Black Ice

by Matt Dickinson

  Sean said yes to a coffee and pulled out one of the lab stools to sit on as they got the small talk of weather, flights and the extortionate cost of London taxis out of the way. He watched her carefully as she poured steaming water out of the ancient kettle, deciding that his previous theory regarding the undesirability of female scientists was now blown firmly out of the water. Dressed in a simple white T-shirt and a pair of faded denim jeans, Lauren had the unmade-up beauty—and certainly the figure—of a model. With her dark, naturally curled hair and her earnest brown eyes, she looked a bit like a young Sigourney Weaver, Sean decided, back in the Alien days when a million male fantasies had been fuelled by the single scene on the spaceship when she strips down to her underwear.

  If she knew what I’m thinking right now, Sean mused, giving himself an internal rap on the knuckles, I’d never get the job. Then he saw the half-smile in Lauren’s eyes as she looked at him appraisingly and thought: Or maybe I would.

  ‘Tell me about the expedition,’ Sean said with a cough as he reddened slightly. ‘Are you drilling a core like the Greenland team?’

  Lauren handed him the coffee.

  ‘Drilling a core … with a twist,’ Lauren told him, wincing at her own pun. ‘At the far end of the core is a lake. I want to pull up a water sample, and it has to be completely sterile.’

  ‘A lake? Beneath Antarctica? I thought the whole place was frozen.’

  ‘So did scientists,’ she told him, ‘until the early 1970s. That’s when aircraft from various scientific missions began running airborne sounding radar over certain stretches of Antarctica. That type of radar can penetrate ice and find a reflection off the underlying rock or whatever’s beneath it.’

  ‘I got you.’

  ‘They found something pretty staggering in Eastern Antarctica—a fresh-water lake about the size of Lake Ontario, and twice as deep, was sitting four kilometres beneath the ice. They called it Lake Vostok after the Russian base situated above it. Some cynics doubted the data, but in 1996 the European Remote Sensing Satellite confirmed that it really was what we thought it was.’

  Sean leaned forward, his attention caught. ‘So why doesn’t it freeze?’

  ‘We believe it’s because it’s sitting in a kind of tectonic rift, a valley—the type of fault that Lake Baikal and the Red Sea occupy. The heat from the earth’s interior is sufficient to melt down the lake, and there it is—perfectly locked away from the rest of the planet—a source of pristine water … and potentially a source of new life forms.’

  ‘So you want to drill down and explore that lake?’

  ‘Not Vostok. Vostok has too many problems, as I’ll demonstrate.’

  Lauren crossed to a flip chart. ‘This is a cross-section of the ice cap, right?’

  Sean nodded as he watched her draw two lines—the lower one representing the earth’s surface, a higher, wavy one representing the thickness of the ice above it.

  ‘Lake Vostok is believed to be just below sea level. And the surface of the ice is at three thousand nine hundred metres. To reach it, those scientists will have to drill a colossal four kilometres or more through the ice.’

  ‘Four kilometres!’ Sean was astounded. ‘But that’s just about impossible. Ice moves—it’s always moving. The risk of the drill core bending and breaking is too high. Up in Greenland we were pushing it to achieve five hundred metres.’

  Lauren flipped the chart to find a blank sheet.

  ‘Exactly. And that’s why I’ve got a different proposal. About a thousand miles away from Vostok, there’s a volcano locked beneath the ice. We’re talking about a location just about as remote as it is possible to get.’

  Lauren drew the same lines as before, but this time she added a cone-shaped mountain jutting high into the mass of ice.

  ‘How do you know that volcano is there?’

  ‘It was discovered by British scientists back in 1956. They were working in Antarctica as part of the International Geophysical Year. But since there are plenty of under-ice volcanoes in Antarctica, no one paid this discovery much attention.’

  ‘So how come you’re so interested in it?’

