Surviving Antarctica (22 page)

Robert pulled a rope out of his pocket and
tied the dog to the sled.

Billy tried to shrink away. Surely Grace wouldn’t ask him to hold a dog.

Luckily, Grace had a rope in her pocket. She used it to tie Apatosaurus’s mouth shut.

She pushed the muzzled dog toward Billy. “Take Apatosaurus.”

Billy held on to the collar of this dog, who managed to snarl even with his stupid mouth roped shut.

Grace struggled with Diplodocus, trying to pull him away from the feast.

Apatosaurus was a big dog, and strong. He fought to get free. Billy held his collar. He wished that he had the whip.
He’d
get this dog to calm down.

Grace examined Diplodocus. “Just as I thought—they ate through their harnesses.”

Billy wrestled Apatosaurus onto the snow and squatted on his back.

Robert examined the seal’s body. “Not much left,” he called.

So much for seal steaks, Billy thought bitterly. Apatosaurus tried to twist away from him, but Billy only held him tighter. The dog stank of blood.

But Billy wasn’t unhappy. The dog was muzzled and couldn’t bite him. Yesterday Grace had
had a good day with the dogs, but now, once again, they had proved that they were more trouble than they were worth. After this, Robert would have to get rid of them. Without the dogs, Grace didn’t have a chance to be MVP. Not a chance.

“You ready to go?” Chad said to Steve. “The day crew will be here soon.”

“The Secretary overlooked a calamity,” Steve said. “The script didn’t mention the dogs eating the kids’ food.”

Chad looked serious. “You read the script?”

“Yeah.” Steve waited for Chad to get angry.

The lock on Chad’s briefcase clicked loudly before he picked it up. But all he said was, “So you understand how bad the odds are?”

“I do.” Steve grabbed his coat.

“I’m sorry,” Chad said.

“Were you going to tell me?” Steve turned and faced Chad.

“Sometimes it’s better not to know everything,” Chad murmured.

Steve walked to the door. In a way, Chad was right. If he let it, that script could steal his hope, and then how could he face watching the kids?

“See you tomorrow,” Chad called.

Steve didn’t bother answering. I’ll be here
tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. No matter how bleak their chances, I will be there for those kids, Steve promised himself as he walked down the dark hallway.

LATER THAT SAME
morning, Polly examined Robert, Grace, and Billy. The trio had been up for half the night looking after the dogs, and Robert was in a particularly foul mood. In contrast, she and Andrew had been asleep since yesterday afternoon. She felt bleary-eyed from too much sleep, and Andrew was yawning.

“I’ve checked the supplies, and we’re down to one day’s worth of food,” Robert said. “The dogs ate the rest.” He glared at the group.

“I want to call another vote on the dogs,” Billy said. “We could stake them here and pick them up in the helicopter on our way home.”

Billy was cruel, Grace thought. Her dogs
would starve before they returned.

“What’s to keep them from eating through their harnesses tonight, Grace?” Polly asked.

“Nothing,” Grace said. “They’re tired of their moldy food. From now on, we’ll have to store all our food in the tent.”

“What do you think we should do, Polly?” Andrew said.

“We need the dogs,” Polly said.

“You want to change your vote, Andrew?” Billy asked.

Andrew took a sip of hot chocolate, remembered the voice of his friend, and shook his head.

“Robert, what do you think?” Billy said.

“Even though Grace still has trouble controlling them, the dogs have been performing, Billy,” Robert said firmly.

Polly was proud of Robert, but she didn’t want to say anything. It would just make him mad.

Robert had noticed, Grace thought. Her dogs were a team. She wasn’t perfect yet, but she was a dogsled driver.

Billy sighed in disappointment. Didn’t Robert know that he was setting up Grace to win the game? Robert wasn’t nearly as smart as he thought he was. Billy flattened one of the maps on the floor of the tent. No use arguing.
He knew he was beaten.

“We have a straight shot. Only twenty-three miles and we’re there,” Billy said. “Before the blizzard, we were just about to cross a patch of blue ice.”

“That’s good and bad,” Grace said, remembering her grandfather’s tales of ice and snow.

“Why?” Robert asked.

“More crevasses,” Grace explained.

“The map warns that the area is full of them,” Billy agreed.

“How many crevasses are there supposed to be?” Andrew asked.

