Beneath the Ice

by Alton Gansky

  “I didn’t make it up, Jack. It’s there, and yes, it looks like a pyramid—or ziggurat, as Dr. Curtis reminded us.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Shape,” a voice said. Dr. Curtis approached. “Pyramids have straight sides while ziggurats are stepped. Usually the word ziggurat is applied to Mesopotamian structures, but the term can be used more widely. A ziggurat starts wide at the ground and each layer up is smaller until it reaches its peak.”

  “So you think one of these ziggurats is below the ice,” Jack said.

  Dr. Curtis shook his head. “I’m sorry, Perry, but it’s too much to believe. I’ve seen strange things in my day, including that find of yours in the Tehachapi Mountains that still has me answering questions from universities all around the world, but this pushes my credulity a tad too far. I have to agree with Dr. James. It’s a mound of some sort that coincidentally looks man-made.”

  “Sensible conclusion, Dr. Curtis,” Griffin said. “At least I have one other reasonable person around.”

  “Don’t count me too far on your side, Dr. James,” Curtis said. “I’m willing to admit that I’ve been surprised before.”

  “We all have, but not by the likes of this,” Griffin objected. “Buildings mean humans, and it is simply impossible to think that humans ever inhabited this region—or anywhere in Antarctica. The largest native animal here is the wingless midge. Anything larger than that insect could never survive the hostilities of the land. Sure, penguins, seals, and the like make their way to the shoreline, but nothing moves inland.”

  “But Antarctica has changed,” Perry said. “What we see today is not the way it’s always been.”

  “Everything changes, Mr. Sachs. Nothing is stagnant.”

  “Except old ideas,” Perry countered.

  “Excuse me?” Griffin said, looking injured.

  “Humans have a tendency to latch onto a truth and cling to it no matter how much evidence tells them otherwise.”

  “You mean like your faith,” Griffin said. “My sister tells me you’re a Christian. Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  “That goes for me, too,” Jack said.

  “And me,” Curtis said without embarrassment.

  “Really?” Griffin said, looking at Curtis. “That surprises me. I can understand how these two might succumb to such myths, but you’re scientifically trained. And in archaeology at that.”

  “I have found science deepens my faith,” Curtis said. “And don’t sell these men short. You’re too intelligent a man to be shackled by scientific chauvinism. Perry, Jack, and Gleason are no fools.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” Jack said. “I think you’re just swell, too.”

  Curtis sighed. “No matter how much they may act it.” He returned his attention to Griffin. “Science is the pursuit of reality. We struggle to describe what was, what is, and what may come to be. Once we cease to test, to reexamine, then we become the keepers of the old, not the explorers of the new.”

  “I don’t think you can accuse me of being a keeper of the old,” Griffin said.

  “Really?” Curtis asked. “An hour ago in the Dome, when Perry revealed the news about poor Dr. Hearns’s find, you pooh-poohed it out of hand. When presented with the possibility of a human-made structure where no such structure could possibly be, you refused to participate in a search for the truth.”

  “But you said you didn’t believe it to be what it appears,” Griffin said.

  “That’s true. I don’t see how any structure, pyramidal or not, can be there. The difference between us is I want to ascertain the truth.”

  “Science is science, and stupidity is stupidity,” Griffin remarked.

  “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference,” Jack said.

  “You know as well as I,” Perry said, “that Antarctica used to be very different. All we see is cold and ice, but life existed here—life much larger than the wingless midge. The fossil record shows the presence of forests of the southern beech tree, Nothofagus. Fossil leaves of a plant similar to the ginkgo biloba have been found as well. Conifer remains are present, including one that stands twenty-three feet high. On the Antarctic Peninsula the remains of a giant, flightless bird have been unearthed. In recent years a crested carnivore fossil was found, as was a duck-billed hadrosaur. Evidence of small dinosaurs exists, too, such as the Leaellynasaura and later marsupials. On Seymour Island, near the Antarctic Peninsula, scientists found a fossil of an armadillo the size of a Volkswagen.”

