“Mars. We’re on Mars. And the satellites show that we’re not alone.”
“And that’s why the Rover left marks on the ice. That’s not just water that’s been frozen for an eternity. It’s dry ice, carbon dioxide in the solid state. It exists in great quantities on Mars,” Caroline said in a whisper.
“And there are no traces of carbon dioxide on Ganymede,” Sofia exhaled.
“Smooth stones, underground veins, stalagmites and stalactites demand that water run for centuries and centuries. Nothing that water melted by a mere volcano would explain. We’re stupid,” Mariah concluded.
“From the beginning of the mission, it’s always been Mars. The ship was designed for Mars. I’ve never heard any scientist talk about that phantasy of launching tons of bacteria on Venus, much less seeds and eggs five hundred years later,” Sofia Suren realized.
“There’s a lot to be explained. President Cardoso himself told us the Ganymede story. If they lied to us, maybe it was because they had to lie. We need data. We’ve got to get more information,” Andrew concluded.
“Hey, guys, come look at this,” Pierre called out. He’d approached the vault door that closed the enormous hanger. “It looks like a coded opening system.”
They approached it. On the ground, Pierre had lifted a slab and discovered a device with an alphanumeric keyboard. Below it a complex, unintelligible expression was written.
“It’s a code,” Mariah said.
“It can’t be a direct entry code,” Andrew advised.
“No, it can’t. We have to translate it using the Enigma system’s code machine,” Pierre bet.
Enigma was the electromechanical encryption system used by Germany during World War II that the English, headed by Touring, had deciphered. They called Steven and Larissa, who looked in the computer server for the German Enigma code’s algorithm. They exported the software to the laptop with the group in the cavern and Andrew proceeded to decode it. When decrypted, the code gave three German names: Eva, Klara, and Edmund. They introduced them into the keyboard, heard a motor start and the vault door began to move. First, it moved away from the wall, with dust and dirt falling off, then it opened sliding parallel to the grotto’s face. The six entered a very straight and much deeper chamber with a metal bridge across it. To the left and to the right, they saw horizontal terraces. Many of them were above and, more dramatically, below, in a tremendous shaft. They were verandas or enormous shelves, filled with transparent ice cubes. In each of these cubes as woman, Caucasian, almost nude and frozen. The women seemed between seventeen and twenty years old, with the exception of a few older ones who were dressed. To the left and to the right, they extended for more than fifty stories along the entire hall.
The female genes, they all thought.
They crossed the long hall to another vault door and once again there was a keyboard below the ground, under a slab, with the same code: Eva, Klara, and Edmund. They typed it in. The door behind them closed and another, in front of them, opened. They continued down a corridor with air shafts, going through smaller doors, all sealed with the same code.
These didn’t open with a motorized mechanism, but, rather, a lock wheel. They were safe doors inspired by naval submarine engineering. To open one, you had to close the previous one. They tried to go back but found no mechanism to open the doors in the opposite direction. They decided to go ahead and, after having passed a third door, climbed up stairs carved into the side of the shaft’s rock. They went through a fourth one and when they began to open it, it sucked dust from the stairs through crevices in the door, entering into the area that revealed itself.
It was a classical room with stocked walls and wooden floors that brightened its entrance. Its austere furniture was predominantly made of massive wood. Various paintings, shields and ancient coats of arms decorated the walls and near the ceiling—also wooden but lighter, they could see several types of vents. The light switch by the door had activated automatically. The thermometer showed ninety-five degrees below zero, lower than the initial galleries, and on the right wall there were a thermostat and pressure, oxygen, carbon dioxide and humidity gauges, all analogical. To the left, there was an enormous metal eagle, painted black, gold and red, standing on a rock promontory. It was simultaneously frightening and attractive.
