The Pole of Inaccessibility Read online

  ***

  While the Lieutenant indulged himself in flights of fantasy directed toward the picture of the subject of his mission, an aircraft was inbound into McMurdo carrying Susan Engen’s two grad students who would be assisting her in the field during the season. It had been circling Ross Island attempting to land, but the weather had deteriorated to the point that the pilot was unable to gain the visual reference required to be able to put the C-130 down on the ice.

  After the third go-round, the co-pilot informed her that she was out of fuel, a circumstance that had not altogether avoided her notice, and faced with the choice of running out of gas somewhere over the sea ice and making a blind landing where she suspected the ski-way was, she decided to just put the bird down and hope for the best. The groomed ski-way was lined with wooden markers on either side, but since the pilot couldn’t see them in the whiteout, she decided to make an open field landing running parallel to the strip. The upside was she wouldn’t slam into a series of wooden billboards at a hundred and forty miles per hour. The downside was she that would be dropping the skis onto an unprepared surface of unknown quality, the effect of which had previously been known to tear the ski-clad landing apparatus clean off the fuselage of planes like hers.

  The loadmaster was told to inform the passengers to prepare for impact, and at her direction, they piled all of the hand-carry personal bags against the bulkhead as a cushion should the aircraft go in hard, and the passengers go ballistic within the frame. The eight tons of cargo that would be following them into the bulkhead was studiously ignored, there being nothing anyone could do about it anyway.

  Having taken the four-engine turbo-prop airplane out over the ice shelf as far as she dared, she turned and took a long, low approach, attempting to bleed off as much speed as possible, while leaving a safe margin to avoid stalling. But as they passed the strip, she was still higher and faster than she wanted to be, and found herself heading back out to sea over the ice.

  “Gotta put her down!” the co-pilot said, the steady tone she was reaching for devolving into a shriek.

  “I know!” the pilot shouted back, but then added, “screw it!” and dropped the aircraft onto the ice.

  The shock was reported through the airplane with a crack that rang like an explosion, but the structure held and the engines were thrown into full reverse as they skid to a stop, crashing through the waves of snow that drifted over the sea ice. The pilot turned the forward ski as the ship slowed to taxi speed in a wide arcing turn to make the return trip back to the airfield, when one by one, the engines sputtered to a stop, the last of the fuel having been exhausted.

  “You girls done playing around out there?” the Captain’s voice asked over the radio.

  “That the Skipper?” the co-pilot asked.

  “Yeah, it’s the old bastard,” the pilot said on the intercom, knowing already the grief she was in for. The first all-female crew to fly into Antarctica was bound to meet with some sort of adventure to mark the occasion, as well as what promised to be never-ending ribbing from their male counterparts.

  “That’s a-firm,” she replied. “We’re down.”

  “Good. Now hurry up and get the hell back here.”

  “That’s a negative,” she said in the matter-of-fact cheerful voice that was used for routine radio communications. “You want us, you’re going to have to come get us. Sir.”

  There was a pause before a new voice came on and said, “Roger that. We are calling “Triple-A” right now. Have a nice day, ladies.”

  It was going to be merciless.