Free In Cold Pursuit by Sarah Andrews

those islands. That’s White Island to the east, then Minna Bluff—keep an eye on Minna; if it disappears, a storm’s coming and you have about two hours to take cover—then Black Island, Mount Discovery, and the Brown Peninsula. Black Island is the closest, at about twenty-five miles hence.
    “They came in by sea, not like us lazybones who fly down; they were at sea in the wildest weather for weeks. They sailed in during the height of summer when the ice was broken out, all the way to this point, and dropped anchor, spent the winter, and started out south the following spring. That was the way of it. They couldn’t get close enough to make the pole in one season, because the ice freezes out hundreds of miles to sea, and it doesn’t break out until December or January, and some years not at all. So they had to wait for their access, then unload their supplies and begin to set up depots, then hunker down and wait out the long winter night. When the sun rose again, they went out around White Island and continued south across the Ross Ice Shelf. The ice is riddled with crevasses where it flows around those islands, so that must have been a joy. That’s my job, you see. I blow up things that are in peoples’ way around here.”
    Valena nodded, letting him know that she understood, though she wasn’t certain that she did.
    Ted said, “So he took his best shot, picked a glacier, and made his climb. Then he was not only fighting the cold, but also the altitude. He crested 10,200 feet. That first attempt was unsuccessful, you’ll recall—only got to eighty-two south.” He threw up his hands. “
Only
eighty-two south? For Christ’s sake, can you imagine the effort that took? They did it on foot, dragging a sledge—just a few miles a day, the conditions were so bad—and with no idea what lay beyond, because no one had been there before. They had to turn back at eighty-two or die. Why? Because they’d dragged their asses up that glacier. It burns up a lot of energy when you keep falling into crevasses, and let me tell you, you can’t alwayssee them before the snow that’s bridging them falls out from underneath you.”
    “They were lucky to be alive,” said Cupcake.
    Valena listened intently. She could never have imagined the dimensions of Scott’s undertaking without standing here at the edge of the ice—the barrier, they called it—with the wind buffeting her, her cocoon of down and polypropylene all that stood between her and certain frostbite.
And this is a balmy spring day
, she reminded herself.
    Ted said, “Well, that’s how it goes around here. You drum up the money to make a try at a goal—the geographic pole, or some key bit of scientific understanding—and then off you go into all that ice and you do your best. Thing is, you’ll never do it perfectly. You’ll never learn everything you set out to know. You’ll never be perfectly satisfied with yourself, or your accomplishments. But you go, and go again, until you make it or you die trying.”
    Cupcake said, “You’re stalling, Ted.”
    Valena turned to look at the man. She had to turn her whole body, because the hood of her parka was in the way. She waited.
    Ted dropped his gaze. “Your Dr. Vanderzee is a smart man, a driven man. He had questions he wanted answered. He drove really hard to get to them. And now he’s been turned back, short of his goal.”
    The use of the past tense was not lost on Valena.
Had
questions.
Wanted
answered.
Drove
hard. As evenly as she could, she said, “I’m here to continue his work.”
    Ted nodded. “Good. Good.”
    Cupcake said, “Tell her what it was like up there. She needs to know, Ted.”
    “Yeah, I’m stalling. That damned newspaper’s been hounding me since last year—nice way to spend my off time, dodging weasels with microphones—and now here we are with federal marshals hauling scientists off the ice. It’s just not good. The next thing we’ll have is some kind of fundamentalist