by Bob Mayer
“How would electric power be generated here?” Conner asked.
“Most likely oil-burning generators. That’s what runs the majority of the bases here, although they would have had to airlift all that oil. At McMurdo they bring it in by ship, so it’s not a major logistical problem. Here, I don’t know.”
“The man I talked to who helped build this place said they brought in quite a few bladders of fuel.”
Devlin nodded. “Then we need to find whatever burns that fuel.”
Next they went to the door straight across the corridor. This unit was a nicely designed living quarters with three sleeping areas, each separated by a thin wall. Traversing the entire length, they came to a door on the far side. They exited that and were faced with another side corridor extending off to the right and a door directly in front.
“Let’s go straight through until we get to the end. There’s supposed to be four of these in line, according to my source,” Conner said. “If there’s nothing in this row, we’ll work up the middle one.”
Devlin swung open the door and they stepped in. Large stainless steel tanks lined both sides of a narrow walkway. The tanks were open on the top, and banks of dead lights hung low over them. There were pumps and various tubes arrayed throughout the room.
“What is this?” Conner asked.
Devlin shined his flashlight inside one of the tanks. “I don’t know. It reminds me of something I’ve seen before, but I can’t place it right now.”
They walked the length of that unit and through another door. Devlin pushed open the door to the last unit.
“Ah, this is more like it,” he said as he swept his flashlight over the machinery inside. “This must be the power room. Look, there’s a control panel.” He walked over to a console full of dials and switches. “There’s the ‘on’ for the master power, but I’m sure we have no battery power.” He pressed the button with his thumb. Nothing.
“There must be a small auxiliary generator to start the main.” He flashed the light on the other side. “Here we go.”
Conner watched as he knelt down next to a medium-sized portable generator and unscrewed a cap. He shone his flashlight inside. “It’s even got fuel. Hold the light while I prime it.”
Conner hovered over Devlin’s shoulder as he worked. She didn’t know what he was doing, but he obviously did. After about five minutes he stood. “All right. Let’s give it a shot.” He took hold of a knob attached to a cord and pulled.
“Shit,” he muttered when the cord didn’t move. He pulled more carefully, and the cord slowly unwound. Then he squatted and exploded upward. The engine turned over once with a burp. “Damn. This thing is stubborn.”
Conner didn’t say a word. She found it remarkable that they were trying to start a generator that had been in frozen limbo for twenty- five years. The concept of a place where nothing deteriorated or rusted was hard to grasp.
After five more tries, the engine coughed, sputtered, and turned over for almost ten seconds before dying.
“I’ve got it now.” Devlin adjusted the choke and pulled once more.
The generator sputtered again and then roared to life. Devlin let it run on high for a few minutes before he turned down the choke.
“All right. Let’s see how we get the main started while that warms up.” He took the flashlight from her hands and played it over the control panel. He laughed. “They’ve got all the instructions right here, almost as if they were expecting someone who didn’t know how to run this thing. Hell, it’s even numbered.
“We’ve already accomplished step one by getting the auxiliary started. OK. Two is to open up the main fuel line.” He moved to the left of the console and looked up. “Here’s the valve.”
Conner heard a few seconds of metal screeching.
“OK. We’ve got fuel. Now we prime this baby.” Devlin worked for a few minutes, following the instructions step by step. “Last—but not least—we open the power line from the aux to the main generator and give it some juice.”
Conner watched as lights flickered and glowed on the console. Gradually they steadied. Devlin looked over the gauges. “Ready?” he asked.
Without waiting for an answer, Devlin pressed the starter button. The lights on the board dimmed, and they heard a sputtering noise behind the console. The sputtering shifted to a whine and then a rhythmic rumble after thirty seconds.
Devlin was examining another row of controls to the right. “Here’s a bunch of switches labeled north, middle, south, east, and west tunnels.” Conner looked over his shoulder at the schematic of the corridors of the base. At least she could get oriented now. The surface shaft where they had come down opened onto the north end of the east corridor.
Devlin threw all the switches, and light suddenly streamed in through the open doorway. “All right!” he yelled.
Conner flicked on the light switch just inside the doorway. She squinted as the room was flooded with bright light from the overheads. “What’s that for?” she said, pointing at the other end of the room.
Devlin turned. The far end of the unit was filled with a massive control panel with uncountable gauges. It made the main generator board look puny. A three-by-three panel with a triangular warning sign was recessed into the left side. Devlin walked the twenty feet to look over the setup.
“Oh, my god. I don’t believe it. I don’t fucking believe it.” Conner hurried up to him. “What’s the matter?” Devlin turned to her, his face ashen. “This is the control panel for a nuclear reactor.”
Chapter 12
ETERNITY BASE, ANTARCTICA
“How could they put a nuclear reactor down here? I thought reactors were huge and had lots of safety devices and all that,” Sammy asked. It was the first time she had said anything since Devlin and Conner had returned from their recon mission. The members of the team were huddled in their sleeping bags, listening to an excited Conner finish her report on the base.
