Czytaj książkę: «Polar Quest»
TOM GRACE
Polar Quest
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.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in the U.S.A as Twisted Web by Pocket Books, New York, NY, 2003
Copyright © 2003 The Kilkenny Group, LLC
Tom Grace asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847561244
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007420216
Version: 2018-07-09
To Robert Hopps, who shared with me a daughter and a lifetime of interesting stories
To Craig Hopps, who lived a full life in far too brief a time
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
1 JANUARY 22 Tucson, Arizona
2 JANUARY 24 LV Research Station, Antarctica
3 JANUARY 25 Ann Arbor, Michigan
4 JANUARY 30 LV Research Station, Antarctica
5 JANUARY 31 Skier-98
6
7
8
9
10 FEBRUARY 1 Rio Gallegos, Argentina
11 FEBRUARY 2 Lake Vostok, Antarctica
12 FEBRUARY 2 Tucson, Arizona
13 FEBRUARY 8 New York City
14
15 FEBRUARY 14, 11:30 PM Ann Arbor, Michigan
16 FEBRUARY 15, 1:20 AM Ann Arbor, Michigan
17 FEBRUARY 15, 6:45 AM Ann Arbor, Michigan
18 FEBRUARY 15, 1:45 PM Ypsilanti, Michigan
19 FEBRUARY 17 LV Station, Antarctica
20 FEBRUARY 18, 9:00 AM Ann Arbor, Michigan
21 FEBRUARY 18, 9:25 AM Langley, Virginia
22 FEBRUARY 18, 5:35 PM Livonia, Michigan
23 FEBRUARY 22 Langley, Virginia
24 FEBRUARY 24 Christchurch, New Zealand
25 FEBRUARY 27 Ann Arbor, Michigan
26
27 MARCH 4
28 MARCH 5 Waco, Texas
29 MARCH 6 Tucson, Arizona
30 MARCH 8 Ann Arbor, Michigan
31 MARCH 9 Rio de Janeiro
32 MARCH 11 George Town, Grand Cayman
33
34
35
36 MARCH 12 Langley, Virginia
37 MARCH 14 New York City
38 Ann Arbor, Michigan
39
40
41 MARCH 16 New York
42 MARCH 17 Bridgewater, New Jersey 12:30 AM
43
44
45 MARCH 17 3:45 AM New York City
46 MARCH 17 6:20 AM Bridgewater, New Jersey
47 MARCH 17 9:00 PM Ann Arbor, Michigan
48 MARCH 18
49
50 MARCH 19 Paris
51 MARCH 20 Evry, France
52 Paris
53 MARCH 21 Paris
54 MARCH 22 Paris
55 Evry, France
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65 Paris
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By the same author
About the Publisher
1 JANUARY 22 Tucson, Arizona
The Ice Queen – a sexy Nordic blonde with pouty lips and ice blue eyes – gazed down at Kuhn. Her lusty smile and the mink bikini that barely contained her physical charms were warm reminders of his past. Like a Vargas pinup girl, she sat atop a globe that displayed her frozen domain: Antarctica.
Kuhn ran his hand over the aircraft’s smooth aluminum skin, paying his respects. The patches on Kuhn’s weathered aviator jacket matched those on the aircraft: US NAVY VXE-6 SQUADRON. Beneath the side cockpit window, just above the rendered image of the Ice Queen, stenciled letters read:
CDR GREGORY KUHN
COMMANDING OFFICER
For almost a quarter century, Kuhn had piloted XD-10, the Ice Queen. She was a Lockheed LC-130R, a variant of the venerable C-130 Hercules transport equipped with skis mounted to her fuselage so she could land on ice.
As ungainly as she looked, the Hercules could actually fly and was designed to do one thing: lift heavy loads. Except for the cockpit, the fuselage of the Ice Queen was a cavern of empty space big enough to accommodate several large trucks. Ninety-eight feet in length, she sat low to the ground, like a cylindrical railroad car with a ramp in her tapered tail that folded down like a drawbridge. Her wings spanned 132 feet, and the Ice Queen used every inch of her lifting surface and every ounce of power from the four Allison T56 prop engines to propel her into the sky.
