Last Gasp

Steady now, take it easy, he warned himself. Whatever it is that's out there--if anything'sout there--it's survived till now. Steadying himself, he sucked in long deep gulps of air. He'd look bloody foolish if he were found dead within fifty feet of the entry ramp.

A little over ten minutes later, pacing himself, he came in sight of the sled after skirting an outcrop of sheer glistening ice, thrust upward by the immense pressure. The team of eight dogs was, quite literally, on its last legs. That explained why he hadn't heard them barking. They were too exhausted to do anything except sag in their harness straps and pant weakly.

Chase leaned over the sled and with an effort pulled back the stiffened canvas sheet. It cracked like breaking timber. A shapeless mound of ice-encrusted furs concealed the body of a man. His head was sunk deep in a cavity of fur. He was heavily bearded and blackened by the sun. Dark goggles, the old-fashioned type, with tiny circular lenses, covered the eyesockets.

Dead--must be, Chase reckoned and then saw the blistered lips move. That was incredible. The man had come out of nowhere, appeared from a thousand miles of icy wilderness, and incredibly he was alive.

The wedge of light sliced through it as if the blackness itself were a tangible substance. Wielding the heavy battery of arc lamps, Chase swam deeper. He was the searcher, Nick the collector. Above them the lid of ice, forty feet thick, sealed them in, with just one tiny aperture between them and a freezing watery tomb.

No wonder Nick had grumbled and cursed. "For Christ's sake, are you a masochist or what, Gav? No, I get it, a bloody sadist, that's what you are. Nick Power thinks the tour's over, no more work to be done, so I'll show the bastard. Make him suffer."

Except that Chase didn't think of it as suffering. He rather enjoyed it, as a matter of fact. He saw himself suspended, a tiny fragment of warm life, on top of the world (top, bottom--in an astronomical context they were interchangeable), with everyone and everything else beneath him. All the continents and oceans and cities and the whole of mankind way down there. It was a wonderful feeling; it quickened his pulse just imagining it.

At 130 feet he swung the battery of lamps around. Nick hadn't a clue what to catch; he merely followed the wedge of light and swooped when Chase gave the signal. It could look a bit ridiculous, swooping at nothing, and Chase grinned behind the full-face mask at Nick's apparently pointless pantomime. They were after microscopic plants and it was good luck more than judgment if they happened to snare the ones

Chase wanted. He chose what seemed a likely spot, just above the ocean floor, and hoped for the best.

Nick turned toward him, his faceplate flashing like a golden coin in the milky light. The net trailed after him, a long swirling cocoon. He'd closed the neck, Chase saw, and was gesturing upward. He'd had enough. Probably the cold was starting to seep through his insulated suit. Chase could feel a creeping numbness in his own feet. If you ignored it--it wasn't painful--you felt fine until you got back to the surface and began to thaw out. Then you were racked with the most excruciating agony and you might find all your toes had dropped off. So any kind of pain was preferable to a lack of sensation, especially in the extremities.

Chase gave a thumbs-up in the cone of light, indicating they were done. Nick kept on gesturing, his movements sluggish, dreamlike. What was the clown playing at?

Chase kicked with his flippered feet and swam nearer. Nick's eyes bulged at him through the faceplate. Again he pointed, but this time Chase realized that it was a frantic gesture over his shoulder toward his double cylinders. Something the matter with his air supply.

It was difficult, trying to maneuver the awkward battery of lights with one hand while he spun Nick around with the other. Around them the blackness was total, just a speck of light in countless cubic feet of freezing water.

The first cylinder was empty; its gauge registered zero. The second cylinder should have cut in automatically, but hadn't, and Chase saw why. The exposed brass feed pipe was flecked with ice. The valve had frozen, and Nick was eking out his existence on what little remained in the first tank. At 130 feet that meant an ascent lasting several minutes --much too long for Nick to survive. And Chase couldn't feed him from his own mouthpiece. Air supply and mask were an integral unit, and to remove your mask in these waters meant the cold would strike needles into your skull and kill you with the shock.

For several seconds Chase's mind was locked in paralysis. Nick had only a few gasps of air left. Even if he managed to get him to the surface .alive, the lack of oxygen would cause irreparable brain damage, turn him into a human cabbage. The Antarctic was an implacable enemy. Relax your guard for even one instant and it would exact the full penalty. Negligence was death.

Heat.