On Thin Ice Read online

  The wind gusted, and Eddie hit himself in the face with his own spray of spit. Little pieces of ice clung to his eyebrows and eyelashes.

  “It worked!” he crowed. “Lulu, come and see!”

  Lulu sighed and turned away. Even a life-or-death quest in the most remote corner of the world couldn’t put a damper on her brother’s spirits for long. You had to appreciate that about him.

  The plan was for most of the men to stay at a base camp near the ship. They would keep the ship from getting frozen in, and would be available as a rescue mission if the explorers didn’t return to the coast in the expected time. Meanwhile, half a dozen of them, including Lulu and Eddie and their father, would travel into the interior to locate the Scott camp — and the notebook.

  “Lulu! Eddie!” their father called. He was standing on the snow waving big wedges that looked like the blades of a fan. “Come here and I’ll teach you how to snowshoe!”

  Lulu waddled over. With every step, she sunk through the icy crust and into the snow. She had to high-knee her leg up to take each step — it was a lot of work. When she finally reached her father she was more than ready to try out the special shoes.

  Her father bent over and helped both kids strap in. Lulu wiggled her ankles to make sure she was firmly fastened, and then took a first hesitant step. It felt awkward to have big flipperlike feet, but at least she wasn’t breaking through the snow anymore. Before she could try another step, she heard a nervous neighing behind her, and her father scooped her up in his arms just as a pony trampled right over where Lulu had been standing.

  She didn’t have time to wonder if she should have been scared before she burst out laughing. The men had put all the ponies into special snowshoes as well. The shoes were circular, made of what looked like long pieces of cane twisted into a spiral, and bound together with twine and wire. The ponies were running around the snowfield like crazy, making weird sideways hops, and shaking their manes and their tails. The men were all cracking up, and Lulu felt her father’s arms shaking with laughter as well.

  “The ponies look like bouncy toys,” Eddie cried as one jumped up in the air right by him.

  The ground was completely marked with the little circles. Lulu thought it looked like a host of fairies had burrowed nests into the snow. As she watched, the ponies started to figure out that they could still walk normally, even with the discs strapped to their feet. Once they were settled, the laughter died down, and the crew finished loading up all the supplies, then hitched the dogs and the ponies to the sleds.

  They were ready to go.

  There was no reason to delay, no need to camp out on the shore for a night. With some quick farewells and last-minute reminders, the exploration crew turned their backs on the ocean and started walking toward the interior.

  Eddie and Lulu found themselves walking side by side, right behind their father. The snowshoes allowed them to skim along the surface of the ice, like stones skipping across a pond. There were enough dogs for the animals to take turns pulling the sleds, so Mizu was free to run off into the distance, turning invisible as her coat blended into the snow, then bounding back, her dark nose showing up like a pebble against the ice. Reaching them, she licked Lulu’s mittened hand and barked happily, falling into step beside her.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Lulu said.

  Eddie sighed. “Yeah, ’cause the dogs like you better than they like me.”

  Lulu had seen Eddie trying to tie the dogs’ tails together during the long, boring boat ride. And he wondered why they liked her better?

  “Here,” she said, fumbling her big mitten into her pocket and finally scooping out a treat. “Give Mizu this. She’ll love you forever.”

  But Lulu could tell Mizu was watching her sneak the treat into Eddie’s hand. She knew Mizu would always love her best.

  Step by step, the small exploration party headed deeper into the depths of the Antarctic wilds.

  Only a few miles away, another boat was docking at another beach. The flag that flew from the topmast snapped in the wind. Bundled figures stood in two evenly spaced lines, tossing packs of supplies from one to the next with military efficiency. Their leader scanned the land for any signs of movement. No ships. No people. It looked like only the ice, and the possibility of freezing or starving or falling to their deaths, stood between them and their goal. And would he risk marching into the unknown tundra, gambling his and his men’s lives, with no guarantee of success? Of course. They were SQ. This was what they had pledged their lives to.

  But wait — a sudden movement caught his eye. He swiveled his body and refocused the binoculars. Was that small speck on the horizon moving? Could it possibly be foolish Neil Charles, come to surrender, to beg for mercy?

  “Squad One!” he shouted. “To arms.”

  Six men leapt to the railing of the ship and raised their weapons.

  “Wait on my command,” he ordered.

  They stood as still as stone while the icy wind turned their noses cherry red, and streams of snot froze to their carefully trimmed mustaches.

  Even their leader wished he could relax his position for a moment to grab a handkerchief. But he had trained with the toughest generals in the world. He would never give up a tactical advantage on account of a runny nose.

  The dot in the distance was steadily growing larger.

  He refocussed his binoculars once more.

  The shape was closer, and he could make out details that he hadn’t been able to see before. In fact, he could now see that what had appeared to be a single speck was actually a clump of several individual specks.

  And the clump was now resolving itself into a group of waddling penguins, curious to see who had shown up on their shore.

  Furious, he threw his binoculars down on the deck, shattering the glass of one of the lenses.

  “Just a drill, men. Back to what you were doing.”

