whatever they took. Internet access was also available. Most members of the expedition took the opportunity to email their loved ones at home with a greeting from the bottom of the world. JR declined, as he was still miffed at Daniel, along with the rest of the family for supporting Daniel’s ultimatum.

  Their sojourn at McMurdo was short. As soon as their supplies were delivered, everyone was pressed into service to unload small items, while heavy equipment took care of the larger items. Members of the station staff sometimes came out to lend a hand, glad to get even the low-angle sunlight after their long winter of near-total darkness. Several expressed doubt about the success of the expedition, which was like searching for a needle in a snow-covered haystack. Others actually scoffed and declared that they’d heard lost-city myths before, and they were always fairy tales.

  They would remain at McMurdo for a few days, loading their supplies on the sleds in such a way as to leave accessible what they would need to reach first. LeClerc came into his own for this project; his expertise lying in how to outfit and run an expedition with as little physical effort as possible. This was necessary to conserve calories. Though the expedition members would travel in relative comfort in the cabs of the big Sno-Cats, strenuous work would be required sporadically, and the effort of maintaining reasonable weight in the extreme cold would also require that their physical effort be carefully conserved for the times of necessity. To the surprise of most of the group and the delight of the women, his last task before departure and every morning thereafter was to distribute large bars of chocolate to each member, admonishing them to consume at least half of it before they stopped for their next meal.

  On the afternoon of the third day, they set out along the South Pole Traverse, bound for Amundsen-Scott station at the South Pole. Along the way, they’d use the sensitive equipment they’d brought to explore the ground on either side of the packed-snow track to a distance of one hundred feet once they reached solid ground. If a city were to be found along this road, it would be a bonus, but they didn’t expect it. They were merely being efficient by exploring as they traveled, though the majority of the route was over the Ross Ice Shelf and therefore they would travel that section as quickly as possible. Heavier equipment took about forty days to reach the Pole from McMurdo, but the expedition, with lighter equipment that was the most advanced to be had, planned to make the first part in three weeks. Then they would break off to explore the mountains through which the Leverett Glacier was the pathway for the highway. It was here that Summers had the highest hopes for locating the 9th Cycle city referred to in the 10th Cycle Library.

  ~~~

  First, though, they had an arduous trek across the Ross Ice Shelf, nearly 1,000 miles of ice with all the characteristics of a glacier, to cross. Crevasses, melt pools in later months, average temperatures well below freezing, combined with a constant headwind of five to eighteen miles per hour would combine to keep their progress to about fifty miles per day, and that was considered fast. However, because the ruins would be found on solid ground or not at all, they would make all possible speed across the ice. Contingencies for delays due to stormy weather had been built in, since October was the stormiest month. If they were able to avoid stopping for high winds and driven snow, they might even make it in two weeks rather than three.

  At first, it was a lark. Everyone was in high spirits to be moving forward after the long weeks and in some cases months of training and preparation. A vacation mood prevailed, with LeClerc and Summers the main restraint. However, long hours traveling in a landscape that changed but little began to be wearing after only a few days. The strange night, which never got really dark, and the constant wind made it difficult to sleep at first. As the expedition began, the sun was low on the horizon, casting long shadows over the deceptively flat terrain as it circled their position, neither rising further nor setting. As the months went on, it would only get higher over the horizon, until, half-way through their expedition, it would beat down with unremitting brightness twenty-four hours a day for several weeks. Summers was confident that they’d grow accustomed to it, and fortunately LeClerc had put heavy sleeping masks in the supplies, since the two-man polar tents made of red nylon weren’t particularly light-proof, even though they were double-skinned.

