Excerpt from 72 Below Zero by Vladimir Sanin, translated from Russian
In early April, day is already scarcely distinguishable from night, but twilight proper was yet to come. Outlines of the vehicles and the numbers painted on their steel sides and doors were quite visible, as well as cisterns and sledges.
As usual during stops, when the snow was rather packed, prime movers were driven close to each other and lined up in a row, and in the middle of it there was Kharkovchanka, shockingly huge, towering like a shepherd among his herd. Voyagers’ lifesaver, their beloved Kharkovchanka, serial number 21. This giant snow-desert cruiser is the pride and beauty of Antarctic transport. Short of thirty-five tonnes of metal was put into the vehicle by Kharkov tractor plant workers. A million thanks to them for this priceless gift. Ten feet tall, a prime mover would dwarf any tractor, but itself is a far cry from Kharkovchanka! One enters her as an aircraft, via stairs, and her driver has as many instruments as a pilot does, and on the left side of her roof there is a transparent cupola equipped with an astrocompass, nicknamed ‘planetarium’ by voyagers. The driver’s cabin and the navigator’s corner, the radio room, the lounge aka sleeping room, the lavatory, the cookroom – everything and the kitchen sink fit in few square feet, but in the vehicle proper rather than in some prefabricated sledge trailer.
Kharkovchanka is voyagers’ anchor and lifeline, their insurance policy. Prime movers may stall or break down, but Kharkovchanka will keep going, will shelter and save everyone, will bring them home. She alone is capable of that, owing to her power, size and complete self-sufficiency.
***
Two hundred and thirty miles to go, and one hundred and fifty of them is the road without road – sastrugi. The natural wonder of unspeakable beauty – enjoyable, perhaps, in a movie. Scientists explain them through the laws of aerodynamics: here downslope winds from the South Pole always blow in one direction and, like a sculptor with a chisel, carve out sastrugi, whose sharp edges point towards Mirny. A fat walrus of a sastruga can reach twenty feet long and five feet high. There is no escape from them, no bypass: sastrugi, like antitank teeth, speckle the whole dome. Like it or not, a crawler has to creep onto a sastruga, crush its sharp edge and thud down.
The vehicle plummets so that soul is shaken out of body, and then the seven-tonne sledge catches up and pushes on. Teeth clash together, the head seems to tear off the neck unstoppably – bam, the chin hits the knees, and stars explode across one’s vision like Bengal lights.
No room for surprises had been left, every item in the vehicle had been fastened, but after nosediving from a five-foot sastruga a suitcase leaped out from under the bunk, hopping like a living creature. Once the suitcase was tamed, a guitar fell down from wall, singing with all its seven strings.
***
Nowhere on the ice dome does machinery suffer as much as in this wretched zone: track plates crack, hinge pins break, steel spiders creak and drawbars cramp. After all, prime movers also feel pain when they’re tossed; they also have the nervous system, which revolts when humiliated. The heavy-duty artillery prime mover is no dumb steel ingot, but аn intelligent living machine, so humans have to stop for hours to persuade it, console it and heal it – and longer in the sastrugi zone than anywhere else.
To add insult to injury, one has to drive slowly in the sastrugi zone, always in first gear, never in second.
Three miles per hour is quite good, and twenty miles per leg is a great deal of luck.
Now and then sastrugi disappear for two hundred yards, but usually they turn up every ten to fifteen yards and in some places back-to-back, like sea waves.
Kharkovchanka suffers most: she is the first to crush sastrugi down; the prime movers trail the mother ship in single file, and they suffer a lighter fall. Voyagers’ hearts are heavy about Kharkovchanka. They would wish her to go last, but, alas, the navigator is there, so she must blaze the route.