“I say we go to the first set of living quarters you found and set up,” suggested Riley. In answer to his own proposal, he threw his gear over his shoulder, helped Sammy to her feet, and headed off. They left the corpse in the corridor, covered with a blanket, letting the cold continue its task of preservation.
Entering the room, Riley switched on the ceiling heaters as the rest of the team settled in. Devlin was still agitated by their most recent discovery—more than he had been over the discovery of the body. He answered the question Sammy had asked out in the corridor. “McMurdo had a nuclear reactor: the U.S. Navy set it up in ‘61 and got it on line in ‘62. They thought it would alleviate the problem of bringing in all the fuel oil every summer and would be a cheap and effective way to keep McMurdo supplied with power.”
“What happened?” Vickers was seated on a chair, leaned against the wall, obviously feeling better.
“The plant was closed in ‘72—the year after this place was built. They had a leakage of coolant water into the steam generator tank. The navy shut the thing down, and it took them three years to remove
it. When we get back to Aurora Glacier Station, I can show you where the reactor was. They put it on Observatory Hill right near Erebus, which in and of itself wasn’t too smart, since Erebus is still an active volcano.
“They shipped the reactor and a hundred and one drums of radioactive earth back to the United States and buried them somewhere. But even that didn’t make the site clean enough. The navy had to dig out more earth and ship it back. The site wasn’t opened up for what the military termed unrestricted use until 1979.”
“There’s no way they could have left a reactor down here unattended for twenty-five years,” Conner said. “I don’t know much about them, but I do know they require constant attention.”
Devlin nodded. “You’re right. But this one is off line. The plan must have been that when they reoccupied this place, they’d bring the rods with them and use the oil generators until they could get the reactor on line. But, even so, the fact that the U.S. gove
rnment put a nuclear reactor—even one without the nuclear fuel—down here and abandoned is unbelievable.”
Lallo was more concerned with immediate matters. “What now? We have to wait out the storm, but what do you want to do in the meantime?”
Conner stood in front of the group. “We need to explore. Now that the lights are on, we should be able to figure out what this place was built for and maybe who built it.” She looked at Vickers. “Can you work?”
Vickers nodded. “The bleeding has stopped. As long as I don’t hit my head again I should be all right.”
“OK.” Conner was all business. “Let’s get out the cameras and take some initial footage. I want to start at the top of the staircase and work our way in, as if we were entering for the first time.”
Kerns and Vickers started opening the cases of camera and sound equipment. Devlin grabbed his flashlight and headed for the door. “I’m going down to the power plant to see what I can find out about the actual reactor. They must have offset it from this base, and maybe I can find the location.”
The room rapidly emptied until Sammy was left with Riley and Swenson. The pilot walked over to one of the beds and flopped down on it. “I’m going to catch me some shut-eye so I’ll be ready to fly when this storm does break.” With that he pulled the pillow over his head.
“Let’s take a walk,” Riley suggested to Sammy.
They could hear Conner and her camera crew clattering on the stairs in the access shaft. Riley walked to the doorway straight across the hall and entered the first unit that Devlin and Conner had explored.
Riley switched on the lights. It was obvious this was some sort of communications setup. Against the walls were several radio consoles with chairs in front of them. Riley flicked the on switch for one, and the set hummed. “They’ve got a lot of redundant commo equipment here,” he remarked to Sammy. He pointed. “That’s an HF—high frequency—radio. That looks like a SATCOM—satellite communications—rig. I used both types when I was in the service.”
He fiddled with the knobs, trying to see if he could get something. A dull hiss was all that came out of the speakers. Riley suddenly slapped his hand on the panel in disgust. “Shit. Sometimes I’m so dumb. The antennas probably blew away a long time ago, if they ever put them out.”
Sammy pointed to the far left corner of the room where a large number of wires ran into a shaft that disappeared into the ceiling. ‘That must be where the antenna wires run up next to the entrance shaft.”
A transmitter on the other side caught her attention. Several large boxes containing long-lasting batteries surrounded it. A placard on the front read “Eternity Base Transponder. Frequency: 45.83.”
“What’s this?” she asked.
Riley came over and examined the set. “That’s how the builders of this base planned to find it once it was covered over. The transponder is set to be initiated by a plane’s radio. The pilot dials up the proper frequency—45.83—on the radio and presses his transmit button. That turns on this transponder. The pilot then homes in on the radio beacon.
“It’s the same system set up at small airfields. It allows pilots to turn on the airfield light when they approach at night and the tower isn’t manned. The antenna is probably built into the roof of the access shaft.”
Riley looked at the various gauges. There was no juice left in the batteries, but they were now slowly recharging with the main power on. Even the cold of Antarctica couldn’t have kept the batteries alive for twenty-five years.
The two left the radio room and moved on to the next unit. It was another set of living quarters, except this one was more lavish. There were two bedrooms and a small living room. Sammy moved into the smaller bedroom and immediately spotted a large blue binder conspicuously placed on top of the bed. An envelope was taped to the outside of the binder. PETER was written in block letters on the outside of the envelope.
