Vostok

by Steve Alten

  I unscrewed the lead cap and popped out the device, careful not to handle the octagonal-shaped plutonium unit. Stretching out the telescopic antenna, I plunged the pole’s spiked end into the earth and snow, twisting it back and forth like a beach umbrella to deepen the hole before filling it in. After testing the stability of the pole, I powered on the sensory device.

  Other than a reassuring hum, nothing happened. And nothing will until all three sensors are working and the array is established, dumb-ass.

  I was taking another reading from the magnetometer when Ben emerged from the fog. He was sucking in lungfuls of air, on the verge of hyperventilating. “This… is… batshit crazy. Ming… you okay?”

  She shook her hooded head no.

  I pulled Ben aside. “Ming’s close to hypothermia. The way I see it, we have three choices. We can leave her here while we plant the other two devices, in which case her core temperature will continue to drop and she’ll probably die before we make it back to the sub, or we can send her back to the sub now while we plant the other two devices.”

  “What’s the last option?”

  “The three of us head back to the sub now and tell the Colonel to go fuck himself.”

  Ben gazed at the mountaintop. “Ordinarily I’d vote for the last option, but there are ramifications. Whatever’s out here, it’s been generating incredible gobs of energy for fifteen million years, which means the three of us are standing on top of the single most powerful thing in the solar system, besides the sun. Agreed?”

  “No, but go on.”

  “My point is that an operation with a payoff this big is strictly black ops, which makes our Colonel Vacendak, at the very least, a Skunkworks engineer or, worse, a MAJESTIC-12 senior officer. Either way, if Vacendak suspects that we know what’s really down here, you and I just became expendable. I’m not talking dishonorable-discharge-with-an-extended-stay-in-a-mental-asylum expendable. We’ll simply disappear, and Vacendak will inform our next-of-kin we died in Vostok.”

  I felt lightheaded. “So what do we do?”

  “We have to plant the other two devices, otherwise the Colonel won’t take us to the extraction point. Send Ming back to the sub, and you and I play it dumb. There was just a mountain covered by snow. We planted the devices and left.”

  “No big deal. That’s all there is as far as I can tell.”

  He nodded toward the summit. “Look closely. Hidden beneath all that ice and snow is the mast of an extraterrestrial vessel.”

  I looked, but all I could see was volcanic rock covered by snow.

  He’s obsessed. Don’t argue. It’s minus thirty degrees and Ming’s dying. Humor him, plant the devices, and get the hell out of here.

  “I’ll get Ming started back down.” He unclipped his rope from his harness.

  “Ben, wait. Maybe you and I shouldn’t split up. It might be safer if we hit the remaining two sites together.”

  “According to the GPS, the remaining targets are three kilometers from here. Roundtrip, that’s just under a four-mile hike for each of us, plus the return trip back down the slope. If we did it together, we’d end up having to circle the entire base of the mountain, doubling our journey. That equates to an extra hour or more in this cold. All things being equal, I’d rather get the job done sooner alone than face freezing to death in pairs.”

  “And if one of us gets back here first? Do we wait for the other guy before we head back down, or do we meet at the sub?”

  “We wait. Let’s say fifteen minutes. If the other guy doesn’t show up by then, we’ll meet at the sub.” He held out a gloved hand. “See you back here in thirty minutes.”

  “Or less.” We shook on it; then he was off, setting a quick pace to the east.

  I returned to Ming, detaching the two climbing ropes from her harness. “Ming, you can’t stay out here. Do you have the strength to make it back down to the sub on your own?”

  She nodded and stood. “Getting down is far easier than climbing.”

  I coiled one of the two lengths of rope, shoving it inside her backpack. “Follow our tracks; they’ll take you right to the sub.”

  She offered me a pained smile and a thumbs-up; then she set off.

  I coiled my rope and stowed it in my backpack as I watched Ming head slowly toward the fog bank. Then I climbed to the base of the mountain and headed west.

  Mountain. Not alien spaceship.

