by Tom Grace
The complexity of a mission to Europa was unlike anything NASA engineers had encountered since the days of Apollo. Forays to other worlds had thus far only scratched the surface of those celestial bodies. Once on Europa, NASA planned to bore through at least six miles of ice in order to explore a mysterious ocean. A submersible robotic vehicle designed to plumb those hidden waters would not only have to survive a journey in the vacuum of space, but also be able to withstand a crushing pressure that, at a minimum, would equal the deepest place beneath Earth’s oceans.
NASA’s Europa team, led by Collins and his wife, sought out the best minds in robotics, biologic testing, artificial intelligence, and deep-sea remote vehicles to help tackle the technical problems posed by the mission. The Europa Lander not only had to perform numerous complex tasks in an extreme environment but, due to the distances involved, it also had to be capable of making decisions on its own.
Early on, Collins’s team seized on the idea of exploring Lake Vostok as a full-dress rehearsal for the mission to Europa. Exhaustive testing of various subsystems finally led to the construction of a prototype. Ice Pick incorporated all but three of the main systems to be used by the Europa Lander. The deep-space communications unit was deleted from Ice Pick, since the probe’s first stage wouldn’t be more than fifty feet from the people controlling it. While it would have been nice to have the genetic analysis module on board, the scientists at UGene were still tweaking it, and any samples retrieved from the lake would be analyzed in their laboratory afterward. The probe’s nuclear power supply – a radioisotopic thermoelectric generator – was not included, because an international treaty expressly forbade the importation of nuclear material into Antarctica.
The wind shifted and the parhelic circles slowly faded away. Satisfied that he’d captured what he could, Collins picked up his camera and headed back to the station. He followed the thick orange umbilical line that provided power and communications to Ice Pick.
After a quick look around the station, Collins reentered the tower air lock and closed the door. He wasted no time stripping down to his jeans and turtleneck – the station’s interior was over a hundred degrees warmer than outside. Static sparks crackled as he peeled the woolen balaclava from his head; his black hair and beard were matted down by the protective head covering.
‘Water?’ Nedra asked as Collins clambered up the spiral stair to the station’s main level, scratching his chin.
‘Oh, yeah. My mouth is drier than a camel’s ass.’
‘That’s not the image I want in mind the next time you kiss me.’
Nedra filled a tall plastic glass and handed it to him. Keeping hydrated was critical in a place totally devoid of humidity, where the average annual precipitation was less than the Sahara Desert. Collins sat down beside his wife at the long workstation. Nedra’s monitor displayed the same information she hoped to receive one day, several years from now, from a spacecraft on the surface of Europa.
‘Status?’ Collins asked.
‘The sample capsules from the last mission are stowed and a new set of empties are on board the hydrobot. Batteries are at one-hundred percent charge.’
‘Then let’s see if we get lucky today.’
Clinging by actuated crampons to the underside of the glacial ice sheet in the slushy upper boundary of Lake Vostok, the second stage of the Ice Pick probe waited for its next command. It had taken five days in late November for the three-foot in diameter sphere to melt its way straight down through over two miles of glacier. The cryobot liquefied the ice beneath it with the heating panels on its lower hemisphere, and, as it sank, the displaced water refroze above it to prevent contaminants from the surface from entering the hidden lake. A filament of superconducting wire imbedded in a carbon nanotube sleeve emerged from the top of the sphere like a strand of webbing from a spinneret, and ran straight up along the path of the cryobot’s descent from beneath the first stage on the surface.
At Nedra’s command, the circular heating plate at the lower pole of the cryobot receded about a quarter-inch into the sphere, then slid away to expose an iris diaphragm.
‘Equalizing tube pressure,’ Nedra announced.
A series of pressure-relief valves slowly opened to allow a flow of water from the lake to gradually enter the cylindrical chamber behind the diaphragm. Once the air inside the chamber had been evacuated and the water pressure inside made equal with that of the surrounding lake, the valves closed.
‘The tube is flooded and equalized,’ Nedra noted.
Collins switched on the monitor in front of him and gripped the joystick controls. ‘Launch the fish.’