After looking at the austere room for some time, they went through the door to the next gallery. But before that, Lucas turned out the light and pointed the spotlights at the eagle. In the shadows, he saw that there was a carved staircase in the rocky promontory. He turned the lights back on and the stairs disappeared. Between the form of the rocks and paint overlapping the stairs, it was a perfect chameleon, not in color, but in form. It was difficult for Lucas to climb the narrow steps in his spacesuit. There, above, he could see the vast room but nothing else. He turned back and stood in front of the eagle’s face. It was just as perfect and hypnotizing up close as it was from afar. Its eyes seemed alive, real, as if they were looking at him. He looked fixedly at them and then simultaneously stuck two fingers in them. He heard the crack of falling and a small compartment opened up on the pavement. There was an Enigma keyboard inside.
They deciphered a new code, ONE THOUSAND CENTURIES and heard an opening mechanism. The wall with the analogic temperature and other gauges opened and there was a rapid flow of Martian air from the room into a vast shielded metal chamber, white in color and of low luminosity. The chamber’s interior pressure was very low, nearly a vacuum. Inside, within a bluish pentagonal block, opalescent due to the presence of micro bubbles of an unidentified gas, were two frozen statues.
* * *
The ice rock had been excavated to the central zone, but, due to the opalescence, they couldn’t identify the two individuals in suspended animation. It was 125 degrees below zero in the enormous walk in freezer. The crumbled center had curved, irregular faces, showing that the ice had not been melted or cut using a mechanized saw. The generous carving extended to a coat of arms with a swastika and an eagle, smaller but otherwise identical to the one they’d seen outside. The eagle’s eyes had been pressed and were in an inward position. Since they’d entered that underground base’s second hall, they had not said a word but all thought the same thing: the frozen sarcophagus had been violated, and some kind of treasure had been stolen. Could it have been the book describing how to heat and reanimate the bodies? Could it have been a secret weapon? Could it have been instructions for a group that would arise later? A testament? Some other type of revelation? Whatever it was had been of great interest to someone who’d already taken possession of whatever they’d found.
They had to close the door, once again pressing the large eagle’s eyes in order to continue. They went through six more submarine-type doors with the same mechanism and, at the last one, they were spit upon the ground by a cyclone that threw them ten meters. Sofia’s suit ripped and, terrified, she remembered her decompression in the greenhouse on Violet Street. But there was no whistle or saliva boiling in her mouth. Just cold. She got up and saw Lucas standing, having removed the helmet from his spacesuit. He was breathing normally. They went into the next area and came upon a horrifying spectacle.
The bunker was full of mummified bodies and skeletons, some military, but the majority dressed in white gowns as if they had been scientists or doctors. Many had been tossed by the air current that filled the tunnel from which they had come. The bodies were old. They all took off their helmets as Lucas had done and breathed normally despite the very cold temperature. They entered rooms showing that the people in that bunker had lived a relatively comfortable life. Lucas stripped off his spacesuit and devices, completely undressed with his body sea like from the platinum. He went to a locker, took out some light clothing his size and put it on. When he looked back, the others were staring at him, foreign and nude in the cold.
“We don’t need the suits,” Lucas said.
Andrew shook his head and everyone chose warm German clothes that they put on, cautiously, leaving the
heavy robust suits behind. It was really cold, even though Lucas had trouble perceiving that simple fact.
“We’ve got a signal,” Andrew discovered, looking at the radio. At that point, they heard Steven’s voice. “The polar ship suffered a great shock as if it were sinking in the direction of a branch of your grotto; all movement, temperature, and alarms have gone off. Are you hearing me? Do you hear?”
“Yes, Steven,” Andrew told him. “The vault must be about to collapse. You will have to risk lifting off for the equatorial position, along with the other groups of settlers, if there are any.”
“And you?” returned Larissa. “We’re well, in an old but functional underground structure, with breathable oxygen,” Andrew responded. “I have to go. Steven is beginning the rocket’s ignition sequence,” Larissa Mayamba Lee was overheard saying. “We hope the dome doesn’t offer great resistance to the ship as it exits.” Silence again.