  Without blinking, the men trotted back to their spots in the lines.

  Well, so it wouldn’t be that easy. No matter. The race was on, and he knew he would win it.

  Three days later, Lulu’s initial excitement had faded away, turning into a dull determination. They had been trudging through the snow all day, and the day before, and the day before that. Her thoughts and feelings had narrowed down to the basics: hunger, cold, fatigue. Repeat.

  When the trip began, they had marched single file, the dogs at the head of the group pulling the sleds in close formation, packing down the snow to make it easier for the humans to follow. Now they were more spread out. They walked for a few hours at a time, stragglers falling behind, the strongest forging ahead with wild intensity.

  Now, after the latest grueling hike, they were taking a break to rest and regroup. When Lulu and Eddie caught up to the others, their father handed them a snack.

  “This is it?” Eddie wailed. He stared at the small strip of salted meat in his hand. Lulu understood what he was feeling. She tried not to complain, but she knew how little that smidgen of meat would satisfy the gnawing hunger in her belly. She held her own small snack for a moment, willing herself to savor it and not gobble it down too fast to taste it. Which is exactly what she wanted to do.

  All of a sudden, she felt something whack at her hand and she dropped her strip of beef. She spun around to face her brother, completely fed up with his antics. “Eddie! Stop trying to steal my food! I’m just as hungry as you are!”

  The innocent look on his face appeared sincere for once. And he wasn’t even standing that close to her. Lulu looked down and saw Mizu munching away happily.

  “See, I didn’t do it!” Eddie said, validated.

  She was so sick of the situation she couldn’t even forgive her favorite dog just then, let alone acknowledge that her annoying brother had been right. Lulu crouched down and cradled her head in her arms. She tried to puff out her breath to warm the little nook s
he’d created. She just wanted to shut it all out — the eternal bickering with Eddie, the endless march. . . .

  Another nudge — this time more gentle.

  “What?” she said.

  “Here, take mine, Lu.” Eddie pushed his own food into her hand. Besides the small nibble he’d taken when he first got it, it was whole. Some stray strands of his brown hair had snuck out of his hat and lay frozen with sweat to his forehead. She did have to remind herself sometimes, but she was lucky to have her little brother here with her.

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks, though.” She straightened up, shaking out her limbs to get the stiffness out of them.

  “Well, let’s split it, then. Or I’ll feed mine to Mizu, too.” He dangled the meat out over the dog’s eager mouth. Drool stretched all the way from Mizu’s jaws to the snow.

  “All right, all right! Split it.”

  It seemed like only a minute later that they had to continue their walk.

  As they put foot after foot, Lulu tried to summon back the thrill she’d felt when the boat had first landed and she’d gotten her first glimpse of the polar landscape. But days of an all-white terrain searing itself into her eyeballs was making her feel jaded to the wonders of the Antarctic.

  There were times when, looking out into the distance, she couldn’t see the line that divided earth from sky. It was just total white bleeding into total white.

  Every day, too, the sun got lower and lower in the sky. It was March, the end of the summer down here in the Southern Hemisphere. So far, the sun had stayed above the horizon, creating an endless succession of never-ending days. But once the sun set, night would settle in for months. An entire season of darkness. Her father had told her that even if they didn’t complete their mission in time and the sun set, there would be a grace period: a brief time of twilight, when the direct sun was gone, but the light lingered on the land. Still, what heat there was would rapidly fade away, and then night would fall, bringing a cold so severe it barely compared to what they were already experiencing. Utter darkness, in a continent where every step was a potential trap, where the ground could give way at any moment to reveal a crevasse and a bone-breaking fall.

  Her father hadn’t said so, exactly, but Lulu understood that if they were still in Antarctica when the night began, they were doomed to die there.

  It was on their eighth day that the trouble began.

  They were only a few miles from where Scott’s tent was thought to be. Lulu’s father hoped to retrieve the notebook and begin their return trip by the end of the day. They were walking steadily when the man in front stopped suddenly and called to the group to halt. Lulu, just behind him, wasn’t sure why they’d stopped — they’d had a break only an hour earlier.

  Then she looked down at the earth and started shivering uncontrollably.

  The ground before them was like a giant labyrinth, a maze of cracks and sheer drops. From where they stood the vertical drops just looked like thin lines in the snow, but Lulu knew that from above the lines would show themselves to be gaps a foot or more wide. Sparkling ice arches bridged some of the crevasses.

  How wide was the crevasse field? Would they be able to get around it in time? The crew started talking quietly among themselves . . . as usual, leaving Lulu and Eddie out of their discussion. Lulu, however, thought she had an idea. She tried to nudge her way in next to her father, but he gave her a severe look.

  “Not now, Lu. This is serious. We need to figure out how far out of our way this will take us — how much time we’ll lose, and whether we can risk it. Let the adults speak, all right?”

  “Yes, but, Father —”

  “Did you hear me? Not. Now.”

  She couldn’t believe he would shut her out like that. As the trip had gone on, her father had become more and more withdrawn, as though his heart were freezing up in his chest.

