Spontoon Island
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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
4 April, 1937



Sunday April 4th, 1937

(Written later, from notes.)

Dear Diary: we wanted to find out what was really happening down here – and now we get to find out. Quite possibly we will find out more than is good for any fur to know.

    Yesterday evening Maria noticed the lists were being drawn up and put on the notice-board downstairs, with pencils and erasers handy. A quick discussion in Spontoonie followed – there were three aircraft parked on the snows outside, two of them having just arrived to take the furs on the excursion. The third we have been watching for the past three days heading out and back to the South, carrying supplies to whatever is down there.

    As long as we keep with the tour group we may get some good exercise, but there will be nothing much to tell Saimmi. We all agreed that we had to get away and yet make it look like an accident – which is where Maria’s plan came in.
 
    We waited till everyone else had signed, then I put us all down for the glacier trip. Maria came by a minute later and put us down to climb the Nunatak – we knew that different Guides were in charge of each excursion. This morning they each came to us separately and pointed out we had double booked – I apologised, rubbed our names out and assured him we would go with Maria’s suggestion – Maria did the opposite, and we vanished from both lists just as everyone was heading towards the aircraft. Both groups hopefully believed we were on the other excursion, leaving us free to go elsewhere.
 
    Getting aboard the third aircraft was a good test of our skills; we circled wide around it by quarter of a mile and came in from the side opposite the open cargo hatch keeping out of sight from the cockpit. Nobody seemed too concerned about security – and as far as Maria could translate the labels on the crates they were mostly food and fuel oil, nothing too liable to be stolen anywhere this side of Krupmark. I could not really see the tourists here sneaking in to purloin a crate of tinned sausages and beans when the cook (one would call him a chef d’hote but the Germans would probably be insulted at such a French term) serves up so much better food.

    As it happened the aircraft was almost loaded ready to depart, and after a few mail bags were thrown into the front the doors were locked and we heard the engines starting. In any other case we would have split up, some of us staying to alert the Authorities in case the others did not return – but considering who the Authorities are in Wotansberg, that is a fairly pointless idea. All for one and one for all, as Sophie D’Artagnan says. In fact we are in no more danger together than apart, and if the worst comes to the worst we have our skis and some days’ supply of food with us palmed from the breakfast tables. Having food along always increases one’s options, as we learnt early in our first year. The same is true of money, but around here there seems little opportunity to spend it.

    The insides of a cargo aircraft are not famous for having wonderful views out, especially if one has to hide behind crates and suchlike. They are decidedly unheated as well – and although we were well dressed in our ski outfits, as the aircraft climbed to altitude above the Antarctic Plateau we had to pack in tight together with our paws and ears jammed into the middle to keep from freezing. None of us had ever been in such cold – Molly says she was out once in thirty below and this is a lot colder – in fact it is about the only temperature where Centigrade and Fahrenheit agree. It is just as well the aircraft was about to depart; keeping still for a whole morning without freezing while supplies were loaded would probably have been beyond us.

    After three years of flying properly instrumented aircraft, from the feeling in my ears and the engine note I could get a rough idea of our flight; we topped fifteen thousand feet and were starting to get worried about oxygen (or the lack of it) when amidst some severe buffeting the aircraft started to descend an hour into the flight. Still, I doubt we had much to worry about on those grounds – the service ceiling of a JU 52 full of cargo is not much higher than fifteen thousand even in such dense cold air. The cold was quite another matter; it was quite painful to breathe even with layers of cloth around our muzzles to hold the heat from our breath and cut down telltale plumes of steam rising from behind the cargo should any of the crew look back. Even minor gaps have frigid air hosing through as if they were jets of ice water, and there were all too many minor gaps in the cargo hold. The only good thing was that the howling drafts dispersed the steam plume of our breath should any crew take it into their heads to look round at their cargo.

    An hour and ten minutes of flying as nearly due South as our compasses could tell (fortunately we know the Junkers is mostly aluminium and we were a fair way back from the ferrous mass of the engines) we touched down on a long, smooth plateau of mostly hard ice to judge from the landing. It was somewhat bone-shaking even so; the most elementary aircraft seats provide a lot of cushioning one takes for granted until the first landing without one. Definitely we were glad of the padded clothing as the plane skidded to a halt. Unlike a Vostok “Balalaika” the Junkers does not have reversible pitch props, and there are no brakes on aircraft skis.

