Beneath the Ice

by Alton Gansky

  “Precisely,” Larimore said. “I don’t think we could live that long with this thing and remain sane. Most likely it would go off before the battery was drained.”

  That had occurred to Perry as well. “Gleason tells me the batteries are missing from the base’s radios, too. There’s a good chance that one or more of them are on the bomb.”

  A tearing sound floated in on the wind. Perry was glad to hear it. It was almost time.

  “It’s tempting,” Larimore said.

  “What?”

  “To reach in there and just pull out the wires. It might work.”

  “We’d better stay with the plan. The less we move the wires the better off we are.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Larimore said.

  “I pray I’m right,” Perry replied.

  Gleason reappeared. “The chariot awaits,” he said.

  “Okay,” Perry said. “You and the commander should make your way to the Chamber and join the others.”

  “I’d rather stay,” Gleason said.

  “I can’t risk it, buddy,” Perry said. “The others are going to need you if things go bad. Besides, I’m nervous enough. The fewer distractions I have, the better.”

  “So now I’m reduced to a distraction.”

  “You know what I mean,” Perry said.

  “Yeah, I do,” Gleason said. He put a hand on Perry’s shoulder. The gesture was simple, but the communication was profound.

  “Get out of here, Gleason, and take this navy swab with you.” Larimore started to protest, but Perry cut him off. “I insist, Commander. The fewer people around, the better this will go.”

  Larimore rose and extended his hand. Perry shook it. “God-speed, Perry.”

  Perry replied with a silent nod. The two left, and Perry stepped to the opening. “Time for you to beat feet, pal.”

  Jack’s expression became serious. “Sorry, I can’t hear you.”

  “I said it’s time for you to head to the other dome.”

  “Too much wind. I can’t make out a word you’re saying. Besides, there’s a twelve-inch drop from the floor to the ice. The Dome is raised to allow room for insulation, remember.”

  Perry remembered. He also knew that Jack was hearing every word. “I can do this alone.”

  “What?” Jack raised a hand to his ear.

  Perry shook his head. He could force his will on almost anyone but Jack. Jack made up his own mind about things. Perry glanced over his friend’s head and saw the snowmobile two yards away from the Dome. He could also see strips of gray duct tape running from the handlebars to the side of the vehicle, locking the steering in a straight direction. On the seat was a cardboard box with the words Canned Beef printed on the side. Jack must have snatched the box from the galley on his way to retrieve the snowmobile. Another strip of duct tape hung limply from the throttle.

  “What say we stop wasting time,” Jack said. “You hand me the package, and I’ll deliver it.”

  There would be no arguing with Jack, and time was slipping by. It was time to act. Perry shook his head and returned to the bathroom, bent over, and placed his hands on the side of the gray brick that he knew to be one of the most powerful explosives around. If the bomb went off in Perry’s hands, there would be no pain, no awareness of his failure. Nor would there be much of him to bury.

  “It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.” The Bible verse made him wonder if his appointed date had arrived. Images of his father and friends flashed into his mind. He smiled. He planned to live a very long time, but if his life ended in the next second, it didn’t matter. It had already been a great life.

  Perry closed his hands on the bomb and lifted it from its place in the cabinet. He was surprised he was still alive. “Step one,” he whispered to himself then turned toward the door, moving slowly, thinking about every step before he took it. Five steps later he was facing the cold blast of wind as it shot through the recently made opening. Jack stood just outside, his normally jovial face drawn tight. The wind whipped the fur lining of his hood, but Jack stood solid as a rock.

  “I think I can do this myself,” Perry said as he approached the opening.

  “Just give me the thing,” Jack said. “The sooner this is over, the better I’ll feel.”

  “Even if we get blown to tiny little bits?”

  “Yeah, I hear Heaven is real nice this time of year.”

  “Any time of year,” Perry said. The conversation helped keep him calm and focused. Bending at the waist, Perry handed the deadly device to his closest friend and felt guilty the moment he did. He should have found some way to make Jack leave.

