by B. C. CHASE
For the first few weeks, he had lost his appetite, he couldn't sleep, he frequently vomited, his joints ached, and his ears hurt. He had lost about eight pounds since he came. But the astonishing thing was, his symptoms were no worse than for anyone else new to this part of the Antarctic. Mankind was not meant to come here.
The site on the glacier was at a high elevation so oxygen was scarce. Even now, almost a month into his residence, he breathed heavily as he walked towards the dome exit. When he was inside the dome like he was now, he wore gloves, boots, and a snowsuit complete with a hood.
The door of the dome was the size of a highway tunnel entrance, and as he approached the air became crisper, dryer. The sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue, and he could see the speck which he knew to be a thirty-foot twin propeller plane as it approached.
He walked out to the strip, his boots crunching the packed snow beneath them. Then he waited for the turboprop to land, taking in the horizon's distant craggy peaks which never failed to inspire awe no matter how many times he saw them.
The plane finally bounced down on its skis. They never shut off the propellers when they landed. Instead it was as brief a stay as possible, then a quick takeoff; otherwise the engines would freeze. It took some time for the crew to open the hatch and a stair to be driven up, but, finally, the people he was waiting for emerged.
He had found Antarctica to be surprisingly mountainous, and beautiful. He vividly recalled his first helicopter flight from a ship flotilla to China's coastal research station, named Zhongshan. The pilot had steered them directly through a magnificent archway over the deep navy of the churning sea. It was a giant monument created by the collapsing glacier, with warm, orange sunlight glistening off one side while contrasting blue dimly glowed in the shadow of the other.
Ahead, he could see the waves crashing against the white shore where the myriad of tiny penguins endlessly waddled up and down in front of giant ice-cliffs. There were sea lions, too, basking in the sun or sliding down icebergs, trying to catch one of the swimming penguins.
Established in 1980 and intended as a long-term endeavor, Zonghshan had consisted of only several small structures and housed a mere sixty people at most. Now, a veritable city had been erected in its place to support Ming-Zhen's research effort, making one forget how very remote and isolated it actually was.
From Zhongshan, he remembered a near three-hour-plane ride to the inland site. Aircraft could reach the site only five months out of the year. During this period, from October to February, the sun shined twenty-four hours a day. This was the Antarctic summer—averaging -22 degrees. Antarctica was the driest land mass on earth in terms of precipitation—a desert, in fact.[9] The snow had piled up in huge glaciers over many years. The glaciers slowly moved out to the coast and broke off into the sea.
His seat was jarring, his breath formed little puffs, and the turboprop engines rattled the plane like a tin can, but when he stood up to look over the pilot's shoulder, the view out the windshield was spectacular. Over land, the mountains were endless stone peaks covered by ice. He marveled at the clarity of the air. The sun somehow seemed closer than he was used to and the snow below was blinding as it sparkled with its reflection.
The landscape of ancient Antarctica, complete with lakes and, it was suspected, even rivers, was below the ice cap. The largest of these bodies of water was Lake Vostok, the site they had chosen. East and slightly south of the center of the continent, it was the size of Lake Ontario. The average temperature of the water was probably -3 degrees, but it wasn't frozen; the immense pressure applied above it and geothermal warming that occurred somewhere in the lowest part of the lake prevented that.
And the lake was indeed deep: the third deepest in the world. Although covered with over two miles of glacial ice, Lake Vostok was visible from space because, in contrast to the surrounding area, the ice above it was almost perfectly flat. Having been covered since the poles froze, it was now as it had been thirty million years ago (or however old it was). It was a time capsule.
To Doctor Ming-Zhen, this was intriguing enough. But there were two even more provocative features to the lake. One was that radar showed there to be an island of some sort in the center. The other was a “magnetic anomaly” measuring sixty-five by forty-six miles.