    Of course, the next bit was always likely to be interesting. A good, bold approach is often the best – we were invited by Eva and her Uncle to look around the Antarctic, and nobody exactly told us there was any bit we must stay clear of. Certainly there were no “Do Not Trespass” signs around Wotansberg, though in most circumstances a hundred miles of mountain and snowfields does the job cheaper and without having to be translated into all languages. So as soon as the cargo doors were open we stood up, Maria thanked the open-mouthed pilot and co-pilot for a comfortable ride, and as if we owned the place we stepped out onto what we suddenly realised was a high shelf in the foothills the far side of those strange-visaged mountains.

    Looking round, in a few seconds we realised we were in an interesting situation. The mountains reared up behind us to an incredible height. We might have been at eight thousand feet just on the shelf (which bore a strange resemblance to an ancient lake shore, though there can never have been liquid water here for endless millennia) which would have made the main mountain range equal to anything in Tibet or the Andes.  Definitely these are not on any map we have ever seen - not only are we the first Songmark girls in Antarctica, but a wholly unknown part as well. Just above the fossil shore-like feature was a most peculiar collection of rock structures. They were half buried in ice but reminded me if anything of great blocks and pyramids eroded till only their barest outlines remained.

    The dozen furs lined up in front of the aircraft like an honour guard were another surprise. As was Herr Grubensdorf striding forwards to meet me, smiling alarmingly like Beryl does when she has sold a tourist a sheaf of worthless pre-revolution Russian bonds for face value plus commission. “Miss Bourne-Phipps and party, I presume”, he beamed as he shook my paw “we have been expecting you.”

    Well!

    Our reputation evidently precedes us. True, we had told Eva something of our adventures on Krupmark and elsewhere – Professor Schiller saw us in action on Cranium Island last Summer so there seemed no reason not to. Leaving a cargo aircraft standing within range of the tourist resort unlocked and unguarded was rather an open invitation, now I think about it. Further, it turns out from what he mentioned that the undercarriage legs on the JU52 have a jolly useful strain gauge letting the pilot know just how heavy the aircraft is before attempting takeoff.  An alert crew loading the cargo noticed that the weight had unexpectedly changed by a suitable weight for four people, and putting two and two together radioed ahead for a reception committee.

    A hundred yards from the smooth shelf was an obvious prefabricated hut sheathed in ice blocks with a heavily braced radio aerial lattice tower alongside. Herr Grubensdorf invited us in out of the cold - politely enough but we did not feel like arguing. None of the furs with him were armed that we could see, which at least was reassuring. Then, unlike the North Pole there are no ancestral hungry bears around Antarctica, only penguins. Despite what that “Even Weirder Tales” pulp magazine had on the front cover last month, I doubt we will meet any of the giant electrical penguins with the long stinging tendrils. Though we might well have quite sufficient to worry about here.

    From what we gathered, Professor Schiller is not here right now but he has forwarded quite a lot of information on us; of course he saw what we could do while retrieving the Cranium Island Fragment and evidently he has been keeping his ears perked up since then; possibly Kansas Smith told him about how we retrieved its complement from Krupmark. Folk seem unsurprised that we have “volunteered our services” as he suggested – quite probably had we kept with the tour group we would have had more opportunities to investigate dropped in our path until one of them tempted us down here.  Any other such group might have had a chillier reception, probably involving a crevasse and an “unfortunate accident.” Everyone on the holiday had to sign disclaimer forms anyway; this is simply not a safe part of the world.
 
    The hut was indeed nicely out of the wind, and as they removed their hoods I noted the rest of the Germans were mostly arctic foxes, snow hares and a sable in full Winter fur colouring despite it being just past Summer down here as far as that means anything. Herr G explained that they speak little English, although with a wink he noted that some understand languages less commonly spoken today.
 
    Anyway, it is not discouraging that they brought out about a gallon jug of steaming coffee – not to my tastes but it was hot and that was the main thing. Maria has always said the Germans make excellent coffee, which is odd as they scarcely have the climate to grow any (to be fair, there are few tea plantations in England either). In the Great War their “Coffee” was mostly roast chicory and acorns, Eva has told us, so they appreciate the real thing when they can get it. Herr G rubbed his paws gleefully and announced that his Director would be so pleased to see us, and hopes we will bring our unique viewpoint to some of their research problems.

    Maria asked cautiously as to what he was the Director of – at which Herr G looked somewhat pious and explained that the Thule Society had been officially disbanded three years ago, not that it had ever really existed outside the fevered imaginations of sensation-seeking journalists, probably Reds or Freemasons. He added that he had certainly not been a member of it since 1925, and that Eva Schiller must have been fibbing awfully when she claimed to know anything about it since it had no female initiates even in the outer circles. I doubt he is a spy whatever else he does – at any rate in the talkies, spies rarely wink broadly and spoil the whole effect like that.

