The lights faded as the sled roared around a distant curve. Peter crouched down to watch Brian's departure.
With a final thumbs-up, Brian shoved the throttle forward. He engaged the throttle, the engine's roar echoing off the walls, doubling and tripling decibel levels. Like a boy on a toboggan, Brian sprawled belly down on the sled, head pointing toward the mouth of the tunnel. Only the motorized sleds made transport from cavern to cavern possible through the wormholes. He hated those "wormholes," as the troop had nicknamed the smooth undulating passages, with diameters so small that a man could barely crawl through them. "You've got a five-minute break until I return." "I'm going to proceed to the relay," Brian said, pulling a transport sled into position at the lip of the tunnel. He shivered, wondering if hell had a doorway. It seemed to go straight to the bottom of the world. He leaned over the edge and pointed his light down the crevice. Since he'd arrived three months ago, he had learned a healthy respect for these honeycombed caverns. Slipping past the black slit, Peter eyed it suspiciously. "Hey, watch your step there," Brian said, pointing his light at a crevice in the cavern floor. Peter grabbed his lantern and clicked it on, spearing the cavern with a blade of light, and followed. We've got three more relays to calibrate before the end of this shift." He loosened his hand lantern from the transport motorcycle. "If you quit thinkin' about it, it wouldn't be so bad," Lieutenant Brian Flattery replied. Damned blizzard up top and hotter than a hooker's snatch down here." He dreamed of the fridge in his bunkroom stocked with a case of Coors. Two miles below Mount Erebus, through glacier, permafrost, and granite, Private Peter Wombley wiped sweat from his eyes. Nothing lived on the surface, except for grimy patches of yellow lichen, far older than any of the men stationed at McMurdo Base.
BLUE ICE ENCASED THE CONTINENT FROM HORIZON TO horizon, scoured to a gritty shine by gale-force winds ripping shards across the frozen landscape.
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