"Don't tell the oil companies," Maeve said with a thin smile. "Or the whales will become extinct before next Christmas."
One woman asked for the vial and sniffed it. "Can it be used as cooking oil?"
"Yes indeed," Maeve answered. "The Japanese are particularly fond of whale oil for cooking and margarine. In fact the old whalers used to dip their biscuits in saltwater and then fry them in the bubbling blubber. I tried it once and found it to have an interesting if slightly bland taste--"
Maeve was abruptly cut off by the scream of an elderly woman who frantically clutched the sides of her head. Six other people followed suit, the women crying out, the men groaning.
Maeve ran from one to the other, stunned at the look of intense pain in their eyes. "What is it?" she shouted. "What's wrong? Can I help you?"
Then suddenly it was her turn. A daggerlike thrust of pain plunged into her brain, and her heart began to pound erratically. Instinctively her hands pressed her temples. She stared dazedly at the excursion members. Through the hypnotic spell of agony and terror, all their eyes seemed to be bulging from their sockets. Then she was struck by a tidal wave of dizziness rapidly followed by great nausea. She fought an overwhelming urge to vomit, before losing all balance and falling down.
No one could understand what was happening. The air became heavy and hard to breathe. The beams of the flashlights took on an unearthly bluish glow. There was no vibration, no shaking of the earth, and yet dust began to swirl inside the cavern. The only sounds were the screams of the tormented.
They began to sag and fall to the ground around Maeve. With horrified disbelief she found herself immersed in disorientation, caught in the grip of a crazy nightmare where her body was turning itself inside out.
One moment people stared at death from an unknown source. Then inexplicably, an instant later, the excruciating agony and vertigo began to ease. As quickly as it had come on, it faded and disappeared.
Maeve felt exhausted to her bones. She leaned weakly against the cask of whale oil, eyes closed, vastly relieved at being free of pain.
No one found the voice to speak for nearly two minutes. Finally, a man, who was cradling his stunned wife in his arms, looked up at Maeve. "What in God's name was that?"
Maeve slowly shook her head. "I don't know," she answered dully.
With great effort she made the rounds, greatly cheered at finding everyone still alive. They all appeared to be recovering with no lingering effects. Maeve was thankful that none of the more elderly had suffered permanent damage, especially heart attacks.
"Please wait here and rest while I check the two ladies at the entrance of the tunnel and contact the ship."
They were a good group, she thought. None questioned or blamed her for the unexplained event.
They immediately began comforting each other, the younger ones helping the more elderly to restful positions. They watched as she swung open the massive door and walked through the portal until the beam of her flashlight vanished around a curve in the tunnel.
As soon as Maeve reached daylight again, she couldn't help wondering if it had all been a hallucination.
The sea was still calm and blue. The sun had risen a little higher in a cloudless sky. And the two ladies who had preferred to remain in the open air were lying sprawled on their stomachs, each clutching at nearby rocks as if trying to keep from being torn away by some unseen force.
She bent down and tried to shake them awake but stiffened in horror when she saw the sightless eyes and the gaping mouths. Each had lost the contents of her stomach. They were dead, their skin already turning a dark purplish-blue.
Maeve ran down to the Zodiac, which was still sitting with its bow pulled onto the shoreline. The crewman who had brought them ashore was also lifeless, the same appalling expression on his face, with the same skin color. In numbed shock, Maeve lifted her portable communicator and began transmitting.
"Polar Queen, this is land expedition one. We have an emergency. Please answer immediately. Over."
There was no reply.
She tried again and again to raise the ship. Her only response was silence. It was as if Polar Queen and her crew, and passengers had never existed.
January is midsummer in Antarctica, and days are long with only an hour or two of twilight.
Temperatures on the peninsula can reach as high as fifteen degrees Celsius (fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit), but since the tour group had come ashore it had dropped to freezing. At the scheduled time for the Polar Queen to return there was neither word nor sign of her.
Maeve continued her futile attempts to make contact every half hour until eleven o'clock in the evening.
As the polar sun dipped toward the horizon, she stopped hailing on the ship's channel to conserve the transmitter's batteries. The portable radio's range was limited to ten kilometers, and no other ship or passing aircraft was within five hundred kilometers of picking up her calls for help. The nearest source of relief was the Argentinean research station on the other end of the island, but unless freak atmospheric conditions stretched her signals, they would not have received them either. In frustration, she gave up and planned to try again later.
Where was the ship and crew? she wondered constantly. Was it possible they had encountered the same murderous phenomenon and suffered harm? She did not wish to dwell on pessimistic thoughts. For the time being she and her party were secure. But without food or bedding for warmth, she did not see how they could hold out very long. A few days at most. The ages of her excursion group were on the high side. The youngest couple were in their late sixties, while the rest ranged through the seventies to the oldest, a woman of eighty-three who wanted a taste of adventure before she went into a nursing home. A sense of hopelessness welled inside Maeve.
She noted with no small apprehension that dark clouds were beginning to drift in across the sea from the west, the vanguard of the storm that First Officer Trevor Haynes had warned Maeve to expect. She had enough experience with south polar weather conditions to know that coastal storms would be accompanied by fierce winds and blinding sleet. Little or no snow would fall. Debilitating windchill would be the primary danger, Maeve finally gave up hope of seeing the ship anytime soon and began to plan for the worst by making preparations for the excursion members to bed down for the next ten hours.
The still-standing huts and rendering shed were pretty well open to the elements. The roofs had caved in long ago, and high winds had broken the few windows as well as carrying off the doors. She decided her group would stand a better chance of surviving the bitter cold and life threatening wind by remaining in the cavern. A fire using a stack of weathered lumber at the whaling station was a possibility, but it would have to be placed near the entrance. Farther back in the cave, and the smoke could cause asphyxiation.