But there was nothing. Cass rose in her seat to look over Hanratty’s shoulder. The white, featureless expanse expanded in endless iteration and continued—as she knew rationally but had difficulty believing—for eight hundred miles over the Transantarctic Mountains and the Ross Ice Shelf before meeting the sea. Between here and there was literally nothing. Sheryl’s death had not come from that direction.
A gust slapped them with such force that Cass had to snatch at the seat to hold on. The leading edge of the storm was coming at them fast. Despite multiple layers of expedition-rated clothing and the massive gloves they called bear claws, the cold was stupefying, spawning a knot of fundamental, animal fear in her gut. We shouldn’t be out here . I shouldn’t be out here. I came to Antarctica to lose myself, to find myself, not to die.
Hanratty, feeling her anxiety, relented. “All right, Jennings. Take it easy. We’re heading back.”
He hit the gas and they took off from their previous crawl with a jerk. To hell with pride , Cass thought, letting go of the seat and wrapping her arms around the waist of the thin, hard body in front of her. In tactile terms, Hanratty seemed not so different from Sheryl’s corpse.
Within a few seconds they were doing fifty miles an hour, flying across the snow and ice so fast it seemed they were hovering rather than plowing through it, though they still caught several of the sastrugi hard enough to jar the bones in her knees and hips. Hanratty was careful to follow their double-wide tracks back, both as a backup to GPS and to avoid the ever-present danger of falling into a crevasse. At their speed, they wouldn’t have a chance of spotting the slightly darker aqua-blue shade of ice that was the only warning—the two of them would hit bottom before they even knew they’d found a chasm.
For most of the trip, the wind pressed on Cass’s back like an invisible hand, then a gust of swirling, katabatic wind hit them unexpectedly from the side, lifting the right side of the snowmobile off the ground and threatening to dump them onto the ice. Cass instinctively leaned into the tilt, bringing her body weight to the fight to force the snowmobile back down. They landed with a jolt, the whining track bit back into the snow, and Hanratty piloted straight for the hump that was Shackleton base.
As they neared the compound, the dozens of outbuildings that surrounded the base became dimly visible: the skiway where the planes came in, the Summer Camp of old red Jamesway huts, mounded berms of supply pallets, and a scattering of other buildings, sheds, and shanties. Thanks to the oncoming storm, all were obscured as though seen through a translucent white curtain, present but indistinct, and she only knew they had crossed the skiway when the punishing ride stopped thanks to the runway’s compact surface. Somewhere off to their left was the candy-striped ceremonial South Pole, surrounded by the flags of the Antarctic Treaty signatory states and topped by the reflective metallic bulb that everyone took their picture with. Then, as if erupting from the ground, the main building of Shackleton—the beating heart of all research efforts at the South Pole—loomed in front of them, looking like a colossal double-tall shipping container hovering on a cluster of pillars.
Hanratty continued past the facility, then slowed and banked left, following a gentle slope around and down that ended at a man-made snow cliff some forty feet lower than the plateau on which the main base rested. Taking gradual shape out of the flurries were the half-moon entrance arches of Shackleton’s garage and warehouse, embedded side by side at the base of the cliff. Taylor must’ve been watching for them: the mouth of the garage gaped wide. Hanratty drove straight toward the white LEDs and crossed the open doorway with a clatter and a roar, then cut the engine. Cass took a deep breath, trying to lose the feeling of dread that had built up as the storm chased them across the Antarctic plain.
“Jennings. Let go.”
Cass jerked back, releasing her hold on Hanratty. She swung off the saddle of the Skandic, stumbling a little as she did; her legs were numb from the thighs down. Stamping her feet to get some of the feeling back, she began peeling off layers, looking around while she did her little warming dance. Sheryl’s body was gone, presumably already in the medical lab undergoing an autopsy or an exam or whatever was supposed to be done in a situation like this. Cass fought down a wave of nausea. The garage workspace, normally comforting and familiar, now felt abandoned and dismal.