When his plane landed, he had been greeted by a charismatic, large man with celebrity-worthy white teeth, a thick beard, and big gloves. He exclaimed warmly, “Welcome to the dead zone! I am Ivan Toskovic. Good to meet you after so long.”
Doctor Ming-Zhen's stoic demeanor caused the other to slap him across the back and laugh heartily, “Smile, my friend! I am not Ivan the Terrible!”
As they entered the dome and boarded the transport, Doctor Toskovic explained that in 2012, he had been a young researcher at the Russian Vostok station to the east. Recently he had been seduced out his professorship in Saint Petersburg to head up operations here for the Chinese, chosen due to his experience.
“In 2012 we did not have nice big dome,” he said, making a sweeping motion as they entered the giant structure. The dome's chief purpose, as Doctor Toskovic explained, was to make the drill operable through the Antarctic winter. Its secondary purpose was keeping its inhabitants from freezing to death, “although,” he said with a wink, “some days we lose one or two.”
The vehicle whirred down a well-used track in the snow from the entrance to the residential area, a large cluster of rectangular, windowless metal boxes surrounding a large community building. There, they disembarked and Doctor Toskovic introduced him to the cafeteria, a bustling hall with metal tables and noisy chairs. “You like food from cans?” Doctor Toskovic asked him. “Good, here you eat like prince!” As they sat down for a meal of soup and fresh rice, Doctor Ming-Zhen noticed a tattoo on Toskovic's arm.
“What does your tattoo say?” he inquired.
Doctor Toskovic grinned mysteriously, “It only means I know more than you. My little 'badge of honor.'” Then he proceeded to detail the Russian experience with Lake Vostok, a history that Doctor Ming-Zhen already knew to be fraught with peril.
Despite protests from all over the world because of fears of contamination, the Russians had spent twenty-four years drilling through the two miles of glacier towards the lake, yet their borehole was smaller than six inches wide. By the time they neared the surface in 2012, they were averaging only about five feet a day, a dismally slow rate. It was at this time that the scientific community was stunned by horrifying news. The Russian team had disappeared.
There had been three days of radio silence with no one hearing from them, and the worst was feared. Scientists warned of the danger: the pressure difference could have sent a powerful geyser up through the hole. As the days dragged on to five and then seven, the internet was ablaze with speculation, especially among conspiracy theorists. Had an unknown bacteria swarmed up from the lake to infect them? Had they been removed by some government agency that did not want them to reach the lake? Had they been abducted by space aliens with a secret base hidden in the lake (the magnetic anomaly)?
“Of course there was nothing to any of these rumors,” Doctor Toskovic laughed. “We were so busy and excited that we couldn't bother to answer radio.”
When Doctor Ming-Zhen heard this, he was leery. How could they be so busy that even one person could not bother to answer increasingly distressed calls over seven days?
At any rate, the Russian team did succeed in reaching the water, and a geyser did not kill anyone; in fact, the up flow from the pressure actually helped them to acquire samples. They were able to obtain these from water that froze inside the borehole several hundred feet up from the lake surface.
Doctor Toskovic himself carried the samples to Saint Petersburg, the voyage so long that it wasn't until 2013 that they were able to experiment with them. What they ultimately discovered baffled the imagination.
They found DNA, DNA representing thousands of species.
Most of these species were bacteria
, but eukaryotes (single-celled organisms with a nucleus) and over one hundred multi-celled organisms were found, four of which were associated with mollusks and fish (in such roles as aiding in digestion).[10] Amazingly, it was said a species entirely unknown to science had also been found, although nothing more on this subject was ever mentioned.
It was believed that the DNA could not have survived millions of years merely drifting in the lake. Therefore the alternative was that the samples represented a living biology that presently occupied it, leading one of the excited Russian scientists to make the extraordinary claim that “living fish” might be found there. The statement was quickly retracted, but the damage was done: doubt was cast on the findings and the entire team suffered the consequences. The scientific community used the press to seriously question all of the findings, saying the DNA samples were modern contaminants, and eventually all of the Russians were shamed into silence.
