On Thin Ice Read online

  Cover

  Title Page

  Code Page

  Hystorian File

  On Thin Ice

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  You’re about to uncover the secrets behind some of history’s most pivotal moments.

  And with knowledge comes a special reward.

  The seven Infinity Ring Secrets stories each contain a fragment of a code. Collect the fragments in order to assemble a complete ten-digit code. Then:

  Go to scholastic.com/infinityring.

  Click on the “Add a Book or Code” button.

  Enter the ten-digit Infinity Ring Secrets code to unlock an exclusive medal!

  The code fragment for this story is:

  Hystorian File #1912090000

  The race is on!

  In the early twentieth century, Robert Falcon Scott, an officer in the British Royal Navy, was determined to be the first man to reach the South Pole. He led an expedition to Antarctica, braving the unbelievably harsh conditions of the world’s deadliest continent.

  Scott and his team made it to the South Pole. Unfortunately, they made it there five weeks after a Norwegian expedition. Scott’s chance for glory was lost.

  And then things got much, much worse. Scott and his men met with disaster. The weather slowed them down. They ran out of supplies. They never made it back.

  But what secrets might they have left behind, out on that frozen tundra . . . ?

  LULU CHARLES was not ready to die. But she wasn’t sure she had control over that anymore.

  She huddled in her tent, holding Eddie’s hand as tightly as she could with her numb, frostbitten fingers.

  She was dressed in the warmest clothes she had — which also happened to be some of the warmest clothes in the world. And the tent was specially designed to hold in their body heat. Even so, Lulu was shaking with cold.

  Or was it fear?

  Because she thought she heard a noise outside. It was hard to hear anything over the howling of the wind, but she thought she heard something different, something other than the endless swishing of snow over the frozen ground.

  There it was again: a heavy sound. A pause. And repeat. The sound of someone approaching through the snow.

  Deep in the ice fields of Antarctica, there could be only two explanations for the noise that was slowly approaching the tent that sheltered her and Eddie.

  It was either an enormous and ungraceful penguin . . . or it was the team of SQ bounty hunters that Lulu and her brother had been desperately trying to outrun. Lulu had to admit that the penguin theory was unlikely.

  The whole mess had started months before. Lulu had been chasing Eddie around their house, shouting at him for hiding her books and getting her in trouble at school that day, when their father, Professor Neil Charles, had called them into his wood-paneled study, a room they were forbidden to enter when he wasn’t around.

  “I am going to make you pay,” Lulu muttered under her breath so her father couldn’t hear. But Eddie put his angelic smile on his face and skipped into the room ahead of her. Of course he’d gotten away with his prank — he always did.

  As she followed him into the study, Lulu realized she hadn’t set foot in the room since before their mother died. The shock of the realization distracted her from thoughts of revenge against Eddie. It had been almost a year. The only change in the room was that her mother’s portrait was now hanging on the wall in an ornate golden frame.

  Their father got up from behind his desk and settled into the large leather chair tucked in the corner of the room. Eddie sat on his lap, and Lulu stood next to them. Her brother looked younger, curled up against their father. For just a moment, Lulu thought, you wouldn’t know Eddie was such a pain in the rear.

  “Children.” Their father cleared his throat, a nervous habit. Lulu knew it meant bad news was coming. “I have to go away . . . on a long trip.”

  This was a shock to Lulu. He hadn’t left them for more than a few hours at a time since their mother died. In fact, though she wouldn’t voice it, Lulu knew that they’d all been living a muted, tense life since her death. Like they were waiting for the next tragedy to hit.

  Her parents had been a world-famous team of explorers. They’d met in Lower Guinea along the African coast, and their lives had been full of adventures ever since. Lulu and Eddie got to tag along on some of the tamer ones, most recently a long camping trip in the Scottish Highlands. But for the past year, their father had cowered at home, like a protective father bear or like a wounded, fearful cub. Lulu wasn’t sure which instinct was propelling him to stay so close to home.

  She shook her mane of long brown hair out of her eyes so she could study her father. His face was deeply creased, and his thick dark hair had started graying. He pressed a hand into his temple as though he could massage this problem out.

  His voice cracked as he continued. “I’m headed to Antarctica. I’ve received a report that an earlier expedition, led by Robert Falcon Scott, has likely failed. The men have not been heard from in some time, and we know they suffered from a series of mishaps during their preparations. We have to assume that they’re dead, somewhere out there on the frozen continent —”

  Eddie broke in. “So why do you have to go there?”

  Lulu jabbed him in the ribs. She wanted her father to finish explaining. Too many questions and he could get irritated and give up. These days he barely finished his sentences. The slightest interruption and he’d lose his train of thought, start staring off into the distance. . . .

  But Eddie’s question didn’t seem to upset their father. “Eddie, Lulu, look around you.” They did.

  Lulu saw her father’s massive shelves, filled with books of history and philosophy from all around the world. The works of Aristotle stood next to histories of the Vikings and documents from the French Revolution. His desk was so covered in papers and ancient coins that you could barely see its polished wooden surface. What was she supposed to be looking at? These were all familiar things. She and Eddie had gotten in trouble once when they were little for building a fort with these same books. Was this going to turn into another lecture about respecting their father’s privacy? If he was going to leave them, they deserved answers.

