Black Ice (45 page)

105

Fitzgerald could hear them gaining on him, the sound of their skis against the ice.
Did they have the axe?

He knew he didn't have the time to look back.

Fifty metres. There was the aircraft wing, partly covered in snow, big pieces of engine and gearbox strewn here and there.

His legs were beginning to cramp, he could feel the muscles starting to knot as they reached their limits. The great crevasse was in front of him, the one the aircraft had fallen into. On the other side was the remains of their camp, the tents no longer standing but the fabric still visible poking from the winter drift. Inside one of those collapsed domes would be the emergency transmitter, but if the others reached it first …

The explorer thought he would have to skirt the crevasse, a detour which might mean at least an extra mile on foot. Then he saw that a snow bridge had built through the winter. It looked fragile, but now there was no choice. Fitzgerald committed himself to the thin span of ice, feeling sick as he felt it slump in the middle, the weight of the sledge threatening to drag him down into the void which fell hundreds of metres deep on each side.

But the snow bridge held.

Fitzgerald reached the other side, turned, saw that Lauren and Sean were just seconds from crossing the crevasse.

Next to him was a mass of metal. He saw rubber, aluminium struts: the remains of one of the Twin Otter's wheels. The explorer reached down and pulled with all his might, wrenching the forty or so kilos of wreckage free from its icy grip and hoisting it above his head.

With a roar, he threw the metal remains out onto the snow bridge, the weight crashing with a muffled crumping noise into the midsection of the bridge and collapsing it into the depths.

106

Lauren and Sean came to an abrupt halt, just before the edge of the monster crevasse. In front of them, huge fragments of the snow bridge were tumbling down into the dark interior of the ice cap, and, not twenty metres in front of them, Julian Fitzgerald was standing, triumphant and untouchable.

Lauren tried to scream something at him, to vent the fury and despair that welled up inside her. But she didn't have the breath. Instead she bent over double, winded and desperate for air after the chase.

They had failed. For the sake of a cupful of petrol, a few metres of distance, they had failed. Lauren could feel what remaining vestige of strength was left inside her ebb and fade as she watched the explorer walk over to the remains of his old camp.

‘We can work our way round the crevasse … maybe we can still catch him up…' Sean began, but his voice faltered as he saw how far the fissure stretched across the glacier. Even if they had had a reservoir of strength left to get around the obstacle, he knew that Fitzgerald would be long gone, the headstart enough that he could now never be caught.

Sean knew it was over; his body had given up the fight.

Close to where they stood was one of the wrecked engines—a mess of mangled pistons, valves and pipes. Sean helped Lauren to take the few steps, and they collapsed with their backs to the hulk of metal while they struggled to catch their breath.

Some distance behind them Lauren could see Mel and Murdo towing the sledge—plodding so slowly along they hardly seemed to move as the minutes rolled past.

On the other side of the crevasse Fitzgerald was busy digging at the collapsed tent, searching for the transmitter.

Lauren turned to Sean, her face puffy and swollen from wind blisters and solar radiation.

‘Is there
anything
we can do, Sean? Think one last time. Once he's gone, we'll never catch him again. How can we stop him?'

Sean turned to consider the engine, pulling absently at the twisted metal. One of the broken fuel lines was jutting from the wreckage, and as he tugged at it, a thin trickle of avgas trickled from the metal line.

‘There's still some aviation spirit in these fuel lines. If we could get enough out of this thing, we could fill one of the cans with it, use it as a weapon…'

Sean's voice petered out as he watched the pathetic trickle running from the slender fuel line.

‘Shit.'

He crimped the aluminium fuel line to stop the flow and slumped back against the engine.

‘It'd never work anyhow,' he concluded wearily.

Soon Sean wandered off to help Mel and Murdo drag in the sledge, leaving Lauren on her own, leaning against the shattered engine.

‘Think,' she whispered to herself, the scientist in her not quite ready to concede defeat. ‘There has to be a way.'

