felt certain, was what they must have been. Who else would have been so yoked together, with coils of chain, and consigned to a watery grave? He tried to imagine the scenario, any scenario, that would make sense of it all. Were they captured and thrown into the sea by a jealous husband? Or was it done at the orders of a spurned wife? Had they violated some code of conduct- a code of the sea, or, given the gold braid on the man's uniform, of the military? What crime could they have committed that such an awful crime would have been committed in turn against them?
The dogs made a wide circle to skirt some uncommonly high sastrugi-windblown ridges of snow and ice-and Michael was reminded again that the dogs knew the route better than anyone. And they were heading home, to their comfortable kennel, with its straw-lined floor and food bowls. All he had to do, most of the time, was hang on to the handlebars and stay on the runners. He hadn't heard a peep out of Danzig, and he had the distinct impression that the man was asleep, his chin resting on his chest, his hood gathered close around his face. Whether that was a sign of his confidence in Michael, or in the dogs, wasn't clear, but Michael hoped he could make it all the way back to the base without waking him.
Far off on his left, out on the ice floes, he saw a tiny red light flash, and a few minutes later he saw it again- the beacon, he realized, on top of the dive hut. Michael had witnessed some of the traps being hauled up from the bottom, several of them containing stunned and gasping fish, with translucent gills and white eyes, and he'd watched as Darryl transferred the ones that had survived the trip to specimen buckets. But how, he wondered, could such a confirmed vegetarian and animal rights activist do this kind of work?
“Rationalization is the key,” Darryl had said. “I tell myself that, by studying the few, I can save the many. The first step in getting the world to conserve natural resources is to remind the world that they are imperiled.” He'd lifted one dead fish by its tail and gently deposited it in a separate bucket, packed with ice. “And if I work fast, I can still get an interesting blood sample, even from this one.”
As the sled drew parallel to the dive hut, the dogs turned inland, several of them yelping in gleeful anticipation. The blades swished through the snow as the sled surmounted a low hill, and now Michael could see the camp. The various modules and sheds and storehouses looked, from here, like the Lego blocks he'd played with as a kid, strewn about in only the rudest semblance of order. A collection of black and gray structures, with huge yellow Day-Glo circles painted on their roofs so that the camp could be spotted by the supply planes in the long, dark austral winter.
Hard as it was to live there in the summer, with the unending light, Michael could barely fathom how anyone withstood a winter at the South Pole.
Danzig stirred in the shell and raised his head. “We there yet?” he mumbled.
“Almost,” Michael said.
Now he could see the American flag, so stiffened by the wind that it looked flat.
“But since you're awake,” Michael said, “what do you say to get the dogs to stop?”
“Try whoa.”
“Try it?”
“It doesn't always work. Pull back on the lines, hard, and step down on the brake.” Michael glanced down at the metal bar, with two claws, that served as the brake, and prepared to step on it as soon as the sled got within a hundred yards of the kennel. He didn't anticipate a swift stop.
From the ocean side, he could hear the distant roar of a snowmobile, and he couldn't help but compare it to the smooth, natural whooshing of the sled. As a photographer-somebody who relied upon all the latest gizmos-he knew he was in no position to throw stones at technology. Hell, if it hadn't been for airplanes, he'd never have gotten here, and if weren't for digital cameras, he'd be fumbling with a lot of frozen, broken, and scratched film. But the noise of the snowmobile, which looked like it would arrive back at the base just about as he did, was an intrusion nonetheless, like a power mower breaking the perfect quiet of an August morning. He wondered, as he watched it zip across the ice like a black bug skittering across a tabletop, if Darryl was on board, loaded down with fresh specimens.
The kennel was at the back of the station, beyond the quad where the dorms and administration modules were set up, back where the labs butted up against the equipment sheds and generators. Even though the generators were placed as far away from the dorms as possible, there were still many nights, if the wind was down, when Michael could hear their constant thrumming. When he'd complained about it at breakfast one morning, Franklin had said, “Worry about it when you don't hear that racket.”
