Attacked Beneath Antarctica

by Dave Robinson

  “You're right.” Gilly strapped himself into the engineering chair, and started flipping switches. A few moments later, he punched a big red button. A faint rumble echoed through the airship as the engines turned over. Vic automatically reached out to feather the propellers, only to see the controls move by themselves. She glanced to the other seat, and Doc had replaced Ming.

  “Time to go.” Doc fastened his own seatbelt. “You should buckle up.”

  “Buckle up?” Vic cocked her head. “I thought this was supposed to be nice and smooth in flight.”

  “It is, but safety first.”

  “Safety first?” Vic laughed. “Where's the fun in that?”

  “Just buckle up.”

  “Yes Doc.” She turned away to hide her smile. Vic couldn't wait to take control. Doc was going to find out just how useful his seat belts were.

  As usual, Doc's touch on the controls was that strange blend of gentle but mechanical that Vic never wanted to duplicate. It was like he had some kind of barrier in his head, that he didn't ever truly connect with the machine. She shrugged, it wasn't her problem.

  Vic blinked against the glare as the huge doors in front of the airship inched open, revealing a line of sunlight. As she watched, the doors opened wide, revealing first the field and then the fluttering wind sock at the far end. Doc eased the throttles forward, keeping the propellers feathered as the RPMs climbed. By the time the doors had opened, all twelve engines were up to cruising RPM. Doc nudged the pitch forward, and the ship ambled towards the opening at less than a walking pace.

  With the calm morning, they were able to glide out onto the field without trouble under the airship's own power. “Good thing it's a calm day,” Vic said. “I'd hate to fight the wind in something this size.”

  Gilly leaned forward and pointed over her shoulder. “Tractor.”

  “He's carrying a tractor on an airship?” Vic raised an eyebrow.

  “I thought it might come in handy in bad weather, or where there are no ground crews available,” Doc threw in. “This ship was designed to be as self-contained as possible. It can cruise for up to two weeks without refueling, and there's a generator to supply internal power and heat for up to a month.”

  “So did you build this ship to visit Antarctica?” Ming asked.

  “No, I was going to look for a better route through the Northwest Passage,” Doc explained, as Gilly met Vic's eyes. She had to fight to keep a straight face as the North Carolinian rolled his eyes. They had all heard this kind of thing before; sometimes Doc just couldn't pass up a chance to lecture.

  “So you're saying it was designed for the cold?” Ming asked from her perch at the back of the cabin.

  “Exactly.” Doc's eyes stayed forward as he adjusted the airship's lift factor.

  New York state fell away behind them as they arced south and west towards Antarctica.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Iceward Bound

  Vic stretched her neck, hearing the joints crack. Even on an airship, four days of piloting eight and four were no fun, especially in the blackness of the southern night. Lights stabbed out ahead and below, illuminating the heaving waves. There were just enough whitecaps to show the direction of the wind, and Vic took another look at the gyrocompass to be sure of her heading. At least the ship handled easily, although she wasn't fond of crosswinds.

  “Are we there yet?” Gilly broke the silence.

  Vic snapped her head back. “What?”

  “Are we there yet?” Gilly repeated, a twinkle in his eye. “We don't have any children in the back seat, so I figured I'd ask for them.”

  Vic sighed. “Actually, we should be crossing the coast any time.” She pointed toward the chart table. “If we've navigated right that chart says we'll come ashore in the Vestfold hills within the next hour.”

  Gilly shivered, and then shook his head.

  “Are you cold? I can turn up the heat.” She reached toward the thermostat.

  “No.” Gilly shook his head. “I just felt that I had to come up here. Not sure why.”

  Just then, Vic caught a glimpse of snow below them, and pulled back on the pitch controls. “I think we've found it.”

  The ground beneath them was rocky and covered with a faint dusting of snow that shone in the airship's lights. Breakers crashed on the shore as Vic put the nose of the airship into the wind, and then throttled back to hold their position over the coast. At five hundred feet, Vic was able to keep the airship steady at a little over one-tenth power. Even with the lights, it was hard to get a good view of the ground below. All she could see was a mix of rock and snow, sometimes hidden by the mist.

