Until the Night

From the Blue Notebook

Wyndham emerged from the lab and lugged his computer battery to a sled that was already heaped with equipment. Gordon had evolved a kind of mobile observation post that he painstakingly assembled and disassembled every other day in his obsessive pursuit of perfection. He was a compact, pocket-sized man, but his shadow as he crossed the ice must have been thirty metres long. The shadow of his heavily laden sled was not much shorter.

For some time now we had been bearing south along the western shore of Axel Heiberg Island, our ice island having been nudged by other floes into the Sverdrup Channel. It was a beautiful day and nearly everyone was working outdoors to make the most of it. We had abandoned our heavier parkas for down jackets or fleeces, although the slush necessitated knee waders. I checked my AARI buoys, which gave continuous readouts of drift direction and speed, details of water currents, temperature and so on. My fans and scoops and sensors were at the end of a narrow drive shaft beneath ice that was over seventy metres thick.

Wyndham had passed our radio mast and had nearly reached his first observation post, trudging in the peculiar head-jutting way of anyone who is man-hauling anything heavy. The sun was low, and half obscured by a lenticular cloud that swept upward like a solid brushstroke from the horizon. The light was the colour of a blood orange.

We were spread out across our table of frozen sea like markers on a board game. Most of the buoys were fixed into the ice directly north of the lab, and normally that’s where I would have been at that time of day. But I was getting an anomalous readout from a buoy half a kilometre to the west, so that’s where I went. I was cranking my sensors toward the surface while watching Wyndham.

Rebecca was farther from the central building, between me and the landing strip. She genuflected and aimed her camera into the cloud, into the sun. Probably shooting infrared. Her passion for documenting the invisible.

Hunter was riding his tractor, doggedly ploughing the landing strip down to something approaching solid ice. The Twin Otter was scheduled to pick up Deville and drop off some supplies in three days. The temperature was expected to drop before then. Even so, landing a Twin Otter on that surface was going to be dangerous, and I was thankful once again that I had quit the flying business for the relatively tranquil requirements of research.

Vanderbyl was making adjustments and checking readings from his hydrophones and other sensors. Ray Deville had been hanging around him all morning. He had been informed of his impending evacuation and for the past few days had been making frantic efforts to convince Kurt of his competence to carry on, but he was not in sight at the moment.

There was the crack of a gunshot and I looked over toward the lab building. Someone practising on the target range. I was still working at raising the sensors with a hand crank, the motorized one having seized up yet again. A few more metres to go. Wyndham had his laptop out and was wiring it up to an array that measured changes in albedo—the reflectivity of the Arctic surface.

That, then, was our dispersal: Vanderbyl to the east of the landing strip, Rebecca and I to the west, Wyndham (and Hunter, still on his tractor) in a line straight north from the lab and the radio mast. Dahlberg, Washburn and Bélanger were inside. All of this I remember as vividly as if each of us were a pin stuck on a map.

More shots from the firing range. They sounded a little strange, but in that unpredictable acoustic environment I wasn’t concerned. Arm aching, I finally managed to crank my sensors out of the drill hole. The problem was immediately obvious: an Arctic jellyfish had got itself wrapped around the fan. I pried the mess off with one of my trowels and it hit the slush with a smack.

The dogs had started barking and I looked around to see if there was a bear. I knew that Wyndham was armed that day, and also that Hunter—ex-military Hunter—was always armed. Rebecca was working reasonably close by and I could see the flare gun strapped to her waist. In most cases a warning flare is enough to make a bear think twice.

The dogs’ barking transmuted itself into the yips and whines of canine paranoia. I pulled out my binoculars and focused first on Wyndham, who seemed intent on his observations. Hunter was ploughing at the near end of the runway.

Beyond the strip, Vanderbyl was hoisting a small pack onto his back. He usually headed inside about this time to spend an hour or two in the lab before lunch.

I took my radio out of an inner pocket. What’s going on with the dogs? I said. Have we got a bear somewhere?

It was Wyndham who came back: All quiet over here.

A rumble of thunder cut him off. You get used to the sound of cracks shooting through contracting ice. Sometimes they make a deep squeal that ends with a gasp, a kind of breathy pop. I’ve heard fracturing ice wail as if a gate of Hell had suddenly blown open, and other times it sounds like nothing more than the slam of a washing machine lid. I had never heard one that sounded like thunder. The dogs began howling in earnest.

I turned toward Rebecca. I think I was hoping she would be perceiving some storm system visible only to her infrared. But she was not looking through her camera. She was standing in an attitude of anxious expectation.

I turned back with the binoculars. Wyndham had stopped work. He had his back to me in a posture of alertness, listening. Vanderbyl had passed him, heading toward camp, but stopped and turned around when Wyndham yelled something.

There was a tremendous crack and we all—everyone I could see—fell to our knees. Hunter was still on his tractor, still ploughing. It’s possible he didn’t feel that first tremor.

At first no more than a fissure, the crack that appeared was the otherworldly blue of the polar lead. From my vantage point, the lead seemed to run about three hundred metres, forming an amethyst wound that stretched from the edge of the camp to the foot of the radio tower. Hunter had seen it too and switched off his tractor, creating an envelope of silence.

Leads opening up like this were not uncommon. To reduce the risk of such a fracture forcing us to up stakes and move, we had erected Arcosaur in the middle of the widest ridge, in the middle of our island of ice. What no one had expected was that a lead might open up at right angles to the island furrows.

