She tried not to look into her eyes as she worked the hand drill, the saw, and the pick. It was too unnerving.
Tina was working on the back of the block, using the same tools, and as usual, they were talking about something else entirely—the recent changes in the NFL—when Tina stopped and said, “They were right.”
“About what?” Betty shaved another slice of ice away.
“There is a second person in the ice. I can see him now.” Betty came around back, and she could see him, too. His head was pressed against the back of the woman’s, and the same iron chain was wrapped around his neck; he had a pale moustache, and appeared to be wearing a uniform of some kind. Betty and Tina looked at each other, and Betty said, “Maybe we should stop.”
“Why?”
“This might be bigger than we can handle, down here. It might be the kind of thing that ought to be sent up to, say, the NSF labs in D.C. Or even back to the U. of Idaho.”
“What—and miss our chance to make history?”
Michael, laden down with gear—cameras, a tripod, a couple of lights—didn’t have a hand free to bang on the sheet-metal panel that served as a gate to the core bin, so he had to simply kick it with his foot. He’d heard Betty and Tina talking behind it—one of them had just said something about history—and when Betty pulled it back, he said, “Sorry I didn’t call ahead.”
“That’s okay. We love company.”
“Living company,” Tina added, portentously.
But Michael was so intent on his first task that he failed to pick up the hint. Instead, he laid a few things on the ground, then immediately went to the crate in the corner of the pen. He got down on his knees and looked inside—Ollie was so used to him by then that he actually got to his feet and waddled forward. Michael removed the strips of bacon he had just taken from the commons and held one out. Ollie cocked his fluffy gray head—he was looking more like a gull every day—studied it for a moment, then took a quick peck.
“Whoa, you almost got my finger there.” Michael placed the other strips at the edge of the box, then stood up. But when he saw the apprehensive looks on Betty and Tina’s faces, he stopped and said, “Don’t look so worried—skuas can eat anything.”
Betty said, “It’s not that.”
And then he followed Tina’s gaze, toward the block of ice. “Holy smokes,” he said, stepping closer. “I was right.”
The man was still buried in the ice—if she was Sleeping Beauty, then had this been her true Prince Charming?—and Michael had the immediate impression that the man had been a soldier; there was a hint of gold braid around the chest area.
And he also experienced the oddest feeling—a sense of comfort, that she had not been alone all this time.
“Don’t make another cut,” he said. “I need to make a photo record of this stage in the process.”
He quickly assembled some lights and mounted them around the block. It was a bitterly cold and gray day, and the lights suddenly turned the ice into a glittering beacon.
“Betty and I were just talking,” Tina ventured, “and we were thinking that something as extraordinary as this maybe ought to be kept intact.”
Michael was so busy figuring out his game plan—what would be the best way to capture the image of what lay inside the ice?—that he didn’t acknowledge her words. The play of light and shadows, not to mention the problems with reflections off the ice, was going to be murder. But that was part of the challenge. He lifted his green goggles up on top of his woolen hat and took a light reading.
“Michael,” Betty said, “maybe we should slow down and think this through.”
“Think what through?” Michael said.
“The process of extracting these bodies. This job might require extensive lab facilities—and, say, X-ray and MRI capabilities—that we don’t have down here.”
“Darryl’s convinced that he’s got all the equipment and facilities he needs,” Michael said, though he was given pause. Was he rushing headlong into this? Inflicting damage to what could prove to be a truly miraculous discovery?
“It isn’t just a question of removing them safely,” Tina added. “That’s easy. It’s preserving them afterwards that’s hard.”
Wouldn’t Darryl know what to do? And wasn’t the whole Antarctic basically just a vast deep freeze? Even if the bodies were taken from the ice, couldn’t they be kept sufficiently cold to keep them from deteriorating?