The Winter Over(10)
“Yeah.” His eyes flicked to her hair and she pushed a stray lock behind one ear self-consciously. “You were already here? From the summer, I mean?”
“That’s right. I was one of the lucky few who got to stay on through two seasons. A full year. You can get a lot more work done that way.”
He nodded, then turned back to his tray with a trace of a smile. “You don’t have to worry about your instruments, ma’am. I know better than to touch anything except the wires behind the panel over there.”
“Thank you, Leroy,” she said, ashamed. She’d taken him for a country bumpkin, something she’d vowed never to do at the Pole. Nobody down here was an idiot, even if they looked like a hayseed and wore overalls. “How about I leave you to your work, then? I’d probably just be in your way.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Leroy pulled out a screwdriver and went to work removing the panel. “I’ll be about half an hour.”
“Then that’s when I’ll come back.” Anne went over to her desk to grab some papers and her coffee mug, then headed for the door, her long hair swinging with each step. It was going to be a busy couple of days and she needed to meet with the other astrophysicists—or at least learn their names—and now was a good time to do it.
Just before she reached the door, she thought she heard Leroy say something and she glanced over with an expectant smile, but his attention was focused on the mess of wires that sprouted from the wall, frowning in concentration and whispering to himself as he worked.
CHAPTER FIVE
Cass hurried down the hall to the A4 wing and along the narrow corridor to her berth, a five-by-ten-foot box that resembled a small dorm room at a state school where the funding had dried up.
A single bed was built into the left-hand wall. Next to it was the only horizontal surface in the room aside from the bed: a tiny nightstand that acted as both desk and bookshelf. Resting on it was a well-thumbed copy of The Worst Journey in the World , a mug with three-day-old coffee in it, a portable alarm clock, a reading light, and a handset phone. A large, single piece of cardboard had been cut to fit into the room’s only window so as to block out the light that spilled through it twenty-four hours a day during the summer. It had been there when she’d arrived back in November and she’d never removed it. Judging by the packing label that said “FEB 2008,” she was just the latest in a long line of people who hadn’t bothered to take it down.
Overhead, chipped ceiling panels fit poorly in their flimsy metal frames, loosened and damaged by Polies pulling them down to check for leftover booze and other treasures hidden from season to season. All Cass had found was a deflated soccer ball and three bottles of mint Irish cream liqueur. The gray-green liquid sloshing around in the bottles had apparently looked so gross that even booze-hungry Polies hadn’t broken them open.
A closet near the entrance was just big enough to hold three pairs of jeans, three shirts, several sets of cargo pants, sweaters, and two fleeces that could function as work outfits or casual wear as needed. The rest of the space was taken up with the two backpacks and five pairs of running shoes she’d brought on the long commercial flights from Logan to LAX, and from LAX to Christchurch, then—courtesy of the USAF—from Christchurch to McMurdo on the battleship-sized C-17, and on the final flight to Shackleton.
The small space wasn’t meant for comfort, but at least she could reach everything from the door. In four quick moves, she grabbed a makeup kit, a “nice” sweater that showed off her modest chest, and a relatively clean set of jeans. She changed in the shared bathroom, chucked her work clothes into her berth as she ran by, then left the dormitory and entered Shackleton’s main artery, where she slowed her pace. No one liked to see running down the halls—it put people on edge, made them glance around for the emergency. But a brisk walk put her inside the foyer of Destination Alpha, where she glanced at her watch. Thirty seconds before her guests were scheduled to appear. Alpha, the main entrance to the base, was on the second floor. The stairs slowed all but the fittest visitors.
She took that half minute to settle her ever-present butterflies. Leading visitors through the station was one of her least favorite things to do, and that included cleaning restrooms. The forced social interaction went against every instinct she had—she was shy, retiring, geeky. But that’s precisely why she’d volunteered as a tour guide. The engineer in her knew that a system’s potential was discovered only when pushed to its limit. If she wasn’t in Antarctica to find out more about herself, then why was she here?
A gust of cold air blasted through the meat locker doors and hit her full in the face, whisking those thoughts away. Deb stomped through the door, trailed by eight people stuffed into the ubiquitous scarlet Antarctic parkas with the faux-fur trim around the hood. They shuffled forward like penguins, forced by the awkwardness of many layers to turn their entire bodies if they wanted to look around. Deb gestured toward Cass.
“All right, everyone. I’m going to leave you in the capable hands of one of the station’s best guides. Besides keeping the place spick-and-span, Cass can drive, maintain, or fix just about anything ever built.”
“And she’s not hard to look at either,” said one of the men in front. He was of late middle age, with a doughy face and capped teeth. The men around him, younger versions of him, laughed.