  “Got it,” Jack said. “Not as heavy as I thought it would be.” He turned and took a step toward the idling snowmobile.

  “I don’t suppose I should remind you that you’re walking on ice.”

  “Thanks, chum. Up until now I didn’t have anything to worry about.”

  Perry waited until his friend was a few steps away, then he jumped the short distance to the ice. Jack moved very slowly. Perry jogged around him, giving him a wide berth, and reached the vehicle first. He watched Jack take a step, twisting his foot from side to side to make sure of his footing before taking another. It was like watching someone walk underwater—excruciatingly slow. Perry used the time to double-check the system Jack had set up on the snowmobile. Duct tape ran from the handlebars to the body. The cardboard box was also secured with the tape. The flaps had been torn off, leaving just the four sides and the bottom. Perry hoped the famous fix-it-all tape could stand the abysmal temperatures a little longer.

  Jack arrived and gently set the explosive device in the box, pushing it to the rear—a good idea, Perry realized. If the bomb slid, then it might explode while it was close enough to do real damage.

  Jack released his grip and took a step back. “Your turn.”

  Perry nodded, took the piece of tape that dangled from the accelerator handle, and turned the handle enough to rev the engine just above idle. Then he secured the tape.

  “Now the scary part,” Perry said.

  “The other part wasn’t scary?”

  “Step back,” Perry ordered, and to his surprise, Jack did.

  Perry reached forward, dropped the snowmobile in gear, and prayed that it wouldn’t lurch. The engine chugged a moment, wanting more fuel, but then slowly pulled away. Perry had no desire to play spectator. He sprinted for the opening with Jack a step behind. When he reached the hole in the wall, he dove through it and rolled forward on the floor. He heard a thud behind him. His big friend had taken the same approach.

  Staggering to their feet, they turned and watched the snowmobile crawl along the ice.

  “How far do you think it will go?” Jack asked.

  “There’s some rough ice a hundred yards or so ahead of it. If Larimore—”

  The slow-moving vehicle erupted into a ball of fire. Perry and Jack hit the floor and covered their heads.

  Chapter 12

  “It’s time you came clean,” Griffin said.

  The entire group sat in the common area of the Dome. It had been two hours since the snowmobile carried away the bomb. Perry had called for another search of the facility, and they had searched every corner, nook, and crevice twice more. Gleason had filled Perry in on the acid-injured radios and how he, Sarah, Gwen, and Dr. Curtis had begun searching the area and found the bomb. It had not been an idea that first occurred to them, and Gleason bemoaned the fact. They had spent hours trying to construct a single radio that would work. He and Sarah had cannibalized all they could with no success. It was in desperation that they began the search, hoping to find some clue as to who might have done such a thing.

  Perry looked at Griffin and wondered how to respond. Perry was weary from the previous day’s expedition—seeing the horrific loss of life, searching wreckage for life he knew wasn’t there, enduring the windstorm huddled in a makeshift shelter, riding back against a still too powerful wind, and then
finding the bomb. What Perry really wanted to do was go to bed and forget, at least for a few hours, all that he had seen in the past twenty-four hours. That was not to happen. He would not allow himself that comfort. Not yet.

  “Come clean about what?” Dr. Curtis asked.

  “Perry has admitted to withholding information,” Griffin said. “I think the situation is such that we need—that we have a right to all the information available.”

  “We have more pressing problems,” Sarah said. “From what Perry has told us, we may have a killer among us.”

  “We don’t know that,” Larimore said. “The plane may have been brought down by a bomb, but there was a bomb here as well. Would someone plant such a device in the only shelter available to him . . . or her?”

  Perry had told them of the crash and his suspicion that it was no accident. The bomb in the bathroom was an exclamation point to it all.

  “It’s not fair that you and your buddies have all the secrets,” Griffin said. “We’re out here risking life and limb, just like you.”

  “Ease up, Grif,” Jack said. “I don’t know any more than you, and if that’s the way it has to be, then there will be no complaints from me.”