    As his Director would not be available for some hours, Herr G asked if we would like a look at the site. Of course we agreed – having had our cover as tourists convincingly “blown”, not that it seemed to have ever convinced the authorities here, we had better take a look at what there was to see here. We are tourists in that respect. Molly seemed uncomfortable, as she has never had good experiences with the sort of thing our Warrior Priestess training arms us again – not only did she discover on Cranium Island that conventional guns are no use against such things, but having survived Krupmark last Solstice she knows to her disadvantage that only the blessing of Priestess Oharu on her weapon saved her. Neither are happy thoughts for Molly.

    After a second warming coffee we donned our mittens again and headed out into the cold. The sun was already setting behind the mountains and the sky seemed a very dark blue above us – far off to the North was a long, deep valley that we must have flown straight down as according to our compasses we had not circled before landing, and the descent would have been uncomfortably steep had we come in over the peaks. I revised my guess at our altitude; just walking on the level through the deep snow left us quite breathless despite our good level of fitness.  The valley has a pass some twenty miles away that does not seem particularly high above us; I first guessed we must be at least twelve thousand feet here, which means the peaks must be colossal.

    Looking around carefully I still got the impression that this had once been a lake shore, and for an incredible period of time. One sees similar wave-cut platforms at the seaside (the White Cliffs of Dover have quarter of a mile of flattened rock exposed at their foot at low tide, as once under the waves very little erosion occurs) but lakes are less energetic and it would have taken so very long – especially as the rock looks like hard basalt rather than chalk. But there were “steps” cutting up the level shelves running across the valley – from our prospecting lessons I realised with a shock that they were rock faults that much have opened after the shore and its buildings were here. Maria has mentioned there are ancient Greek and Roman remains that are now underwater, but the Mediterranean is far more geologically active than Antarctica is reputed to be. The sheer scale of time involved must be awesome. I doubt there is much point in looking for it in history books.

    The first cave entrance we were escorted into was a great triangular hole in the hillside, very much frost-shattered around the entrance. But there were electric lights glowing within on newly strung cables, and as we followed the group further away from the weather the walls became smoother – very smooth, in fact. I have been in smoothly water-worn caves before, but those have been rounded – no cave I have seen has had a geometrically sharp roof line cutting across all the rock layers without a single pothole or stalactite to show that water made it. A hundred paces from the entrance and we were walking down a straight passage of triangular section as regular as any Modernist railway station or air terminal. Arches are common enough but I have never seen any triangular tunnels before.

    I ventured that it was a nicely done piece of futurist architecture – I once saw a newsreel of the German Bauhaus project – but Herr G replied cryptically that they had found the entrance sealed with utterly solid ice to a depth of eighty metres, and that the oldest ice levels had included wood fragments and pollen layered as if they had been swept in with the first wave of unmelting snows from the remains of some final doomed boreal forest outside. If that is true, this might not be a 1920’s Bauhaus-inspired structure at all.

    Dear Diary: now I understand why Professor Schiller is here as an archaeologist. There was a junction with another corridor crossing at right angles, and on the walls there were – carvings. I have seen cryptic writings before (on Spontoon the pictographs left by the original inhabitants tell a terrifying story that we have just about learned to read) but  those were at least in a style that had echoes of others closer to home, having modern descendants used in everyday writings. Even the disturbing pictographs on temples hidden in the jungles of Mixteca seemed as familiar as chalk scribbles on a Barsetshire wall compared with these. There was no possibility of these being forgeries. I rather wish they had.

    There was little point in Helen and me keeping up any pretence, so as we stopped to look we opened up those skills Saimmi has taught us. Very cautiously at first – I sensed this might not be a good place to attract unwelcome attention. This was just as well – it was like striking a match to discover oneself in some abandoned Great War arms cache with leaking and corroded shells and demolition charges lying around on all sides. I could not really identify anything but I could see there was an awful lot of it – and that a lot of it seemed to be broken. One need not have the instruction manual of an item to spot jagged edges and trailing wires, and much of what I could feel seemed to be similarly incomplete.

    Five minutes later Herr G showed us a side-chamber brightly lit with floodlights, and the central area roped off. One could see why; there was a yawning pit two yards wide that went straight down out of sight. The electrical power was running more than the lights – surrounding the pit was one of those pre-war Electric Pentacles sitting on its gutta-percha base, its seven concentric layers of gas tubes spilling polychrome light out into the room.

    Well, I could see what they were trying to do. Helen could too, and as we concentrated with more than our eyes she shook her head and announced that it was really not going to work. Herr G sighed and nodded, explaining that they had lost some Researchers and guards here already – and that he would greatly value our input. But first he should talk to his Director, who would be arriving from a distant dig later on – in the meantime it would soon be Suppertime. An encouraging thought! Food is precious out here and furs are not likely to give us any if they think we are spies.