The dogs cut a narrow path past the ice-core bins and the botany lab, past the garage where the Sprytes and snowmobiles and augers were housed, and on toward the kennel, across a winding alley from the marine biology lab. Michael shouted “Whoa!” to almost no effect, and pressed with both feet on the brake. He could feel its steel claws digging into the permafrost and slowing the speed of the sled, but they weren't slowing it enough for a soft landing. He shouted again and leaned back, with all his weight, on the mainline, until he saw the brush bow, at the front of the sled, lift an inch or two, and the dogs gradually wind down. Kodiak stopped straining against the harness and fell into a trot, and the others immediately followed suit. The blades coursed almost silently across the snow and ice, until the sled pulled up to the kennel-an open shed with a hayloft above, illuminated by a glaring, white light. From the happy reaction of the dogs, it looked to them like the Ritz.
“Nice job, Nanook,” Danzig said, hoisting himself up and out of the shell. “What's on the meter?”
Sinclair had heard the sled arriving-the barking of the dogs, the runners cutting through the snow. But he didn't dare to open the door to see what was out there-for all he knew, a guard might be posted right outside.
There were no proper windows, either, but he did see a narrow glass panel running just below the flat ceiling, close to the door, and he quietly drew a stool over to it. He stepped up on the stool-his socks, still damp, squishing on its seat-and tried to peer outside. The noise of the dogs was quite close. But the window was so encrusted with snow and ice, he could barely see anything. On his side of it, however, there did appear to be a handle of some kind-like a crank-and when he turned it, the bottom of the window lifted, pushing some snow out of its way. He cranked it again, and now he had a couple of inches through which he could see. The blast of wind, despite the narrowness of the aperture, was forbidding.
He saw an ice-packed alley, with a team of wolfish dogs prancing through it. There were two men on the sled-one, in a bulky, hooded coat, was driving, and the other, wearing a necklace of bones around his neck, was riding in the carriage. The sled ground to a halt inside a wide-open barn-brightly lighted, even though it appeared to Sinclair to be midday outside-and the man in the sled clambered out. Sinclair could not hear what the men were saying. But his attention was drawn instead to the back of the dog pen.
His chest was there. The one that had contained the cache of bottles.
The men pushed their hoods back and lifted some sort of heavy dark spectacles from their eyes. The driver was young-maybe Sinclair's own age-tall, with longish black hair; the other man, with a full beard and wide Slavic cheekbones, was older and stocky. Neither of them wore anything that suggested a uniform, or national allegiance, of any kind, but that was little help. Sinclair had known soldiers, so weary and so encumbered with gear, that by the time they arrived at the front, they looked more like a band of hooligans than Her Majesty's own.
The bearded man was untying the harness lines-Sinclair was reminded of his own horses and carriages, back at his family's estate in Nottinghamshire-while the driver filled a stack of bowls with food from a sack. One by one, the dogs were tied to stakes, spaced a few feet apart; their eyes were riveted on the bowls as the young man dispensed them. While the dogs devoured their meals, the bearded man hung his overcoat on a wall hook-he had some other coat on underneath it-where Sinclair saw a motley assortment of other garments, hats and gloves and even a pair of those green spectacles, also hanging.
More and more, he knew that he would have to raid that barn. There was food (even if it was only considered fit for dogs), there was clothing… and there was his chest.
“What do you see?” Eleanor whispered.
“Our next objective.”
He climbed down from the stool and began to put his own clothes back on.
“Are they dry yet?” Eleanor asked. “If they're not dry…”
He lifted his saber out of its scabbard-it stuck for a second, before sliding free-then slid it back in again. He hoped he would not have to draw it, but it was best to know, that if things came to such a pass…
“What do you want me to do?” Eleanor asked, her voice not only soft but weak. He knew she hadn't really tested her strength yet-for that matter, neither had he-but he wondered if she would be fit to travel, as they would no doubt have to do, and especially in what appeared to be the same hostile climes they had last encountered.
