Frozen Solid A Novel

50




THE MOUTH OF THE ENTRANCE SHAFT WAS A ROUND HOLE IN THE ice four feet in diameter. As Blaine had told her, it was hidden behind a maintenance shed a quarter mile from the station.

Under the plywood cover, a six-by-six wooden post lay across the top of the hole, its ends resting in slots cut into the ice. Bolted to the six-by-six was a cable ladder with round metal rungs that dropped into darkness. Cavers and climbers had used similar ladders in the old days, before rappelling and vertical gear changed everything. Like those, the rungs on this ladder were only a foot wide. And slick.

She glanced at the parka thermometer: seventy degrees below zero. There were no southern lights just now, only stars pitting the black sky. The cold was already seeping through her clothing, sneaking past thin spots of insulation. Tiny exposed places on her face burned. Fire and ice, she thought. At some point, they feel the same.

She started down. It had been some time since she’d used a ladder like this. The metal rungs were icy, and she’d never had to descend one wearing seven layers of clothing. Worst of all were the huge bunny boots. The rungs were so narrow that she could place only the toes on them, which meant that she had to keep her calf muscles tensed to prevent her feet from slipping off. By the time she reached the bottom, both legs were jigging up and down in the spasms climbers called “sewing machine legs.”

She stepped from the ladder onto the bottom of a rectangular corridor that, as she played her light beam around, reminded her of an abandoned mine shaft. The walls were sheets of thick plywood, now bulging in from the crushing pressure of ice and snow. The ceiling was more plywood, supported every four feet by massive vertical timbers and horizontal crossbeams. Even so, some of the crossbeams had cracked, and seams of ice showed through splits in the plywood sheets.

Because no one had ever lived at the South Pole before 1957, no one had known what the weather would be like. The first crew constructed most of the original station underground, leaving five feet of ice on top. The walls and ceilings had been shored up, mine-style, with timbers. When the place had originally been built, everything must have been plumb and square. Now there was not a plumb line or square angle to be seen, giving the place a tilting, twisting fun-house look. It smelled of old wood and diesel oil and decay.

Cave-in debris blocked half the passage to her left, so she went right, into an open corridor. After a hundred feet that led into a room that must have been the galley—red picnic tables with benches, sagging cabinets, sinks. On the tables sat bowls of cereal as they had been left half a century earlier, no mold growing here, empty beer cans and mugs, some with coffee frozen solid, overflowing ashtrays.

Either they got out of this place in one hell of a hurry, she thought, or they didn’t bother to clean up after their last day. Probably the latter. She was about to continue through a door on the galley’s opposite side when a cracking noise stopped her. She remained absolutely still, not even breathing, listening. No more noises, but she knew that the entire complex was unstable. The beams and timbers were huge, two feet on a side, but a major shift in all that ice above could snap them like twigs. Not a place to linger.

Thirty feet past the galley she came to a T intersection. Turned right, moved on carefully, the floor here littered with rusting cables, lumber, scrap metal. Came to what had been an entrance on her right, the frame all askew now, door hanging from one set of hinges. Painted in black:

Capt. J. R. Lieder, USN

C.O.

South Pole, Antarctica, USA

Like Columbus claiming everything he could see, and all he could not, for the queen, she thought. South Pole, Antarctica, USA. Different times. She wrenched the door back and shone her light into the room. Two gray metal file cabinets, an overturned chair, and a massive old metal desk like the one in Graeter’s office in the station.

Fida lay on top of the desk, naked, curled into a fetal position. His eyes were open, dulled by the gray haze of death. One arm lay underneath him. The other was stretched straight out, fingers spread wide, as if trying to snatch something out of the air. Areas of his skin glistened: body moisture that had frozen and was reflecting her light. Sweat? From a struggle? So thin, she saw, skin over knobs and ridges of bone. His ECW gear, underclothing, and boots lay in a pile on the floor beside the desk.

She ran her light over the room’s ceiling. None of the crossbeams had split, but all had unsettling downward curves. Didn’t matter. She needed to get closer. She walked in, stood beside the body, started to look for wounds or signs of trauma. Saw nothing obvious at first, but then, peeking from beneath Fida’s head, a small, reddish-black circle. Blood? She bent to look.

A sharp noise from the dark passageway behind her, then a sound like giant hands clapping, ice cracking, timbers shattering. One second of dead silence, and the ceiling collapsed. Her last thought was that it sounded like the avalanche on Denali just before it hit.