    (Later). It turns out the main “camp” for this expedition is safely underground in a nearby tunnel complex that is not remotely linked to the pit chamber – it felt empty to Helen and myself though we scanned it painstakingly. There was a great seven-sided chamber where Herr G introduced us to the rest of the team – about fifty of them. Maria confirmed that he was describing us to them as specialists who Professor Schiller had worked with before – which had mixed reactions. I could well imagine many furs would not be pleased to see effectively strangers turning up at their top-secret dig, however highly recommended.

    While we were shown to a table and were served up a rather fine spiced pork and noodle soup, there was a furious debate going on at the main table. Most of the researchers were in standard Polar gear but two were in Police or military-type uniforms, at least wearing the jackets under their outer rayon-fur layer. There was a grizzled hare in a sort of butternut coloured uniform with gold braid around the collar, arguing with a lean and hungry-looking greyhound in a rather newer-looking black outfit. By the time we had finished dessert (hot caramel pudding, and very nice too) the greyhound seemed to have won to judge by his opponent’s crested muzzle and dipping ears.

    Maria whispered in Spontoonie that we had both sorts of Party stalwarts here – the hare being from the original lot (now generally rather discredited) who were famous for starting parties in beer halls, and the greyhound being of a select bunch who started off as their Chancellor’s bodyguard but seem to be having rather a recruitment drive. I know back in England there are churches and palaces that have ceremonial main gates which are only thrown open for the Royal visits, but having a cadre of the Chancellor’s bodyguards in place and cooling their heels all the way down here might be the famous Teutonic thorough planning carried just a little too far. Unless of course one day they plan on having a State Visit; their Leader spent the Great War in the Alpenkorps after all and is no stranger to snow and ice. Maria has said he was a “Skifuhrer” before he was any other kind.

    Just then there was a commotion from the doorway and I heard various folk mention “Herr Direktor”. He came in with three evident assistants trailing behind carrying equipment, all brushing the snow off their outdoor suits – a trim grey boar with a duelling scar under one eye. With a rather sinking feeling I realised I had met him before – indeed, rather more than that.

    I recall very well one of those fine parties Lars threw, the night before we went off to Vostok the winter before last. I met Ritter Leopold von Schtroumphenberg then, and as they say, visited another cabin on the Ark. Very happily at the time, and until today I had not regretted it in the slightest – though I have never been able to look at a corkscrew or drill bit in quite the same way again. Fortunately that was when I was being Kim-Anh Soosay, that long evening being one of her earliest adventurous outings. So Herr Direktor would hopefully remember that name and fur pattern, not me under my own name let alone as Lady Allworthy. At least, I hope so – and I hope he does not have that perfect recall of scents that some talented folk have! That could prove rather embarrassing.

    I took the chance to whisper to Molly if she recognised him – she shook her head, as it is a year and a half ago and she was equally busy elsewhere at that party. It is just as well we are heavily dressed even indoors, which rather restricts one’s scent from getting out. Boars rank almost along with canines on having excellent scenting powers.

    Indeed, that was put to the test when Herr G and the greyhound stood up and went over to their Director, gesturing towards us and talking in German at a great rate of knots. I saw his eyebrow raise and he cast a keen gaze over us. Hearing the words “nach Songmark, in der Spontoon Inseln” hopefully would not remind him too much of a certain evening there – although for all I know he might be a regular visitor passing through there with many such encounters to cloud his memory since then. Still, I could tell my ears were blushing as we were waved over and introduced to him – by reputation Adventuresses are tough as nails and rarely blush. It is surprising how many … details one had forgotten, that surface when given such a reminder.

    Still, all seemed well – though he looked at us all searchingly I doubt he recognised me. Kim-Anh was wearing rather different clothing on Spontoon and rather less of it even to begin with, although it was December. We were welcomed, and everyone seemed to assume we had come here specifically to help out. What have Eva and Professor Schiller been telling them?

    We were shown to an empty dormitory all to ourselves with a bolt on the door inside, evidently used but quite well aired. A tiring day indeed, and not one we expected. Still, it is one thing to quietly explore Krupmark or even Cranium Island – there are jungles and woods to hide in and observe from. Anyone stuck outside a tent or building in this climate will be frozen by morning and Polar equipment is bulky and hard to hide, as is anyone wearing it. If we are to find out exactly what is going on here – this is the only way, rather than trying to infiltrate. Though we seem to have been given an official introduction, I expect anyone found sneaking around outside would be treated as a spy and ejected – probably into the nearest crevasse.


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