  But he continued. “You know that I am a Hystorian. That means more than simply studying history. It’s about trying to stop the SQ from changing the course of history for their own evil purposes.”

  Lulu had heard her parents discuss the SQ before, and some newspapers claimed that many governments were merely shadow puppets for the SQ. But were they really evil?

  Her father spoke again. “Scott and his men were trying to be the first to reach the South Pole. But there’s more to it than that. Scott was an important Hystorian and had access to a lot of top secret information. He had contact with Hystorians all over the world. We know Scott would never deliberately sabotage the organization. However, we also know that he kept a journal. As an explorer, there’s nothing odd about that. In fact, it’s important to keep detailed records for scientific purposes. But it’s possible that in this journal he named people whose identities should have remained secret, or described Great Breaks that we have identified. Especially in his last days, probably crazed with cold and hunger, who knows what he may have written down.”

  Lulu’s father looked her in the eyes. “If that is the case, there is currently a notebook lying out in the snow somewhere that could bring the ancient Hystorian organization crumbling around our feet. We know this. Unfortunately, the SQ also knows this. Which is why they’re going to try to get their men to Scott’s camp before we can.”

  Lulu responded without thinking her answer through. There w
as a lot to digest, but one thing she was sure of. “We’re not letting you go without us,” Lulu said.

  Eddie didn’t say anything.

  She kicked his shin. He had to stop being such a cowardly custard.

  “Uh, that’s right,” Eddie mumbled. “We think you should stay here —”

  “Or,” Lulu interrupted, shooting Eddie a dirty look, “we think you should take us with you.”

  Their father looked skeptical, but before he could speak, Lulu continued her argument. She couldn’t let him leave them behind!

  “We’re so light, we’ll be able to walk right over the ice without falling through the crust and into the snow.” She paused and racked her brain for other reasons her father might possibly want a ten- and twelve-year-old in the tundra with him. “We don’t eat as much as adults, so we won’t have to bring as many supplies and we won’t slow you down.”

  “We’re smaller so we can all sleep in one tent,” Eddie chimed in. Lulu smiled at him gratefully.

  “And you know I’m good with dogs. . . .” Breathless, Lulu ran out of arguments. The dog one was her final masterstroke. If that didn’t work, nothing would. Her father had seen her with animals plenty of times. She could always coax a scared cat out from under a sofa, or convince an angry dog to lie down. Birds didn’t fly away when she walked by them. If they needed someone to take care of the sled dogs — or if an angry polar bear attacked — Lulu was the girl to handle it. (Were there polar bears in the South Pole? She would have to check.)

  Her father shook his head slowly. None of Lulu’s arguments had worked. It felt like a huge rock had dropped into her stomach.

  Her mother had gone away — and never come back. Now the same thing would happen to her father, and she and Eddie would be left completely alone. Lulu bit the inside of her cheeks and stared up at the ceiling as hard as she could, her best trick for keeping tears from streaming down her face.

  But Eddie had obviously not learned these tricks yet. Her normally loony little brother burst into sobs.

  “Don’t . . . leave . . . us,” he managed to say between his tears.

  Their father’s face paled.

  “Daddy, please!” Eddie wailed. And their father nodded.

  “All right,” he said, sighing. Lulu could hear the mixture of relief and worry in his voice. “All right, you can come. But it’s going to be dangerous.”

  Meanwhile, in a special soundproof room in southern Chile, a group of six men and ten dogs stood at attention. The dogs’ ears pointed forward. Their tails trembled with eagerness. They were ready for the chase.

  Their leader paced the front of the room. He was a tall man with a large fur hat pulled tightly over his bald scalp. The flaps were tied up in a bow at the top of his head and his ears stuck out like flags.

  “Listen up, men!” he barked. He had a voice like an old sea lion. “The Scott expedition is missing. They are either dead or near death, and no match for us. We must reach their camp and obtain any documents left behind. I have heard that explorer and suspected Hystorian Neil Charles has been chosen to fetch the documents. He will most likely be traveling with a well-trained team. If he or anyone else gets in our way, you have license to kill.”

  The men saluted and the dogs barked sharply, once, in unison.

  Their sleds were loaded with food and gear. Their bags were heavy with telescopes and guns. The men had special fur robes and snowshoes and tents that blocked the wind and held in their body heat. Years of training meant that their bodies were pure muscle, and they knew exactly how many miles they could travel in a day, and the minimum number of calories on which they could survive without reaching starvation. The plan was for the dogs to pull the sleds full of supplies until the food rations ran out. Then, if necessary, the men would eat the dogs and carry the rest of the gear themselves.

  The boat that would take them to Antarctica was docked in the port. They were just waiting for the final word to start their journey.

  Their leader reached up and undid the string bow that held up his earflaps. They flopped down on either side of his face, and he retied the strings in a tight knot under his chin. “Men,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  In unison, they turned a sharp ninety degrees and jogged single file out the door. Emblazoned boldly on the back of each man’s jacket was the symbol of the SQ.