The Ice Queen and her sisters once formed the backbone of the VXE-6 Squadron. Since the mid-fifties, the squadron had fulfilled the mission objectives of the ongoing Operation Deep Freeze, providing logistical support to research stations in the Antarctic. It was a tough job that earned the unit the unofficial nickname Ice Pirates. VXE-6 had owned the skies over the frozen southern continent until the end of the 1999 season, when the squadron returned to its home base at Point Mugu Naval Air Station and was disestablished.
Like many veterans of VXE-6, Kuhn felt anger and a sense of loss when the squadron was phased out, its planes mothballed and its mission reassigned to a National Guard air wing. He’d flown over Antarctica for twenty-four years and had fallen in love with the icy untamed wilderness.
In the years since, the Ice Queen sat tightly wrapped in a plastic cocoon in the high desert air of Arizona.She was one of the hundreds of military and commercial aircraft that sat row upon row in the Boneyard, as the Aircraft Storage and Reclamation Facility was known.
‘The old bitch looks pretty good, eh, Greg?’
Kuhn turned as Len Holland walked up.
‘Is that any way to talk about a lady?’ Kuhn asked.
Holland shook Kuhn’s hand, then looked over at the Ice Queen. ‘Hard to believe our planes have been sitting in the desert all these years.’
‘No different than the day we left them here.’ Kuhn nodded down the flight line at another LC-130R. ‘Polar Pete came out of hibernation just fine, too. Where’s the rest of the guys?’
‘Right behind me.’
Ten men emerged from the flight operations building, all sporting aviator jackets similar to Kuhn’s. Each plane flew with a crew of six men – a pilot, a copilot, a navigator, a flight engineer, and two cargo handlers. Escorting the flight crews was a man in a button-down shirt with a bolo tie and a clipboard.
‘Commander Kuhn,’ the escort said warmly. ‘I’m Jim Evers, the manager here at ASRF.’ Evers pronounced the facility acronym ay-surf. ‘Both XD-10 and XD-11 have been checked out, and all systems are flight ready.’
Kuhn pulled a thick envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to Evers. ‘Here’s our flight plan for this short hop to Waco.’
Evers pocketed the envelope. ‘Your planes are fueled, so once you finish your preflight you can get out of here.’
‘Thanks.’ As Evers walked away, Kuhn turned to the two flight crews. ‘You guys know the drill. Let’s get these old birds in the air.’
The Ice Queen and Polar Pete flew a low route across southern Texas, carefully avoiding civilian air-traffic control radar as they bypassed Waco and headed into the Gulf of Mexico. The flight crossed over the Yucatan peninsula, then turned south toward Honduras.
‘I’m picking up the beacon,’ the navigator announced. ‘Bearing two-one-five.’
Kuhn glanced out his window at the rain forest below, the thick foliage barely a hundred feet beneath the aircraft.
‘About friggin’ time,’ Kuhn said impatiently. He had wanted to land before sunset, but an unexpected head wind had increased their flight time.
Kuhn deftly turned the Ice Queen until his heading matched the one his navigator had given him. Five minutes later, he saw a gaping hole in the jungle canopy. The runway looked to be in good condition and certainly long and wide enough to handle a Hercules. Along one side of the runway, he saw a cluster of large tents, a few heavy trucks, a helicopter, and a tall pole with a windsock fluttering in the breeze.
‘X-Ray Delta One Zero to X-Ray Delta One One, over.’
‘One One, over,’ Holland replied.
‘I’m going to circle around and land. You follow me in.’
‘Lead the way, One Zero. X-Ray Delta One One out.’
Kuhn piloted the Ice Queen in a smooth arc that aimed the nose of his plane down the length of the runway. Descending, he skimmed over the treetops and then dropped into the clearing. Sunbaked earth exploded into clouds of dust when the wheels touched down, the gray plume trailing the Ice Queen down the length of the runway. Holland waited until the dust cloud settled before making his approach.
‘Just like riding a bike,’ Holland said as he brought his plane down perfectly.
Once on the ground, Holland taxied Polar Pete behind a jeep with a sign that read FOLLOW ME and was led to a space beside the Ice Queen. A man with orange-tipped wands guided the plane into position and, once there, signaled Holland to cut his engines.
As Kuhn, Holland, and their crews stepped out of the planes into the steamy heat of the Honduran jungle, five brown-skinned men trotted out from the tents. Each grabbed a length of steel pipe from a large pile and began assembling scaffolding around the aircraft.
