by Bob Mayer
“Anything?” Conner asked as the man slid down his parka hood. She recognized Riley.
“Nothing.” He slumped down in his seat and leaned back. “I went about eight miles out and took a slightly different route back and picked up nothing.”
There was a roar as Swenson started the engines. In a minute, welcome heat poured out of the vents, and the windows slowly started clearing.
“Let’s taxi north and pick up Devlin on his way back,” Conner suggested.
Swenson shook his head. “Uh-uh. I know where the runway is safe for take-off.” He pointed out the front window. “Right back the way we came. Plus there’s too many small ridges that way. We wouldn’t get far.”
“Besides,” Riley added, “we don’t know if Devlin is taking a straight route back. Even though it isn’t likely, we might just miss him.”
Conner sighed and resumed her vigil out the window. She didn’t like waiting. Swenson shut off the engines after five minutes, and the heat quickly dissipated out the skin of the plane.
Swenson turned in his seat, tapping the headset he wore. “I just got the weather report from McMurdo. It doesn’t sound encouraging. They only give another three to four hours max of good weather and then we’re going to get hit with high winds, which means very low visibility.”
Conner wondered what was taking Devlin so long. He should have been back a half hour ago according to the plan.
Twenty minutes later, Vickers called out. “I see him.”
Conner leaned over and looked out the opposite side porthole. Devlin was moving rapidly to the plane. They opened the door as he arrived, and he threw in his backpack, followed by the skis and himself.
“Anything?” Conner asked.
“Yes.”
She waited for an explanation, but Devlin was busy cleaning the snow off his boots and then shutting the door. “Well?”
Devlin removed his snow goggles and smiled at Conner “There’s something under the ice about three miles from here.” he said, “I checked it as much as I could and left a flag there. It’s pretty big, whatever it is—at least eighty yards long, maybe more. It’s either your base or a big flying saucer that got buried under the ice.”
Everyone in the plane looked at Conner expectantly, waiting for her instructions. Devlin accepted a cup of coffee from Vickers’s thermos and cradled it in his hands, absorbing the warmth.
“Can we land up there?” Conner asked him.
Devlin nodded. “I think there’s a good level area to the north of the spot. I couldn’t tell for sure because I didn’t ski over it, but I think it’s worth a look.” He looked forward toward Swenson. “It runs northwest-southeast.”
Swenson shook his head. “We’ve got bad weather coming. If we don’t head for home now, we may get stuck out here.”
Sammy spoke for the first time. “What happens if we’re stuck out here?”
Devlin shrugged. “We have our emergency gear, but it depends how long the weather stays bad. It could stay bad for a week, in which case it would be an awfully long time to be cooped up in this plane.”
“I don’t think staying here’s a good idea,” Riley threw in.
“What if we get into the base?” Conner said.
“What?” Devlin was confused.
“What if we get into Eternity Base? It would be out of the wind. They probably left supplies in there.”
Riley was shaking his head. “Even if what Devlin found is Eternity Base, he said it was all covered up. How are we going to get in?”
Devlin was considering the idea. “They had to have an access shaft, and actually I think I found it when I was checking out the dimensions. Something is covered with blown snow next to an ice ridge.”
“We’ve got shovels and pickaxes in the plane’s gear. Let’s give it a shot,” Conner argued.
“I don’t like it.” Riley shook his head. “If you want my opinion, we go back to Aurora Glacier and wait until we get good weather. We know where the place is now and can come back.”
Swenson agreed. “I don’t like the idea of staying here, missy. I think we ought to go back.”
Conner leaned forward in her seat. “We’re going to have to weather out this storm somewhere—either at Aurora Glacier or here.
If we stay here, at least we won’t get caught in the bad weather flying back. Plus, remember we’d still have that forty-five-minute tractor ride back to the station. I think landing up near the base site and trying to dig in is the better option.”
Time was the most precious commodity Conner had now. She made a command decision. “Let’s try to land near the site.”