The rings of the iris diaphragm rotated to create an eight-inch aperture at the base of the cylindrical chamber. A blast of compressed air shot the two-foot-long, torpedo-shaped hydrobot through the slush into the dark water below.
Once the hydrobot was safely away, three telescoping masts extended out from the bottom of the cryobot. A pre-programmed series of transmissions verified that communications between Ice Pick’s second and third stage had been established.
‘Hydrobot is in the water,’ Nedra said. ‘She’s all yours.’
The graphical display of gauges and bar graphs on Collins’s monitor became colorfully active as the stream of real-time data began flowing in from the hydrobot.
‘All systems are up and running,’ Collins announced. ‘I’m switching on lights and camera and powering up the propulsion system.’
Halogen lights in the bow of the hydrobot illuminated the crystal-clear water as it slipped downward toward the distant lake bottom. The hydrobot’s descent slowed, then halted as the screw propeller in its tail dug into the frigid water, spinning in reverse to counteract gravity. A trio of maneuvering thrusters clustered around the hydrobot’s center of mass pivoted in response to Collins’s command and slowly rotated it like a baton.
‘Signal strength is good. The hydrobot’s responding to guidance commands,’ Collins said, the image on his screen spinning wildly.
‘Do you have to do that every time we launch?’ Nedra asked, clinching her eyes shut as she rubbed her temples. ‘You know it makes me dizzy.’
Collins brought the hydrobot to a level stop. ‘Plotting course to the next search area.’
The bow of the hydrobot dipped down and Collins piloted the submersible in a gentle sloping descent toward the bottom. Other than a few gently drifting particles, the water in the upper reaches of Lake Vostok was crystal clear – there was no wind, currents, or tide to stir things up. Through the first three hundred feet of its journey downward, the hydrobot recorded only minor temperature fluctuations in frigid water.
‘I think I see something,’ Collins announced as the hydrobot entered the search area. The clear water characteristic of the upper lake was giving way to a gray-black haze. ‘Visibility is dropping.’
Nedra looked over her husband’s shoulder. ‘Where’s the bottom?’
‘Fathometer reads about seventy-five feet of water beneath the fish. This is deeper than the surrounding area. May be a rift in the bottom. The haze looks a lot heavier than before. I think we found a smoker.’ Collins slowed the hydrobot’s descent as it reached the haze. ‘Temperature is rising, pushing into the fifties.’
‘Let’s hold here and take another water sample.’
A clear rigid pipette extended out from the bow of the hydrobot into the water, the submersible’s camera relaying the action to the station above. Inside the hydrobot, a pump drew some water into a sterile sample capsule. After the capsule was filled and sealed, the sampling system purged its lines and withdrew the pipette.
‘Damn, I wish we had that lab kit on board. It’d be nice to know if we found anything alive down there.’
‘You’ll just have to wait. We’ll know within a couple of weeks after we get home.’
When the sampling was complete, Collins resumed the descent. Sixteen feet down, the water in front of the camera cleared considerably. The hydrobot’s lights graz
ed the underside of the thick silty cloud suspended over the lake bottom. Particles glinted as they fell through the powerful beam of white light.
‘I’m going to maintain about thirty feet off the bottom while we take a look around,’ Collins said. ‘Water temp is now in the mid-seventies.’
‘It looks like we’re inside a snow globe.’
‘Only that’s volcanic ash, not white glitter.’
Collins moved the hydrobot forward slowly as they scanned the image of the silty bottom for any sign that life existed inside this remote, alien realm.
‘Water temp is moving up,’ Collins said. ‘There just has to be a vent close by.’
‘If you do find one, just make sure you don’t get too close or you’ll fry the electronics,’ Nedra cautioned.
‘I know what I’m doing,’ Collins snapped.
He brought the hydrobot to a stop and began turning it in a slow horizontal sweep to the right. Forty-three degrees right of his previous heading, he spotted a plume of particles billowing out of a lumpy black mass of rock that jutted up from the lake bottom like a broken fang. The ash gray landscape surrounding the smoker was mottled with patches of white.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ Nedra asked.