Doctor Toskovic disclosed to Doctor Ming-Zhen that he himself had found his role as a scientist castigated since then; at conferences he was shunned, and he found it difficult to publish papers in respected journals. Research money or partners were suddenly scarce. Thus he spent most of his time in Saint Petersburg lecturing rather than doing any practical research. And he had never returned to Antarctica until now. He was eager for the chance to redeem himself.
“You and I, we are alike, I think,” Doctor Toskovic said, his face serious. “We both make discoveries, they don't like, call fraud, career fall to pieces. Now we have chance to show them truth.”
After dinner, they left the hall to walk down an aisle of barracks to Doctor Ming-Zhen's new “home-away-from-home,” as Doctor Toskovic called it.
His quarters were six feet by six feet, but he was relieved to see he did not have to share a bunk. There was a single, twin-sized cot, a lightweight desk, and a metal chair. As far as enjoying the comforts of home, though, Doctor Toskovic summed it up best: “You like bed of nails? Good! Here you sleep like infant!”
Doctor Toskovic left him to settle into his quarters for the night. The bathroom was in a building about thirty steps from his quarters, so his trip was not a pleasant one. Then he slipped under the bedding with most of his layers still on and found the cot to be just about as comfortable as Doctor Toskovic had promised: jagged wire pressed into his back. He would have slept on the floor (his bed at home was almost as hard as the floor), but that would have been colder.
As he tried to sleep that first night, he thought of what the Russian had said. It was true: they were alike. They were both on a mission of redemption. And Doctor Ming-Zhen had learned his lesson: this time he wanted the scientific community to be without doubt that if he discovered anything, it was 100% legitimate.
That is why he was here. There would be no robot submersible: a person had to enter the lake and witness it with his own eyes. This was the only way to remove all doubt.
It was also 100% dangerous.
In the cold darkness, he felt very alone and missed his family. He felt a pang of guilt. A very straightforward man, he didn't agonize over the choices he made. But this one had become a thorn in his flesh almost the moment he decided to go. Anyone who was not very intimate with his wife would never have known that she was troubled: she did not scold or criticize him, she simply had moments where she could no longer restrain her internal, emotional turmoil and she would stare into space as a silent tear navigated her cheek. She was not ignorant of the tremendous risks, and although she had supported his initial efforts to redeem himself, she had not realized then that this would ultimately place him in a life-jeopardizing submersible in Antarctica.
It was the very danger, however, which made it a matter of duty, he thought. He could not send people down there if he was unwilling to go himself. After all, this mission was the brainchild of his conception.
There had doubtless been a contest to see who would be the first on the moon. Lake Vostok was no less remote, and, depending upon what, if anything, was discovered there, the man who first entered it would be immortalized.
He was suddenly very nauseous. As much as he detested the idea of braving the frigid air, as his stomach churned and his mouth filled with saliva, he knew it was inevitable. He kicked off the blankets and ran out the door, blinking in the light and realizing that it was still totally sunny out. He remembered that there were twenty-four hour days here this time of year—
As the vomit showered from his mouth, he realized how advantageous the increased light must be to his camera crew who had appeared just in time to record this memory for him.
That first unpleasant night now a month behind him, he watched as the door of the plane opened and his family blinked as they stepped out into the frosty air. His daughter, Li, pointed and waved to him from the top of the staircase. Made rotund by an apparent suitcase-full of pants and coats, she struggled to make her way down the steps.
His wife, Boa, held her by the hand, but when they finally reached the ground, Li could be contained no longer and broke free from her mother to run into his arms. This girl was the only thing in the world that caused Doctor Ming-Zhen to fully break from his stoicism and smile from ear to ear.
Hugging his daughter with one arm, he drew Bao close with the other. She had a broad face, short neck, and upturned eyebrows. Her thick, graying hair protruded from under a large cap, and her cheeks were rosy with the cold. Tears streamed down her face, but she said nothing.
