“Yes,” he whispered.
“Did you know these tunnels are just the beginning? They keep going far, far under the station. Almost no one ever goes there. You should explore them sometime. Perhaps you could find your own little getaway. Away from the wind.”
Leroy’s shoulders stopped quaking. “Below the base?”
“Yes. You’ll have to be careful. If anyone hears you’ve started spending time down there, they’ll stop you. But if you don’t tell anyone and only go down there when you need to, you can do it. You can start to create your own space, away from the others. Away from the wind.”
Leroy stared for a moment longer, then nodded and shuffled away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cass ran her mittened hand along the ice wall as she moved down the tunnel, wrinkling her nose as she went.
In the supernaturally cold air below Shackleton, smells didn’t actually travel far, but master pressure gauges and the computer monitoring system had suggested something was wrong with the station’s sewer pipes, and it was pretty easy to fool herself into thinking she smelled the accumulated sewage of hundreds of people over decades of use. Or maybe she was being hypersensitive; a busted shitter was a five-alarm mechanical emergency for a small group stuck together for nine months and it was her job to fix it. Or else.
Finding the problem was the challenge. In the early days of Shackleton, leaving sewage at the site where it had been deposited was a distasteful, if necessary, reality. When simple survival was in doubt, no one bothered to haul out months of accumulated excrement. Even as technology improved and year-round residence at the South Pole was established, it was still considered impractical to remove waste, despite the environmental impact.
Hence, the invention of the sewer bulb, which was a fancy word for shit hole. Two dozen of them had been plumbed when the new station had been built but, like anything else involving fluid mechanics and pipes at the bottom of the world, the delivery system sometimes failed.
Unfortunately, the only way to discover whether the problem was a split line or a busted conduit or a malfunctioning pump was to descend the Beer Can, take a right past the intersection at the service arches, walk the length of the main utilities tunnel past the shrines and stub-up ladders, and maybe even haul your butt down to the old ice tunnels, the ones that went to the original parts of the base, using nothing but your eyes and nose to find the problem.
Dwight, the departing engineer who had trained her, had warned Cass that, with jobs like this, you had to make a choice right off the bat: drag a banana sled full of tools with you, prepared for anything, or walk to the problem empty-handed to perform a diagnosis, then return with only the tools you needed. If the leak was right around the corner, the first choice paid off. If not, you were in for a serious workout.
Cass, prudent and hardworking, would’ve normally gone for the first option and humped half the tools in the VMF with her, but Doc Ayres had been right: although it had been a month since her sprain, her ankle was still tender. The last thing she wanted to do was reinjure it or prolong the healing process, so dragging a sled for a mile-long round-trip wasn’t a possibility. Making two round-trips? Not a savory option, either, but she didn’t have a choice. Unless she wanted to supplant Keene as the most unpopular person at Shackleton, she had to find the problem before the toilets stopped working.
As she passed it, she glanced down the alcove at the access ladder that led to her hidden radio spot and felt a twinge of guilt. Busy with countless tasks around Shackleton, she hadn’t gotten in touch with Vox lately. She imagined him waiting by his own shortwave—hidden who knows where—listening to the hiss of empty airwaves. She promised herself she’d make it up to him.
She continued down the tunnel, each segment looking exactly like the last. Bright overhead lights lit the way, although as an energy-saving measure they were spaced farther apart than in the main tunnels. The radius of each light died out just as the next one picked up the slack, forming modest pools of illumination interspersed with wedges of darkness. Since she’d want her hands free in order to inspect the pipes thoroughly, Cass pulled out her trusty headlamp and secured it in place as needles of cold sprang along her forehead and scalp. She switched the red light on and pulled the hood back over her head, giving the lamp just enough room to shine through.