"Eve, if you can hear us, try to make as much noise as possible!" said Kira. "Whatever you do, don't let yourself break into a sweat! If you already have from your skiing… try to dry off underneath your layers if you have any way to do so."
The tension and worry Jove heard in his mother's voice made him sick to his stomach. He was already moving, trying to get a sense of where Eve might have been when she fell, or crashed, or whatever had happened to her.
Large and cumbersome as it was, he brought the snow rake with him, along with the crowbar. Ryan's belated warning about the danger of crevasses seemed as relevant to a skier as it did a snowmobiler. He felt genuinely nauseous as he thought about what the situation might be if she'd fallen into a deep one, how long she'd have, what her last moments in the cold might feel like.
"Eve!" he shouted. "Eve!"
The swirling wind and snow had such a dampening effect on sound that he could barely hear his own bellowing. He tried to listen — she'd be shouting, too. Was that the edge of her scream he was hearing or just the sharpness of the whipping wind?
He had the forethought to look down. The wind was resetting the topography of the snow at regular intervals, but it still took time. The dual tracks of a pair of skis would be distinctive enough to be visible in places lucky enough to have been spared the full brunt of Antarctic exposure.
There. A double dash looking like an equal sign. She'd skied by that exact spot, but in which direction? He tuned out the sounds of his mother and Aster worriedly discussing the situation and continuing to try to hail Eve, useless as it was. Would Eve have skied around the station clockwise or counterclockwise? Did it even matter if she'd done more than one lap?
"Eve!" He took several breaths of ruthlessly cold air and shouted his sister's name with every ounce of his voice. "Eve!"
He heard something this time, a faint shout he might have missed if not for the sound of something clacking rhythmically in its wake. He stood where he was for a moment to orient himself to where he suspected it was coming from. It was impossible to be totally sure with the wind playing tricks on his ears, but it seemed to line up with the way the ski tracks were pointing.
He sprinted forward, bolstered by the way the noise grew louder as he did. Rushing was a mistake and he forced himself to slow down. It was one of the smartest things he could remember having done in recent history, as the crevasse which had apparently swallowed his sister seemed to appear in front of him without warning.
"Eve!" he said, coughing a little from the cold. "Mom! Aster! I found her. She's… in a crevasse."
His relief and excitement immediately shifted to horror as he dropped down to his knees to peer down at her. Eve was standing upright, skis carefully leaned against one wall of the narrow crevasse, arms wrapped around herself as she shivered uncontrollably. Sections of her hair were clumped and frozen with ice. She winced and looked away as a spray of snow fell into her face, knocked loose by Jove's eagerness to get a better view.
"Jove," she said, through chattering teeth. "I'm… really cold. Go get a ladder! Quick!"
"I don't know if there is one, but I brought this!"
He extended the snow rake down, feeling exquisitely justified in his decision to bring it along with him. The feeling evaporated as Eve took hold of the end and made an attempt at climbing up it.
The snow rake was constructed of thin plastic to allow it to be long enough to clear the solar panels without being prohibitively heavy. The sections connected in a telescoping manner, and as Eve tried to scurry up the length of it, it immediately bent at a worrying angle. She tried to keep going, and the next section slid completely free, rending the snow rake in two useless halves.
"Fuck." Eve let out a disappointed cry and kicked the crevasse's ice wall. "Get a rope, maybe? Hurry."
"Mom? Aster?" he shouted into the headset. "Can you bring a rope?"
"Jove, I don't know where you are!" said Kira. "Try to get a sense of your surroundings."
He still barely had any idea himself. Eve didn't have time for him to wander around to figure it out. She looked cold and he suspected hypothermia would set in unreasonably fast on the planet's most southern continent.
"I might be able to reach you if I anchor my feet," he said.
He also still had the crowbar with him. He took and found a spot to wedge it into the ice at an angle. Laying down, he could just hook one of his feet underneath it in just such a way to keep his body from sliding. The ground was unfathomably cold underneath him, but he forced himself to ignore it.
Jove trusted his weight to the crowbar as he began leaning out over the crevasse, extending his hand as far down as it would reach. Eve was still well out of reach. She tried jumping and grabbing, but the added height still wasn't enough.
"Could we use one of your skis?" he suggested.
"There's nothing to grab onto, but maybe."
Eve threw both skis up and out of the crevasse, followed by both poles. The poles were more promising, and he gave one of them a try, reaching Eve with it. Unfortunately, the bottom end didn't have anything to hold onto and regardless of who held it, it slipped loose when Eve put her weight on it.
"I'm… going to try my jacket instead," said Jove.
"What did you just say, Jove?" asked his mother. "Try what with your jacket? Jove?"
"What are you wearing underneath it?" asked Eve.
"Doesn't matter, this will only take a second," he said.
He would have liked for it to have not mattered, but even as he unzipped his thick and newly purchased winter coat, his body screamed that it did. It really, really did. He had on a long sleeve shirt, but it offered as much insulation as a thin layer of plastic wrap in a freezer.
The cold seeped into him as he resumed his previous posture, laying flat on his stomach, extending his arms down with the jacket's sleeve tightly held. Eve took a step back, and then rushed at the crevasse's wall, scampering up a few steps before getting a grip on the jacket's other sleeve.
By some miracle, she kept her grip. The jacket seemed on the verge of tearing, but took the force remarkably well. Jove gritted his teeth and began pulling her up, though Eve quickly found toeholds to kick her boots in to make the process a little easier.
He heard something then that made no sense. It sounded like someone was moving behind him, rushing through the snow. He assumed it was his aunt or mother, finally arriving to offer their help. But no, the sound was way too fast, too heavy on the snow, and it circled them once.
His mind jumped to terror fantasies of polar bears and wolves before his logical side pointed out that they were close to the south pole, not the north. There were no large predators native to the south pole. The fact should have been comforting, but as something circled him a third time with unnerving focus and speed, his entire body went tight with tension.
"There!" Eve got one hand over the crevasse's lip.
Jove seized her by the elbow and yanked her up the rest of the way. He fell half onto her as she collapsed onto the snow next to him. She looked at him strangely and then shook him by the shoulders with rough force, like she was trying to get the attention for some reason.
"Did you see that before?" He spun around searching for whatever had been circling him, making impossible noises. Eve yanked his shoulder back around.
"What are you doing?" he asked, or tried to ask.
The words came out all funny, his mouth numbed by cold. Eve seized his arm and stuffed it back into his jacket, and Jove belatedly made the connection between the situation and the danger they were still in.
"Is Eve still alright?" asked his mother over the headset. "Jove? What's going on?"
"We're on our way back," he managed, teeth chattering. He looked around once more. The snow was still gusting, and he couldn't see a damn thing.
Eve helped him to his feet. They hooked their arms together, just as he and Aster had earlier. He noted that her other arm was loaded up with her skis and ski poles.
"Really?" he said. "Do you need to bring them inside now?"
"And lose them forever if they get covered by snow?" she said, indignant. "These might well be the last pair of skis and ski poles I ever have access to."
He laughed, but she sounded deadly serious.