  “If we made our predicted landfall, we should be about twenty or thirty miles short of where Hansen was going to set up his base camp,” Vic muttered.

  Gilly sat at the radio station, and started to work the controls, while Vic slowly moved the pitch levers upward. The airship surged forward, picking up speed with the inevitability of a battleship. The numbers crept up on the indicator, finally settling at about forty knots indicated, though with the headwind Vic expected the ground speed was closer to twenty-five or maybe thirty.

  That was twenty or thirty miles an hour at first. As they followed the coastline, the wind speed kept rising, forcing Vic to increase power to compensate. It wasn't much at first, but after a few miles she was getting up to half power and not sure at all if they could make it the rest of the way up the coast.

  “Do you see it yet?” She asked Gilly, straining her eyes into the blackness ahead.

  “Not yet.”

  Ten minutes later, Vic was wrestling with the controls of an airship for the first time in her life. The engines were all at full throttle, and the wind was high enough she'd had to dial back the lift to keep from climbing out of sight of the ground. Wind howled outside the windows, setting the whole skin vibrating.

  Finally, they crested a hill and the wind dropped away as if it had never been.

  Vic threw the engines to full lift mode, and dialed the lift back up to compensate for the lack of aerodynamic pressure. Meanwhile, the airship shot forwards and downward, heading straight for a ship moored in the protected anchorage that had just appeared in front of them.

  Everything was black except the beams of their lights, but it was enough to get Vic's heart beating. Low buildings flashed by under moving lights, and then the ship came back into view. Moored close in, it lay low in the water like a black cloud; three masts stabbed upwards, the yards coated with rime that flashed in the searchlights.

  Vic bit her lip as she fought the controls. An insensate machine was not going to beat her, not in the light or the darkness. She pulled back on the yoke, fighting the nose up as her almost one-thousand-foot steed careered toward the ship floating like a caltrop in the water. “Doc forgot the rockets,” she muttered, throwing all her strength into the controls as if trying to lift the whole airship on her own. “Come on, come on, come on.”

  The airship shuddered, but responded, and the altimeter started slowly counting upwards, five feet, then ten, then twenty. Were they going to make it? Vic stomped a pedal and rolled ship, leaning almost thirty degrees to port. “I want rockets, dammit!”

  Wood scraped along the window in front of her as she barely touched the mainmast of the ship below them. The topmast held for a moment, and then shattered, sending splinters of wood shooting off into the darkness. The whole cockpit creaked as the remainder of the mast scraped along the side of the nacelle before vanishing behind and below them. All twelve engines howled, as Vic threw caution to the wind and shoved the boost lever all the way forward.

  Two minutes later they had leveled off at two thousand feet, station keeping just above the low buildings Vic had spotted moments before.

  “What was that?” Gus broke into the control cabin, his tie flapping around his neck and fur peeking out from his open collar. “You almost spilled my brandy!”

  Vic met his eyes and smiled brightly. “We found Hansen's base ca
mp.”

  “You did?” Gus grumbled, slowly reaching up to adjust his tie with surprisingly delicate fingers.

  Moments later, Doc and Ming came through the hatch almost bouncing off each other. He was fully dressed in khakis and a clean white shirt, while she was clutching her silk nightgown closed. She was the first to speak. “Are you all right?”

  “I'm fine,” Vic answered. “I promise.”

  Doc walked over and looked out a window, all his attention apparently on the gloom beneath them. “What happened?”

  “I was fighting a fifty-knot headwind that just stopped the moment we crossed the crest of the hill,” Vic explained. “I was at full power with the lift dialed down, and a second later I needed less power and more lift.” She stuck out her chin. “This thing really needs rockets.”

  “The weight and fuel consumption didn't seem worthwhile given the intended use.” Doc pursed his lips. “I didn't design her with aerobatics in mind. This is a scientific research platform, not a barnstormer.”