They were alone in the Bunker. There was no possibility of returning to the polar ship.
“There’s no point in them taking off. Either this is a collective hallucination and nothing is going to happen or whoever is keeping us alive will also keep them alive,” whispered Lucas.
“Shut up,” Sofia responded. “Enough conspiracies. You’re in an archaic underground space base, with pressurization chambers and multiple systems for regulating the atmosphere and temperature. Someone built it a very, very long time ago, but you discovered it too soon and by accident. No one is taking care of us.”
“Stop yourself, too, Sofia,” Andrew said in a soft but firm voice. “There can’t be a rational discussion when neither of you understands anything about what is happening. Let’s go.”
They continued through several doors that now were opened with another code—the words OPERATION GLACIER 1946. Without the spacesuits’ batteries, the lanterns quickly lost their charge. They came upon a staircase that, after several flights, was cemented above. They couldn’t go any farther. They went back and saw a wall, on a landing, with cracks so large that a finger would fit in them. Lucas grabbed the small titanium pick and began to strike the wall from top to bottom. Initially, only small fragments fell, but a type of cellulose fiber-cement that gave off a dense dust appeared. “Be careful, they’re very old walls. They may contain asbestos,” Caroline warned, moving Lucas out of the way. All of them covered their mouths and noses with their clothes but Caroline, who held her breath, grabbed the pick and began to open a hole large enough for them to go through, raising an enormous cloud of dust that got in their eyes. It was as dark as pitch because the lanterns had gone out. They couldn’t see anything. Pierre entered, groping, and told them to give him their hands. They obeyed instinctively and Pierre advanced in complete darkness, whistling softly.
“We’re in a very large tunnel,” Pierre informed them. “Let’s go.”
“How do you know where we’re going?” Sofia asked.
“By the whistle’s echo. Don’t you hear it?” Pierre asked.
“You know good and well that only you hear it,” Lucas responded.
“Pierre Tollmache, the bat from Lille. You’d make a good movie,” Mariah joked.
“Or the Vampire Tollmache,” Caroline disagreed.
“Vampire, no. A vampire would devour me in the dark. I’ll dispense with that,” corrected Mariah.
“Speak for yourself, dear,” Caroline disagreed.
“I can hear you, Caroline,” Pierre warned. “And, remember, I once saw you nude.”
The six of them managed to laugh, in that impossible nook that destiny had reserved for them in the solar system. They continued for forty minutes in single file through tunnels blinding in their darkness. At a given point, Pierre advised them, “This is a metal staircase.” They climbed until they reached a sealed cover they were able to break open without much effort and exited onto the planet’s frozen surface, outside the dome containing the polar and logistics ships. They quickly confirmed that they, in fact, were not alone.
Part Four
The Eight Continent
Chapter 19
The Beginning
Andrew, Lucas, Pierre, Sofia, Mariah, and Caroline climbed the stairs linking the underground space base’s tunnels to the outside and opened the wheel locks leading to the polar surface. Two jeeps with soldiers immediately appeared and surrounded them. They were in the middle of a street on a very busy citadel in the snow.
Steven and Larissa had begun the countdown to ignite the spaceship’s rockets when bright rays of light entered the capsule’s eyes and they heard a deafening noise. Loudspeakers from two extremely heavy helicopters announced, “We are the High Mountain Special Forces of the United States Army. Abandon the space vehicle now; failure to immediately comply with this order will lead to our forced entrance into the vessel or its destruction.” They exited and were surrounded by armed soldiers wearing white protective gear for nuclear, chemical and biological risks who led them to one of the helicopters, which then took off in the dark night of the new moon. From the air, they saw the headlights of dozens of military vehicles establish a security perimeter around the grotto. American paratroopers descended from assault helicopters by rope into the underground cavern’s opening, lit up by the airships’ spotlights like it was day. The Germans were toast.
