their thighs until they reached the entrance to the central building. About two meters of snow had drifted against the door. Twenty minutes later they had removed enough to pull the door half ajar.
Giordino gave a slight bow and smiled grimly. “After you.”
Pitt never doubted Giordino’s fortitude for a minute. The little Italian was utterly fearless. It was an old routine they had practiced many times. Pitt led the way while Giordino covered any unexpected movement from the flanks and rear. One behind the other they stepped into a short tunnel ending at an interior door that acted as an additional cold barrier. Once through the inside door, they continued on down a long corridor that opened into a combination recreation and dining room. Giordino walked over to a thermometer attached to the wall.
“It’s below freezing in here,” he muttered.
“Somebody hasn’t been tending the heat,” Pitt acknowledged.
They did not have to go far to discover their first resident.
The odd thing about him was that he didn’t look like he was dead. He knelt on the floor, clutching the top of a table, staring open-eyed and unwinkingly at Pitt and Giordino as if he had been expecting them. There was something unnaturally wrong and foreboding about his stillness. He was a big man, bald but for a strip of black hair running around the sides of his head and meeting in the back. Like most scientists who spent months and sometimes years in isolated outposts, he had ignored the daily male ritual of shaving, as evidenced by the elegantly brushed beard that fell down his chest. Sadly, the magnificent beard had been soiled when he retched.
The frightening part about him, the part that made the nape of Pitt’s neck tingle, was the expression of abject fear and agony on the face that was frozen by the cold into a mask of white marble. He looked hideous beyond description.
The eyes bulged, and the mouth was oddly twisted open as if in a final scream. That this individual had died in extreme pain and terror was obvious. The fingernails of the white hands that dug into the tabletop were broken and split. Three of them had left tiny droppings of icecrystalled blood. Pitt was no doctor and had never entertained the thought of becoming one, but he could tell this man was not stiffened by rigor mortis; he was frozen solid.
Giordino stepped around a serving counter and entered the kitchen. He returned within thirty seconds. “There are two more in there.”
“Worst fears confirmed,” said Pitt heavily. “Had just one of the station’s people survived, he’d have maintained the auxiliary motors to run the generators for electrical heat and power.”
Giordino looked down the corridors leading to the other buildings. “I’m not in the mood to hang around. I say we vacate this ice palace of the dead and contact Ice Hunter from the chopper.”
Pitt looked at him shrewdly. “What you’re really saying is that we pass the buck to Captain Dempsey and give him the thankless job of notifying the Argentinean authorities that the elite group of scientists manning their chief polar research station have all mysteriously departed for the great beyond.”
Giordino shrugged innocently. “It seems the sensible thing to do.”
“You could never live with yourself if you slunk off without making a thorough search for a possible survivor.”
“Can I help it if I have an inordinate fondness for people who live and breathe?”
“Find the generating room, fuel the auxiliary motors, restart them and turn on the electrical power. Then head for the communications center and report to Dempsey while I check out the rest of the station.”
Pitt found the rest of the Argentinean scientists where they had died, the same look of extreme torment etched on their faces. Several had fallen in the lab and instrument center, three grouped around a spectrophotometer that was used to measure the ozone. Pitt counted sixteen corpses in all, four of them women, sprawled in various compartments about the station. Everyone had protruding, staring eyes and gaping mouths, and all had vomited. They died frightened and they died in great pain, frozen in their agony. Pitt was reminded of the plaster casts of the dead from Pompeii.
Their bodies were fixed in odd, unnatural positions. None lay on the floor as if they had simply fallen. Most looked as if they had suddenly lost their balance and were desperately clinging to something to keep upright. A few were actually clutching carpeted flooring; one or two had hands tightly clasped against the sides of their head. Pitt was intrigued by the odd positions and tried to pry the hands away to see if they might have been covering any indications of injury or disease, but they were as rigid as if they had been grafted to the skin of the ears and temples.
The vomiting seemed an indication that death was brought about by virulent disease or contaminated food. And yet the obvious causes did not set right to Pitt’s way of thinking. No plague or food poisoning is known to kill in a few short minutes. As he walked in deep contemplation toward the communications room, a theory began unfolding in his mind. His thoughts were rudely interrupted when he entered and was greeted by a cadaver perched on a desk like a grotesque ceramic statue.
“How did he get there?” Pitt asked calmly.
“I put him there,” Giordino said matter-of-factly without looking up from the radio console. “He was sitting on the only chair in the room and I figured I needed it worse than he did.”
“He makes a total of seventeen.”
“The toll keeps adding up.”
“You get through to Dempsey?”
“He’s standing by. Do you want to talk to him?”
Pitt leaned over Giordino and spoke into the satellite telephone that linked him with almost any point of the globe. “This is Pitt. You there, skipper?”
“Go ahead Dirk, I’m listening.”
“Has Al filled you in on what we’ve found here?”
“A brief account. As soon as you can tell me there are no survivors, I will alert Argentinean authorities.”
“Consider it done. Unless I missed one or two in closets or under beds, I have a body count of seventeen.”
“Seventeen,” Dempsey repeated. “I read you. Can you determine the cause of death?”
“Negative,” Pitt answered. “The apparent symptoms aren’t like anything you’d find in your home medical guide. We’ll have to wait for a pathologist’s report.”
“You might be interested to know that Miss Fletcher and Van Fleet have pretty well eliminated viral infections and chemical contamination as the cause of death for the penguins and seals.”
“Everyone at the station vomited before they died. Ask them to explain that.”
“I’ll make a note of it. Any sign of the second shore party?”
“Nothing. They must still be on board the ship.”
“Very strange.”
“So what are we left with?”
Dempsey sighed defeatedly. “A big fat puzzle with too many missing pieces.”
“On the flight here we passed over a seal colony that was wiped out. Have you determined how far the scourge extends?”
“The British station two hundred kilometers to the south of you on the Jason Peninsula and a U.S. cruise ship that’s anchored off Hope Bay have reported no unusual events nor any evidence of mass creature destruction. By taking into account the area in the Weddell Sea where we discovered the school of dead dolphins, I put the death circle within a diameter of ninety kilometers, using the whaling station on Seymour Island as a center point.”
“We’re going to move on now,” Pitt notified him, “and make a sweep for Polar Queen.”
“Mind that you keep enough fuel in reserve to return to the ship.”
“In the bank,” Pitt assured Dempsey. “An invigorating swim in ice water I can do without.”
Giordino closed down the research station’s communications console, and then they stepped lively toward the entrance; jogged quickly was closer to the truth. Neither Pitt nor Giordino wished to spend another moment in that icy tomb. As they rose from the station, Giordino studied his chart of the Antarctic Peninsula.
“Where to?”
“The right thing to do is search in the area selected by Ice Hunter’s computer,” Pitt replied.
Giordino gave Pitt a dubious look. “You realize, of course, that our ship’s data analyzer did not agree with your idea of the cruise ship running aground on the peninsula or a nearby island.”
“Yes, I’m well aware that Dempsey’s brain box put Polar Queen steaming around in circles far out in the Weddell Sea.”