  “It should have been both.” Vic grinned. “It would have been more fun to fly that way.” Was it even possible to do a loop in an airship? Probably not. “Anyway, now that you're all here, well except Kehla, I think it's time to put her on the ground.”

  “And we should see if you did any damage to Hansen's ship.” Gus glared at Vic. “I heard that sound.”

  “It was just a topmast,” Gilly broke in. “I'm sure he has spares.”

  “You may be sure,” Gus muttered, “but I'm not.”

  “Let's land and take it from there,” Doc said. “There isn't much more we can do from up here.”

  Vic threw a mock salute, and dialed down the lift settings.

  #

  Doc was the first one on the ground, the snow crunching under his feet. The airship's lights cast long shadows across the rocky surface, interrupted by the low huts of the Hansen expedition. He pulled his muffler across his face, making sure that none of his skin was exposed to the biting cold. At minus fifteen with no wind chill, even he was uncomfortable. Moving forward, he took a few moments to examine the situation.

  The airship behind him glowed in the spillover from the searchlights that slowly traversed the rocky terrain. Not for the first time, Doc wished he had better night vision, or at least some of the Archonate's vision devices. He smiled to himself, maybe that was something worth inventing.

  Hansen's barque rocked gently in the anchorage, the mainmast noticeably shorter than the other two. Despite the damage, there was no reaction from either the ship or the shore. They were going to have to go on board later and see what they could do to repair it, Doc thought.

  “Is it always this dark?” Gilly's voice was distinctive enough to stand out, even if he hadn't been the only other one over six feet.

  “In winter?” Doc replied. “At this latitude there should be precisely zero hours of daylight during the month of June.”

  “I meant at Hansen's base camp, not the season.” Gilly waved an arm from the ship to the buildings. “Wouldn't there be some light from one of the buildings?”

  “Not necessarily, anywhere the light could get out, the cold could get in.”

  “True, enough.” Gilly started towards the nearest hut. “I want to get out of the cold.”

  Doc didn't say anything, but led the way towards the huts. They were prefabricated units, assembled from pieces Hansen's group had brought from the states. Each one was triple-walled and heavily insulated to deal with the harsh Antarctic winter night. There were no windows; a door at one end, and a chimney at the other were the only visible openings.

  As Doc and Gilly made their way towards the Hansen's huts, the others spread out to explore the terrain. Vic and Ming headed down towards the shore while Gus and Kehla moved towards the outskirts of the camp. The lights of the airship shone brightly behind them but it wasn't long before Doc and his team began to pull out their flashlights. Wisps of snow glistened in the light, moving slowly in the calm air.

  The four huts were arranged in a semicircle, with all the doors facing each other. Doc led Gilly towards the center where the huts came together. It was a good arrangement, Hansen and his team were sheltered from the wind and the huts were close enough together to make passing from one to the other in the cold Antarctic winter a snap. As they got closer bought Doc lowered his muffler and took a tentative sniff of the cold air. The dry air burned in his sinuses carrying with it the very faint hint of ozone.

  “Do you smell anything?” Doc asked Gilly, who was just a few feet behind him.

  “No, should I?” Gilly replied.

  “It's fifteen degrees below zero, you would think they'd have a stove going.”

  Gilly nodded, the movement almost completely hidden by his heavy parka. “Yeah, I'd be freezing in there without a stove.”

  The ground underneath their feet had smoothed out. Someone had obviously taken the time to clear it before the weather got too cold. Doc's flashlight beam played across the front of one of the huts and Gilly gasped. The door was open, with a small drift of snow leading into the darkness. Three quick steps took Doc to the center of the huts, where he found four open doors leading into empty blackness.

  “What the hell?” Gilly came up behind him.

  “It appears that we're too late.” Doc aimed the beam of his flashlight through the doorway to his right. The inner door was open too, revealing shadowed shapes in the darkness beyond. “Stay here.”

