“But we’re almost at Point Adélie. We’re tracking the coastline, and coming in from the northwest. If the fog breaks, you should be able to see the old Norwegian whaling station, or maybe even the Adélie rookeries.” He clicked off, but then, a few seconds later, came back on again. “Ensign Jarvis has asked me to advise you that our ground time will be minimal, so please be prepared to depart the craft as soon as you are advised that it is safe to do so. Don’t wait for your bags and gear—they’ll be transferred for you.” Then he clicked off again and stayed off.
Michael tightened the laces on his boots, and gathered up his coat and hat and gloves, even though he couldn’t put them on again until he was out of the shoulder harness. The chopper was slowly losing altitude—he could feel it even if he couldn’t see it—and cutting through the fog. Occasionally, a patch of rocky shoreline would become visible, and once or twice he saw great black swarms of penguins, massed on a snowy plain. Then he caught a glimpse of a patchwork of abandoned wooden buildings, the colors of soot and rust; what looked like a steeple poked up from the fog. But it was hard to say for sure, as the chopper was skimming along so quickly, rising and falling on the powerful air currents, bucketing from side to side. A few minutes later, it came up over a low ridge, slowing down and turning, the rotors whirring louder than ever. Michael leaned close to the window to look down; the chopper’s blades were shredding the mist below, and through it he could see a man in a hooded orange parka wildly waving and sliding around on the ice. Splotches of gray and brown surrounded him, some of them moving, skittering across the snow and ice, others disappearing as if they’d spontaneously evaporated. The helicopter hovered, but a gust of wind hit it hard and set it rocking in the air. In the cockpit, Diaz and Jarvis were hunched over their controls; Diaz was speaking rapidly into his microphone.
The man below vanished from Michael’s field of vision, then ran back across it, his arms still waving. The chopper rocked again, an air horn blasted twice, then, slowly, the aircraft descended. When its blades touched the ice, there was a grinding noise that reminded Michael of cracking open one of those old-fashioned ice-cube trays, and under it came the sound of the man in the orange parka shouting. He skidded past the window—Michael caught a glimpse of a bearded, weather-beaten face under dark goggles—and then he heard the gradual sigh of the rotors winding down. The pilots were flicking off switches and shucking their own seat belts.
Michael did the same.
Diaz turned around, and called out, “Last stop!”
Jarvis had already climbed out, and was yanking on the latch to the passenger compartment. The door jerked open, and a blast of Antarctic air blew like a gale into the cabin. Charlotte was still wrestling herself out of her seat harness, and Darryl was doing his best to help her.
“All ashore that’s going ashore!” Jarvis shouted, extending a hand to Charlotte, who finally freed herself and stepped out gingerly onto the ice. Darryl tumbled out after her, and Michael followed.
The orange parka guy was shouting at the pilots, something about seals, Weddell seals, and pups. Michael was still a little deaf from the roar of the chopper, and much of what the guy was saying was snatched up and blown away before he could quite make it out.
Michael moved away from the helicopter, as several other men in parkas and goggles ran toward the tail of the helicopter, where Jarvis had already thrown open a cargo bay. Michael saw pallets of supplies sliding out, but then he almost lost his footing and had to focus again on where he was going. Where was he going? There was no sign of the research station, and the ice, he suddenly discovered, had holes in it, roughly a few feet wide. He stopped, and he could see that there was something on the ice, something red and pulpy and wet, and the orange parka man was shouting again, though now Michael could actually hear some of it.
“The Weddell seals, they’re whelping here! Right now! Watch where you’re going!”
Charlotte and Darryl, arm in arm, were frozen in place.
“Holes in the ice!” he cried, pointing at several spots around them. “They’ve chewed breathing holes in the ice!”
A few yards off, almost indistinguishable against the ice, Michael saw a pup. Then two. White, but smeared with blood, their black eyes open. A mother lay beyond them, like a gray barrel.
And then, as he watched, another seal—bigger, darker, fully grown—put its head down into a hole, and somehow managed to slither through.
“Keep going!” the guy in the orange coat shouted. “Get off the ice!”