by JE Gurley
The motor pool still had its complement of vehicles stored out of the weather, the keys safely locked away in a steel vault for security. The person with the keys had been one of the first to turn zombie, curtailing most attempts at escape. Malosi had been lucky. He had stumbled across a brand new Yamaha RS Venture GT, which one of the mechanics had been assembling in a storage shed. All it needed was a few finishing bolts and fuel. He filled four, five-gallon cans with fuel and ferried them to his collection. He decided to return for an extra snowmobile battery. That move almost cost him his life.
He walked around the front of the motor pool just in time to see John Gilford exiting the lab. He ducked behind a parked jeep, but in his haste, he kicked an empty oilcan. The can rolled in front of the jeep. Gilford stooped, eyed the can, and took his pistol from his coat.
“Who’s there?” he shouted. “Come out or I’ll shoot.” He laughed wildly. “I’ll shoot anyway.” Gilford fired three shots into the jeep. One passed through the window and struck the wall inches from Malosi’s head. He slowly withdrew his revolver and held his breath. Gilford cocked his head to one side and stared at the oilcan for a few moments longer, and then laughed and continued to the cafeteria. Malosi released his breath and rushed into the motor pool, grabbed the battery and fled the base, relieved that he had avoided a confrontation with Gilford.
He returned to the snowmobile but waited an hour to give Gilford time to complete his business and return to his sanctuary. At the last minute, caution won out over speed, and he decided to drive closer but not onto the base. Instead, he parked near the runway and made several trips between his stash and the sled. Satisfied he had greatly improved his chances for survival, he cranked the Yamaha and roared away, smiling as he thought of Gilford rushing out to chase ghosts.
3
Aug. 21, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Base, Antarctica
Only a certain breed of man could feel at home in the Antarctic. During the twenty-four-hour daylight of the Antarctic summer, the whiteness is so intense that it is almost blinding. The Polar Plateau is a featureless plain of ice and snow, built steadily deeper layer by layer over millions of years. With ice almost two miles in depth, the glacial coldness rises like a living creature, sapping strength and insinuating itself into every living thing. In fact, the only creature foolhardy enough to visit the South Pole is man. Bent on his exploration of the world around him, even the Poles have proven no barrier, but in March, the sun dips below the horizon one final time, leaving the land blanketed in perpetual gloom, broken only by the moon and the stars overhead. The wind, frigid enough to freeze flesh in minutes, moans in the darkness. For those used to the diurnal movement of the sun, the constant twenty-four-hour darkness of the Antarctic winter is unnerving and difficult to ignore.
Bradford Niles was such a man. Born in North Dakota, a veteran of thirty-one harsh winters, he relished the cold. Like North Dakota, the clear skies of Antarctica were perfect for his chosen field, astronomy. The South Pole presented whole sections of the galaxy invisible in the Northern hemisphere. The six months of darkness allowed him to scan the skies whenever he needed, and the dry atmosphere reduced absorption of the millimeter wavelengths collected by the telescope he used. Exhausted by a twelve-hour shift of mapping dark matter in the Magellanic Cloud Galaxies, his current project, he glanced at his watch and performed the mental calculations necessary to determine the time in his hometown of Bottineau, North Dakota. There, people would just be sitting down to Sunday breakfast on a warm summer morning. At Amundsen-Scott South Polar Station, it was just before two a.m. Monday morning, an eighteen-hour time difference with Daylight Savings Time.
In the reversed seasons of the Southern Hemisphere, North Dakota winter was the season of warm weather and perpetual daylight hours in Antarctica. During the months of September through February, the base housed up to two-hundred-fifty researchers and visitors. By March, most had gone, leaving only a few hardy researchers and the support staff of forty-eight. The office that he and his fellow overwintering astronomer, Daryl Overton shared, was on the second floor of Pod B, one of the two, U-shaped buildings that comprised the base. He glanced at the temperature gauge for Bottineau on his computer – eighty-five degrees. Outside the base, the temperature was hovering near sixty-five degrees below zero, a one-hundred-fifty-degree difference. He stretched his aching muscles and pushed away from his desk, too tired to continue. The remainder of the data could wait until later.