‘Commander Kuhn.’
Kuhn turned as a tall, lanky man dressed in militarystyle khakis walked toward him. The man had thick black hair and a full beard that gave him the look of a left-wing revolutionary.
‘Sumner Duroc?’ Kuhn asked.
‘Yes, it is a pleasure to finally meet you,’ Duroc said perfunctorily in Gallic-tinged English.
‘You cut this strip?’ Kuhn asked.
‘No, the Nicaraguan Contras cleared this area to receive supplies from you Americans. We merely restored it. Did you encounter any problems?’
‘None,’ Kuhn replied. ‘Everything went according to plan and both aircraft are flying perfectly.’
‘Good. For the next few days I expect you and your men to work with my staff in preparing for our mission.’
‘My men’ll be ready, but right now we’re in need of a bite to eat and some down time.’
‘Tents have been assigned to you and your crew.’ Duroc made a motion with his hand, and a swarthy man dressed in khaki ran over. ‘Commander, this is my executive officer, Leon Albret. Leon, show the commander and his men their quarters, then take them to the mess tent and see that they are fed.’
‘Yes, sir.’
After finishing his dinner, Kuhn stepped out of the mess tent and walked back over to the planes. Both were now enmeshed in a framework of vertical poles, crossbars, and wooden planks. A diesel generator purred nearby, powering work lights attached to the scaffolding. At several points, tall poles rose out of the scaffolding to support a broad sheet of camouflage fabric that completely covered both planes. The fabric not only hid the aircraft from view, but during coming days it would also prevent the sun from heating the aluminum skin on the planes like a skillet.
Duroc stood alongside the Ice Queen, watching as the workmen began the tedious process of carefully stripping off the aircraft’s paint scheme and markings.
‘Your men got this rigging up pretty quick,’ Kuhn said as he walked up to Duroc.
‘That’s what they were paid to do.’
‘Do they know what they’re doin’ to my plane? I’d hate to have one of them break somethin’.’
‘Like you, they were hired because of their skills,’ Duroc replied. ‘These are not the first planes they’ve rechristened.’
‘It’s gotta make you sick to see her like that,’ Holland remarked, ‘all done up like she’s air force – a guard unit at that.’
Kuhn nodded as he studied the new paint scheme that decorated his beloved Ice Queen. In two days, the Hondurans had stripped her down to bare metal, removing the red-black scheme and her sexy namesake. Now she bore air force markings and her wingtips and tail were painted orange. Stenciled letters identified the Ice Queen and Polar Pete as Skier-98 and Skier-99 – aircraft currently assigned to the National Guard unit that took over the Antarctica mission from the navy.
‘Make you sick enough to turn down Duroc’s money?’ Kuhn asked.
‘Hell, no. I just don’t like flying false colors.’
‘It don’t matter what she’s wearing on the outside,’ Kuhn said, ‘underneath, she’s still the Ice Queen.’
‘Looks like shit, don’t it?’ Holland said. ‘Got no personality whatsoever.’
‘Maybe,’ Kuhn replied, ‘but for the first time in the history of VXE-6, we’re going to really live up to our nickname.’
Duroc, Albret, and the rest of the two flight crews emerged from the camp and walked over to where Kuhn stood with Holland.
‘Commander, are your aircraft ready to fly?’ Duroc asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ Kuhn replied. ‘The tanks are all topped off and it doesn’t look like your paint crew did any damage.’
‘Good.’ Duroc nodded to Albret, who handed packets to Kuhn and Holland. ‘Here are the flight plan and the latest weather reports.’
Kuhn opened the manila envelope and glanced over the southbound route. From Honduras, the planes would fly along the Pacific coast of South America, landing at remote airstrips to rest and refuel. In the final leg, they were to cross over southern Chile into Argentina.
‘I will meet you in Rio Gallegos,’ Duroc said. ‘There, we will load the men and equipment required for the mission. Any questions?’
‘Not a one,’ Kuhn replied, holding out his hand. ‘I guess we’ll see you in Argentina.’