  Nine of the pyramid-shaped tents were pitched each night, and the occupants left to sort themselves out. Before they’d been on the road a week, it had become
standard for Roosky, at six-foot-six the second tallest and at 380 lbs. the biggest, to be the odd man out with a tent to himself. JR had to sleep in a slight curl, as the edges of the walls inclined as they met the floor, an otherwise generous seven and a half feet square. Since he had the curvy Misty to curl around, he didn’t mind. The others, all of average height, made arrangements according to who had been conversing with whom when they made camp for the night, or who had a bit of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ fun in mind for the night. Of the females, only Dr. Mendenhall and Carmen, the overqualified research assistant typically bunked together, Rebecca being uninterested in casual sex with her fellow expedition members and Carmen being interested only in the Aussie geologist, Robert Cartwright, who didn’t reciprocate. Summers also held himself aloof, which meant he changed tent mates often as the others’ love lives waxed and waned.

  The Scott Pyramid tents had been chosen for their ease of pitching, even when the winds were fairly high, and their careful attention to ventilation. Oddly enough, next to dying of exposure without one, the most common danger of dying came from carbon monoxide poisoning, with two people breathing in a small area and the inevitable build-up of a heavy frost layer inside the tent from exhalation. Without ventilation, it was a real and present danger, not to be taken lightly. However, these tents had the latest technology to not only keep occupants snug and reasonably warm, but also to provide adequate air exchange.

  In addition to the sleeping tents, when weather permitted, a cook tent was erected and Bart the cook was able to put together a hearty meal. At other times, soup from a pouch, reconstituted over an alcohol stove that was set up on the floor of one of the Sno-Cats had to suffice. The team was almost always hungry, not because the food wasn’t adequate, but because of a combination of boredom and their constant shivering whenever they were outside the Sno-Cat. Even at temperatures above freezing, the wind chill would have left them cold if they stood still, a theory that had no need to be tested, since the temperature was never above freezing.

  Sometimes, with the average pace only four miles per hour, the more ambitious of the team got out and walked for a while, realizing that two or three weeks cooped up in a seated position in a moving vehicle would destroy their conditioning. Others did awkward calisthenics at camp. They traveled twelve hours a day, stopping only for meals and for night camp, though the ‘night’ part of that phrase was merely a concept.

  Eventually, the novelty of the landscape lost its luster even for the most wide-eyed of the bunch. iPads came out for video games, reading and crossword puzzles or Scrabble. Summers and LeClerc played chess on a magnetic board until they each knew all the other’s moves and most games ended in stalemate. When the first slopes of the Transantarctic Mountains came into distant view, a cheer went up, until they realized that in the clear air they could see greater distances. Those peaks were still at least two days away. Worst of all, they’d have to skirt them as the mountain range ran almost parallel to the track they were following to the Leverett Glacier, which would serve as the pass through which they’d negotiate the mountains. They were at least four days away from turning south toward the pole through the mountains.

  At camp on the night that the sharpest-eyed member of the expedition had spotted the mountain range in the distance, Summers and LeClerc compared their long-term forecast document to the readings on the barometer and anemometer.

  “Listen up, folks,” Summers shouted over the howl of the wind. “Gather round.”

  Reluctantly, a few of the team crawled out of their tents, putting on coats and gloves as they gathered around him. “We’re going to get some wind tonight. Real wind, in excess of 60 miles per hour. That’s a little over one hundred kilometers per hour to those of you who aren’t American. Make preparations to stay in your tents until it dies down; we won’t be moving from this location until it does. Cook has some protein bars and other stuff you can take to your tents to eat; no hot meals before tomorrow late afternoon at best. Tell your tent mates, too, if they aren’t hearing this. Let me repeat; stay in your tents at all costs. I want you all inside and your hatches battened down within half an hour.”

  There was a mad scramble for the sled where Bart was handing out emergency food supplies and bottled water, some people checked and rechecked guy wires to their tent sides, and a couple of hasty trades of places within the tents took place, before all human activity grew quiet within the shelters. As the wind speed increased, so did the noise, until almost everyone was put in mind of a freight train racing past a lonely country intersection, with only the shelter of a thin wall of nylon to protect them. Conversation was impossible. It was a long night. At least the driven snow obscured the weak sunlight, so that once the noise became part of the background, a few of them got some sleep.