  Lulu had gone her whole life without ever being truly cold.

  Not that London didn’t see plenty of snow. Some of Lulu’s happiest memories involved rolling around in the stuff. She loved how it could take on so many different qualities — how you could sink right through it one minute, then pack it into a tight, tough ball the next. Most of all, she loved the way it sparkled like tiny gems.

  But the Antarctic winds brought a whole new level of cold.

  Lulu pulled herself up the wooden ladder that led from the hull of the boat to the deck, and stepped into a light so bright and dazzling that she had to squeeze her eyes shut. Dogs were barking, men were shouting, and birds screeched as they circled the boat, trying to steal scraps of food. And naturally, she could pick out her brother’s mischievous laughter anywhere.

  But the feeling that was most exhilarating: the cold. The freezing, unimaginable, heart-stopping, face-burning cold! She could feel her breath solidify as it hit the air; she could feel her lungs cringe as she sucked in a new gulp.

  She slowly inched her eyelids open.

  After an exhausting, weeks-long sea journey, they’d finally arrived at Antarctica. Sixty people, plus dogs and specially trained ponies, had made the trip. Lulu was the only (human) girl, of course.

  Her father stood at the prow of the boat, his face flushed with cold and excitement. He was shouting out orders and gesturing wildly, directing the unloading of animals and equipment onto shore. Lulu spotted Eddie, messing about on the deck. He was making two of the strong crewmen swing him around like a sack of flour. His high-pitched hysterical laughter rang through the air. Just off the side of the boat, a pony hung suspended in the air by a crane, and four men in a small rowboat were trying to guide the frightened animal into their little craft.

  But all this was instantly forgotten as soon as Lulu turned her attention to the scenery around her. They were docked just off the coast of a rocky beach. Beyond the beach was a land as white and empty as a bathtub. A huge glacier loomed up alongside the boat like a miniature mountain. Under the cloudy sky it was a luminescent white blue, in stark contrast to the gray sea. Smaller icebergs floated in the water all around them. Dark, sleek shapes moved through the water, making Lulu gasp with fear. But as she peered more closely, she could see that the shapes were only seals, diving for fish. There were more animals than she’d expected in this barren place. Curious penguins on a nearby cliff peered down at them, totally unafraid. No polar bears, though. Not in Antarctica. Lulu had checked.

  When the men finally put Eddie back on his feet, he came running up next to Lulu, rousing her from her wide-eyed stare.

  “Lu, how incredible is this?” he panted.

  “It’s amazing!”

  “It’s better than when we got to sleep in the zoo that time —”

  “It’s better than when we got to watch that volcano erupt —”

  “It’s better than when Mother taught us how to —” His smile crumpled for a moment. “Mother would have loved this trip.”

  Lulu nodded. He was right. Their mother never got seasick — she would have loved every second of their journey down through the Atlantic and into the Southern Ocean. She’d lived every day with total vitality, never even sick with a cold. And then —

  Lulu found that she was employing her old tricks again, staring up into the tops of her eye sockets so that all she could see was the huge sky that arched over them. “She would have been proud of us for coming here, Eddie.” Comforting words weren’t coming easily. She knew she had to be the big siste
r, even though she was only two years older, but at times like this she wished their father would do the comforting — she could use some, too.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go help them off-load the ponies.”

  As if on cue, the airborne pony let out a terrified whinny.

  Once the poor animal had been eased down into the boat, Lulu had climbed in as well. The pony had nearly broken the slat seats with its wild stomping, but Lulu had put her hand on its muzzle and whispered calming words into its ear. Then she pulled some pony treats out of her pocket. Immediately, the animal shoved its warm nose into her palm, snuffling around for the treats, and, as soon as they were gone, looked up into Lulu’s face with its big brown eyes, pleading for more.

  “All right, you silly thing,” Lulu crooned. “Let’s get you onto land and then you can have another.”

  With Lulu’s help, the process of off-loading the ponies and the dogs went easily from then on. She smiled proudly whenever one of the sailors complimented her on thinking to bring dog treats and dried carrots as rewards for the animals. Lulu didn’t say what she was thinking — which was, who wouldn’t think to do that?

  She understood why they needed the animals here. These particular breeds of dog and pony were hardy. They’d evolved over millions of years to be perfectly suited for the cold. They had their own shaggy fur coats, and they were known for their endurance and their speed, making them ideal candidates for pulling the heavy sleds.

  Still, Lulu welcomed their presence for another reason: their companionship. On the sea journey, whenever she had started to feel ill or scared in a storm, one of the huskies would be sure to come nuzzle into her, letting her grab its heavy coat for comfort and stability.

  Her favorite was called Mizu. Mizu was pure white, with a gray smudge on her snout, as though someone with dirty fingers had run a hand from the space between Mizu’s eyes to the tip of her nose.

  Now, leaping to land, Lulu and Mizu paused to look around. Everyone was busy fastening gear to sleds. Everyone except Eddie, of course. He was busy spitting, trying to see if the globs of saliva would turn to ice before hitting the ground. Lulu shook her head.