Lauren turned her mind one more time to the problem, knowing that, if she couldn't work out a solution, all six of them would die in that godforsaken place.

107

Fitzgerald stood on one side of the crevasse, Lauren and her team on the other. He was no more than twenty metres from them, but in that moment, those unbridgeable metres were the gulf between the living and the dead.

‘I found the transmitter,' Fitzgerald told them, gesturing to the yellow object strapped to the back of his sledge.

‘So why don't you activate it and we can all go home?' Lauren asked him.

Fitzgerald laughed.

‘Actually, I admire what you've done,' he conceded. ‘I thought you'd lose most of your team on the way. Three hundred miles on those resources was a hell of a feat.'

‘Save your compliments,' Lauren told him. ‘It makes no difference now.'

‘No … I suppose not. No one's going to stumble across you by accident, and there's nothing here to keep you alive.'

‘Our bodies will be found,' Lauren told him bitterly. ‘We'll make sure the truth will be known in the end.'

Fitzgerald laughed. ‘How? By leaving a note? Who do you think will ever come to this place to find it? And how do you think they'll find you under the three metres of new snow which will fall in the next couple of months? Besides, I'll tell the world you all died a hundred miles from here.'

‘Where are you going to call in the plane?' Sean called. ‘Just out of curiosity.'

Fitzgerald thought carefully for some moments. ‘I don't suppose it would hurt to tell you my plans,' he said. ‘Actually, I'm going to continue down to the coast before I put in the mayday call.'

‘Eighty miles? Why go so far?' Sean asked in surprise. ‘All you have to do is get out of this crevasse field and find a nice flat piece of ice. Ten miles would be enough. You know we haven't got the strength to follow you.'

‘Oh, I just want to put a little distance between us,' Fitzgerald replied. ‘I don't want the pilot to be tempted into a quick overflight of this place, for one thing…'

Suddenly, Lauren gave out a bitter laugh.

‘And for another thing,' she said, ‘you'll get to the coast and claim you made it across the continent on foot just like you originally planned. That's about right, isn't it?'

Fitzgerald made no response to this but merely glared at her across the gap. Then he turned away and prepared to leave, tying bits of gear onto the back of the sledge.

‘One more thing,' Lauren called out, her voice weak now and barely able to project.

Fitzgerald paused in his packing. ‘What is it?'

Lauren fished in her pocket and brought out the titanium tube she had so carefully guarded through the trek; she held it high in the air so he could see what it was.

‘The sample from the lake,' she told him, the words heavy with resignation. ‘Will you take it with you and see it gets to my sponsor, Alexander De Pierman at Kerguelen Oils?'

Fitzgerald laughed. ‘And why the hell should I do that for you?'

‘Because there are species in this sample that are new to science. It's my last request, if you like. We know we're going to die here now. The least you can do is let me die in the knowledge that something came of this.'

Fitzgerald's first inclination was to tell her to go to hell, but as his mind ticked over he saw another possibility.

‘Species new to science? I'll do it. Throw it over.'

Lauren gave the sample tube to Sean.

‘Will you…?' she asked him. ‘I'm not sure I have the strength.'

‘You want to do this?' Sean looked at her in amazement. ‘He'll take the credit for it, Lauren; you know what he's capable of. It'll be another Fitzgerald scoop—“How I saved the vital specimen from destruction.” He'll probably end up naming one of these life forms after himself.'

‘Do it, Sean,' Lauren told him. ‘That sample has to be properly analysed and recorded, or it's all been for nothing.'

‘Well, if you're sure…'

Sean reluctantly took the tube and walked to the very edge of the crevasse. Then he threw it, underarm, across to Fitzgerald's side, where it plopped unharmed into the soft surface.

Fitzgerald plucked it out and looked at it closely.

‘How do I know you haven't put a note inside?' he demanded suspiciously.

‘Unscrew the top,' Lauren called out. ‘The titanium tube is just an insulating outer shell. The sample is inside in a glass tube.'

Fitzgerald did as she said, removing the top and sliding the glass test tube out. It was immediately obvious that there was no note inside—the tube contained only clear fluid.