  “That’s a long way from an established human civilization,” Griffin said.

  “My point is, life used to be here in abundance,” Perry said.

  “So what changed?” Jack asked.

  “You want to take a crack at that, Dr. James?” Perry asked. “It’s your specialty.”

  “I’ll concede that complex life used to make its home here, but that would have been when Antarctica was part of Australia, which was part of a single large continent, the supercontinent Gondwana.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” Jack said. “Gond-what?”

  “Gondwana or Gondwanaland,” Griffin said. “Three hundred million years ago the continents of South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica were part of a single land mass. The name comes from Eduard Suess, an Austrian geologist. He wrote a book around the turn of the twentieth century called The Face of the Earth.”

  “The original Dr. Seuss, eh?” Jack joked.

  “Whatever,” Griffin said. “His concept is now called plate tectonics. That’s the idea that the continents are not stationary. There was a time when all the continents were one. That land mass is called Pangaea. At least, that’s how the theory goes. It’s still hypothetical.”

  “As much of science is,” Curtis commented. “That explains the need for an open mind and desire for truth.”

  “Let me ask something,” Perry said. “Why is Antarctica so cold?”

  “Two reasons, primarily,” Griffin said. “First, location: Antarctica does not receive much direct sunlight, and most of what it does receive is reflected back into space by the white ice. Also, there are months near darkness where very little light reaches the surface.”

  “And the second reason?” Perry prompted.

  “The Antarctic Circumpolar Current.”

  “The ocean makes it cold?” Jack said.

  Griffin nodded. “This continent is surrounded by ocean, like a huge island. The oceans affect weather everywhere. At the higher latitudes the water is warmed by the sun, and currents move that warm water around, which transfers that energy to the climate. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current never gets to the higher latitudes, so it remains cold—extremely cold. It is the main reason for the freezing conditions we find ourselves in.”

  “If the continent were part of a larger land mass, then the current wouldn’t be stuck in the circumpolar loop, right?” Perry said.

  “Right.”

  “Therefore, the continent would be warmer.”

  “True,” Griffin said, “but all of this happened hundreds of millions of years ago.”

  “Perhaps,” Perry said. “Perhaps not.”

  Gleason and Sarah approached, closely followed by Gwen, who had been caught up in the work.

  “We’re ready, Perry,” he said. “Just give the word.”

  “Consider it given.”

  Chapter 13

  Thomas Mahoney snapped an order to the young sailor who stood at the state-of-the-art control console of the 420-foot Coast Guard cutter, and the sleek vessel began a slow turn, just as it had a few miles before. He let his gray, sun-bleached eyes trace the water’s surface. He saw nothing new, and his frustration increased.

  “Is it just me, or is something out of whack?” his executive officer, Ray Seager, asked.

  Mahoney thought for a moment, wondering if he had detected something wrong with the ship, something that had slipped by him. The diesel-electric propulsion system seemed normal. If anything was wrong with the thirty-thou
sand-horsepower engines, his crew would notify him immediately. Then he caught his XO’s meaning.

  “You mean the missing plane?” Mahoney said.

  “Exactly. It doesn’t seem right.”

  It doesn’t seem right, Mahoney thought. They had received word of a missing C-5 overdue at McMurdo Station. The Healy, an icebreaker and scientific platform, was pressed into search duty. It made sense. No one knew the cold waters better than an icebreaker captain and his crew. This was Mahoney’s second year as CO, and although far from home, he loved the duty. Most days the powerful ship cleared channels for supply ships or aided researchers in scientific exploration. Cutting through ten-foot-thick sea ice was a combination of skill, experience, and brute force. The captain and thirty-one-member crew provided the former, the Healy’s mass and engines provided the rest.

  “What’s bothering you, Commander?” Mahoney asked. Off the bridge he would have referred to his XO and longtime friend by first name, but never in front of other crewmen.