FORD MOUNTAIN RANGE, ANTARCTICA
The second landing had been smoother than the first, and the plane was now staked down three hundred yards to the north of the ice ridge. Next to the ridge itself, Sammy, Riley, and Vickers were hacking at the ice and snow on the protuberance while Kerns and Devlin swept away the loose debris with shovels. Conner and Lallo were capturing their actions and the surrounding terrain on film.
It was obvious that the object underneath this snow was man-made. The shape was too linear to have occurred naturally. Riley swung the pick, and a section of ice splintered off. His next swing almost broke his hand as the point bounced off something solid. With his gloves he began wiping away ice and snow, exposing metal.
“I’ve got something,” Riley yelled. The others gathered around and stared at his discovery. The metal was painted white, and the pick had gouged the smooth surface.
“Let’s clear it out,” Devlin said, dropping his pick and grabbing a shovel. Shoulder to shoulder, Riley and Devlin used the edges of their shovels to enlarge the clear space on the metal. Soon they had exposed a flat sheet of metal almost three yards wide by two high.
Devlin stepped back and looked. “This has to be some sort of surface shaft.”
“Where’s the door then?” Sammy asked.
‘There are four sides,” Riley replied as he began excavating around the corner to the right. Vickers joined him. Without a word, Devlin and Lallo started around the corner to the left.
As they dug, they actually were leveling the area around the shaft, making it flush with the surface of the ice on the non-ridge side. The wind had picked up and snow was beginning to lift and blow across the basin.
Riley worked smoothly, trying not to break into a sweat. As his body heat rose, he removed his parka and stuffed it into his rucksack. He advised the others do the same.
A yard from the edge, Riley discovered a seam in the metal. He scraped away the ice up and down the seam and then to the right. Gradually a door appeared. On the far right side he discovered a spoked metal wheel. Once the door was completely uncovered he stepped back. The rest of the party had gathered around.
“Do you think it will work?” Conner addressed the question to Devlin.
Devlin ran his hands along the seam. “I don’t know. It ought to. It shouldn’t have frozen up—the temperature here never gets above freezing so there isn’t any moisture. Let’s give it a try.”
Riley moved back as Devlin gripped the wheel and leaned into it. The metal didn’t budge.
“Here, let me try.” Vickers placed the handle of the pick through one of the spokes of the wheel and squatted down. Slowly he started to exert pressure upward.
“Watch out!” Riley yelled, just as the wooden handle broke. The free piece ricocheted off the door and hit Vickers in the head. Dazed, he fell back onto the ice.
“Damn.” Vickers sat there rubbing his head through the parka hood. “That hurts.”
Sammy found it darkly amusing to get this far and maybe not be able to get in. But what truly worried her was the weather. The sky was dark with clouds and the wind was really howling now, knifing through her clothes. They needed to get out of the wind, and there were only two choices: into the base or back to the plane.
She looked at Vickers again; something dark was seeping through the hood. “Shit,” Sammy muttered. “Stay down,�
� she ordered as Vickers tried standing up. She carefully pushed aside the big man’s hood. The inside was caked with blood that had already frozen. The gash from the wound wasn’t hard to find on his bald head. It was about three inches long but didn’t appear to be deep.
“What’s wrong?” Conner asked.
Without answering, Sammy opened the first aid kit attached to her rucksack and pulled out a sterile gauze pack. She quickly tore it open and then put her mittens back on before pressing the cloth against the cut. It immediately turned bright red.
“He got cut. It’s not deep, but scalp wounds bleed a lot because the blood vessels are right on the surface.” Sammy looked up. “We need to go back to the plane now and settle in. Hopefully this thing will blow over quickly.”
Swenson shook his head. “I don’t think so, mate. McMurdo says this is a big front. We may be stuck for days.”