  She tried to make allowances for him, though, because she knew he did care. She knew her quiet, solemn father well. The longer the trip went on, the greater the risk was. And her father was afraid that he’d taken his children into far too great a danger. She knew that losing their mother had almost broken him. He had to close off his heart in order to get through this ordeal.

  Lulu smoothed out Mizu’s fur while she waited for them to finish their huddled conversation. One of the men cautiously approached one of the ice bridges and made a careful study of its thickness and strength. He reported back to the group, prompting more urgent discussion. Finally, their father turned to fill Lulu and Eddie in.

  “The field is wide. The bridges are fairly strong, but we just don’t think they can hold the weight of our whole team, the animals, the sleds. . . . Though we’re very close to the camp, we’ll have to backtrack and find another way around.”

  “There is another way.” Lulu gathered her courage. “Why don’t you let Eddie and me go? We’re light. We can cross the crevasse field and get the notebook. We’ll be back in a matter of hours.”

  “Absolutely not —”

  “Father. It’s the best way. You know it is. And Eddie and I know what we’re doing by now — we’ve had just as much experience crossing the ice as the rest of you.”

  His face crumpled with worry and defeat, and Lulu knew it was settled. She and Eddie would be doing this alone. She just hoped her little brother wouldn’t play any stupid pranks while they were out there.

  Lulu gave Mizu a big hug and a special treat before they left. She couldn’t bring herself to say any kind of good-bye to her father — if she did, it would feel like they were saying good-bye forever. And Lulu was determined to make it back alive.

  Slowly, she and Eddie inched out onto the ice sheet, pushing one foot in front of the other, feeling out the ice for any weakness. Crossing the first ice bridge, Lulu thought for a moment that she might pass out. She could imagine the delicate bridge cracking, falling away below her, could picture hurtling down into the icy chasm. But Eddie’s voice broke her terror: “If you don’t keep moving, I’m going to start sneaking snacks out of your pack.”

  If he could be brave enough to joke, she could be brave enough to keep moving. Lulu slid her foot forward an inch, another inch, and shifted her weight. The bridge held. She kept moving.

  When they arrived at the other side, Lulu didn’t realize it. She was so focused on watching her feet feel their way across the bridges, on reaching for Eddie’s hand as he made a jump across a narrow chasm, on keeping her breathing from devolving into hyperventilation, that it took her a minute to realize that now she was just slowly shuffling across plain snow.

  They had made it!

  And there, ahead of them, was something totally eerie.

  Like ghostly footsteps from a backward world, there were raised columns thirty centimeters high, in the shape and size of large feet.

  Was there some kind of evil spirit that roamed the tundra and would now eat them for dinner? Lulu was still trying to decide how frightened to be when Eddie ran up to one of the columns and started whooping.

  “Lu, look at this. Do you know what they are?” She shook her head silently. “I read about this phenomenon.” (Since when did Eddie read about anything?) “When you walk in Antarctica, even though you don’t realize it, you compact the snow below your feet. Then, when a big wind storm comes, it blows away all the lighter snow around, leaving these raised footprints!”

  “So,” Lulu said, finally understanding, “what you’re saying is that these footprints were made by humans . . . walking in the same direction we are. . . .”

  Eddie nodded enthusiastically.

  “So,” she said again, still figuring it out, “these footprints were either made by Scott and his team, as they walked south —”

  “That’s right!” Eddie cried.

  “Or,” she continued, “by the SQ as they beat us to Scott’s tent.”

  Eddie’s jaw dropped. “There’
s no time to lose!”

  They took off running.

  Five minutes later, completely out of breath, they saw the tent.

  They slowed down, suddenly cautious.

  Lulu gestured to Eddie to wait outside. What if, as they feared, someone from the SQ was already inside? She moved as quietly as she could, opened the flap, and peered into the tent.

  A horrible shudder passed through Lulu’s body.

  They were safe — the tent was devoid of life — but she hadn’t prepared herself for the fact that they were guaranteed to find death. In the corner, wrapped in a sleeping bag, was the dead body of a man who could only be Robert Falcon Scott.

  They’d made it, but she felt far from victorious.

  The wasted life . . . the lonely end . . . this was a tragedy. And she wanted to get as far away from it as fast as she could. She had to keep Eddie from seeing the body, that was for sure. But more important . . . the notebook.

  “Wait there,” she whispered to Eddie. “Keep watch, and let me know right away if you see anyone approaching.”

  Lulu crept into the tent. The body had not decomposed — it was too cold for that — but there was still a terrible smell. Like something stale and wrong. She started on the far end of the tent, pushing aside blankets with the tip of her mitten, peeking inside bags. She didn’t see anything even resembling a notebook. Finally, when she realized there was no other option, she approached the body.

  Scott’s eyes were closed, his face a blank. But his right arm was thrown out over the edge of his sleeping bag, and under it was a small leather-bound journal. It was open.

  Lulu bent over. She could make out the last lines he’d written in a shaky script:

  It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. . . . For God’s sake look after our People and may history someday be corrected.