The two men grinned nervously at each other. “No problem,” Carlos declared.
“Let’s see,” X said.
Carlos turned on the engines. Muffled roar from behind and below, vibration all through the metal of the craft. They waited while the engines warmed up. This hovercraft was old, X saw, looking at the finger-polished tops of the toggles. A Hake 1500a. At some time in its life, no doubt its stint at Corrosion Corner, the outriggers had been added to give the craft more resistance to side winds and small inclines. By and large the craft was intended for flat surfaces only, like water or sea ice; in strong winds, or traversing any kind of slope, it tended to sideslip pretty badly, floating as it was on its own air cushion, with little or no contact with the ground. The enterprising engineers who had reworked the craft had therefore welded and bolted booms onto the sides, with a hydraulic system to lower them down onto the ice or raise them again. At the ends of the booms hung what looked to be snowmobiles stripped to their functional essence; when the booms were lowered and the snowmobiles’ engines turned on, their tracks would engage the ice and do their best to haul the whole craft in that direction, which gave the hovercraft some traction to that side. X had seen them deployed, and the system worked pretty well, helping the hovercraft to glide up and down the gentle undulations of the polar ice without sideslipping into basins on the side.
Carlos had traveled with Geraldo and German on a route they had worked out down the steeper sections of the Zaneveld Glacier’s descent to Shackleton Camp, and now he found their maps marking the route in the craft’s computer, which X saw was a later addition, stuck on the dashboard and plugged in.
“Okay, try the lift fans.”
X found that the levers controlling these were extremely stiff, and had to be shoved up by main force; but when he did that the air intakes in the roof aft of them buzzed, the fan engines whined, the skirts that held in the air bellied out to their full extension, and the body of the hovercraft rose up off the ice, with only a single thump of the metal tub.
When they were fully lifted, Carlos gave the thruster of the propeller fan a push forward. That engine proved to run several thousand rpm faster for every centimeter he moved the thruster, so that the craft jerked and slid forward over the ice, tilting down a tiny bit.
“Jeez,” X said, “who did the ergonomics on these controls?”
“An idiot,” Carlos said. “Where are Geraldo and German? Goddamned Argentinians …”
“I thought they were Chilean.”
“Well, now they are Argentinians.”
Carlos turned the steering wheel gently. In this case the control was less sensitive; it took nearly a full revolution of the wheel to get the craft to change direction even slightly.
“A total idiot. Still, we can do it. See, we are going in a circle. Here, better slow down,” knocking the thruster level back down to idle.
“What about brakes?” X asked.
“No brakes. If you really want to brake, you turn the craft around and hit the thrusters, and that slows it down.”
“Great.”
“Well, how are you going to have brakes when you aren’t touching the ground? I suppose deploying both the outriggers would slow you down.”
X shook his head.
“It’s all right,” Carlos said. “We can turn around and go down the steepest sections backwards.”
“Uh huh.”
It was sounding pretty tenuous to X, but on the other hand Carlos was now driving them around the ice offshore from Roberts in big swooping glides, just as if he knew exactly what he was doing.
Val came up behind them. “Looks like you have this thing in hand.”
“No problem,” Carlos and X said in concert.
“It looks like Jack is coming to a bit.”
“Good, good! And it’s almost time for sked coms with McMurdo. We can tell them what we’re doing. And remind me to ask about German and Geraldo and the rest of them.”
They brought the craft back in to the dock, X muscled down the lift fan lever, and the tub thumped hard down onto the ice.
Carlos stood. “Let’s get ready quick, and get going while the engines are still warm.”
They went to the back of the cabin. The injured trekker, Jack, had been awakened by the sounds of the hovercraft’s test run. Ta Shu and Jim were crouched at his sides, getting hot liquids into him; the others crowded in the doorway to see how he was, X at the back. Between sips Val and Carlos asked him questions. He was a bit groggy, and could not remember the accident in which he had been hurt; but he did remember much of the walk here, he said, with a brief glance at Val that X could not interpret. His shoulder hurt, he said, but otherwise he was fine. X got the impression that he was pissed off, but unwilling to talk about it. Something had happened out there on the ice. Val did not seem at all comfortable with him, which was in marked contrast to her behavior with her other clients.
“Okay,” Carlos said when Jack was done drinking. “Time to try Randi again.”
He went to the radio and turned it on, then wrapped a fist around the shrieking earpiece and started the call. “McMurdo, this is Roberts Station! Roberts Station at nineteen hundred scheduled coms, over!”
Reception was if anything worse than last time. But then Randi’s voice was cutting through. “Kkkkkkkkkkkkk got you, Roberts! How’s it kkkkkkkkkkver?”
Carlos managed to make most of a status report, and Randi told them a bit more about what had happened. As far as they could gather through the static, one or all of McMurdo’s big fuel tanks had been contaminated somehow. “The Navy’s flying in some fuel and there’s a tanker on the way, but meanwhile the guys are filtering the shit out of what’s left, and we’re burning it as fast as they clean it. Really too bad Ron isn’t still here to work on the filtering. So search and rescue activities are still being conducted on a need basis, over.”
“Triage,” Wade commented.
Carlos waved him quiet. “Randi, does that mean you will not be able to collect us by helo, over?”
“No helo ops at Shackleton Camp at this time, T-023! Their fuel is wrecked. Do you still need a medevac?”
“Well, he has a broken collarbone.”
“Kkkkkkkkk down the list. You should get down to Shackleton Camp if you can. We plan to fly a Herc there tomorrow and evacuate everyone there. Apparently a lot of the Roberts crew ended up there, did you know that, Roberts? Roberts Station and the Mohn station too.”
“Hey!” X and Carlos said, giving each other a brief hug.
“—to Shackleton, or hang tight at Roberts, and wait for us to get to you.”
“We don’t have the food to wait long,” Carlos said into the screeching, reaching over Jorge to shake hands with Wade as well.
“Then get yourselves to Shackkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”
“Okay, okay,” Carlos said, “but who did all this, do you know, over?”
“Did not read you, Roberts, can you repeat, over?”
“Who did all this!”
“Kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”
“Mac Coms, this is Roberts, do you read me?”
“Roberts, are you there, repeat, Roberts, do you read me, over?”
“Yes, Mac Coms, roger, roger, we read you!”
“We read you too, Roberts, over!”
“Repeat—who did all this!”
“No information on that, Roberts. We assume saboteurs of some sort, but kkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”
“How illuminating,” Carlos said, shaking his head and staring at the handset. “Randi, listen! We are planning to take the hovercraft to Shackleton! Can you give us weather forecasting please, over!”