We got to our feet and looked around, one to the other. Ray Deville had emerged from somewhere, having changed from his parka to a lighter jacket. He was on his knees, as stunned as the rest of us. My radio crackled and I had to retrieve it from the slush where it had fallen.

Wyndham’s voice, with a tremor in it: I’ve got a huge lead just opened up less than ten feet away.

Get away from it, Vanderbyl told him. It’s probably over, but let’s be on the safe side.

I can’t move. My sledge is caught on something.

Uncouple your tether, man. Don’t hang around.

I’m trying to. My bloody fingers won’t work.

Even over the radio you could hear the laugh in Wyndham’s voice—nervous, of course, but also self-deprecating. That was utterly in character, and it was one of the many reasons he hadn’t an enemy in the world.

I don’t think Wyndham, I don’t think any of us, had yet registered true panic. We were not yet cognizant of the magnitude of the disaster. Vanderbyl, a tall, no-nonsense sort of man, easily six-three, moved toward Wyndham in long, efficient strides despite the slush.

Wings shearing off a jetliner. That was the sound that at that moment ripped through the atmosphere. Off to my right, our main building imploded, the roof crashing in toward the middle as the two sides were pulled away from each other. The crack in the ice widened with horrific speed, shooting like a pale blue bolt across the surface.

Vanderbyl was on the far edge of the split. With me, across from him: Wyndham, Rebecca and Ray Deville—and somehow Dahlberg. Dahlberg had no reason to be outside, but I had no time to wonder about that. Wyndham’s sledge had disappeared. Wyndham himself was down, having been dragged a short distance until he caught on one of the buoys, and now he clung to it. I found myself running toward him. Rebecca looked unhurt. She was getting up, but Deville remained on his knees where he had fallen. His face bore the vacant, bewildered look of a man who has been pulled unhurt from a death-dealing car crash.

As I ran, I registered in my peripheral vision that Hunter had started up his tractor again, raised his plough, and was turning the ungainly machine toward Wyndham. And it was only as I ran that I understood exactly the peril Wyndham was in. The Nansen sled, with its freight of equipment, had tumbled into the lead with Wyndham still harnessed to it. The only thing keeping him from following it into the abyss was the buoy fastened into the ice and to which he desperately clung. I patted my pockets for my folding knife as I ran.

It looked as if Hunter would reach him first. Vanderbyl had come to a stop on the far side, halted by the blue gap that was now some twenty metres across. Hunter’s tractor was slamming toward them.

It takes considerably more time to read about what happened next than the events themselves took to occur. We are talking a matter of seconds, somewhere between three and five.

There was a tremendous boom and those of us on foot were hurled to the ice. The impact sent the snot flying from my nostrils, and all the bony places of my body lit up with pain. As I pulled myself up, I saw that the crack had turned serpentine, opening a whiplash curve just in front of Hunter. He had no time to react. The tractor’s port tread went over first, causing the whole machine to pivot and tip sideways, pitching him into the crevasse. What is most vivid now in my mind is not the image of his death—the sprawling, ungainly ugliness of it—but rather his absolute silence, the absence of any cry, the slightest protest at his severance from the living. The tractor tilted with agonizing slowness, halting for a moment on the precipice with the poise of a ballerina, before somersaulting with a roar over the edge.

I was getting to my feet, trying to regain my breath, and saw Vanderbyl doing the same. He would not be able to help—the gap had become a canyon. Behind him, the radio mast listed at a forty-five-degree angle. Somehow I managed to stagger the last dozen or so metres to Wyndham.

He was on his side, curled around the buoy. From his position he couldn’t have seen what had happened to Hunter. He even tried to make a joke.

No rush, Kit, he said to me. Take your time.

I was on my knees. I had my knife out but was having trouble opening it. Some people, I said to him, will do anything for attention.

A squeal of metal and I looked up. I have absolutely no doubt that if we had had just another few seconds, I could have saved Wyndham. The radio mast lurched and fell another ten degrees, paused for a half-second, and crashed full length to the ice. The top third of the array snapped off and vanished.

I cannot say with certainty—no one could know for sure—but it seems likely that the top of the radio mast, in its plunge into the abyss, smashed into Wyndham’s dangling sledge and tore him away from the buoy. Before I could so much as drop my knife to grab for him, he had slithered across the last few feet and over the edge.

Again, that terrible silence.

I crawled to the precipice, lay down and peered over the edge. In that blue and shimmering canyon, there was no sign of life. Sea water swirled and foamed as it flooded into the crevasse some hundred feet below.

Vanderbyl was stabbing at his radio, barking Mayday, Mayday. Get some rope, he yelled to me. We’ve got to get them out of there.

There was no rope to get. The fracture, serpentine to the north, had forked to the south. The lab hut hung in jagged pieces from either edge of the initial split. The rest of the buildings—the power shack, the vehicle shed, the sleeping quarters—were mostly intact on a shard of shelf ice that had become its own separate floe. I remember wondering what had happened to Murray Washburn, our facilities manager, and Paul, our cook. They rarely had occasion to visit the lab, and it seemed unlikely that they would have been in it the moment it was destroyed.

Ice island T-6 was now at least three ice islands, rapidly drifting away from each other. Kurt Vanderbyl was a hundred and fifty metres distant, adrift on his own shard, his dark silhouette rippling against the sun. Rebecca ran to the edge of what now amounted to our universe, calling her husband’s name. The useless shortwave dangled from his left hand. He slowly raised his right in farewell.