Still stretching his arms over his head, he stepped out into the deserted corridor. Except for the ticking of a clock and the soft whisper of water in the overhead pipes, all was silent. Walking the deserted corridors was like prowling an empty shopping mall after closing hours. He always felt that he should walk softly and whisper when he spoke. The sound of a ball bouncing drew his curiosity. He passed the row of managers’ offices lining the hallway. They were mostly empty for the winter, and only a few night owls like him remained awake in the early morning hours. The sound was coming from the basketball court. Curiosity drew him downstairs to the gym.
He entered the two-story basketball court that also served as a meeting room for large events and found Mark Walls shooting hoops. Walls noticed him enter and tucked the ball under his arm.
“Ready for a little one-on-one?” Walls asked.
Brad grinned. While he was an outdoorsman, often hunting moose in the Turtle Mountains and fishing at Lake Metigoshe, he had never enjoyed participating in team sports except for watching a good hockey game and the usual Super Bowl event the base threw. Walls knew this and it had become a standing joke between the two.
“No thanks. What’s wrong, Mark? Can’t sleep?”
Walls took a jump shot from the corner of the court. The ball made a whishing sound as it sailed through the net without touching metal. He pumped his fist in the air in triumph.
“Nah. I’m running a program for the TDRS uplink. I’m killing time until it’s uploaded.”
The TDRS-F1 and Iridium System were two of the communication network satellites that kept the base in constant contact with the rest of the world. The old timers had told him about the early days of almost total isolation. Now, they enjoyed cable television and internet access for several hours each day while the satellites were high enough above the horizon, and twenty-four hour access via the newly installed fiber optic cable to Concordia Station.
“Problems?”
Walls looked thoughtful for a moment, and then frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? I’m receiving no signal from any of the satellites. Could be a bug.” He dribbled down the court for a layup. The ball bounced off the glass and missed the hoop. He cursed and chased after it. While Brad was computer savvy, he knew little about the science of telecommunications, Walls’ specialty. He only hoped he didn’t lose his link with the A.A.O. in Coonabarabran. The Australian Astronomical Observatory was allowing him to access data from the 3.9-meter A.A.T. and the 1.2-meter Schmidt telescopes, which, like the 10-meter telescope at Amundsen-Scott that he was using, were also studying the Magellanic Clouds.
“I guess I’ll try to catch a few winks before breakfast,” he said.
Walls yawned, and then glanced at the clock on the wall. “My program still has two more hours to run. I’ll kill some more time, run a few final checks, and join you later for breakfast. Then, I’m going to smoke a nice Peruvian cigar, hit the sack, and sleep in all day.”
To keep the air inside the base as pristine as possible, especially during the long Austral winter, all smoking was confined to one small room with a separate ventilation system, much to Walls’ displeasure, but to Brad’s delight. He had walked in one day as Walls was smoking a Miguel Grau, his favorite Peruvian cigar. The pungent smell had gagged him.
“Smoking will kill you,” Brad told him.
Walls grinned. “It’s either cigars or sex, and there’s not much of that down here.”
Of the forty-eight people remaining at the base, only nine were women. Of these, tw
o had already paired with each other, four were in semi-steady relationships with members of the staff, and one, Faith Mendez, was determined to sleep her way through the remainder. That left Nattie Mullins, one of the two sous chefs, and Elizabeth Strong, the base’s medical officer. Nattie was a great cook and friendly, but she cursed like a sailor and looked like a toothless walrus. Elizabeth, Liz as she preferred, had politely brushed off countless attempts by male members of the love-starved staff to woo her. Brad found her attractive and friendly, but somewhat cool and reserved. Everyone had their favorite reason why such a woman would confine herself to the ends of the world. He suspected a bad relationship or a failed marriage, but no one knew.
“Faith might look you up,” he said.