The artificial dome was very visible and there was a military complex beyond it. It was night outside, but, beyond that lost base, everything was a frozen desert without a living soul. And there were no signs of life during the hour long flight to the coast to an aircraft carrier with that well known flag having stars on a blue field and red and white stripes. They had barely landed when they were taken to a room where Sofia, Mariah, Caroline, Andrew, Pierre, and Lucas were still dressed in German clothes. Two soldiers arrived who ordered them to clean their hands with an alcohol solution and gave them masks and gloves. Then Tyrell Hendriks came in, wearing a white gown and surgical gloves. He looked at their clothes with an air of delight and ordered them to sit somewhat distant from him.
“As you have seen, Operation Antarctica has served to guarantee your quarantine and training for your real mission, your departure for Mars,” Hendriks explained. “There was that unbelievable serendipity afterward. We chose that zone of Greenland to construct the test base because it is one of the coldest, most uninhabited and secure places in the northern hemisphere—it was the closest thing to the red planet we could use. The Antarctic would have been ideal, but we only got the name because the Chinese are there. The cost of cooling the dome is lower and there are far fewer curious people than there would be in Alaska. The Germans must have thought the same thing. What impresses me is how, in the 1940s, they managed that feat. Besides the facet of military logistics, there’s the scientific aspect. We must tip our hats to those sons of bitches. When we figure out the formula, if it works, we’ll make a great leap in cryopreservation. We must thank you for your discovery.”
“Now, for practical things,” Hendriks continued. “You will leave for Mars within a few weeks. Your group is a little heterogeneous, but it has a dynamic that works.”
“How long were we asleep?” Caroline asked.
“Three weeks,” Tyrell responded. “Welcome back to the past.”
“But isn’t Mars going to be destroyed by Theia?” Sofia Suren asked ironically.
“No, nothing like that, my dear colleague. The apocalypse is not a game of cosmic billiards. It’s a straight shot at Earth, lucky girl with good genes. The good man Cardoso believed in Santa Claus and if he knew that Mars would be clear, he’d have wanted to send everyone there by flipping a coin. With Ganymede, he didn’t have that illusion; he realized that we had to pick who we would send to the ends of the solar system. You...”
“I want to see my parents before we leave,” Mariah interrupted.
“The Earth is condemned, and it’s going to be very complicated keeping things under control,” Hendriks advanced. “That’s hell. The Russians and the Chinese have things easier beca
use they use an iron hand and that’s that. We’re having problems keeping order, since rumors have spread that the end is nigh. At this moment, we think the collision is almost a given. Theia is a very dark planet; we were lucky to have spotted it. It does not reflect the sun’s light and it’s passing Saturn, coming straight at Earth. Its trajectory will be totally confirmed once it crosses Jupiter’s orbit, in less than seventeen months, since that is when it will accelerate and divert, pointing at us. Officially, the probability of escaping with partial damage that allows for repopulating has risen to twenty-four percent and the probability of nothing changing on Earth has risen to three percent. That would be a bag with four balls, one white and three black, but I’m personally convinced that the probability of escaping doesn’t pass ten percent because of the moons accompanying the principal planet. No one remembers them. Just me.”
“I want to see my parents before leaving,” Mariah repeated.
“One white and three black, Mariah. In the best of scenarios, your parents will lose if they see you.”
“Why? Why do they have to lose anything just because of a hug?”
“Because, despite the rumors and agitation they’re provoking, we’re trying not to reveal the facts until the Presidential elections. It’s only a few short weeks until the elections. Your parents will know that you are alive and your chances are on Mars and theirs will be in orbit.”
“But President Cardoso...”
“President Cardoso is dead. Some whackjob assassinated him. He was a complicated man, he believed in the improbable and doubted real facts. President Magnuson, the former vice president, is in charge now. Happily, the new commander in chief is more practical, he understands the science involved well and he even considered being sent to Mars, during a second stage, to antagonize the Russian and Chinese leadership. You will all be in very good company.”
Perpetual Winter: The Deep Inn Page 19