The Winter Over(6)

Their laughter was cut short when the door opened and someone poked their head into the room. Cass moved to turn the vacuum on again, but stopped when she saw it was Deb Connors, the deputy base manager. Deb scanned the room, then waved at the two of them.

“Cass, we’ve got an early morning tour group that’s missing its early morning tour guide. You’re up.”

Cass gestured to the vacuum cleaner. “I’m kind of busy, Deb.”

“Vacuuming? Drop it. This is a VIP group and the last one of the season. Senator Graham Sikes with an entourage. We need him to go out with a bang before he heads home to tell America that it’s okay for TransAnt to be in charge down here.”

“Can’t Elise do it?”

“Elise is working comms, you know that. And most of the other guides either left for the summer or they’re just about to. You’re it.”

“Damn it, Deb,” Cass said, her voice cracking. “I just . . . I had a rough day yesterday, you know?”

Deb looked at her with perpetually sad eyes. “I’m sorry, Cass. We all liked Sheryl. Nobody is feeling good today, you especially, but life goes on. If I didn’t have to show them the external sites after they land then hustle back to the office and whip up some press info, I’d do the tour myself. Now that everyone’s flown the coop, you’re the only inside guide left.”

Cass nodded wearily. “When do you need me?”

“I’m heading out to greet them on the skiway in five.” Deb glanced at her watch. “The external show-and-tell should take about ten more, so you should still have plenty of time to meet us at Destination Alpha for a handoff if you get moving.”

“Jesus. Why don’t you cut things close?”

“Remember. Senator Sikes, Destination Alpha.” Deb pulled her head out of the room and the door slammed shut, then opened again. “And Cass?”

“Yes?”

“I know you’re not in the mood, but don’t be afraid to put on a show. Sikes is on the Senate subcommittee that handed Shackleton to TransAnt. And word is that he’s something of a letch. We could use some good press. Make sure we get it.”

Cass flipped a middle finger in the direction of the closing door. “Good press, my ass.”

“I believe that was her very point,” Biddi said, grunting as she shoved the couch back against the wall with a hip. “Better get going. Mind what I said. The key to surviving a winter-over is getting along.”

“You said the key was to keep your head down. Or was it the part about getting a frig?”

“It all amounts to the same.”





CHAPTER THREE


Taylor stood on Shackleton’s external observation deck, watching the off-loading and on-loading of the season’s last flights. The workhorse of the continent, the Hercules LC-130, was used to fly new crew members, fuel, and supplies in from McMurdo Station, and to take old crew members, waste, and scientific data out. On the surface it wasn’t all that different from any other day of the past two weeks—summer crew had been cycling out constantly as the season had wound down.

Officially, however, today was the final day to travel, the last chance to leave the base, and there was a frantic pace to the scene as hundreds of crew members prepared to either flee an Antarctic winter or endure one. The only group above the fray was Senator Sikes and his boys, who’d come in on their own private flight from McMurdo, an unheard-of extravagance that had pissed off more than a few old-timers. But one of Taylor’s jobs over the summer had been to remind the base’s personnel that TransAnt was running the show now. When they said jump , you said how high? and not why does the senator get his own plane?

Halfway between the ob deck where he stood and the skiway, a knot of fuelies hovered around one of their trucks. The vehicle was apparently on a return trip from the giant bladders that acted as temporary storage for the AN8 jet fuel until it could be siphoned into the ten-thousand-gallon tanks in the fuel arch under the station. Taylor had blanched the first time he’d heard that the entire station was powered by avgas. The source for much of it was the very planes used to bring people to Shackleton, which meant that the nearly thousand-mile flight back to McMurdo was routinely done on fumes. When he’d asked the pilots on his arrival flight about it, they’d joked that there was always enough left in the tank to walk back. Taylor hadn’t laughed.

He stamped his feet to warm them, watching the activity below and wincing at the tang of AN8. The cold always seemed to make sharp smells sharper, and the fumes from the Hercules seemed to be riding the low temperatures straight into his skull, giving him a headache to write home about.

The cold itself was no picnic, either, especially for a kid born and raised south of Shreveport. Only in Antarctica, he thought, would thirty degrees below zero be flirting with a record high for this time of year. And that on one of the prettiest days he’d seen yet. Yesterday’s storm had cleared out a week’s worth of scud, leaving a sunny, cornflower-blue sky straight off a postcard. Hello from the South Pole! Colder than a witch’s tit and dropping just as fast. Wish you were here.

The beautiful day, unfortunately, barely registered; the pervasive chill and piercing headache put him in a foul mood. Easy enough to solve, of course; he could’ve just walked inside and warmed up away from the fuel dump. But it wasn’t just a migraine and the god-awful temperature driving his bad attitude.