  As intriguing and believable as Captain Benjamin Hintzmann’s close encounter stories had been, once one removed the storyteller’s embellishments I knew there was a reasonable explanation for everything.

  The same could be said about Lake Vostok’s extreme variations in pressure. Magnetic anomalies in Antarctica were far from unusual, and an asteroid impact in a volcanically active region would yield a powerful magnetic resonance. As far as I was concerned, establishing a sensory array around an impact zone was standard operating procedure.

  No, what concerned me wasn’t the Colonel, it was Ben. The captain’s behavior was anything but S.O.P. for a former member of the U.S. Armed Forces. Pilots simply didn’t abandon their wingmen to turn the mission into a race. They stuck together against the elements, even if it meant walking a few extra miles in extreme weather conditions.

  Yet Ben had not only preferred to separate, he’d seemed eager to go off on his own.

  He thinks there’s a spaceship down here, and he means to prove it to the world. Maybe he’ll find an entrance inside. He’ll snap a few hundred photos with his iPhone and send them off to Steven Greer and the rest of the E.T. screwballs in hopes of reclaiming his career.

  The sudden realization of Ben’s circumstances gave me pause.

  He’s a lot like I was. After the Sargasso Sea incident, my career was in serious jeopardy. When Angus tricked me into testifying at his trial, and the Inverness judge practically stripped me in court to reveal scars from a childhood attack on Loch Ness, my name was reduced to a punchline on late-night television. All my hard work and field research as a marine biologist—down the drain. My reputation was destroyed, my career in ruins. In the end, I had done exactly what Ben was attempting to do now: prove to the world he was right.

  Feeling like the world’s biggest hypocrite, I picked up my pace.

  Twenty minutes passed. I had managed to forge a path as close to the base of the mountain as possible, taking advantage of the patches of exposed rock, but as I neared the area targeted on my GPS I was forced to move farther out, exposing myself to snow drifts and unseen crevasses. I was shivering badly, and my resolve was weakening.

  The designated site was another thirty feet or so down a steep embankment. I stared at the spot.

  Ten more paces across virgin snow. Three minutes max to set up the sensory device.

  The air was thick and static, the snow muffling all sound. I remained motionless, listening to my rapid breaths, my life reduced to the emerald-green boundaries within my goggles.

  I was hesitant. I was afraid.

  What if the snow was over my head? What if I couldn’t make it back up the hill?

  Remembering the rope, I retraced my steps up the embankment to a cluster of boulders located at the base of the mountain, the smallest of which outweighed me by a solid ton. Removing the nylon rope from my backpack, I tied off one end around the nearest boulder and clipped the free end to the belt around my waist.

  Feeling more confident, I backed down the hill, moving beyond my own tracks as I watched the GPS screen in my gloved hand.

  I was chest-deep in snow when the target finder finally blinked green.

  Working quickly, I freed the sensory device from its lead case, extended the support pole to its maximum length, and tomahawked the antenna into the snow drift so that only the octagonal sensor was showing.

  I powered up the unit. Feeling a bit dizzy from the high oxygen content, I paused to rest while the sensory array triangulated.

  I gazed overhead as the ice sheet rumbled like an approaching storm. Inching its wa
y east toward Prydz Bay, the thirteen-thousand-foot-thick cap of packed snow was a living entity that affected the entire planet. For fifteen million years its weight had been held in check by an unseen magnetic source, and in the battle for supremacy, the resultant equilibrium had carved out a neutral zone where life had continued to flourish. Even now, the weight of the glacier was squeezing billions of gas particles of oxygen and nitrogen into the lake just so its trapped inhabitants could breathe.

  Breathe.

  Breathe, Zachary, breathe!

  “Huh?” I raised my face out of the snow and gasped a breath.

  Something had happened! Why couldn’t I see?

  For a terrifying moment I thought I had gone blind. Then I realized I had lost my night-vision goggles. A horrible pain radiated from my chest, the tightness clenching me beneath both armpits.

  I was spinning, dangling from the rope in complete darkness. Reaching out, I brushed a rock face. That’s when I realized what had happened—I had fallen into a crevasse.