Duroc stood near the helicopter and watched the two LC-130s depart. The cargo planes circled the jungle airstrip once, then veered south toward the Pacific coast. Finding these unique planes and the crews to fly them was one of the more formidable challenges of this project, and he was pleased with his success. So far, everything was proceeding as planned, but Duroc knew that there was still much to be accomplished and many places where things could go disastrously wrong.
‘The workmen are in the mess tent, as you ordered,’ Albret announced. ‘They are eager for their wages.’
‘Understandably so.’
Duroc unlocked the cargo compartment of the Bell 427 and pulled out a Halliburton briefcase.
‘Put the rest of our gear on board while I take care of the men,’ Duroc ordered.
Albret nodded and jogged away as Duroc walked over to the largest tent in the compound. Inside, he found the five Hondurans laughing and enjoying the cold beer Duroc had provided. All eyes turned to him as he entered the tent.
‘Gentlemen,’ Duroc said, easily slipping into Spanish, ‘I wish to thank you for your excellent work over these past few days. As we agreed, here is five hundred thousand dollars in U.S. currency.’ Duroc set the briefcase down atop the table where the men were seated and opened it so the contents faced the men. Inside, the case was filled with neat bundles of U.S. twenty-dollar bills. ‘It has been a pleasure doing business with you.’
Duroc shook a few hands and the rest of the Hondurans raised their bottles in his honor. One of the men picked up a battered guitar and began strumming – they were rich and it was time to celebrate. Duroc smiled and left what promised to be a wild day of drinking.
By the time Duroc returned to the helicopter, Albret had their gear loaded and the rotors turning. Duroc slipped on a pair of dark aviator sunglasses and climbed into the copilot’s seat. Albret ran through the rest of his checklist, powered up the twin turbine engines, and lifted off.
As the helicopter rose above the treetops and began to move away from the runway, Duroc keyed a command into the onboard computer that instructed it to transmit a series of pulses at a specific frequency. Less than two seconds later, a thin layer of plastic explosive lining the interior of the briefcase exploded.
The five men barely felt the searing heat from the blast or the shards of fragmented metal from the briefcase. Everything within fifty feet of the bomb disappeared in a fireball that incinerated the encampment. The explosion left a crater twenty feet across and ten feet deep.
Duroc’s helicopter sped over the rain forest toward Tegucigalpa, where he and Albret would board a private jet for Argentina.
2 JANUARY 24 LV Research Station, Antarctica
Collins stood beneath a clear blue sky bathed in the whitest light he had ever known, a light blinding with brilliant intensity. The hard-packed crystals of ice that covered the glacial plateau glowed in dazzling imitation of the sun. Were it not for the yellow-lens goggles protecting his eyes, he would have been snow-blind as soon as he stepped outside the station. From his vantage point, less than seven hundred miles from the South Pole, the sun traced another unbroken ellipse in the sky. Endless day.
Click.
Ansel Adams could’ve worked some real magic down here, Collins mused as he adjusted the exposure setting on his camera.
Today, the wind, temperature, and sky conspired to produce one of nature’s rarest and most dazzling sights: parhelic circles. Sunlight, refracted through tiny airborne ice crystals, created the illusion of luminous halos, arcs,and flaring parabolas in the sky. Collins counted twenty distinct formations dancing around the sun.
Click.
Like a surrealist painting, distance was an illusion in the interior of the southernmost continent. It was generally accepted that the otherworldliness of this place was due in equal parts to extremes in temperature, altitude, and lifelessness. Over fifty years of record keeping by Russian crews manning the Vostok Research Station – Collins’s closest neighbors some forty miles to the south – bracketed the local temperature range as between-40 degrees and-128 degrees Fahrenheit.
Satisfied that he’d captured at least one decent image from this spot, Collins moved his camera around to the opposite side of the station. LV Research Station had been home to Collins and his wife, Nedra, since November and had been entirely prefabricated in the U.S. as a mockup of the habitat for NASA’s manned-mission to Mars. At the center of the station stood a short domed tower. Four cylindrical modules – each the size of a railroad tanker car – stood mounted on thick legs and radiated out from the tower in a cruciform configuration. The modules provided space for research, crew quarters, power and environmental systems, and storage.