  “Everything, Captain.” Mahoney was taller than Seager by two inches and weighed a good fifteen pounds more. Those pounds wanted to settle just above his belt, which annoyed him. “We’ve been at this for ten hours now and have found nothing, not a single piece of wreckage, not the tiniest pool of fuel or oil on the surface. I don’t think she’s out here.”

  “Neither do I,” Mahoney admitted. “It would take the world’s worst pilot to overshoot McMurdo and fall into the sea without a distress signal or radio communication.”

  “I suppose it could have been mechanical failure,” Seager said.

  “What kind of mechanical failure could cause an aircraft to fly past its intended landing area and drop into the sea? The crew would have be asleep at the wheel. And weather isn’t a consideration. The sky was clear and the katabatic didn’t hit the coast until the craft had been overdue by two hours. I agree, something isn’t right.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We follow our orders, Commander,” Mahoney said with crisp, military diction. “We search until we’re told to stop.”

  The Sachs Engineering building rose from the concrete and asphalt of downtown Seattle like a stately redwood, reflecting the late afternoon sunshine back to the cloud-adorned blue sky. Below Henry Sachs’s twelfth-story office’s window, commuters clogged the narrow streets. It made no difference to Henry; he wasn’t planning on returning home until just before bedtime. With his wife Anna visiting her sister in Florida, there was little need to rush home. Instead, he settled in his large leather chair.

  Henry Sachs was not given to ornamentation or fine art. A simple metal desk in a quiet room was all he needed to lose himself in his work. His office, however, was far from Spartan. Rich red-oak paneling covered the walls, leather chairs and a sofa marked off a casual meeting area, and halogen ceiling lights bathed the umber carpet in the purest white light. Paintings hung proudly from walls, displaying projects his firm had erected over the years—at least the ones that carried no top-secret classification.

  He sat behind a desk made of quilted maple. The desk was his pride and joy. Not because it was one of a kind but because of the artist who made it—his son, Perry. In fact, Perry was responsible for the whole office. Henry had been overseas for extended business and when he returned, he found his office made over in Architectural Digest–fashion. “Happy birthday,” Perry had said. The thought still brought tears of joy to Henry’s eyes, tears he was quick to hide from others.

  On Henry’s desk were several file folders, a thin computer monitor and keyboard, and a family picture. He picked up the picture and studied it. The photo had been taken at a local restaurant, where Perry had taken Henry and Anna to celebrate forty years of marriage.

  On the glass pane that protected the picture, Henry saw the pale reflection of his face. He had grown older. He acknowledged the fact, but he refused to allow it any seat in his mind. The reflection that stared back was of a man with white hair combed back in easy waves, a deeply tanned face, and a mouth comfortable with smiling. Just beyond the glass was the picture of his wife—dark hair, dancing blue eyes, a petite nose, and lips parted to reveal a row of white teeth. She was stunning when he met her, and she still made his heart leap when he looked at her.

  He missed his wife.

  He missed Perry, too. His son’s image, a younger version of himself dressed in black coat over gray shirt and tan pants, gave Henry pause. He was proud of his son in more ways than he could count, but seeing his picture filled him with concern. It was a nebulous sensation that something was wrong. He had the vague feeling that Perry was in danger. There were no facts to justify the fear, but it was there nonetheless.

  The phone rang, startling Henry.

  He answered. He listened. He began to pray.

  “When?” he asked the caller. “That was almost a full day ago . . . You’ll keep me advised? Good. Thank you for calling.”

  Henry Sachs hung up the phone and wondered what to do next. Ironically, the call had come from Seattle, from the Coast Guard base. The base commander had taken it upon himself to notify Henry of the downed plane. He knew Perry was scheduled to stay on the project site for several more weeks. He felt some comfort in that. What brought him no comfort was what he had to do next—phone six now-bereaved families.

