Last Gasp (2 page)

The mystery man arrived just before the five-month antarctic night set in. Two days later and he would never have been found.

Like a mole from its burrow, Gavin Chase emerged that morning from the prefabricated bunker eighteen feet belowground. Six years ago the bunker had been on the surface. Now, shored up with buckled iron ribs and creaking timbers, it was gradually sinking deeper and deeper and being crushed in a clamp of ice. Soon it would be necessary to abandon and build anew.

It was still dark. The spread of stars was etched into the firmament with hard, diamondlike precision. Above the icebound continent of five million square miles—nearly twice the area of Australia—the insulating troposphere was so shallow, half that at the equator, that the marine biologist felt directly exposed to the vacuous cold of outer space. Cold enough to turn gasoline into jelly and make steel as brittle as porcelain.

Chase stepped carefully from the slatted wooden ramp that led below, a bulky figure in outsize red rubber boots, swaddled in waffle-weave thermal underwear, navy-issue fatigues, an orange parka, and, protecting his vulnerable hands, gloves inside thick mittens thrust into gauntlets that extended to his elbows. A thin strip, from eyebrows to bridge of nose, was the only bit of him open to the elements. He moved across the packed wind-scoured surface to the weather-instrument tower, eyes probing the darkness.

Yesterday the temperature had fallen to 52.3 degrees below zero F. Once it dropped past minus 60 degrees there would be no more scuba diving till next summer. But he hoped there was time for at least one more dive. There were specimens of planktonic algae he wanted to collect, in particular a subspecies known as silicoflagellates, which abounded beneath the pack ice of the Weddel Sea, here on the western rim of the Antarctic Plateau. Amazing really—that there should be such an abundance of microscopic life teeming below when up here it was as bleak and sterile as the moon.

With slow, calculated movements he gripped the metal ladder and hauled his six-foot frame twenty feet up to the first platform. Young and fit as he was, honed to a lean 160 pounds after nearly six months at Hailey Bay Station, Chase knew that every calorie of energy had to be budgeted for with a miser’s caution. Inactive, the body used up about one hundred watts of power, which went up tenfold with physical activity. The trick was to keep on the go without overtaxing yourself. That way you kept warm, generating your own heat—but there was another trap if you weren’t careful. At these extreme latitudes the oxygen content was low, the equivalent of living at ten thousand feet on the side of a mountain. With less oxygenated blood reaching the body’s tissues any exertion required double the effort and energy expenditure. Too much exertion and you could black out—without warning, as quickly as a light going out—and that would be that.

Chase knelt down and brushed away the thick coating of furry frost from the gauges with his cumbersome hands.

Windspeed was up to 18 knots, he noted with a frown. Then relaxed slightly and grinned when he saw that the red needle of the temperature gauge was still a few degrees short of sixty. Good. That meant one more day, possibly two, for diving. Nick wouldn’t like it, but he’d have to persuade him; he couldn’t dive without a backup. Serve the bastard right, he thought with a flash of mordant humor.

With only two weeks left to serve at the station, Chase was keen to gather as many marine samples as possible before boarding the C-130 for the 1,850-mile flight across the Pole to the American base at McMurdo Sound, then the 2,400-mile haul to Christchurch, New Zealand. And a week after that he would be home! Wallowing in all the comforts and pleasures of civilization. After all these months of enforced celibacy the young scientist knew quite definitely which pleasure came first.

He straightened up and gazed out over the featureless wasteland toward the heart of the polar interior. His breath plumed the air like smoke. On the barely discernible line of the horizon a very faint smudge of the most delicate crimson indicated the advent of the sun. They would see it for a couple of hours today—a flattened reddish ball resting on the rim of their world—and then once more it would be night. Soon it would be night until September.

That’s how much we depend on you, Chase communed with the rising sun. Without your warmth and light the planet would be sheathed in ice twenty feet thick. Or was it fifty? Not that it mattered, he thought wryly. Ten feet of ice over the surface of the earth would be enough to make the human race as extinct as the dinosaur.

Directly below him elongated slivers of deep purple shadow edged out from the weather gantry and radio mast—the “bird’s nest” as it was called by everyone on the station. The shadows crept slowly across the smooth humps that were the only visible sign of the warren of living quarters and labs and the thirty-six men beneath.