  ‘Firstly because my father was one of the scientists who discovered it, and second because this volcano is the one closest to the surface. The crater is just two thousand feet beneath the ice. That’s about seven hundred metres compared with four kilometres to reach Vostok. Much less chance the drill bit will break, much better chance of getting a probe down into a lake.’

  ‘Wait a second. I’m confused. Why should there be a lake connected with this volcano?’

  ‘It has a true crater, we can deduce that from echo location. And it’s an active volcano. There has to be heat. Where there is heat, ice becomes water. It really is as simple as that. I believe there is quite a large mass of fresh water down there, and where there is water … there is life.’

  ‘But how did this life get down there?’

  ‘Millions of years ago perhaps. Before Antarctica existed. We may be talking about life forms that have actually evolved completely independently. Or life forms from an era when the continents were in different places. That’s the challenge for science—these lakes are like a time capsule—we can push our knowledge of how life forms far beyond where it is now if we can just get to them.’

  ‘What are the practicalities?’

  ‘I want to set up a tiny, independent base, perhaps no more than a handful of scientists and a couple of supporting personnel. I’ll hire a Hercules C130 to fly everything in. I want to rent or buy a drilling rig and put seven hundred metres of probe down into that lake and find creatures no one has ever dreamed of before. Can you imagine what a thrill that would be?’

  Sean laughed at her raw enthusiasm. ‘When you say creatures, are we talking things big enough to see?’

  ‘Almost certainly not. The most likely life forms are diatoms—simple single-celled organisms. But just because they’re microscopic doesn’t mean they’re any less important. Some of the greatest advances in life sciences have come from studying creatures which can only be seen through an electron microscope.’

  ‘I like the project,’ Sean told her. ‘I’ve been looking for a chance to get down to Antarctica for years. You can count me in.’

  16

  Setting up Capricorn had been the most thrilling experience of Lauren’s life—a roller-coaster logistical ride so packed with highs and lows she sometimes felt that it would be easier to set up a base on the moon than in the wilds of Antarctica.

  The money had been tough to find, particularly as her project was regarded as risky by many of the bigger grant-giving scientific organisations. But by sheer power of persuasion, allied with her fast-growing reputation for getting results, Lauren pulled it together.

  There was £300,000 from the Scott Polar and a quarter of a million from the National Foundation for Science. Charitable trusts came in with a further £150,000, and Lauren won grants from several leading scientific publications who were keen to gain first access to the expedition findings.

  There was still a one-million-pound hole in the budget when Lauren got a call from Alexander De Pierman, chief executive of Kerguelen Oils. De Pierman was a billionaire oil prospector with a serious image problem: his company had encountered the wrath of the green lobby for its oil prospecting in the waters around the Falkland Islands, and his share price was suffering as a result. His PR advisers had decided to look around for a worthy project to ‘adopt’ as sponsor and—luckily for Lauren—had stumbled across her expedition.

  Lauren was uneasy with the association with a less-than-squeaky-clean oil exploration company, but she agreed to meet the sixty-year-old De Pierman to discuss the idea. To her surprise, the two of them got on extremely well. De Pierman immediately grasped the scientific objectives of the base and impressed her with his insight into some of the technical problems the drilling operation would face.

  De Pierman, likewise, was very happy with the meeting. As an entrepreneur, he had al
ways admired those who had the conviction to push risky ideas into existence. Lauren was a winner, De Pierman decided, and agreed to back her project—anything that got rid of the placard-waving earthies outside his Park Lane offices was worth a million to him, and Lauren finally got her cash.

  Lauren and De Pierman posed together for press photographs when the sponsorship was announced, and De Pierman’s new public role as scientific benefactor lifted Kerguelen Oils’ share price nicely off the floor. He got to choose the base name too, christening it Capricorn after Lauren’s star sign.

  With the money in place, and Sean on board, Lauren had selected the rest of her team.