  Chapter 14

  Perry stood to one side of the hole in the ice. Over the last few hours Hairy had made significant headway, moving faster than expected. Perry checked the rigging again, just as he had five minutes before. The support structure they had erected earlier remained rock solid, and the cable that connected Hairy to the surface moved easily along its guides.

  Again Perry leaned over the four-foot-wide hole and stared into its open maw. It was remarkable that Hairy could do what it was doing, melting the ice before it and sinking through the slush left behind. A thick-walled hose trailing after Hairy carried water out of the hole so that it wouldn’t refreeze and close off the opening.

  “It’s a patient man’s game,” Larimore said. “I’m afraid I’m ill-equipped to play it.”

  “Moving through two miles of ice is going to take some time,” Perry said. “Too much energy to the heating elements could cause problems with the onboard sensors.”

  “It’s hard to believe,” Larimore added, “that this robot is moving downward under its own power.”

  “Its own weight,” Perry corrected. “There are small tractor-like treads on the side that keep it centered in the ice shaft, but they provide no appreciable forward movement.”

  “And they plan to send one of these to Europa?”

  “Yes. According to Sarah it will be much smaller and will have to work without all the rigging we’ve hooked up. We have an advantage that the space-going cryobot doesn’t. We can pump out the slush, provide an unlimited power source for the heating element in the head, and, once it breaks through to the lake, control it in real time. By comparison, this is a walk in the park.”

  “Some park,” Larimore said. The navy commander seemed alien and somehow different in his clean suit. “Do we really have to wear these? When we were putting some distance between us and the bomb, we didn’t bother with these things.”

  “That was an emergency situation,” Perry replied. “We had no choice. We want the Chamber as unpolluted as possible. Breach-ing protocol once for an emergency situation doesn’t change our goal.”

  “You got that right,” Gwen said. “It may be a moot point. No matter what we do, we’re bound to introduce something to the lake that wasn’t there before.”

  “I bathed, I promise,” Larimore said, as if trying to lighten the moment.

  “You can’t bathe enough,” Gwen said seriously. “Human skin is covered with microscopic animals. Even our breath is loaded with bacteria. We’re all walking worlds for microscopic life. It has always been that way.”

  “Suddenly I feel dirty,” Larimore quipped.

  “You are,” Gwen said. “We all are. And now we’re going
to plunge a mechanical device into pristine waters. There’ll be no going back.”

  “Hairy is cleaner than an operating room,” Perry said. “Sarah saw to that.”

  Gwen shook here head. “It may have been clean when it started down, but there are microorganisms in the ice.”

  “You mean we’re taking microscopic bugs from the surface down with the device?” Larimore asked.

  “That’s right,” she said with a sigh. “That’s been the big problem all along. It’s impossible to make the journey without taking un-wanted passengers with us.”

  Perry understood her point and felt badly about running such a risk, but he also knew that it had to be done. “The lake may not be as pristine as you think, Doctor. It’s my understanding that there is still some uncertainty about how these lakes form. Isn’t it possible that the water could have percolated in from below and not be the result of melted ice?”

  “It’s possible,” Gwen allowed.

  “And the geological heat source is certainly contributing something to the water. If the water remains liquid because of ground heating, then the geothermal heat may also be contributing to the water.”

  Perry turned to see Gwen scowling at him through her face shield. “If there’s a pile of garbage on your front lawn, should I feel free to dump my waste there as well?”

  Perry laughed. “Point taken, Gwen.”

  “Those things you describe may have created a closed-system environment. They’re not contaminating what’s there; they may be maintaining it.”

  “Quarter mile,” Gleason announced. He was standing behind Sarah, who was seated before a table that held two computer monitors. Her hands were folded in her lap. There was little for her to do but watch the electronic readouts. It was going to be a long vigil, one that would have to be shared. Sarah had estimated, based on the ice densities given her by Griffin, that Hairy would take forty-eight hours to core through the ice sheet. That estimate assumed a speed of over three feet per minute, a speed she had told Perry was remarkably fast.