‘Good enough.' Fitzgerald placed the glass tube back into its snug titanium protector and carefully put the phial in the breast pocket of his windsuit.

‘Anything more?' he called back sarcastically.

Lauren and Sean said nothing.

‘Then I'll be gone.'

Fitzgerald flicked down his ski goggles and hitched the harness around his waist. Then, without a backward glance, he began his trek towards the coast.

PART 5

The Hero Returns

108

Alexander De Pierman was sitting in heavy London traffic on his way to a meeting when the call came through.

‘I've got Irene Evans on the line for you,' his secretary told him.

‘Who?'

‘Julian Fitzgerald's logistics manager. Says it's top urgent.'

De Pierman was perplexed. He'd had a few dealings with Fitzgerald's team during the press annnouncement to break the news of the loss of Capricorn and its crew, but he could not imagine what Irene Evans was calling for now, so many weeks later.

‘Put her through.'

‘You're not going to believe this,' Evans told him, her voice alive with excitement. ‘I just got the most extraordinary news from Ushuaia. Fitzgerald's emergency transmitter was reactivated yesterday. Someone out there is still alive.'

De Pierman paused a moment while the information sank in.

‘Alive? But how can they be?' he asked.

‘I have absolutely no idea. But it's definitely Fitzgerald's transmitter. An Antarctic Air Service flight is on its way to investigate.'

‘But after all this time…?' De Pierman was struggling to comprehend what he was hearing. ‘How the hell has anyone survived? And where's the signal coming from?'

‘That's the bizarre thing; in fact, I had to question AAS to make sure that they understood the coordinates properly. But they're adamant there's no mistake: the signal's coming from the coast—on the
edge
of the continent, about four hundred miles from the Capricorn base.'

‘The coast? Where exactly?' De Pierman opened his notepad and jotted down the figures as Irene gave him the coordinates. ‘When will we know more?'

‘In the next few hours. As soon as the flight gets there, we'll get a radio call to say who it is.'

After his meeting De Pierman went back to his office and pulled his world atlas from its shelf. He turned to the Antarctic double page and consulted the coordinates on his notepad to find the location of the transmitter. How on earth had any survivor ended up in that position? Surely, if anyone had survived the fire, they would have stayed at the Capricorn site?

By midafternoon Irene Evans was back on the line.

‘I just got the call from AAS,' she told him. ‘They picked up one survivor. It's Julian Fitzgerald.'

‘Did he give any news of the others?'

‘They're all dead. I'm very sorry to have to tell you that.'

‘Oh. Well … I…'

There was a long pause as she waited for De Pierman to respond.

‘Mr De Pierman? Are you still there?'

‘Oh, I'm still here. I just don't trust myself to speak right now.'

‘I'm so sorry. I expect there was something inside you believed that Lauren and her team might have survived?'

‘Call me an old fool,' De Pierman told her sadly, ‘but you're right. All the experts said it was impossible, but you always come up with a way to convince yourself there might have been a factor they'd overlooked.'

‘Well, there obviously was something they overlooked or Fitzgerald wouldn't have lived to tell the tale.'

‘How did he do it? And how did he end up where he did?'

‘We'll all know soon enough. He's sent me a message to connect him straight through to London and to get a press conference fixed up.'

‘My God, he must have a story to tell…'

‘That's what the rest of the world has realised. There's going to be quite a reception committee waiting for him when he gets back to civilisation. I'll arrange the press conference at Heathrow. I'll call you when I know the timings.'

De Pierman terminated the call and stood, lost in thought, as he considered this startling piece of news. Fitzgerald alive? But how had he survived where Lauren and the others had died?

And by what set of circumstances had he ended up on the edge of the continent, in the very opposite direction to the nearest base?

Whichever way De Pierman looked at it, not a single aspect of this new development made any sense at all.

He consulted the atlas again, considering Fitzgerald's position, drawing a mental line from the place to the location of the Capricorn base.