Black Ice by Matt Dickinson

take a lot to change that.’
    â€˜How about you? You still got a soft spot for your childhood hero?’
    â€˜I think his heart’s in the right place, but I think he’s losing the plot. This Antarctic expedition is a case in point: he’s bitten off more than he can handle, and now it’s us—and Capricorn—that’s having to bail him out at the cost of precious time and resources.’
    â€˜How many survivors do you think we’ll be taking back?’ Sean asked.
    â€˜Depends on what happened with the plane. If it crashed on takeoff with the two explorers on board, we could come back empty-handed.’
    â€˜I pray they’re all still alive.’
    â€˜Me too, Sean. And if we can save them, we will.’
    Lauren and Sean brewed up a final cup of chocolate and fell silent as they drank it, lost in their own thoughts as they listened to the wind ripping at the outer shell of the tent.

23
    Now the mountains were before them, revealed suddenly as the clouds parted in a rare moment of calm. Sean and Lauren paused as they drank in the scene, awestruck at the imposing ramparts of the Heilman range soaring many thousands of feet out of the glacier. The peaks were sharp, the frost-shattered rocks jutting like the shoots of early spring flowers from beds of winter ice, stark black towers competing side by side for prominence.
    â€˜These are brutal when you see them close up,’ Sean told Lauren, deeply impressed by the untamed beauty of the craggy peaks.
    â€˜Depends on your definition of “close”,’ she told him. ‘By my reckoning they’re still fifteen miles away.’
    â€˜How many of these have been climbed?’
    Lauren laughed. ‘As far as I know, not a single one has ever been attempted, let alone climbed.’
    â€˜Seriously?’ Sean was astounded to think that so many tempting summits could remain untouched. ‘But how many people have been here?’
    â€˜This region is hardly researched,’ Lauren told him. ‘It’s only been mapped by satellite, and I can’t think of a single scientific expedition which has come out here. What you have to remember about Antarctica is that there are literally hundreds of mountain ranges like this … some are the size of the Alps, and most of them are virtually unexplored.’
    â€˜But Fitzgerald and his buddy must have passed this way?’
    â€˜Sure. And they’d have crossed the range on the shortest route. You don’t do a single metre more distance than you have to when you’re on foot out here.’
    Lauren pulled her map from her windsuit pocket and folded it to the relevant section.
    â€˜We got two choices here,’ she told Sean. ‘We can continue parallel to the range for another eighty miles or so and sneak round the far end onto the glacier. Or we can tackle it head on and save a few hours.’
    â€˜I say we go for it,’ Sean told her after he’d scanned the route with the binoculars. ‘That pass doesn’t look like it’ll give us any major problems. It’ll be much more interesting to cross the range,’ he added. ‘All this flat terrain can get a little dull, don’t you think?’
    Lauren smiled. ‘OK. We’ll go for it. But don’t forget we have to put down the first depot before we hit the mountains.’
    Just after three p.m., Sean checked his milometer and gave his snowmobile a burst of speed to catch up with Lauren.
    â€˜That’s a hundred miles since we left the base,’ he called over as she slowed. ‘This would be a good place, on that tall sastrugi.’
    Lauren considered the terrain. ‘You’re right. Not much in the way of landmarks around here, so we might as well make it as high as possible.’
    They silenced the engines and untied the first of the emergency barrels from the back of Lauren’s sledge. They rolled it to the top of the sastrugi