The arc of red tipped the rim of the world.

Chase held his breath. It was awesome, no matter how many times you witnessed the miracle.

From dingy gray to misty pearl and then to blinding white the landscape was illuminated like a film set. Chase shielded his eyes against the reflected glare. Even though the horizontal rays were weak, the albedo effect of the white blanket of snow and ice threw back every photon of light in a fierce hazy dazzle that seared the eyeballs. Under certain conditions this caused a whiteout: land and sky melting together, with no horizon to align the senses to, all contours and topographical features lost in a blank white dream.

Chase watched, marveled, and became alert.

Something was moving. Out there on the ice. Hell, no, he was surely mistaken. He was gazing toward the Pole. Nothing could be coming from that direction, from the barren heart of all that emptiness. Impossible!

In the next instant he was scrambling down the ladder, rubber boots slithering on the ice-coated rungs. In his haste he forgot about the thinness of the atmosphere, about energy budgets. He hadn’t gone more than a dozen yards before his chest was heaving. Sweat ran from his armpits; always a danger signal, because damp clothing lost its insulation properties and you froze in your own perspiration.

Steady now, take it easy, he warned himself. Whatever it is that’s out there—if anything’s out there—it’s survived till now. Steadying himself, he sucked in long deep gulps of air. He’d look bloody foolish if he were found dead within fifty feet of the entry ramp.

A little over ten minutes later, pacing himself, he came in sight of the sled after skirting an outcrop of sheer glistening ice, thrust upward by the immense pressure. The team of eight dogs was, quite literally, on its last legs. That explained why he hadn’t heard them barking. They were too exhausted to do anything except sag in their harness straps and pant weakly.

Chase leaned over the sled and with an effort pulled back the stiffened canvas sheet. It cracked like breaking timber. A shapeless mound of ice-encrusted furs concealed the body of a man. His head was sunk deep in a cavity of fur. He was heavily bearded and blackened by the sun. Dark goggles, the old-fashioned type, with tiny circular lenses, covered the eyesockets.

Dead—must be, Chase reckoned and then saw the blistered lips move. That was incredible. The man had come out of nowhere, appeared from a thousand miles of icy wilderness, and incredibly he was alive.

The wedge of light sliced through it as if the blackness itself were a tangible substance. Wielding the heavy battery of arc lamps, Chase swam deeper. He was the searcher, Nick the collector. Above them the lid of ice, forty feet thick, sealed them in, with just one tiny aperture between them and a freezing watery tomb.

No wonder Nick had grumbled and cursed. “For Christ’s sake, are you a masochist or what, Gav? No, I get it, a bloody sadist, that’s what you are. Nick Power thinks the tour’s over, no more work to be done, so I’ll show the bastard. Make him suffer.”

Except that Chase didn’t think of it as suffering. He rather enjoyed it, as a matter of fact. He saw himself suspended, a tiny fragment of warm life, on top of the world (top, bottom—in an astronomical context they were interchangeable), with everyone and everything else beneath him. All the continents and oceans and cities and the whole of mankind way down there. It was a wonderful feeling; it quickened his pulse just imagining it.

At 130 feet he swung the battery of lamps around. Nick hadn’t a clue what to catch; he merely followed the wedge of light and swooped when Chase gave the signal. It could look a bit ridiculous, swooping at nothing, and Chase grinned behind the full-face mask at Nick’s apparently pointless pantomime. They were after microscopic plants and it was good luck more than judgment if they happened to snare the ones Chase wanted. He chose what seemed a likely spot, just above the ocean floor, and hoped for the best.

Nick turned toward him, his faceplate flashing like a golden coin in the milky light. The net trailed after him, a long swirling cocoon. He’d closed the neck, Chase saw, and was gesturing upward. He’d had enough. Probably the cold was starting to seep through his insulated suit. Chase could feel a creeping numbness in his own feet. If you ignored it—it wasn’t painful—you felt fine until you got back to the surface and began to thaw out. Then you were racked with the most excruciating agony and you might find all your toes had dropped off. So any kind of pain was preferable to a lack of sensation, especially in the extremities.