Collins swallowed hard, his throat suddenly feeling very tight and dry. He pushed the hydrobot forward, gliding cautiously toward the nearest field of iridescent white. As he closed the distance, details began to emerge from the indistinct mass – long, thin strands of filaments. Collins brought the hydrobot to a stop just a foot above the edge of the spaghetti-like mass. The gentle turning of the hydrobot’s maneuvering thrusters disturbed the water, rippling through the filaments like a breeze through a wheat field. Small, transparent creatures similar to jellyfish darted out of the hydrobot’s light.
‘I don’t think you need that lab kit now,’ Nedra said.
Collins’s eyes were transfixed on the digital image. ‘Send a message to the Jet Propulsion Lab: Lake Vostok is alive.’
Acknowledgements
My thanks to John Van der Velde, Yukio Kamazara, and Lawrence Jones – professors of Physics at the University of Michigan – for their insights into the challenges and promise of physics research in the near future; to Fred Mayer, University Planner at the University of Michigan, for helping me dig up the past; to Shannon Zachary and Kathleen Dow of the University Library for an education in the preservation of books; to Stuart Cohen of the University of Michigan Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory for the tour of Martin Kilkenny’s old workshop; to Prof. Wolfgang Porad for giving me the lay of the land regarding research and Notre Dame; to B. J. Keepers and Scott Gochis for their generous advice on the Special Forces; to Barbara Jones for her understanding of the transportation industry; to the Ann Arbor Police Department; and to Nathan Jacobson, my friend and guide to Russia.
Thanks also to my editor Rob McMahon for his sound advice and sense of humor; to my agent Esther Margolis for her wise counsel; and to Larry Kirshbaum, Maureen Egen, Jamie Raab, Harvey-Jane Kowal, Jimmy Franco, Stephen Lamont, and their talented and able colleagues at Warner Books for their support and encouragement.
A special thanks to my wife, Kathy, and our children for their love and support as I write late into the night.
About the Author
Tom Grace was born, raised, and still lives in Michigan. He studied architecture at the University of Michigan, where he developed his strict eye for detail. In just over twenty years of practice, Tom has worked on projects ranging from modest home renovations to major urban designs for Chicago and London. His superior knowledge of technology has found its way into his writing and has earned him tremendous acclaim as a result.
Tom credits his second career as a writer in equal parts to a voracious appetite for books, an overactive imagination, and a compulsive desire to set challenging long-term goals for himself.
Tom Grace lives with his wife, five children and a yellow Labrador. His interests are architecture and current affairs; he also enjoys scuba diving, martial arts and running marathons. To find out more about Tom go to www.tomgrace.net.
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Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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FIRST EDITION
First published by Pocket Books in 2000.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Dedication
Cover
Title Page
Prologue: December 10, 1948
Chapter 1 - June 5, Present Day
Chapter 2 - June 7
Chapter 3 - June 23
Chapter 4 - June 23
Chapter 5 - June 23
Chapter 6 - June 23
Chapter 7 - June 23
Chapter 8 - June 23
Chapter 9 - June 23
Chapter 10 - June 23
Chapter 11 - June 24
Chapter 12 - June 26
Chapter 13 - June 27
Chapter 14 - June 28
Chapter 15 - June 28
Chapter 16 - June 28
Chapter 17 - June 29
Chapter 18 - June 30
Chapter 19 - July 10
Chapter 20 - July 11
Chapter 21 - July 17
Chapter 22 - July 18
Chapter 23 - July 18
Chapter 24 - July 19
Chapter 25 - July 19
Chapter 26 - July 20
Chapter 27 - July 21
Chapter 28 - July 21
Chapter 29 - July 25
Chapter 30 - July 26
Chapter 31 - July 26
Chapter 32 - July 26
Chapter 33 - July 26
> Chapter 34 - July 26
Chapter 35 - July 26
Chapter 36 - July 26
Chapter 37 - July 27
Chapter 38 - July 28
Chapter 39 - July 28
Chapter 40 - July 28
Chapter 41 - July 28
Chapter 42 - July 29
Chapter 43 - July 29
Chapter 44 - July 29
Chapter 45 - July 29
Chapter 46 - July 29