“No one can know,” Grace said.

“We’ve been lucky so far,” Polly moaned. At least they weren’t dead.

“You call a drowned pony, a storm, loose dogs, and losing our food supply luck?” Billy stared incredulously at Polly.

“It could be so much worse,” Polly said.

“We need to stay upbeat,” Robert said sharply.

“Sure.” Polly remembered Scott’s words:
One can only say, “God help us!” and plod on our weary way, cold and very miserable.

Robert turned his attention away from Polly’s dour expression.

“Billy, I’ll lead today,” Robert said in what
Billy thought was a particularly bossy tone. “I’ll carry an ice pick in my backpack and some rope. If I go down, with any luck I’ll be able to climb my way out.”

Grace thought of the icy sides of the crevasse that she had stared into on the first day of their trek. She wouldn’t want to climb out of one of those.

“Robert,” Polly objected, “some of the crevasses are hundreds of feet deep. Have you ever used an ice pick?”

Robert shook his head.

“I’ll stay in the lead,” Billy heard himself say.

“You’re sure?” Robert asked.

Billy nodded. He wasn’t going to let Robert win so easily. Billy was supposed to be the most experienced one in the group. People would expect him to be the leader, especially now. He’d just have to be very careful.

“Okay,” Robert said. “Let’s see if we can take down camp in under two hours.” He looked at Billy. “Time us.”

Grace was trying to mend a chewed-through harness with rope, but even in the relative warmth of the tent, her fingers were stupid and stiff, and it took a while. From time to time she had to stop and warm her hands by tucking
them under her armpits.

When she finally went outside to feed the dogs, she spotted Brontosaurus trotting off toward the direction of the ship. Trotting off toward his certain death. What did he think he was going to eat? Moldy food was better than none.

That morning she had put him in a makeshift rope harness. He must have eaten through it.

“What’s wrong?” Andrew said.

Grace pointed at the dog.

“I’ll go get him.” Andrew took some skis off the sled and skied after him.

But Grace didn’t have much hope. Bronty had had a head start, and he was fast.

She turned back to the other dogs, who were roped to the frozen gear on the sled. As she adjusted Diplodocus’s harness, she noticed several bald spots in his fur. She examined T-Rex. He was fine, but little Triceratops had a bald spot on her neck. She wondered whether this was a skin disease or poor diet.

Grace hugged Triceratops. Although small, she was a perfectly built sled dog, with a broad chest, strong haunches, and a narrow waist. But if she lost her hair, she wouldn’t last long in this frigid temperature. Grace hated the fact that
the Antarctic posed dangers for dogs as well as kids. She wasn’t planning to alarm the others, but Robert, who was walking by, stopped and stared.

“Are the dogs sick?” Robert pointed at little Triceratops’s neck.

“I don’t know,” Grace answered.

“Great,” Robert said.

“Their food is moldy. I think if we want to keep them healthy, we might need to feed them the pony soon.”

Robert didn’t say anything, but he was fuming inside. Cookie had been little trouble. Using her snowshoes, the pony had handled the snow just fine. Although for the last day and a half the dogs had worked together well, last night they had gotten loose and eaten the food. Robert was tempted to feed the dogs to Cookie, not the other way around.

The clock ticked loudly inside Robert’s head. After last night’s disaster, all they had was a day’s worth of pemmican. They ought to get to the first depot in eight hours, but to be extra safe, he’d figure on a ten-hour journey to the depot. As long as nothing else went wrong, they would arrive at the depot a little hungry, but they would be fine.

Robert resumed loading his cycle’s sled.
Since Billy was going first, they were moving the critical gear to Robert’s sled and Polly was going to ride with Robert. Robert wouldn’t let himself worry about the crevasses they were likely to encounter. “Prepare for the negative, but don’t dwell on it” was Robert Johnson’s first rule of wilderness survival.

Two hours after breakfast, Billy, who was going to lead, gunned his silver-and-blue snowcycle. Even though it was early, the sun was polishing the surface of the ground, and it looked like a skating rink—so blue, so smooth.

They were starting off without Brontosaurus. Andrew had returned exhausted from a fruitless chase, and they had had to wait for him to load his gear. A dog had slowed them down again, Billy thought.