Sammy took a deep, icy breath as she considered the situation. “All right.” She looked at Conner. “Here, you hold this and replace it every couple of minutes. Make sure you keep the pressure on. We need to stop the bleeding. There’s some more gauze in this pack here.”
She gestured to the men. “Let’s all get on this thing.” They grabbed hold of the wheel. “On my count of three, counterclockwise. Ready? One. Two. Three.” All leaned into the wheel and strained. “Again. One. Two. Three.” The second attempt was also a failure.
“All right. Take a break for a second.”
Riley looked at the wheel. “Let’s do it again, but let’s try it the other way—clockwise.”
The men reassumed their positions. Sammy coordinated their effort. “Ready? One. Two. Three.” With a loud screech the wheel moved ever so slightly. “Again. One. Two. Three.” More than nine hundred pounds of man and woman power leaned into the wheel again. It turned almost a full inch.
“Again.” Inch by inch, the wheel turned. After five minutes of struggle, Sammy estimated they had done one complete revolution, yet there was no indication that they’d unlocked the door.
They continued on, the wheel moving a little easier now. After another five minutes the wheel stopped and wouldn’t budge.
“I think we’ve gone as far as it goes,” Devlin said. “I’d say it opens inward. It makes sense. You want doors to open in down here because the outside could be blocked with snow.”
Riley examined the joints of the door. There was an overlap on the outside—another indication that the door opened inward. “All right. Stand back.”
Riley lay down with his back wedged against the ice, then he put his feet on the bottom of the door and pushed. Seeing what he was doing, Lallo and Swenson joined in, pushing on the sides with their arms. With a low creak, a small gap appeared on the right side near the wheel. As they kept up the pressure, the door slowly swung wider and wider, Riley scrambling along the ice to keep his leverage until finally the opening was wide enough for a person to slip through.
“Hold it!” Conner called out. She peered around the edge of the door. In the darkness she could just make out a metal landing and staircase. Eternity Base beckoned.
“Light her up,” she said to Lallo.
The cameraman pulled the cover off his camera rig. A bright light just over the lens came on. Conner slipped through the door, Lallo following, recording the entry. The stairs did a ninety-degree turn and then seemed to descend directly down. An open area next to the stairs had a pully system on top, suggesting that was how supplies were lowered. Shining the light down, they could make out wood planking about fifteen feet below. Something else was at the bottom of the stairs, but from their position they could spot only a vague outline.
Lallo leaned over the railing and froze as his light illuminated the scene. What a moment ago had been only a meaningless shape now assumed the form of a man. He was lying at the base of the stairs, face down, hands stretched out in front of him, almost an act of supplication.
Conner stumbled backward into Riley. “What’s wrong?” he asked as he kept her from falling.
“There’s someone down there!” she hissed.
Riley let go of her and walked forward, peering down. After a few seconds he gestured to her. “Come on. Everyone else stay put.”
Conner cautiously followed Riley down the metal steps. The form still hadn’t moved. When they reached the bottom, Riley shone his light on the body, revealing a figure clothed in army issue clothes. Three black holes punched a line across the back of the man’s jacket, surrounded by a red frame of blood. Riley knelt down and turned over the body. Sightless eyes peered out from a young face, forever frozen in the surprised grimace that must have come as the bullets slammed into his back.
Riley looked closely at the face of the corpse, marveling at the frozen preservation. He wondered how long the man had been dead. He didn’t realize he was thinking aloud until he heard Conner’s quiet reply. “He’s been dead for about twenty-five years.”
Chapter 11
ETERNITY BASE, ANTARCTICA.
Conner, after her initial shock seemed to be on track. She was supervising Lallo as he filmed the body from different angles.
“How long do you think he’s been down here?” Sammy asked, as the rest of the party piled up their baggage in the dimly lit space at the base of the stairs. Riley glanced over at Sammy. “Your sister seems to think he’s been here since the base was closed down in ‘71.” He moved back to the body and began checking the man’s clothing, cracking the frozen fabric. The man wore unmarked army fatigues under olive-drab cold-weather gear—old-style-issue gear, Riley knew. There was no name tag on the man’s shirt.