  By late afternoon the next day, the wind had reduced to half its former speed, allowing the Rossler expedition to escape from their tents. However, only eight were set up, where there had previously been nine. An alarm was raised and soon all remaining tents were empty of their occupants. Missing were Angela and Cyndi, along with any sign of their tent. Directing the others to spread out and search, Summers went to the lead Sno-Cat to retrieve the satellite phone and call for a search mission. However, as soon as he closed the door against the wind, soft snoring led him to the first two bench seats behind the cab, where the missing girls were curled up under their parkas.

  “Oh, my God,” he breathed. It felt as if his heart slammed into gear and started beating again when he saw them. He’d been responsible for the lives of archaeology expedition teams before, and on one terrible occasion, he’d lost a team member to a cave-in. But, he’d never lost two before the expedition had even begun. His heavy sigh of relief woke Cyndi, who opened her eyes to Summers’ concerned face.

  “Oh, hey, Charles. Sorry. Ange and I didn’t get our tent secured, I guess. It blew away, so we had to come here. Are there any extras?”

  Summers began to laugh, his relief was so great. Dropping a totally unexpected kiss on the forehead of the young engineer, he said, “We have a couple of extra tents, yes. But no extra engineers or cartographers. Thank God you’re okay.”

  By now, Angela was also awake.

  “Of course we’re okay,” she said. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

  Summers made a mental note that guide ropes would be fixed from the tent area to the Sno-Cats every time they camped from now on. It was an enormous stroke of luck that the two small women hadn’t been swept across the ice with the tent, unable to stop themselves, until they either succumbed to the injuries they no doubt would have sustained, or blew far enough away that they couldn’t find their way back. In fact, it was a miracle that the girls couldn’t explain and didn’t seem concerned about.

  Since the wind was at a more reasonable twenty miles per hour that afternoon, LeClerc deemed it safe to continue, and they resolved to go ahead and travel the usual twelve hours, though that would have them making camp at about five a.m. the next day instead of their usual eight p.m. It made little difference; the daylight would be the same in any case. That they would be on a crazy diurnal schedule after that would mean nothing until they returned to McMurdo Base.

  Four uneventful days later, two and a half weeks after they started their trek, the group gained the foothills of the Queen Maud Range and started making their zig-zagging route through the passes before turning nearly ninety degrees to their right and heading for Amundsen-Scott station.

  Chapter 12 – Trials And Tribulations

  It was at this point that the real purpose of the expedition was to begin. Rather than move along the track at all possible speed, small groups were sent out with seismographic equipment on either side of the road to attempt to map the terrain under the snow. Permission had been granted for only a few holes to be drilled for explosives that would ‘thump’ the surrounding terrain, the resulting seismic activity to then be recorded on geophones. Robert Cartwright had a great deal of humorous chatter about ‘doodle
bugs’ and ‘jug-hustlers’, oil-field slang for the drillers and the low-level employees that strung the geophones in the array that would map the subsurface, but the others, unused to this type of physical labor for the most part, merely put their heads down and endured.

  It wasn’t that they hadn’t been warned; just that most of them didn’t have the experience to imagine what it would be like. Cold and wind that reminded them of their own winters they expected; quick hikes up ice-covered slopes in it, they hadn’t. All, that is, except Summers and JR, both used to winter hiking in the Rockies near Boulder. Summers was surprised and pleased that JR took to the work with gusto, glad of an outlet for his boredom. Seeing him striding along with the petite Misty scrambling along behind him was comical, too. Their team always finished their array first, prompting Roosky to praise them every evening over dinner, and complain to the others that they slowed him down.

  The Leverett Glacier is said to be about 3,000 meters, or 1.8 miles, thick; but Summers’ expectation was that the rocky terrain on either side funneled the ice into the pass, leaving a thinner sheet within the rough outcroppings that they had a chance of penetrating with the seismic equipment. At least, he hoped, far enough down to detect the anomaly that a ruined city should present. However, to successfully map both sides, the seismograph equipment had to be deployed several miles from the road in either direction, as the glacier was three to five miles wide. Therefore, rather than the fifty miles per day that they’d covered on the Ross, they were making only five or so through the mountains. This created a problem for LeClerc.