3 Snowy search

Chapter Three SNOWY SEARCH "Do you have the coordinates Dr. Anderson gave you, Kiki?" asked Connor. Kiki adjusted her gloves and put her hands on the handlebars. "I've got coordinates for the research centre and Dr. Mikkelsen's tracker data. I've already input everything into our GPS," she said. "We've got to find the doctor first. Ready to go, Beagle?"

The Beagle beeped as Kiki pressed the "START" button and turned the throttle. She maneuvered the snowmobile around in a half-circle until they were facing down the sloping ice shelf. Then she gunned the engine. The Beagle sped smoothly down the slope and out into the snowy wilderness that lay all around. The wind buffeted her face, but Kiki was warm and cozy in her thick layers of thermal clothing.

Dr. Mikkelsen's signal led them east. After a short distance, Kiki saw a set of snowmobile tracks carved into the snow ahead of them. "Those must be her tracks. We should be able to follow them right to her," she said, pointing them out to Connor. "But what if it's someone else?" Connor asked. Kiki raised her eyebrows. "Unlikely!" she said with a grin. "I haven't seen a single other person out here."

Connor laughed. "I guess there aren't that many people hanging around the Arctic," he agreed. They sped on, following Dr. Mikkelsen's snowmobile tracks. The light was bright against the snow, even with the gray skies overhead. Kiki had no idea snow could cover everything so completely. It softened the edges of the land and blurred the horizon, wrapping the world in a huge, fluffy blanket.

The incredible landscape was a lot more varied than she had expected, too. There were broken plateaus of ice, as well as flat plains, and she had to steer the Beagle around several large, craggy outcroppings. On the horizon lay a range of mountains, which Kiki guessed were parts of frozen islands. The ice looked bluer in some places than others, and she instinctively avoided those. Even though she'd never seen snow, or stepped on ice before, it wasn't hard to figure out that in those blue patches, the ice was thinner and less stable. "Watch out for that crevasse!" Connor called over her shoulder through the biting Arctic wind. He pointed at a great long gash in the ice to the west, where the icy sides were sheer and a deep, dark blue. "We don't want to fall in and end up in the sea underneath!"

The Beagle skimmed across the vast whiteness, carving up the snow ahead of them and leaving caterpillar tracks behind. The tracks from Dr. Mikkelsen's snowmobile stretched ahead of them, clear and deep.