Sammy carefully peeled off the envelope. It was sealed. She stuffed it in her pocket, then picked up the binder and rejoined Riley, showing him only the binder.
With the reenactment of the entry into the base completed, Conner guided her crew to the first unit to the right. She narrated as she led the way. “I have labeled the various units according to their row and column for identification purposes. The row nearest the entry shaft is row A. The next will be row B and so on. The column farthest from the shaft is column one, the middle column is column two, and the one closest to the shaft is column three. Thus we have just left unit A3, which appeared to be a communications setup.
“We are now entering unit A2.” Conner went into the living quarters that Riley had exited just minutes earlier. She led Lallo, Kerns, and Vickers through the three rooms, making comments as the camera’s eye took in everything. Then she went back out into the tunnel.
“This tunnel, designated the north tunnel on the power supply board, is blocked heading to unit Al. We might be able to get to that unit by going up the west tunnel. We intend to work our way over there.
“Unit B3 is living quarters where we have temporarily left our equipment and where our pilot is catching some sleep.” She opened the door directly across the corridor. “We are now entering unit B2.”
The first thing that caught her eye as she went through the door was Riley and Sammy at the electric stove. “As you can see, some of our party is already at work using the equipment here to prepare a meal.”
Riley ignored the camera and continued stirring a large pot on top of the electric stove. “Dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes.”
Conner led the way through the kitchen and dining area. “This appears to be the central area for meals and probably was designed to double as the meeting area for the community that was to live here.”
They went through the door and into C2, which turned out to be another set of living quarters. Then they crossed over to C3, which contained the strange metal tanks and light fixtures that she and Devlin had discovered earlier.
She spent more time in D3, making sure they got complete coverage of the control panel for the nuclear reactor. As she narrated, she noticed that the grating to the left of the panel had been removed, revealing a dark tunnel. A small sign above the tunnel read “Power Access Tunnel.” She assumed that was where Devlin had gone.
“Here we have the controls for a nuclear reactor. We can only assume that the radioactive rods were never put in place, so the reactor is inert and not dangerous at the moment. This base, according to our sources, was established in 1971, just one year before a similar experimental nuclear reactor at McMurdo Station was shut down at great expense to the American taxpayer.
“That, however, does not explain the secretive manner in which this base was built and the way its presence was completely obliterated from government records. Nor does it explain the listing of the aircrew who helped build this airbase—the only aircrew that knew where this base was—as missing in action in Vietnam, when in reality they were here on that day, flying the last mission out of Eternity Base.
“Even more ominous, it does not explain the attempt on the life of the worker from the Records Center who discovered the existence of this base. Nor do we know why the man at the entrance of the base was killed.”
Conner slashed her finger across her throat. “Cut.”
“Good,” Vickers said. “That’ll be a real catchy intro. It’ll sure make them sit up in Atlanta when we send it.”
“Let’s get the rest of this place on tape,” Conner ordered. “They can edit it in Atlanta.”
She led the way to the next unit, D2, which turned out to be an extremely well-stocked library. Not only were there numerous books on the shelves but several file cabinets full of microfiche and three microfiche readers set up on tables.
Unit D1 was a dispensary with enough equipment to outfit a minor surgery and shelves well stocked with drugs.
CI was an indoor greenhouse. Large banks of lights lined the ceiling, and trays filled with frozen soil were held in floo
r-to-ceiling racks. There were also lights on the bottom of each rack. Someone had spent a lot of time making every inch of space functional in the small room.
The west tunnel was blocked halfway up between B1 and B2 by the buckling of the ice ridge. Unit B1 itself was crushed halfway through. Conner stood next to a wall of ice while Lallo filmed her against the white backdrop. “Here we see that Eternity Base did not totally live up to its name. Despite the remarkable preservation of most of the base and its equipment, as evidenced by the quick startup of the generators and the lights, we see that Mother Nature did not totally spare the base. This destruction is the result of pressure formed by two sections of ice meeting each other and buckling up to form a ridge on the surface.”
Conner went back into the main center tunnel. They’d been in all the units except Al, which was blocked. She now turned her attention to the set of large double doors that were on both ends of the main tunnel. She and Vickers pulled open the set to the west. A large dark tunnel appeared. Groping inside the doors, Conner found a lever, which she pulled down. Sparks sputtered out of the ceiling and then nothing. Using the camera’s klieg light, they probed the darkness, only to be met by the same wall of buckled ice that blocked off unit Al. It had cut across the base diagonally and continued on through here.
“Let’s try the other side.” Conner led the way down the main cross tunnel and opened the doors there. She threw the lever and gasped as large arc lights went on, revealing a massive tunnel burrowed out of the ice, extending almost two hundred yards straight ahead. There was a clear central passageway, but the rest of the twenty-yard-wide tunnel was crammed with mountains of supplies.
Conner moved down the aisle, letting Lallo photograph the labels on the boxes. Most of it was food. The last fifty yards of the storage tunnel housed a dozen snowmobiles, a bulldozer, a backhoe, several snow tractors of various sizes, and two large cabins on skis that looked as though they could be hooked up to the back of the larger tractors.