“I told you I would come to you in Zhongshan,” he scolded, then kissed her forehead. “It is much colder here than the coast.”
“I could not wait, not one minute more,” she replied softly, her voice breaking. Her tears had already frozen on her eyelashes.
He squeezed his family happily. “Let's get back on the plane before you turn into snowmen.”
The trip to the coastal Zhongshan station and the two-night stay there with his wife and daughter would have been one of the happiest times of his life had it not been shadowed by the fact that, as soon as the visit was over, he would return to Vostok and make the descent two miles under the ice. When he waved goodbye as their helicopter rose into the sky, he wished beyond anything that he had listened to his parents and chosen a major other than Paleontology.
As it was, he returned to miserable Vostok and was greeted by the ever-cheerful Doctor Toskovic and, to his dismay, the camera crew. It was now evening. He would go to bed. The next morning would be the descent.
The drilling station had a tower that was almost ninety feet tall. It was at the center of the giant dome, 250 feet in diameter and a hundred feet high. Nearby were giant storage tanks and a huge pile of ice. A power station near the rim of the dome generated the electricity which powered the thermal drill (and everything else).
With this drill they had bored a tunnel twenty-six inches wide—a mere nine inches wider than the average man, and two miles long. They had sealed the water at the bottom with a pressurizing chamber. And, long before the drilling was done, they had built the five titanium submersibles that, at least in theory, met all the qualifications of the mission.
Now, Doctor Ming-Zhen was trapped in one, and he was descending down the shaft whether he wanted to or not.
“Four thousand feet,” the voice of a controller came over the speakers in the submersible.
When he raised his face, Doctor Ming-Zhen could just barely see the shaft going all the way up to the dark opening where camera flashes were still erupting. In a few minutes, this last glimpse of civilization would vanish. The light from the surface that glowed through the white snow wall was diminishing quickly the lower he went, but there was also a change in its composition. It was becoming more opaque and had a bluish hue that grew deeper with the descent.
“Six thousand feet.”
Doctor Ming-Zhen knew that the lake far below him had fifty times the amount of oxygen found in today's waters, something which would be consistent with what was known about prehistoric earth's atmosphere. This seemed to be yet anoth
er indicator of the lake's ancient age.
“Eight thousand feet.”
One of the reasons he had chosen the Antarctic as opposed to the Arctic was that no nation had any effectual claim on the place. Finder’s keepers.
“Ten thousand feet.”
As he reached a depth at which there was no light, he switched on the exterior lights. The height of the tunnel was shockingly dramatic now that it was illuminated from the inside.
“Twelve thousand feet.”
Finally, the submersible came to a stop with a slight bounce as the steel cable vacillated taut. From below he heard the grinding sound of what he knew to be the pressurizing chamber opening. When that stopped, the submarine gradually lowered into the chamber and outside the bubble he could see only metal. There was a clamping sound as the hooks at the ends of the Y-split on the cable were released.
“I am in the chamber. Prepare for radio silence,” he said.
“See you on the other side,” Doctor Toskovic's voice came over the speakers.
He watched as the cable spun around on its way out the pressurizing chamber and up the tunnel. He felt very much alone as the concave hatch twisted shut above him.
He hit a button to begin the sanitizing process. To ensure no contaminants made it into the lake from the submarines, they were self-cleaning. First, jets of boiling hot water were released to soak the outer skin, followed by a chemical bath. This process took only five minutes.
At the last minute, he remembered the stick of gum he had brought and slipped it into his mouth. Chewing rapidly, he waited for the five thousand pounds per square inch of water pressure.
With a loud grating noise and a blast, the water shot in from below, blasting his round viewport with a violent spray. He could hear very tiny creaks as the vessel was gradually fully subjected to the force of the lake water. A sudden sharp pain jolted his inner ears: he chewed harder until they popped.