Robert surveyed the group. He’d been surprised when Billy had volunteered to stay in the lead on the blue ice. So far Billy had been handy with the maps and navigation, but he had been cautious. Until this morning Robert had thought that Billy was a bit of a coward.

Grace came next, on the dogsled. Would the dogs cause more trouble today?

Andrew was going to follow Grace. Since this surface was going to be particularly tough on
the pony, they had decided that they needed to reduce her load. Andrew planned to lead her for the first few miles.

Polly was helping Andrew with some last-minute adjustments to Cookie’s sled.

Polly and Andrew were sure a funny pair, Robert thought. In a way, she was one of the smartest girls that he had ever met, and Andrew was one of the dumbest boys. She was smart but impractical. Scott’s expedition had taken place almost two hundred years ago. It had ended in his death. It seemed to Robert that the less said about Scott, the better. Yet if he let her, Polly would yammer on about Scott, Bowers, and Wilson—and who were those other guys? Anyway, she would yammer on until polar ghosts haunted all of them.

“Wait up!” Robert shouted at Billy, who had already started to pull ahead. He wanted them to stay together. Just in case …

Polly finished with the sled. Robert turned on his motor as she climbed behind him.

At least the sound of the engine would drown out Polly’s chatter.

FOR THE PAST
two hours, Billy had been leading. The group had had some problems with the smooth, windswept ice. Cookie’s hooves had broken through the crust many times. Once Andrew, who was on foot to reduce the weight on the pony, had stepped into a hole and sunk to his waist. The group had bypassed five or six cracks, as well as a field of fissured ice that looked like splintered glass. Andrew was walking more and more slowly but refused to trade off, saying that he wanted to stay with Cookie.

Robert had removed all the important stuff from Billy’s sled in case he hit a crevasse, so Billy wasn’t pulling much of a load. Billy could
easily have gone ahead and set up camp, but Robert insisted that they all stay together. Although they hadn’t made good time, Billy tried not to feel too frustrated; at least they hadn’t hit anything serious yet.

Suddenly Billy spotted a gash in the ice a long way ahead of him. “Crevasse!” he yelled.

When he got close to it, he jumped off the cycle and peered down. This one was deep and wide and brutal.

Robert parked his cycle next to Billy’s. The word
crevasse
had not meant anything to him, but now he saw that it was a canyon with icy, slippery sides. He would hate to have to climb his way out of one of those.

Death-traps in your path, opened by the pressure of slow-moving ice against the land,
Polly remembered reading as she stared.

Looking into the depths, Billy made up his mind. He didn’t care enough about being MVP to take the lead again.

“We need to find a way across,” Robert said, pointing in the direction of the Pole. “Andrew, you hike along the crevasse and see if you can find a crossing. I’ll hike the other way. Billy, why don’t you see if you can boil us some hot chocolate?”

“Billy, are you all right?” Polly asked.

Billy looked into her worried face. “Oh, sure.” He headed for the sled to unload the Primus. He was all right if you thought that being scared to death was all right. What would have happened if he hadn’t seen the crevasse? If it had been covered with snow? How far would he have fallen before he hit the bottom?

Robert followed the long crack in the ice to a point where it disappeared and all he could see was snow. A few yards later, the crevasse appeared again. This snowy area looked like a snow bridge, all right. But would it hold? He put one foot on the snow, and it felt solid. Was it strong enough for the heavy snowcycles, pony, and dogs to make it over?

There was no way to test the bridge’s strength except to cross it. For reassurance, he stuck his hand in his backpack and squeezed the wooden handle of his ice pick. He hoped he wouldn’t ever have to use it. He put one foot on the snow bridge. It felt sturdy. He walked slowly and deliberately across the crevasse. The snow bridge held. He walked back and followed the crevasse to rejoin the group. He shouted at Andrew to return.

When he got back, the kids were all there staring wide-eyed at him. “I’ve found a snow
bridge,” he told them. “It took my weight, but I’m not sure what will happen if the animals and the cycles go over it.” He hated to ask her, but he felt he had to for the good of the expedition. “Polly, what did Scott do?”

Polly thought about his question. From the books, she remembered a couple of incidents when the men, wearing harnesses, had been pulled up by ropes, but she had no idea what the harnesses looked like or what they were attached to. She knew that without all these details, her answer would only irritate Robert. “The men wore harnesses,” she answered anyway. “That way if one fell, the group could pull him up.”