“Fat chance of that. She’s still working her way alphabetically through the K’s and L’s. W comes a long way down the alphabet, my friend.” He looked at Brad pointedly. “N comes up soon. You should be happy.”
Brad shook his head. “Not me. I’m out of here in another six weeks, back to North Dakota to collate my research material.”
Walls shrugged. “Never pass up free poontang.”
“Nothing’s free in this world, my friend. Remember that. Now wouldn’t you hate to get back to that girlfriend of yours in Dallas with some Antarctic STD, like frostbite of the penis?”
Walls made a pained-face expression and grabbed his crotch. “Ouch.”
“See you later,” Brad said and turned to leave. Behind him, Walls began dribbling again; then cursed as he missed a shot. On his way out, Brad reached out and gently touched the South Pole logo, a white Antarctica surrounded by a blue sea set inside a white circle. It served as a reminder that he was truly there.
The winter quarters were located in one wing of Pod A. A second wing housed the summer crew but was presently shut down to conserve energy and used to store perishable food items in the just-above-freezing environment. His winter quarters room was located at the far end of the base on the lower level. As he started down the corridor, he heard one of the dryers in the laundry room spinning. Who would be doing laundry at such an un-Godly hour? To avoid yet another distraction preventing him from sleep, he backtracked and took the stairs to the upper level. Passing through the corridor outside the medical lab, the ‘Hall of Fame’ lined with photos of over-winterers, he smiled at the thought of his face being there soon among the others. He was so absorbed in the prospect of a little piece of immortality that he almost walked into an equally distracted Elizabeth Strong.
“Excuse me,” she gasped. “I wasn’t expecting to see anyone at this hour.”
Brad was surprised to see her at such an ungodly hour. The medical lab usually kept normal working hours. He looked at her without appearing to stare. She wore a white lab coat over a gray warm-up suit that didn’t hide her well-rounded figure. Her dark-framed glasses dangled from her neck by a silver chain. She had tied her long, blonde hair in a ponytail to keep it out of the way of equipment. From her California Girl tanned complexion, it was obvious that she had been utilizing the tanning lamps. His own pale skin made it equally as obvious that he had not.
“My fault,” he said. “I was daydreaming. You’re up late.”
“I was completing an inventory of the medical supplies. I wanted to finish it today and get it out of the way for another three months. Any interesting stars tonight, Doctor Niles?”
“Please call me Brad. There are way too many doctors here.”
She smiled at him. “Okay, Brad. In that case, you may call me Liz.”
“I logged a new pulsar that might prove interesting, but mostly more of same. It’s a slow, tedious process.”
“Like inventory.”
He chuckled; then realized that she wasn’t joking. “Yes, that’s what I’m doing essentially, inventorying the stars in the low millimeter wavelength.” He glanced down the darkened corridor. “I’m on my way to bed now. Would you like to join me?”
Her expression hardened. “Excuse me?”
He immediately recognized his mistake and blushed. “No…er…no…I meant, would you walk with me to the dorm?”
The smile returned to her face. “Thank you, but I have to go downstairs to the laundry room first. I have some clothes in the dryer.”
The mystery of the dryer was solved. “Okay. See you later.”
He cursed himself for his stupidity all the way to his room. “She must think I’m crazy,” he mumbled to the hallway walls.
During the summer, the base reached capacity of over two-hundred-fifty people. The summer quarters were smaller and often shared. Each of the overwintering crew enjoyed the luxury of a private room. His room was somewhat Spartan in furnishings. A bed, a desk and chair, and an extra folding chair for the occasional visitor were all he required. He welcomed the opportunity for privacy, especially when the base had been overrun with the summer crowd. He had arrived in mid-February to prepare the telescope and install the programs necessary for his research. The base had seemed as crowded as a bar on Super Bowl Sunday. He sometimes worked from his room using his laptop, but it was more convenient to use the lab’s facilities. During the long, dark winter months, like most of the others, he preferred the company of his fellow Antarctic castaways to the lonely confines of his room. Though not normally gregarious by nature, the gatherings in the libraries or television rooms for idle conversation, card games, or a Saturday night pool tournament, quickly became routine.