  Frank was her first recruit. Lauren had worked with him on three different Antarctic bases, and he’d become a friend, even a father figure in some ways. Lauren liked his unflappable personality and his gentle sense of humour, and his experience of constructing bases in the field was second to none. Murdo was an obvious choice too, mainly because in addition to being the best base chef Lauren had ever known, he had skills in plumbing and electrics which would be invaluable when it came to the rapid construction of Capricorn. Mel was—like Sean—a new face for Lauren, but the Kiwi doctor had come so highly recommended from her previous overwintering at Scott Base that Lauren was prepared to take the risk on her.

  And that was Lauren’s famous five—but for the design stage it was really Frank that she depended on. Together they devised a CAD program which would enable them to create a three-dimensional computer model of the proposed base, a virtual blueprint which would produce the final construction plan.

  The two of them spent many hundreds of hours poring over the options, designing the base in a series of different modules—heavily insulated against the cold yet lightweight enough to be air transportable. Five personnel would need to live in Capricorn for one year; they would have to be fed, they would need hot water to shower, they would need a relaxation area with sofas and videos to watch during the long winter night.

  There had to be a laboratory for Lauren, a clinic for Mel, a radio room and more. Their virtual design became more complicated by the day as drilling gear and cooking areas were incorporated.

  The program allowed them to enter the three-dimensional graphic and explore the rooms and corridors of the base at will. In this way, problems could be rapidly resolved. A click of a mouse moved the accommodation quarters so they would be further from the cooking smells of the galley, a further click installed triple-glazed windows in every room.

  There was a lot of guesswork involved: how thick would the walls need to be? What was the likelihood that drifting snow could block a crucial air intake? How many toilets did they need?

  The internal workings of Capricorn were surprisingly complex—the plumbing, the electrical wiring, the heating ducts all had to be incorporated into the plan.

  ‘It’s like looking at the veins and arteries of some creature,’ Lauren told Frank as they threaded the pipes and cables along virtual walls and ceilings.

  Lauren began to think of Capricorn as a living thing.

  The other team members came in and had their say: Murdo the cook wanted more storage space for the many tons of food, Sean proposed a heating duct and better ventilation for his engine shed, and medic Mel pointed out that she couldn’t run a functional clinic without a wall-mounted X-ray machine and a hot-water supply to a sink.

  Finally, they had Capricorn nailed down to the last light fitting, the last nut and bolt.

  In January, the middle of the Antarctic summer, precisely one year after De Pierman had delivered his cheque, Capricorn was boxed up and ready to fly. A lumbering Hercules C130 cargo plane stopped at a military airfield near London, and the prefabricated base—all forty tons of it, complete with supplies—was loaded into the cavernous interior.

  From there they flew across the Atlantic, landing in Colorado where the giant freighter swallowed up the fifteen tons of engine and drill rig which Sean had carefully crated up. Next stop, South America, where the aircraft was fitted with skids, and then on to Antarctica, where they touched down on a smooth ice plateau exactly at the position Lauren had wanted.

  Seven weeks later they had it built; Capricorn was bolted together, anchored against the wind and ready for work. Lauren was pleased with the design: it was warm, functional and sturdy enough to resist the ferocity of the elements. The official opening ceremony was simple: a red ribbon pinned across the doorframe of the mess hut, a magnum of champagne kept in an insulated bag to prevent it from freezing.

  Lauren cut the ribbon with the scissors on her Swiss army knife.

  ‘I declare Capricorn base well and truly open,’ she said with a beaming smile as the others looked on proudly. ‘It may be small, but from here we’re going to do great things.’

  The day held more excitements: late that evening, Sean got the Perkins engine running for the first time, earning a big cheer from the team, which had assembled for the great moment. He engaged the gears which powered the rig and gently let the rotating drill bite into the ice. The cutting surface buried itself smoothly, carving its way into the frozen ground with slow but steady progress. It produced a distinctive crackling noise as it went, the sound of sharp metal grinding into ancient ice.

  Lauren was struck by the fragility of the exercise; the drilling apparatus, which had seemed so bulky and impressive when she had seen it operating before, now seemed dwarfed by the landscape in which it had been placed.