  Perry looked around the room. Seven faces looked back, faces that made no secret of their exhaustion. “Dr. James is right,” he said. “This is as good a time as any. I had planned to lay out all the cards once the construction crew was gone.”

  “You didn’t trust my men?” Larimore asked.

  “It’s not a matter of trust, Commander, it’s a matter of secrecy and need-to-know information. No one on the crew had a need to know.”

  “I sure need to know,” Gwen said.

  Perry stood and clasped his hands behind his back. He paused, organizing his thoughts. “You already know of the surveys done by satellite and aircraft. I told you when we arrived that Lake Vostok, the body of water that is two miles beneath our feet, is expanding, indicating an under-ice melting that has yet to be explained. That, of course, is true.”

  “Of course,” Griffin said.

  “What you don’t know occurred a few months ago. Dr. Harry Hearns—a scientist with the National Ice Center—made an un-usual discovery in an iceberg.”

  “Don’t you mean on an iceberg?” Gwen corrected.

  “No, I mean in an iceberg,” Perry responded. “Dr. Hearns specializes in icebergs and how they calve. While studying a particular berg—the second largest ever seen, as I understand it—the berg split, and he shot video of it.”

  “Nothing unusual so far,” Griffin said.

  “No, it’s not,” Perry replied. “There are plenty of such events on video, but what made this one so different was what the video captured. The ice split, and Hearns, who was in a helicopter, saw a dark object. Once the calving was complete, the new berg, the portion that split off, was top-heavy and rolled into the sea.”

  “What did he see?” Sarah asked.

  “A building,” Perry answered, then waited for their response. Silence. The seven looked from one person to the other.

  “A building?” Griffin said with disbelief. “He saw a building on the ice?”

  “Not on—in. He filmed a portion of a stone structure that was, according to his report, 150 meters below the surface of the ice, entombed.”

  “That’s impossible,” Griffin said.

  “That’s right,” Perry said. “By today’s scientific understanding, that is impossible.”

  “That’s very old ice. Ice is laid down at about two centimeters a year, and you’re talking fifteen thousand centimeters. That’s seventy-five hundred years ago. Not possible. There’s some mistake. There are seventy million cubic miles of ice on the continent, and it didn’t get here suddenly. It took millions of years for this ice sheet to form.”

  “Then explain Hearns’s house or whatever building he saw,” Larimore said.

  “As I said, it’s a mistake,” Griffin said with a dismissive wave. “I’ve met Dr. Hearns, and he seemed a very serious and capable scientist. Someone has twisted something he said. I bet he’s furious over it.”

  “He’s not,” Perry said. “He’s dead.”

  Griffin’s hard expression softened. “What?”

  Perry explained. “He wasn’t satisfied with the brief glimpse he had from the helicopter. He made arrangements to dive on the inverted iceberg. While he waited for the ship and two-man submersible that would allow him a closer look, he studied the video and still photos, sending them via satellite to several colleagues. Those colleagues put pressure on the National Science Foundation and the military to provide Hearns with the necessary equipment. It worked.”

  “It also clued in the military,” Sarah said.

  “Right. Hearns got what he wanted, but something went wrong on the dive. It appears that the pilot sailed the craft right into the ice. Maybe the controls jammed, but the collision breached the hull, and the submersible was flooded with freezing water. They drowned.”

  “That’s horrible,” Sarah said.

  “Ghastly,” Gwen agreed.

  “Further suspicions were raised when two Coast Guard pilots died in a fatal crash.”

  “Let me guess,” Jack said. “They were the pilots who were flying Hearns’s helicopter when he saw the structure.”

  Perry nodded. “Exactly.”

  “And this is what you’ve been holding back from us?” Griffin asked.

  “There’s more.” Perry handed out manila folders to the team. “You each received brief packets before you left your homes to come here. All the information you needed was contained in those packets. What wasn’t in them is the information you now need.” Perry waited as the other seven opened the thin folders. He watched their expressions.

