The Rock From Mars Read Online Free
Author: Kathy Sawyer
was lucky to escape with only minor burns on his hands.
Schutt also impressed on the novices the need to treat the crevasses with respect. Where the mountain ranges or other features obstructed the progress of the ice, the resistance forced these deep, treacherous cracks in the sheet—cracks big enough to swallow a hapless snowmobile or much worse. Schutt had seen one near disaster, when a team member pulling a very heavily loaded sledge tried to cross a crevasse via a snow bridge that had been weakened by several other people proceeding ahead of him. Visibility was poor. The sledge broke through and fell into the chasm. The man just managed to pull it back out before it could suck him down.
In many of the meteorite-stranding fields, the relentless winds had hardened the snow into the consistency of concrete, Schutt explained, and these hardened bridges were usually sturdy enough to allow a safe crossing. But you had to watch out for soft spots. The options for dealing with that sinking feeling, when a crevasse opened beneath you, were covered pointedly in a field manual: “Experience and circumstance will dictate whether to brake . . . or continue driving forward in hopes of getting across. . . . In either case, a change of underwear is recommended.”
Score trusted Schutt absolutely. As part of the training, she and the others followed him single file out into treacherous terrain near McMurdo, where each member of the hunt team, in turn, was lowered into a crevasse. Each was then “rescued” by the others. When Score’s turn came, she descended with complete assurance.
In general, Schutt advised his charges to cultivate a healthy, controlled fear of frostbite, snow blindness, hypothermia, tent fires, flying, and injury. As Ralph Harvey, another expert meteorite hunter, remarked, “It promotes awareness and points out the true killer of Antarctica: rationalization.”
By early December, the team was packed and ready to leave the relative comforts of McMurdo. It took seven helicopters to carry all of them and their equipment into the field. And they had picked a hellish day for it. As they disembarked at their destination on the heavily crevassed ice sheet, they found themselves standing in a cutting thirty-five-mile-an-hour wind. As they watched the last of their chopper taxis disappear, Score felt overwhelmed with a sudden sense of being absolutely, utterly alone.
The feeling, at least in her case, passed. The scouring wind and the biting cold, after all, were what had brought her here. She had work to do.
It was the paradox of the meteorite hunter. The wind and the cold that made the Antarctic so brutally forbidding were crucial to the success of the enterprise. This was the secret that Bill Cassidy and others had figured out, thereby handing the meteorite hounds a gift beyond price. The reason had nothing to do with the rate at which meteorites fell in this place. Earth, rotating on its axis daily as it traveled around the sun yearly, encountered a steady rain of space debris over its entire surface—a relatively uniform distribution over time, as far as anyone knew.
Cassidy and the others had deciphered the action of a majestic natural conveyor belt: over many millennia, meteorites that fell here would get buried under falling snow; that snow would get buried under yet more snow, and so on, and so on. The pressure of the accumulated weight turned the snow to ice, entombing the fallen stones. Powered by gravity, this glacial raisin cake of meteorites would creep slowly but relentlessly overland from the 13,000-foot elevation at Dome Argus, near the center of the continent. It would advance at the proverbial glacial pace of perhaps four feet (1.2 meters) each year—toward the edges of the landmass. When it reached this shore, some of it calved off into the Southern Ocean and was lost. Where this slow flow was forced through narrower passages, it accelerated. In some places, though, the flow was blocked by a
Schutt also impressed on the novices the need to treat the crevasses with respect. Where the mountain ranges or other features obstructed the progress of the ice, the resistance forced these deep, treacherous cracks in the sheet—cracks big enough to swallow a hapless snowmobile or much worse. Schutt had seen one near disaster, when a team member pulling a very heavily loaded sledge tried to cross a crevasse via a snow bridge that had been weakened by several other people proceeding ahead of him. Visibility was poor. The sledge broke through and fell into the chasm. The man just managed to pull it back out before it could suck him down.
In many of the meteorite-stranding fields, the relentless winds had hardened the snow into the consistency of concrete, Schutt explained, and these hardened bridges were usually sturdy enough to allow a safe crossing. But you had to watch out for soft spots. The options for dealing with that sinking feeling, when a crevasse opened beneath you, were covered pointedly in a field manual: “Experience and circumstance will dictate whether to brake . . . or continue driving forward in hopes of getting across. . . . In either case, a change of underwear is recommended.”
Score trusted Schutt absolutely. As part of the training, she and the others followed him single file out into treacherous terrain near McMurdo, where each member of the hunt team, in turn, was lowered into a crevasse. Each was then “rescued” by the others. When Score’s turn came, she descended with complete assurance.
In general, Schutt advised his charges to cultivate a healthy, controlled fear of frostbite, snow blindness, hypothermia, tent fires, flying, and injury. As Ralph Harvey, another expert meteorite hunter, remarked, “It promotes awareness and points out the true killer of Antarctica: rationalization.”
By early December, the team was packed and ready to leave the relative comforts of McMurdo. It took seven helicopters to carry all of them and their equipment into the field. And they had picked a hellish day for it. As they disembarked at their destination on the heavily crevassed ice sheet, they found themselves standing in a cutting thirty-five-mile-an-hour wind. As they watched the last of their chopper taxis disappear, Score felt overwhelmed with a sudden sense of being absolutely, utterly alone.
The feeling, at least in her case, passed. The scouring wind and the biting cold, after all, were what had brought her here. She had work to do.
It was the paradox of the meteorite hunter. The wind and the cold that made the Antarctic so brutally forbidding were crucial to the success of the enterprise. This was the secret that Bill Cassidy and others had figured out, thereby handing the meteorite hounds a gift beyond price. The reason had nothing to do with the rate at which meteorites fell in this place. Earth, rotating on its axis daily as it traveled around the sun yearly, encountered a steady rain of space debris over its entire surface—a relatively uniform distribution over time, as far as anyone knew.
Cassidy and the others had deciphered the action of a majestic natural conveyor belt: over many millennia, meteorites that fell here would get buried under falling snow; that snow would get buried under yet more snow, and so on, and so on. The pressure of the accumulated weight turned the snow to ice, entombing the fallen stones. Powered by gravity, this glacial raisin cake of meteorites would creep slowly but relentlessly overland from the 13,000-foot elevation at Dome Argus, near the center of the continent. It would advance at the proverbial glacial pace of perhaps four feet (1.2 meters) each year—toward the edges of the landmass. When it reached this shore, some of it calved off into the Southern Ocean and was lost. Where this slow flow was forced through narrower passages, it accelerated. In some places, though, the flow was blocked by a
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