  Leaving Gilly behind, Doc ducked through the doorway shining his light from side to side. The first room was an empty antechamber, probably used to keep the heat in when someone had to go out. There was nothing on the walls but a set of hooks on one side and a bench on the other. Doc stepped slowly through the doorway into the main room. It was about fifteen feet long and eight wide. Six bunks flanked a table three on each side. There was a heavy iron stove in the middle of the back wall, a full bucket of coal beside it. A small table on the other side held an assortment of pots and pans. The stove door was open, the ashes inside showing that the fire had burned out peacefully.

  Turning back to the table, he saw six plates stacked neatly in the corner. All the beds were empty, clear of both bodies and bedding. This hut had clearly been a bunk room, but just as clearly wasn't one anymore. It had been abandoned.

  Doc turned back towards the door and called out to Gilly, “This one looks empty, can you check out the others?”

  “Whatever you say,” Gilly said from outside.

  Doc spent a few more minutes going through the room. It had been stripped almost completely bare; the only thing that surprised Doc was the presence of the kitchen utensils. Everything else was gone except for the mattresses. There were no bodies, no clothing, not even a pair of boots. To all intents and purposes, it was as if the room had never been used. The table was clean, made from heavy planks. It had been sanded clean, and the only thing that stood out with a single word: “lake.” Written in a crude hand, the letters had been driven deeply into the wood, perhaps with a carpenter's pencil. Nothing else caught Doc's attention, so he made his way out of the hut.

  The hut directly across from him looked like it had been used for storage. Both doors were open, and he could see stacks of boxes and crates filling the back room. He'd have to check that one out later, for now he was more interested in any evidence Hansen might have left behind. Gilly's flashlight provided a glow from the hut to his right, so Doc turned his attention to the door beside the supply hut. This turned out to be just another bunk room, left in the same condition as the first one. The kitchen utensils were stacked just as neatly, there was no other sign of occupation; the only real difference was that there was nothing carved into the table.

  Less than five minutes later, Doc was back outside alone in the cold.

  “Gilly?” Doc looked around, but couldn't see him anywhere. Faint lights in the distance told him that the others were still down by the water, possibly looking at something on the shore. He shrugged, they could ta
ke care of themselves, especially in such a deserted environment.

  Gilly still hadn't come out, so Doc turned to the final door. Like the others, it was ajar, with Gilly's footprints leading into the main chamber. Doc knocked the snow off his boots, and moved quietly through the room. The inner door squeaked as he opened it, the sound disturbingly loud in the still air. Stepping through, he saw Gilly.

  Gilly stood alone in front of the table. His light played on a model fashioned from what looked like a mixture of flour and water, locked in its shape by the cold. It was hard to make out at first, so Doc moved closer. A deep bowl was carved from the mixture, divided into two sections. The smaller, upper section was rounded and shallow; the larger one long, narrow and much deeper than the first. A shallow ridge separated the two. It looked like nothing so much as a lakebed, but there were no lakes in Antarctica, and one this size would be hard to hide anywhere else. Gilly's light was focused on the lowest point in the trench.

  A series of small angled shapes glistened in the light. Looking like some impossible mixture of obsidian and soapstone, they covered the bottom of the trench. At first they looked like nothing, just a collection of polyhedrons, but as Doc blinked they turned into something else: the representation of a city. For a moment it felt like his mind twisted, trying to follow an impossible direction, but he pulled his attention back to reality.

  It only took a few moments for Doc to examine the model, but Gilly had done nothing. He hadn't moved, or even acknowledged Doc's presence in the room. He just stood there, unmoving, his light focused on the model.

  Carefully, Doc reached over and put his hand over the other man's. Still moving slowly, he firmly pressed his thumb against Gilly's, sliding the switch on his flashlight to the off position. A moment later, the light flicked off.

  “Beneath,” Gilly breathed. “Beneath the ice. The cold, the night under the vault.”

  His eyes snapped open, and he shivered like a cat. “Doc? What are you doing here?”