  “This is another radar survey of the lake below the ice,” Curtis said. “It looks different than what I saw before. For one thing, the lake seems larger than the last image—”

  “What is that?” Griffin asked.

  “That is why we’re here,” Perry said.

  “It looks like some kind of mound,” Sarah suggested. “An upheaval of the crust along the edge of the lake?”

  Perry didn’t answer. He was standing in a room filled with great minds: scientists and engineers from various fields, each considered an accomplished expert in his or her field. They would get it given time.

  “It’s awfully uniform,” Curtis said. “It’s difficult to be certain, but it seems symmetrical and shows strong perimeter lines.”

  “Nonsense,” Griffin said. “That would suggest design. It has to be a natural phenomenon. Why didn’t we see this before?”

  Perry was waiting for that question. “As you know, you’re looking at a radar image taken from a plane. Using sixty megahertz radar data, which measures the change in ice thickness, we have determined that the ice shield has been melting faster than previously thought. As it melts, new details can be seen. We combined all the information—data from radar, satellite imagery, InSAR interferometry, and more—and developed a three-dimensional model. That’s on the next page.”

  Papers rustled and then—

  “This is a joke,” Griffin said. “This is your idea of humor.”

  “Oh my,” Curtis said, staring at the image. He leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin.

  “Wow,” was all Jack said.

  “Dr. Curtis?” Perry prompted. “What do you think?”

  “I think my world has just been turned upside-down.”

  “It’s not real,” Griffin said, springing to his feet. “First you tell this kindergarten tale about a stone building in an iceberg, and now you expect me to believe that there is a . . . a pyramid below my feet.”

  “Ziggurat,” Dr. Curtis corrected. “Essentially the same thing, but with some marked differences.”

  “Call it what you will,” Griffin snapped. “But I call it foolishness. If this were true . . .”

  “It’s true,” Perry said after a moment. “And we’re going to take a loo
k at it.”

  “I refuse to participate in such a waste of time,” Griffin said.

  “Where you going to go?” Larimore asked. “What are you going to do? Sit in your room and fabricate new ways to deny what your eyes tell you?”

  “The commander has a point,” Gwen said, breaking a long silence. “We’re stuck here. It’s not like we can walk home. There’s no plane, and one isn’t due for weeks.”

  “When the transport doesn’t show up on schedule, they’ll come looking for it,” Griffin said.

  “That’s true,” Perry said. “But in the meantime, I say we occupy ourselves with the original task.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Sarah intoned. “The plane didn’t go down by accident, at least that’s your contention. And the plastic explosive in the bathroom certainly was no accident. There’s still a killer somewhere.”

  “Unless he blew himself up on the plane,” Gwen said. “That wouldn’t bring a tear to my eye.”

  “If one of us were the killer,” Larimore began, “then why would he or she blow up the only means of survival?”

  “That very question has been on my mind,” Perry said. “Things don’t add up. Not yet. Still, we can’t sit around looking at each other. Let’s carry on with our mission.”

  “When?” Jack asked.

  “Right now,” Perry said. “It’s time to unleash Hairy.”

  The twin turboprops of the Casa 212 airplane knifed through the thin Antarctic air. The wing-over-body craft was painted a white that matched the terrain below. Minutes before, Tia and her team had watched the blue waters of the southernmost Pacific Ocean, where Pacific became Atlantic, turn icy white. The ground below swept by at nearly two hundred knots. The speed seemed greater since the pilot was skipping along at an altitude of less than a hundred feet. It was not safe, but it was what Tia had ordered.

  To the right rose the Ellsworth Mountains; to the left was the wide expanse of the Ronne Ice Shelf. Ahead lay more ice.

  Ahead lay the future.

  “You know me, buddy,” Jack was saying. He and Perry were watching Gleason and Sarah make the final connections to the cryobot called Hairy. The rest of the team stood nearby wearing the clean suits. “I’ll believe just about anything you say, but this one has me wondering. A pyramid below the ice? Ice that most people in the know say was laid down long before anyone could have sailed here?”