Polar Vortex

Chapter 2

Calibrating the geophones was fiddly work. Finding them under three feet of drifted snow was hard, and adjusting them wearing two pairs of gloves was almost impossible. They took it in turns, one working gloveless until his fingers got too numb to press the buttons, then handing over while he warmed his hands in the fleece pouch they called David Seaman. Safe Hands. Mac had had to explain that one to the American.

‘This is old technology,’ Spoons groused. ‘Blowing shit up, listening to the bang. We should use radar.’

‘Annabel said she tried it last year. Something screwy with the signal — bounced all over the place. Couldn’t get a clean reading.’

‘Maybe that crashed alien spaceship Danny was talking about.’ Mac looked up. Whatever had caused the tremor last night, they’d seen no sign of it. Couldn’t see much of anything, anymore. The cloud had thickened, white sky and white snow bleeding together.

‘We should head back,’

‘Are you kidding?’ Spoons wiped away the frost from his neckwarmer. ‘The Ice Queen would kill us.’

They mounted up their snowmobiles and carried on, Mac in the lead. The cloud got even thicker. Now, when he checked back, he could hardly see Spoons’ headlight. Mostly, he kept his eyes on the ground ahead. There weren’t supposed to be any crevasses in this part of the ice dome. But, as they’d told him at the induction, nobody ever fell in a hole that was supposed to be there.

He looked back again — into a wall of cloud. Couldn’t even see the headlight any more. He eased his thumb off the accelerator and let the snowmobile coast to a stop. He waited, ready to move if Spoons came up too quickly.

Spoons didn’t come.

Mac was getting cold. He checked his watch and realised he’d been waiting two minutes. But Spoons should only have been twenty metres behind him.

He unzipped his coat to get his radio. ‘Spoons?’

Static, then Spoons’s voice. ‘Where are you?’

‘I thought I was right in front of you.’

A pause. ‘Nope.’

‘Stay there. I’ll come back for you.’

He circled the snowmobile around and followed his track back. It was practically invisible in the whiteout. He drove slowly, almost stalling. Still no sign of Spoons.

The counter said he’d gone half a kilometre. He cut the engine and listened to the silence. No hint of a motor running nearby.

He got down and examined the ground in front of the snowmobile. He swore. The line he’d been following was only a groove blown by the wind.

So where was his track?

He toggled the radio again. ‘Can you see anything?’

‘Um, snow.’

‘That’s not … Wait. I think I see you.’

A figure was moving through the fog, swimming in and out of view. He shouted and ran towards him. The snow killed the sound; the fog made him all but invisible. He thought he saw Spoons look around, but he must not have seen him. He carried on away.

Mac broke into a run, shouting through the fog. Spoons still didn’t hear. Mac was right behind him. He put his hand on his shoulder and spun him around.

It wasn’t Spoons. It wasn’t anyone he’d seen in his life.