Chase gave a thumbs-up in the cone of light, indicating they were done. Nick kept on gesturing, his movements sluggish, dreamlike. What was the clown playing at?

Chase kicked with his flippered feet and swam nearer. Nick’s eyes bulged at him through the faceplate. Again he pointed, but this time Chase realized that it was a frantic gesture over his shoulder toward his double cylinders. Something the matter with his air supply.

It was difficult, trying to maneuver the awkward battery of lights with one hand while he spun Nick around with the other. Around them the blackness was total, just a speck of light in countless cubic feet of freezing water.

The first cylinder was empty; its gauge registered zero. The second cylinder should have cut in automatically, but hadn’t, and Chase saw why. The exposed brass feed pipe was flecked with ice. The valve had frozen, and Nick was eking out his existence on what little remained in the first tank. At 130 feet that meant an ascent lasting several minutes— much too long for Nick to survive. And Chase couldn’t feed him from his own mouthpiece. Air supply and mask were an integral unit, and to remove your mask in these waters meant the cold would strike needles into your skull and kill you with the shock.

For several seconds Chase’s mind was locked in paralysis. Nick had only a few gasps of air left. Even if he managed to get him to the surface alive, the lack of oxygen would cause irreparable brain damage, turn him into a human cabbage. The Antarctic was an implacable enemy. Relax your guard for even one instant and it would exact the full penalty. Negligence was death.

Heat.

You fought cold with heat. The only source available was the battery of lamps. The marine biologist grasped Nick by the shoulder, using the leverage to force the cowled arc light against the brass feed pipe. There had to be direct contact, otherwise the water would dissipate what little heat there was.

Together they floated in inky darkness. The muted thump and gurgle of Chase’s air supply was the only sound. His companion had ceased to move and Chase found himself praying to a God in whom he didn’t believe. This was no longer the top of the world, but the bottom, with the weight of the planet pressing down on them. Below them a thick slab of ice, beyond that the tenuous troposphere, and then bottomless space.

Wake up, wake up, he told himself savagely. He was starting to hallucinate, lose orientation. The cold was getting to him. If he didn’t concentrate he might start swimming toward the seabed, thinking it was the surface.

Nick’s arm twitched under his gloved hand. His head turned, the faceplate misty with expired water vapor. For the second time in as many days Chase thought he had a dead man on his hands, and both times, thank God, he had been wrong.

The valve, at last, was free. The ice on the feed pipe had melted, Chase saw with relief, and the gauge was registering again. A wavering chain of silver bubbles rose from Nick’s exhaust release and surged upward.

Nick raised his arm and nodded weakly. He still had hold of the net, clamped in an instinctive grip. Holding the lamps above his head, Chase rose slowly, his other hand gripping Nick’s shoulder harness tightly. In minutes the two men were in sight of the circle of green lights that marked the entry point through the ice and then gratefully hauling themselves onto the diving platform. Wooden steps led upward, connecting with a plywood-lined corridor that ran from the edge of the Weddell Sea onto the Filchner Ice Shelf—the actual Antarctic Plateau. There the corridor led directly into the basement of the station, though it took the two men over fifteen minutes to reach it. Chase had wanted to leave their scuba sets on the platform to be collected later, but Nick insisted he could manage.

He said dourly, “I hope those bloody specimens were worth getting. Are you sure we didn’t come up with an empty net?”

Chase dumped his tanks on the rack and lifted the stainless-steel lid of the collecting vessel, in which the net sloshed in six inches of seawater.

“Could be. Never be sure until we get it into the lab and take a look through the microscope.”

“What?” Nick Power yelped. His face was circled with a fine red mark where the lip of the rubber hood had clung. It seemed even more incongruous because surrounding it was a frizzy mop of reddish hair and a straggly reddish beard, which for a reason Chase could never understand was neatly razor-trimmed in a crescent below the mouth while left to flourish unchecked elsewhere. An art student’s beard; odd, since Nick was a glaciologist. “Do you mean I might have killed myself for nothing? Died in the cause of science and have only two pints of seawater to show for it? Jesus bloody Norah.”

“A noble cause nevertheless,” Chase intoned solemnly, filling the galvanized tub with steaming hot water. “And you wouldn’t have been forgotten, I’d have seen to that. Those two pints of seawater would have been your memorial.”