right and Phil on his left. Shoesmith presided at the table’s head, of course.
Laure had her net. She made a quiet circuit past the nests of birds she had already marked, then deftly swooped on a bird quietly sitting with its back to her. Once it was netted, she slipped a hood over its head. The extinguishing of daylight fooled it into lying still, she had explained to Rook, and she could either ring its leg or fire a microchip into a flipper. Jochen followed behind her, an eager assistant, and they moved deeper into the penguin universe.
Rooker would have liked to stay longer out here, watching the birds, but there was the ship and the new arrival. Of course, Russ or Shoesmith himself could have taken the Zodiac out, but whereas Shoesmith was flexible with the other members of the expedition he seemed to expect Rooker to do everything that fell within his area of responsibility, without assistance from anyone else. So he checked the radio link with Jochen and then left them to their work.
As he came over the headland, Rooker saw the supply ship already gliding towards the mouth of the bay. It was only a small cargo vessel with an ugly high prow and a squat bridge tower, but it looked huge against the black water and the white-draped cliffs. The cabin and mast lights made a glittering garland in so much emptiness.
The sea was getting choppy in the wind, with ice rattling and churning in the swell. It wouldn’t be an easy journey in the inflatable. It would have been much better if the ship could have come closer in to shore, but the bay was too shallow. It was one of the reasons why the British had withdrawn from Kandahar. There was no deep-water landing in the summer season, and in winter the sea froze and the base became inaccessible by ship.
Either he made the pick-up right now, Rook thought, or the new arrival would have to stay on the ship until after the storm.
As he passed the radio room at one end of the lab hut he heard Niki’s voice.
‘MV Polar Star, MV Polar Star, this is Kandahar Station. Do you read me? Over.’
The laconic voice of the ship’s radio op crackled back. Rook waited until Niki pushed his headset aside and gave him the thumbs up.
‘The lady waits for you.’
Rook tramped to the main hut and exchanged his parka for a huge orange float suit. To fall into these ice-bound waters without protection would mean death within minutes. As he zipped himself in he saw that the table was laid for tea with Russell’s fresh loaf, jam and a plate of chocolate cupcakes. Shoesmith was hovering nearby while Russ and Arturo, the precise little Spanish climatologist, pulled on chest-high waders.
‘We’ll give you a hand, mate,’ Russ said.
Rooker took a spare life-vest. The three of them scrambled down the rocks to the shingle beach and ran over the jumble of ice and snow to the floating jetty where the Zodiac was tethered. It strained against the moorings as waves smashed around it. With Rook aboard, Russ and Arturo waited for a lull, then rushed the black inflatable out into waist-deep water. Rook lowered the outboard and to his relief it fired at the first pull. He was already broadside to the waves racing into the bay. A big one rushed at him and almost tipped the Zodiac over. He brought the boat round into the wind and opened the throttle. The inflatable roared forward, the prow lifting as high as his head as it breasted the waves, and ice and scudding water punched the rubber floor as he headed for the bay mouth.
The air was thick with spray and sea mist and gouts of snow. He turned on the powerful lamp he had brought with him and scanned the mass of heaving water for the ship. He caught sight of the masts pitching in the distance and drove steadily towards the lights.
Alice stood at the ship’s rail with her kitbags at her feet. She had spotted the station in the distance – it was nothing more than a pair of reddish specks marooned against a vast expanse of hostile emptiness. Then the clouds of snow and fog closed in again to obliterate even that much.
The breadth of the land’s desolation made her feel afraid, even though she had been longing for this moment ever since the ship had left Chile. She had been abjectly seasick for three days. The only glimpse she had caught of the Antarctic coast, when it finally appeared out of seas as high as mountains, had been through her cabin porthole. Yet now the moment had come to leave the little ship and the friendly Spanish crew, she was full of misgivings. She clamped her hands on the icy rail. The base looked so tiny and she knew just how remote it was. More than three days’ sailing to reach the southernmost tip of a distant continent again, then twenty-four hours of flying to reach home.
Two sailors lowered the flight of metal steps at the ship’s side. As the ship rolled, the platform at the bottom plunged under several feet of glassy water, then it rocked up again with spray cascading off it. One of the sailors drew a finger across his throat and winked at her. Weakly, Alice smiled back.
Over the drumming of the ship’s engines, she caught the higher-pitched note of another engine. At the same moment a nimbus of light formed in the white murk. The sailors ran down the heaving steps as confidently as if they had been a set of stairs in Benidorm. On the platform they unhitched ropes and waited. A black dinghy, pitched at a threatening angle, materialised behind the smear of light. A big man in orange waterproofs swept the tiller in an arc, the boat crested a wave and landed neatly at the foot of the steps.
One sailor made it fast to the steps, so that ship and Zodiac rolled in unison. Waves swept over the dinghy and the platform, and ice-clogged water cascaded everywhere. The other sailor ran nimbly up the steps again, grabbed Alice’s luggage and yelled ‘Vamos!’ at her. She let go of the railings.
The metal treads were steep and slippery. With Spanish instructions and the boatman’s terse commands both unintelligible through the din of engines and surf, she half scrambled and half slithered down to the platform. Water immediately submerged it. The man’s orange arm grabbed her and hoisted as the dinghy flew upwards like a fairground ride. On the downwards plunge Alice launched herself with a sob of panic on to the dinghy’s floor. Her bags tumbled in after her and some nets of more-or-less-fresh vegetables.
The ropes snaked away and the Zodiac roared free from the ship’s flank.
With his eyes on the white wave caps, the boatman kicked a red life-vest towards where Alice was cowering amongst the bags of onions and peppers. The water’s cold sucked all the breath out of her. ‘Put that on,’ he shouted without taking his eyes off the sea.
She struggled to get her arms through the holes and fasten the clasps across her chest. A rogue wave broke amidships and icy spray stung her face. Even though she was wearing weatherproofs she felt she was soaked to the skin. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably.
Behind her there were two long blasts on the ship’s hooter. Up on the bridge the captain and the mate were wishing the English scientist bon voyage.
The dinghy man loomed above her with his feet braced, one hand on the tiller, the other clasping a radio. He shouted again and Alice thought she caught the words five minutes. She huddled on the floor of the dinghy and prayed that they would either be ashore or dead within that time. She didn’t even care which, so long as it was fast.
The Zodiac and the waves raced each other to the shore. She had never been so far from home or felt the effects of distance so acutely. Nor had she ever been so apprehensive of what lay ahead of her.
It had
