“PEREZ calls me Dr. Blomdahl, but I prefer Ingrid,” said the apple-cheeked woman who greeted them at the base medical center—which was kind of a grand name for a group of modest trailers and huts on one of Antarctica’s outer islands. Max’s legs were wobbly from two days on the rocking boat. It was mid-morning but the sun was barely over the horizon. Even though the temperature felt close to zero, and they were all in down coats, the doctor stood at the open front door in a loose white shirt and jeans. “He tells me you’re searching for some scientific mystery? I warn you, a trip to Antarctica can be addictive.”
“Pardon me,” Nigel said, “but if you can conjure up anything less addictive than that atrocious trip across the sea, do let me know. I would prefer to do it in a balloon. And I detest balloon travel.”
“What is your time frame on this quest?” Ingrid asked.
“ASAP,” Max said. “Or people will die.”
“Oh, dear,” Ingrid said.
“It’s a long story,” Alex said. “We can pay for lodging. We’ll need some help. We can pay for that too.”
“Well, there is plenty of room,” Ingrid said. “And in this remote place, everyone loves company. Especially in the darkness of the winter. And even more especially from budding young polar scientists. I suppose I can arrange things.”
“Awesome,” Max said.
As they all introduced themselves, Captain Perez backed away. “Ciao, everyone. I’ll be back when you need me.”
Ingrid led Max, Alex, Bitsy, and Nigel into a solid, one-story building sheathed in metal. “As you can see, everything is a little bare-bones here. There is no permanent habitation on the continent. No ancient humans had any way to migrate here and settle. No villages or towns. Until the nineteenth century, this was basically a twenty-seven-billion-ton hunk of ice. It’s heavy enough have a flattening effect on the Earth. There are parts of the year when the sun barely rises at all, and the winds can reach two hundred miles an hour. It’s brutal. No one would want to live here.”
“You live here,” Max said.
“I work here. Just several weeks a year.” Ingrid brought them into a room that looked like a laboratory struggling to be a lounge. A couple of ragged sofas had been pushed against the wall and covered with books and stacks of paper. A sink and a drying rack were full of test tubes, and boxes of cereal and noodles shared the shelves with textbooks and discarded lab coats. “I study ice,” she went on, throwing some of the books off the sofa and onto the floor. “Down here, that’s a form of time travel. What froze millions of years ago stayed frozen. The farther you drill down, the deeper into the past you go. You find secrets about the early atmosphere, prehistoric marine life—”
“How about hot caves?” Max asked. “Are there any of those?”
“We have a sauna, if that’s what you mean.” Ingrid looked at her watch, then quickly began pulling the blinds. “Ach, so much to talk about! Sit. Please. Make yourselves at home and help yourselves to food. I have some work to do before I join you. Put your stuff on the table. I will take it to our mud room after I do this.”
“Why are you pulling the blinds down?” Max asked. “It’s nearly dark.”
“Ah, but this is the rare time of day when the sun on the horizon will blind you through those windows at this angle.”
As she bustled over to the window, Alex shot Max a disappointed look and shrugged. She, Max, Bitsy, and Nigel peeled off their coats and packs and laid them on the table. “Be back soon!” Ingrid said, scooping them up and disappearing into the hallway.
Alex watched her duck into a room near a rear exit. “Max, are you sure you want to let that pack out of your sight?”
“This is an island,” Bitsy pointed out. “There’s no place to go with it.”
Max sat at the table, tapping with his hand. “We have to talk to more people. Someone must know about the cave.”
“No doubt,” Nigel said. “But I shall be no help without a nap. I understand the urgency, but this has been a taxing voyage.”
As Nigel flopped down on the couch, Max heard the sound of barking outside the window. He stood and peeked through the slats of the closed blinds. There, behind the hut, he saw the movement of gray-and-white fur and the black, eager eyes of excited dogs.
He slipped behind the blinds and pressed his face to the window. The dogs were huskies—maybe two dozen. In their midst were a man and woman dressed in thick down coats. They were working on a couple of sturdy-looking sleds. Each sled had a wood platform maybe two feet by eight. Underneath, the runners extended backward from the rear by a couple of feet, like skis. The dogs were lining up in front like soldiers, wagging their tails in excitement. Working quickly, the two people swapped out some of the sled’s ropes and shouted to each other about guy lines, tug lines, and gang lines.
Now Bitsy was joining him. “Awww, they are so cute!”
“The people?” Max asked.
Alex sidled in beside them. “The dogs.”
The man slid one of the two sleds off to the side of a nearby shed. Then he helped the woman hook up six dogs to the other sled. When she was finished, she stood with each foot on one of the two rear runners. She clutched a curved handrail in the form of an upside-down U bolted to the sled below. Then, with a deep voice, she yelled, “Hike!”
The dogs began to pull, slowly at first and then with greater strength. Max watched them take off and pick up speed. They had gone about thirty yards when she shouted, “Gee!”
The dogs veered right. After a few seconds she shouted, “Haw!” and they veered left. As they circled back around to the starting point, the other worker kept busy hooking up more dogs to the second sled.
“Some kind of training exercise?” Nigel asked from the sofa.
Max nodded. “They sure are more obedient than yaks.”
“Who-o-o-oa!” yelled the woman, a big grin on her face, which had grown red in the wind. As the dogs stopped, she leaped off the runners and went to hug the dogs.
“That looks so fun,” Alex exclaimed.
“I prefer snowmobiles,” Bitsy piped up.
“Alex and I haven’t had good experiences with those,” Max said.
“A nice newspaper and a roaring fireplace for me,” Nigel said. “And by the way, my poor tummy is quite angry at me for that wretched boat trip. Do you happen to see any Tums here?”
“We are doing nothing,” Max said. “I can’t stand doing nothing. Also, Ingrid was wrong about the blinding sun. You can’t even see it.”
Max lifted the blinds, turned back into the room, and began pacing. But out of the corner of his eye, he caught the shape of another person joining the first two outside.
Someone in a hurry.
This person was wearing a thick winter coat but also thick pants. The two backed away, nodding in response to something Max couldn’t hear. The newcomer stood on the sled runners and tossed a backpack into a storage basket.
Max’s backpack.
“What the—?” he murmured, moving closer to the window.
“Hike!” a voice snapped.
Max felt his blood drain to his toes. He couldn’t see the face through the fur, but he recognized the sound.
“Max?” Alex said. “Is that . . . Ingrid?”
But Max didn’t answer. He was sprinting into the hallway.