For recreation, very important for morale in a secluded environment, the base had a two-lane bowling alley, an arts and crafts room, a computer room, a music room, a pool table, a library, a fully equipped gym, and a basketball court. It even boasted a large-screen television where he and the others had watched The Shining and The Thing, a long-standing tradition for those overwintering.
When he reached his room, snoring from the next room broke the deep silence of the night. He grinned. Anthony Pirelli, the station manager, denied snoring despite the numerous accusations. Ignoring the snores and exhausted from his long shift, Brad collapsed on his bed fully clothed and fell fast asleep.
* * * *
The artificial station ‘morning’ came early. Roused by the noise of others up and about, Brad reluctantly forced himself from the comfort of his bed, showered, and shaved. During the summer, to conserve water, each person was allowed a two-minute shower twice per week. This made for a heady aroma in the base. With fewer people, his shower was slightly longer, but he had quickly learned early on to shower with haste. He dressed in his usual casual attire of jeans and t-shirt and headed to the galley. In stark contrast to his earlier early morning walk, the aroma of fried bacon and freshly baked biscuits, the noise of conversation, and the sounds of people preparing for work filled the building.
He quickly saw how overdressed he was as he entered the galley. Walls sat at a corner table wearing red-checkered Bermuda shorts, a bold red-and-white-flowered Hawaiian shirt, and reflective pilot shades. Many of the others wore shorts, light shirts, and sandals, a spit-in-the-eye attitude toward the freezing temperatures outside. The station’s glycol and water hydronic heating system used waste heat from the generators, keeping those areas not shut down for the winter toasty and warm. A few, mostly those whose duties required them to go outside, wore heavier pants and boots.
Brad grabbed a cup of coffee from the urn and sat down opposite Walls. He eyed Walls’ heaping plateful of scrambled eggs, bacon strips, link sausages, pan-fried potatoes, and buttered toast with disgust and decided to stick with his coffee for a while.
“Nothing for you?” Walls asked, shoveling a forkful of eggs into his mouth.
“Too early. I’ll have a muffin later. How can you eat all that garbage?”
“I have an enormous breakfast and skip lunch. Besides, I work out.”
“You could work out on the ice and not burn that many calories,” Brad countered.
Walls frowned and patted his belly. “I’ve lost eight pounds since I got here. Besides, I use food to re
place lack of sex. Speaking of sex …” He glanced toward the door and whistled softly. “Would you look at that?”
Brad turned in time to see Faith Menendez entering the room clad in a thin white shirt with no bra to contain her melon-sized breasts, which bounced playfully as she walked. She wore a pair of cut-off blue denim shorts that hugged her ass cheeks like cupped hands, drawing more than a few appreciative stares from the men and jealous glares from the women.
“I’d have that for breakfast,” Walls remarked, “calories or no.”
Brad tried not to stare, but had to admit that Menendez did have an exquisite body, lithe and muscular in spite of her obvious shapely curves. Her pixie-cut blonde hair gave her a forbidden young girl look that she used to its greatest advantage. “After that plate of food, I doubt you’d have room.”
Walls stopped a fork laden with a sausage link mid-air and stared at Brad. “For dessert then. She’s hot enough to melt ice cream.” He continued to stare as Menendez leaned over a table filled with men from the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory, giggling like a schoolgirl as she displayed her cleavage. “Those guys get on my nerves,” he said frowning.
The ‘Ice Cube’, as most called it, was a cubic square half-mile of sensors embedded in the glacial ice, some as deep as eight-hundred feet below the surface, designed to detect elusive neutrinos from space. Drilling the holes for the sensors with the warm-water drill required the warmer summer months, but the observatory maintained a crew of four throughout the year. Each day they made the long, cold trek from the base to the neutrino observatory. He and Overton had it lucky. They only had to visit the SPT telescope every few days to check on the equipment and could work from the comfort of the base.