“If we break through,” mumbled the morose Russian Pavel Senko gloomily. “The drill’s just about had it and we’re lucky to have got this far.”
“But the drill isn’t running,” said Hall truculently, although none of his colleagues needed him to point that out. The sudden and ominous silence as the drill had stopped was what had brought them from their work in the first place. “We won’t break through tomorrow unless we drill today, and Tanya’s switched the thing off.”
Senko’s compatriot, an affable bear of a man called Ivan Bannikov, dismissed Hall’s concerns. “Tomorrow we’ll break new grounds in science,” he said with a grin, taking a hip-flask from his pocket and grimacing as he swallowed some of its fiery contents. “We’ll take samples from a lake that’s been sealed from the rest of the world for hundreds of thousands of years. What’ll we find, d’you think?”
“Microscopic creatures, plants, and perhaps even fish that’ve evolved in complete isolation,” replied Senko immediately. It was not the first time the scientists had aired this debate, and all had their own ideas about what was waiting for them. “We’ll discover new species that no one’s ever seen before.”
“Right,” agreed British-born Julie Franklin, her blue eyes gleaming with excitement. “But we’ll have to be careful – they may be toxic to us. Who knows whether their environment and ours are still compatible?”
“I think we’ll just find water,” said Paxton, sceptical of their fanciful hopes for exotic discoveries. “We won’t find any life.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” said Hall fervently. “I want to take home something a bit more exciting than a bottle of water – assuming Tanya hasn’t stolen the results for herself, that is.”
Senko glared at him. “If you’re accusing us Russians-”
“No one’s accusing anyone of anything,” interrupted Paxton hastily, not wanting the Russian and the American to argue. He hammered on the door. “Tanya? Are you in there? Open the door.”
“Of course she’s in there,” snapped Hall. “She’s not in her room, the labs, or the kitchen. The only place she can be is here.”
“She may be ill,” said Julie, frowning anxiously. She liked the quiet, intelligent Tanya.
Paxton elbowed Hall out of the way and hit the door with his shoulder as hard as he could. With a sharp, splintering sound of tearing wood, it flew inwards.
“She isn’t here,” said Senko, when a quick glance around the single-roomed building revealed that it was empty. “It wasn’t her who locked the door.”
Paxton studied the door in puzzlement. “Well, someone did; it was locked from the inside. You can see where the bolt’s still in place.”
Hall leaned down to inspect it. “No wonder I couldn’t get it open. Tanya must’ve done it.”
“But she isn’t here,” repeated Senko. “This building’s nothing but four walls, a roof, and a floor that’s four kilometres of solid ice. There’s nowhere to hide; she isn’t here.”
“But the door was locked from the inside,” insisted Hall. “That means someone in here locked it. And since the rest of us were together in the labs, and we know there isn’t another living soul within nine hundred miles of us, Tanya’s the only one who could’ve done it.”
“This is really odd,” said Julie nervously. “The only place Tanya could be is here, but we can all see she isn’t. So where is she?”
An exhaustive search of the camp did not reveal the whereabouts of Tanya. She had last been seen at lunch time, when the others had teased her because it was her turn to do “drill duty”. The drill was temperamental, and needed constant attention while it ran. Monitoring it in the frigid drill-house, to ensure its pumps were clear and that it was well lubricated, was not popular with the scientists, who would rather be in the heated labs doing their own work.
Tanya had dressed in her warmest clothes, and the team had heard the drill start up. And no one had seen her since. There was a limited number of places anyone could be at Vostok: she was not under the beds, in the tiny cupboards in which belongings were stored, or among the stacks of supply crates. The only possible explanation for her absence was that she had gone for a walk.
“She wouldn’t do that,” objected Senko. “There’s nowhere to go, and she’d never abandon the drill.”
Paxton knew that was true. Tanya, like all of them, was reliable and conscientious. She would never shirk her duties, especially given that they were so close to reaching the lake.
“We should look for her,” said Julie, worried. “She may’ve fallen and hurt herself.”
“The drill-house is the tallest building,” said Paxton. “We can climb on its roof and see if we can spot her.”
“I’ll go,” offered Julie. “The weight of the snow’s already made it buckle, and I’m lighter than the rest of you. We don’t want it to collapse and damage the drill – not now.”
She quickly scaled a ladder, and then stepped cautiously onto the snow-laden roof. Taking a pair of powerful binoculars, she scanned the expanse of ice slowly and carefully. But there was nothing to see. When her fingers began to ache from the cold, and the tears from her watering eyes froze on her cheeks, she descended again.
“The weather’s clear today,” she said. “I could see thirty miles easy. If Tanya were out there, I’d have spotted her. You know how colour stands out on the ice.”
“We saw her less than three hours ago, anyway,” said Senko. “She couldn’t have walked that far.”
“So, she isn’t on the ice and she isn’t in the base,” said Hall, puzzled. “Where is she?”
No one could answer him.
“We could look for footprints,” suggested Wilkes, a soft-spoken Virginian who always sported a cowboy-like necktie as part of his cold-weather clothing. “They’d lead us to her.”
“The ice is too hard for footprints,” said Paxton. “And even if we did find some, they won’t necessarily be hers. We all wander outside the camp from time to time.”
For the rest of the day, until it became too dark and too cold, they inspected every crack and crevice at the station, and scoured the featureless ice outside. Julie reported Tanya’s disappearance to the American base at McMurdo, and when Paxton stumbled into the kitchen late that night, cold and weary after his fruitless search, she told him that McMurdo was fog-bound, and that no plane would be available to help them for several days.
“We’ve got to do something,” said Senko, as members of the team gathered to discuss what to do next. “Tanya’s missing. We can’t go about our business like nothing’s happened.”
“What d’you suggest?” asked Hall tiredly. “We’ve looked everywhere. What else can we do?”
Senko shook his head helplessly. “There must be something. Perhaps she climbed inside an empty fuel can.”
“We checked them,” said Julie. “And every empty crate. She isn’t here.”
“I can think of one solution to this,” said Hall quietly. “The stress of not knowing whether the drill will make it to Lake Vostok became too much for her. So she walked out onto the ice, dug a hole, and buried herself.”
“The ice is too hard,” said Senko, dismissive of the American he did not like. “And how could she’ve done it with none of us seeing? Even if she walked ten miles – unlikely in three hours – she’d still be visible from here.”
“And she wasn’t suicidal at lunch time,” added Paxton. “Normally, she hated drill duty, but she was okay today, because we’re so close to breaking through.”
“But she shut the thing down, and we’ve wasted the whole day searching for her,” said Hall bitterly. “Now we might never reach the lake.”