  How deep was the fissure?

  Without my night-vision goggles, I couldn’t see my own two hands in front of my face.

  Cold, scared, and disoriented, I did the only thing I could: I climbed.

  Using the rope for support, I walked my way up the rock face using my spiked boots. The rope was eighty feet long, but half its length remained topside so it only took me a few minutes to reach the ledge.

  Sensing a change in the air current, I pulled myself out of the crevasse and onto my heaving chest.

  For a desperate moment, I blindly felt along the snow for my goggles. Remembering the flashlight, I felt for its cord and powered on the light.

  The beacon cut a narrow swath through the darkness. The crevasse at my back ran north-south, cutting a jagged eight- to ten-foot-wide gap fifty feet or so below the base of the mountain. The rift appeared to have swallowed the sensory device—and me with it.

  Why had it opened? Could the sensory array have triggered it?

  I shone the light down its gullet. The walls of the crevasse descended four or five stories, ending in a pile of snow.

  Aiming the beacon ahead of me, I searched again for my goggles. Tracing the impression my body had left as I slid into the crevasse led me to them, the snow around them streaked with blood.

  Touching a gloved finger to my running nose, I realized I was bleeding from both nostrils. Using my scarf, I wiped the goggles clean and put them on, then pinched my nose to stop the bleeding.

  The crevasse appeared to circle the base of the mountain. A fog had formed, generated by the warm air escaping from the rift. The mist was so thick that my light couldn’t penetrate it, but the sound did.

  The growl was guttural, a predatory snarl that snapped my head around.

  Heart pounding in my chest, I stared at the wall of fog that separated the edge of the crevasse where I now stood from the base of the mountain. I heard the animal’s clawed feet moving over the rocks as it approached. I sensed its enormity as its front paws crushed snow. It was tracking my scent, drawn to my blood.

  Cold sweat beads dripped down my face. I reached for the climbing axe resting by my right thigh and gripped its handle in both gloved hands.

  Batter up, Zach. Just like hitting a fastball.

  The next sound that came was a bloodcurdling cry, accompanied by quick strides through the snow that backed me toward the crevasse.

  I saw the beast charge out of the mist—

  And jumped!

  I don’t know how far I fell. All I know is that one minute I was falling feet-first and then I jerked to halt as something large and musky and covered in fur hurtled past me, howling as it clawed at the sheer vertical walls of the rift.

  I heard it hit the ground below, the impact followed by a second and more solid whump, which drove the air from its lungs and the life from its body. Its death silenced the fissure, save from my own strained wheezing.

  Reaching out, I managed to dig my spikes into a ledge, relieving the stress of the noose around my upper body. Still gripping the flashlight, I aimed its beam below.

  The animal had struck the bottom of the chasm and had broken through to an immense cavern running below the crevasse. Even more bizarre, the hole it had opened up was radiating light. I removed my night-vision goggles, the luminescence appearing violet.

  Reaching for the GPS instrument in my jacket pocket, I set the device to take Geiger readings and held it out, fearful of radiation.

  The needle never moved.

  Had it not been for that mysterious vein of light, I would have climbed out of the fissure and set off for the rendezvous point.

  But why rush back? Hadn’t I come to Vostok seeking knowledge about our past, looking for undiscovered life-forms? I was in no immediate danger. Vostok Command was certainly monitoring my vital signs through the sensory junctions of my ECU jumpsuit. And the Colonel wouldn’t allow Ben to leave without me.

  Climb down, take a quick look, and then leave.

  I looked up, inspecting the interior of the crevasse through my night-vision goggles. The rift narrowed considerably to my left, enough so that I could wedge my body between the two walls and free climb up using my axe and cleats. That was important, as I might need the rope to climb out of the cavern. That meant climbing out of the crevasse, freeing the rope, and climbing back down to explore the subterranean opening, a chore that exhausted me just thinking about it.

  Climb out and reevaluate.

