Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [84]
Great. One million, eight hundred and fifty thousand books contained the word ‘Antarctica’ in some way or another. That was no help.
Alison thought for a second. She’d need a narrower keyword, something a lot more specific. She got an idea. It was a long shot, perhaps a little too specific. But Alison thought it was worth a try anyway. She typed:
LATITUDE – 66.5° LONGITUDE 115° 20’ 12”
The computer whirred as it searched. This time the search didn’t take long at all. The results came up on the screen:
6 ENTRIES FOUND. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE A LIST?
‘You bet your ass I’d like to see a list,’ Alison said. She hit the ‘Y’ key for ‘Yes’ and a new screen appeared. On it was a list of book titles and their locations.
ALL-STATES LIBRARY DATABASE
SEARCH BY KEYWORD
SEARCH STRING USED: LATITUDE – 66.5°
LONGITUDE 115° 20’ 12”
NO. OF ENTRIES FOUND: 6
TITLE AUTHOR LOCATION YEAR
DOCTORAL THESIS LLEWELLYN, D.K. STANFORD, CT 1998
DOCTORAL THESIS AUSTIN, B.E. STANFORD, CT 1997
POST-DOCTORAL
THESIS
HENSLEIGH, S.T.
USC, CA
1997
FELLOWSHIP GRANT
RESEARCH PAPER
HENSLEIGH, B.M.
HARVARD, MA
1996
‘THE ICE CRUSADE –
REFLECTIONS ON A
YEAR SPENT IN
ANTARCTICA’
HENSLEIGH, B.M.
HARVARD, MA
AVAIL: AML 1995
PRELIMINARY
SURVEY WAITZKIN, C.M. LIBCONG 1978
* * *
Alison stared at the list.
Every one of these entries, in some way or another, mentioned Latitude –66.5 degrees and Longitude 115 degrees, 20 minutes and 12 seconds.
They were mainly university papers. None of the names meant anything to Alison: Llewellyn, Austin, and the two Hensleighs, S and B.
It looked like the latter Hensleigh – B.M. Hensleigh – had written a book on Antarctica. Alison looked at its location reference. It had been printed at Harvard University, but it was available at ‘AML’ – all major libraries.
Unlike all of the other entries – a collection of single issue, privately published theses – this Hensleigh guy’s book was widely available. Alison decided she’d check it out.
There was, however, one other entry that caught her attention.
The last one.
PRELIMINARY
SURVEY WAITZKIN, C.M. LIBCONG 1978
Alison frowned at the final entry. She checked a quick reference list that was affixed to the side of the computer monitor. It was a list of all of the abbreviations used in the database. Alison found ‘LibCong’.
‘Ah-ha,’ she said aloud.
‘LibCong’ stood for the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress was situated across the road from the Capitol Building, not far from Alison’s office.
Alison looked at the final entry again. She wondered what a preliminary survey was. She looked at the date of the entry.
1978.
Well, whatever it was, it was over twenty years old, so it was worth checking out.
Alison smiled as she hit the button marked ‘PRINT SCREEN’.
‘All right! Hoist her up!’ Book called.
Rebound and Snake pulled on the stabilising cables and Wilkes Ice Station’s battered radio antenna – a long black pole thirty feet high, with a blinking green beacon light at its tip – rose slowly into the air. The intermittent flash-flash of the green beacon light illuminated all of their faces.
‘How long do you think it will take?’ Schofield asked Book, yelling above the wind.
‘It won’t take us long to hoist it up, that’s the easy part,’ Book replied. ‘The hard part will be reconnecting all the radio wiring. We’ve got the power going again, but there’s still another fifteen or so radio wires to solder back together.’
‘Ballpark?’
‘Thirty minutes.’
‘Get to it.’
Shane Schofield trudged back down the entrance ramp of the station and headed inside. He had come back inside to check on two things: Abby Sinclair and Mother.
Abby met him on the A-deck catwalk. While Schofield and the others had been outside, she had been in the radio room looking at weather maps on the computer, trying to find a break in the solar flare.
‘Any luck?’ Schofield asked.
‘Depends on what you mean by luck,’ Abby said. ‘How soon did you want it?’
‘Soon.’
‘Then I’m afraid it’s not that good,’ Abby said. ‘By my calculations,