The work was slow going. To do the job right, she had to look over each section of pipe, running her light along and behind the sections where the overhead illumination didn’t reach. After the first hundred meters, however, there was no sign of a leak and she felt a small surge of vindication—if she’d taken a chance and pulled a sled full of tools with a bum ankle, she’d already be regretting it.
But the air seemed colder here, if that were possible, and she shivered as she thought about losing her way at the far end of the frozen tunnel. Wandering and alone, unable to find the path back to the surface as the heat slowly left her body . . .
“Jesus. Get a grip,” she said out loud, regretting it instantly as the sound died in the still air. She calmed herself and kept moving, continuing on to the Section D branch, different from the others in that—eventually, after many twists and turns—it connected with the ancient tunnels from the original base. At least, that’s what her schematic said. Before he’d left her in charge, Dwight had told her it was worth a look at the old rat warren and abandoned vaults just to see the wood beam and rivet construction the first Polies had used to shore up their tunnels.
She stopped in front of the plywood door to Section D, then shook off a mitten so she could pull out her copy of the tunnel map. At a guess, it was a half mile back to the Beer Can. Tucking the map into her parka, she tugged open the door and tried the sniff test, regretting it immediately as the inside of her nose turned into an ice cube.
Not surprisingly, there was no smell, but she hesitated and looked back the way she’d come. For one of the planet’s foremost research facilities, there was a sometimes surprising lack of rhyme or reason to where utilities had been placed, with sewer bulbs plumbed and dropped in different areas over the decades. Abandoned bulbs sat next to some currently in use, while still others had been drilled a decade ago but were waiting to be filled.
Coming to a decision, she passed through to Section D, closing the plywood door behind her. The lights here were even fewer and farther between than in the main ice tunnel, spaced maybe twenty meters apart. The puddles of darkness were now three or four times larger than the spread of light, making the lamps less a source of illumination and more like beacons guiding her onward.
She kept her eyes fixed on the pipes running near the top right corner. After another hundred meters, she paused to work the kinks out of her neck, then pulled the schematic out once again. According to the plan, she wasn’t far from the switchback to the 1950s base. She grimaced under her mask. If she didn’t find the leak in the next thirty meters of ice tunnel, there was a good chance it was in the original construction. It would be a major undertaking just to reach it, never mind fix it.
The thirty meters came and went. No leak. At least none that she could see. The downslope switchback to the original base peeled away to her left and she dutifully followed the pipes down the narrow tunnel. The lights were even more infrequent here, the exception instead of the rule—each lamp was barely within sight of the next.
The light from her headlamp swung back and forth as she walked. Smooth, sculpted walls gave way to hand-chiseled passages so tight that she could almost reach up and touch the ceiling. After a minute, those began to seem spacious as the walls and ceiling closed in until Cass’s shoulders brushed the ice and she had to duck her head to keep from banging it on the suddenly low-hanging pipes. The walls were now supported with the wooden shoring and steel rivets Dwight had described to her.
Eventually, the tunnel squeezed down into a passage no larger than a crawl space.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, looking at the four-by-four opening. With the pipes in the way, she’d have to get down on her hands and knees to squeeze through.
It was time to call it quits and go back to the base. Fixing the plumbing and emptying trash cans was one thing, but doing major repairs in a seventy-year-old ruin was another. She turned to leave, then stopped.
A vision of the contempt and disappointment on Hanratty’s face materialized in her head. Who, exactly, is supposed to do the work, Jennings? she could hear him ask. Biddi? One of the astrophysicists? Want someone to fly in from McMurdo with some duct tape? This is what wintering over means. Like it or not, you’re it.