  Everything depended on the journey that bit was about to make through the ice. Could it resist for those seven hundred metres, or would it eventually shatter under the pressure?

  It would take five months or more to find out.

  Back in her room, Lauren collapsed, exhausted, onto her bed, the months of nervous tension catching up with her now the crucial construction stage of Capricorn was complete.

  She opened her diary, thinking to write some momentous words to commemorate the great day, but all she could come up with was ‘Capricorn lives! V. happy.’

  Lulled by the rumble of the big Perkins, lightheaded from the champagne, Lauren fell back on her bed and slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  17

  ‘I brought you a coffee.’ Lauren had to shout to be heard above the engine noise which filled the drilling shed.

  Sean’s oil-stained face turned to her as he heard the shout, his features lighting up as he saw the drink.

  ‘How’s she going?’ Lauren handed him the mug.

  Sean consulted the screen which sat beside the rig, the green display registering the progress of the bit.

  ‘One hundred and forty metres and sounding sweet.’

  ‘No breaks?’

  ‘Nothing. She’s running fine.’

  ‘Still on target?’

  Sean wiped gear oil off his hands and picked up a progress chart on a clipboard.

  ‘We’ve lost a week or so,’ he told her, ‘thanks to losing that head. But if all goes well, we’ll be done by the end of winter.’

  Sean slipped the clutch on the huge rig gearbox, and the universal joint began to spin. Less than six hundred metres to go. Lauren felt a delicious shiver of excitement at the thought. Five years of planning and dreaming and now they were really making progress.

  And what would the breakthrough bring? That was the biggest risk of all. Maybe there would be no life at all in the lake which lay undisturbed beneath the ice.

  Maybe the whole enterprise would prove to be a total waste of time. Then her competitors would have a field day. Lauren already had her fair share of critics in the competitive world of glacial biology—and they would not be slow to pounce on a failure.

  Somehow, Lauren was confident that would not be the case.

  A call from the doorway. ‘Lauren! Radio call. Urgent!’

  Curious to know what could possibly be important enough to make the normally placid Frank sound so stressed, Lauren followed him out into the storm and back to the main block, where she hurried to the radio roo
m. There was interference on the connection, whistles and crackles from the storm. Lauren had to concentrate hard to hear the woman’s voice.

  ‘This is Trans-Antarctica expedition control. We have an emergency, Capricorn. I repeat, we have an emergency. Do you read me? Over.’

  The connection faltered as a storm of static erupted.

  Lauren stared at the radio handset in surprise, wondering if she was hearing right. Who could possibly be reporting an emergency, and why on earth were they calling Capricorn? She raised a quizzical eyebrow at Frank, but he shrugged to indicate he was as lost as she was.

  ‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ Lauren replied calmly. ‘Who are you, and what is the nature of this emergency? Over.’

  The voice paused to try and compose itself. Frank tuned in the radio reception, adjusting the digital control by a fraction to squeeze a little more quality out of the incoming signal.

  ‘My name is Irene Evans,’ came the reply. ‘I’m the radio and logistics coordinator for Julian Fitzgerald’s Trans-Antarctica expedition. I’m up in Ushuaia. Forty-eight hours ago we got a signal from their radio beacon. I sent an AAS Twin Otter down to the Blackmore Glacier to pick them up … it had a reporter on board as well. But the plane hasn’t returned, and we fear the worst…’ The voice diminished again so that Frank and Lauren had to strain to catch the words. ‘We think the plane may have crashed. Over.’

  ‘I hear you, Irene, and I remember reading a press report about Fitzgerald’s expedition. But why don’t you send down a second AAS plane to check out the situation? Over.’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to arrange. But the weather’s too unstable now we’re so close to winter. As soon as they get a window, they’ll go down, but, unless this storm drops off, they won’t be able to land. Over.’

  Lauren and Frank looked out at the conditions, through a window which was shuddering with the impact as the wind and snow blasted against it. Frank mouthed, ‘No way’ at Lauren and she nodded at him.