  I plunged the spiked end of the axe into the rock wall and, using my cleats, squeezed my way up the narrower section of the chasm, testing my climbing abilities. With a bit more effort than I’d anticipated, I reached the top and pulled myself over the ledge, breathing hard. My quads had done the brunt of the work, and my legs were shaking with the effort.

  Surrounded by the dense fog, I was also vulnerable to another attack.

  Shyte or git aft the toilet, Wallace.

  Using the blade of the axe, I sliced through the last forty feet of rope, leaving the rest intact to ascend the embankment. Gathering up the line, I shoved it in my pack and eased myself feet-first over the ledge of the fissure.

  Going down proved far easier than climbing up, and within ten minutes I was standing about fifty feet below the surface. Lying on my belly by the edge of the seven-foot-long hole, I removed my goggles and ducked my head inside. It was a vast ice tunnel, its walls perfectly circular and radiating blue.

  Blue? I thought it was violet? Had the color changed, or was it my perspective?

  My first impression of the cavern tagged it as an ancient lava tube that most likely led to the base of the mountain, an extinct volcano.

  I estimated the drop from the bottom of the crevasse to the bottom of the ice tunnel to be thirty feet. Getting down was easy, getting up would be a bitch. The rope wasn’t exactly the kind I had been forced to climb as a teen in gym class, and bundled in extreme weather gear, already exhausted, left me with a nightmarish thought of being stranded in a damn ice tunnel.

  Having already cursed my own stupidity back in the sub when we nearly suffocated, I thought was why risk it?

  But what about that blue glow?

  Triboluminescence is a geological feature of both sphalerite and tremolite. Friction applied to these two minerals actually causes the rocks to glow. It was certainly feasible that the lava tunnel was composed of one or both of these minerals, and that the blue hue was simply caused by the surrounding ice thawing and refreezing, something that had occurred God knows how many times since Vostok had been sealed.

  Satisfied with my game of cause and effect, I stood to begin my ascent when the tunnel’s luminosity changed from its blue hue to emerald green.

  Dumbfounded, I knelt by the hole and looked inside again. There was no mistaking it, the color had changed.

  Lucky bastard… looks like you’re going in.

  Removing the rope from my backpack, I tied a grapefruit-sized knot at one end and then wedged the ball inside one of t
he narrow gaps chiseled into the bottom of the rift. I tested it and the anchor passed. Still hesitant, I tied another eight knots in the rope to give myself something to grip during my climb.

  Satisfied I could negotiate the climb, I dropped the line into the ice tunnel. It came up short, but it was a manageable reach.

  Grabbing hold of the first knot down, I lowered myself through the hole, climbing down hand over hand like I used to do in tenth-grade phys. ed. So intent was I on not falling that I only took in my surroundings once my spiked boots hit bottom.

  The curved tunnel walls dwarfed me. One end ran south in the direction of the bay, the other north toward the mountain.

  Two paces to my right was the dead animal.

  It was four-legged and gruesome. Half the size of a bear, it had thick reddish-brown grizzly fur but was more dog-like in its appearance, with canine teeth that stretched outside its jowls, a long rodent-like tail, and limbs designed for lumbered sprints through the deep snow.

  I confirmed its identity as an Amphicyonid, an extinct species of bear-dog. It was an apex killer during the Miocene. The males were bigger and nastier than the females, and this one must have weighed between two and three hundred pounds.

  Ignoring the urge to check its sex, I gazed from one end of the luminescent-green tunnel to the other. Maybe it was fatigue, maybe it was the high oxygen content, but choosing a direction seemed a mental chore I hadn’t the strength to complete. So, I yelled out, “Which way, José?”

  The tunnel to the north brightened from green to light green to yellow.

  What? It’s communicating with me using the colors of the electromagnetic spectrum.

  Stepping over the dead predator, I headed down the northern section of the shaft, feeling lightheaded and a bit like Alice as she made her way into the rabbit hole. Of course, Alice’s rabbit hadn’t tried to bite her head off.

  I had walked about a hundred yards when the light changed from yellow to orange.

  AUDIO ENTRY: FINLAY MACDONALD