Riley pulled a poncho out of his rucksack and gently draped it over the body. “Whoever he worked for shot him in the back to keep him from talking about what he saw here. Judging by the size of the wounds, I’d say it was a small-caliber gun—probably a .22. You have to be damn good to kill someone with a gun that small.”
Conner turned to the rest of the group. “We’ve got to find out everything we can about this place. I want to know who built it and why, and then I’m going to nail their asses.”
Conner began organizing the group. She stared down the corridor, trying to pick up details. Devlin’s flashlight reflected off the metal sides of the corridor and faded out after thirty feet. The ceiling, ten feet above, consisted of steel struts holding metal sheeting that blocked out the ice and snow. Conduits, pipes, and wires crisscrossed the ceiling, going in all directions. The corridor itself was about ten feet wide; the floor was made up of wood planks, each separated by a few inches to allow snow and ice to fall through the cracks to the sloping steel floor below.
It was as cold down here as it was outside, but at least they were out of the wind. Riley pulled a sleeping bag from his backpack and helped Vickers into it.
In the excitement of actually entering the base and the horror of finding the body, Conner had forgotten about Vickers’s wound. “Is he going to be all right?” she asked Riley, who was examining the bandage with his flashlight.
“Yeah. We could use some heat, though.”
“There ought to be some sort of generator or space heaters down here,” Devlin said, playing his light around the immediate area.
“You think they would still work after all this time?” Conner wondered.
Devlin coughed nervously, the sound echoing off the walls and ceiling. “Oh, yes. Antarctica is the perfect place to preserve things. The body is proof of that—the man looks the same as the day he died. Think about it. The temperature never gets above freezing. There’s no moisture. No bacteria.
“There are supplies in Shackleton’s hut on Ross Island that were placed there in 1907 and are still edible today. I have no doubt that if we can find the power source down here, or even a portable heater, we can get it going.” He pointed his flashlight at a light bulb set in a cage on the ceiling. “We might even get the lights on.”
Conner peered down the dark corridor again. “Where do you think we’d find that?”
&nb
sp; Devlin shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s take a look.”
Conner turned back to the rest of the party. “Sammy, you and Riley stay here with everyone. I’m going with Devlin to see if we can get the power on or at least find a portable stove or something.”
Riley nodded, busy wrapping a binding around the dressing on Vickers’s head. The bleeding appeared to have finally stopped. “Those of you staying here, break out your sleeping bags and get inside. No sense losing any more heat than you need to.”
Devlin and Conner walked side by side down the wood planking. After thirty feet the walls disappeared on either side and they entered a cross corridor. To the left the corridor opened on two doors, one on either side, and then ended about ten feet in. To the right the corridor also opened on two doors. The right-hand corridor ended just beyond the doors, but not cleanly. A pile of snow and ice blocked the way.
Devlin shone his light where pipes on the ceiling disappeared into the pile. “Looks like that’s where some ice buckled the ceiling.”
“Let’s try the doors,” Conner suggested. They turned left and tried the door on the left side first. It wasn’t locked and opened easily. The light of the flashlight revealed a room about thirty feet long and ten feet wide, full of electronic equipment. Conner remembered Freely telling her about the prefab units that had been flown in to make up the station. This was obviously one of them.
After a few moments’ inspection, Devlin turned back for the door. “Looks like some sort of communications setup. We need to find either a storeroom or the power plant.” He pointed his light at several large boxes hanging from the ceiling. “It looks like each of these units is heated separately with electric heaters and the corridors are kept at normal temperature. This setup reminds me very much of what I read about Eights Station.”
Conner remembered Eights Station from her research. It had been established at the base of the Antarctic Peninsula in 1962 and had consisted of eight prefab units flown in by C-130 and buried under the ice, just like this.