Beneath LV Station, the sheet of glacial ice that blanketed nearly all of Antarctica rose to a height of 11,500 feet above sea level. Thanks to the katabatic winds – dense sheets of frigid air that flowed down from the nearby ice domes – the rarified air that Collins breathed was even thinner than that of other sites of equal elevation around the world. These winds siphoned low-oxygen air from the upper atmosphere to fill the void left behind as they flowed down toward the coast. When they had first arrived here, it took Collins and his wife several days to acclimate themselves, and both still had to be wary of overexertion.
Collins could attest to the extremes in temperature and altitude, but assumption that this place was totally lifeless was something that he and many other scientists around the world were challenging. Until the latter part of the twentieth century, energy in the form of sunlight was assumed to be essential to the formation of life, but then life was found in the darkest depths of the oceans. When communities of organisms were discovered not merely living but thriving in the superheated mineral-saturated waters of geysers and hydrothermal vents, environments lethal to most other forms of life on earth, scientists were forced to rethink their assumptions about the conditions that might give rise to life. Being more tenacious than anyone had previously considered, life seems to need only three things to start: heat, minerals, and liquid water.
Walking past a row of thirty-inch in diameter metal spheres that contained liquid hydrogen for the station’s fuel cells, Collins approached the reason that NASA and a group of partner companies had financed this project. Fifty feet from the station stood a cobalt blue tetrahedron that was as out of place atop the glacial ice of Antarctica as Arthur C. Clarke’s monolith on the moon: the Ice Pick probe.
Collins shortened the legs on his tripod, lowering the camera to capture both the hard lines of the probe’s first stage and the luminous parhelic circles. Satisfied with the composition, he adjusted the exposure setting and snapped another picture.
‘Hey, Philip, how’s the show?’ Nedra asked, her voice clear over his headset.
‘Amazing. You should come out and see it.’
‘I snuck a peek out the window. Just wanted to let you know we’re ready for another dip in the lake.’
Far beneath LV Station, sandwiched between a glacier and the rocky surface of Antarctica, lay one of the largest lakes on Earth – a body of liquid water that could have easily been seen from space were it not concealed by the ice. When British and Russian scientists confirmed the existence of Lake Vostok in 1996, they theorized that heat rising from the earth’s interior through rifts in the crust kept the water from freezing. Seismic activity in the area increased the likelihood of hydrothermal vents in Lake Vostok, meaning that the lake had the water, heat, and minerals necessary to support life. What form that life would take, in a place isolated from the rest of the world for the last 20 million years, was the subject of great speculation.
In 1610, Galileo pointed his telescope at Jupiter and discovered four moons orbiting the giant planet. This discovery came at a time when the whole of Western civilization believed that the earth was the center of the universe. News of Lake Vostok’s discovery and the possibility of life in its hidden waters coincided with the arrival at Jupiter of a spacecraft bearing the great astronomer’s name. During a fly-by of one of the moons discovered by Galileo – an ice-covered rock named Europa – the spacecraft transmitted a series of images as astounding to the scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the discovery of the moon itself was to Galileo four hundred years earlier.
Europa was named after the mythical Phoenician princess that Zeus carried off and ravaged. Detailed images from the spacecraft revealed a pattern of fractures on the frozen moon’s surface similar to ice flows in the Arctic Ocean – evidence that beneath Europa’s frozen shell lay an immense body of liquid water larger than all Earth’s oceans. Dark regions mottling the moon’s surface revealed ongoing volcanic and seismic activity, likely the result of Jupiter’s intense gravity wracking Europa’s molten core. With heat, minerals, and liquid water, scientists now saw Europa as the most promising place in our solar system to search for extraterrestrial life.
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 grazed 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.’
3 JANUARY 25 Ann Arbor, Michigan
‘Is the coffee in there any good?’ Nolan Kilkenny asked as he approached the main conference room.
Loretta Quinn, executive assistant to the chairman of the Michigan Applied Research Consortium, looked up from the letter she was preparing and gave Kilkenny an annoyed look. ‘Does this look like the counter at Starbucks?’
‘No, but you’d be making a killing if it was. Maybe I should talk to the boss about leasing them some space, might be a good way to generate some extra revenue.’
‘Don’t you dare, Nolan. Knowing your father, he’d probably think it was a marvelous idea and I’d end up with a cappuccino maker next to the fax machine. There’s a fresh pot of coffee on the table, and – ’ Quinn glanced down at her notes, ‘your satellite window opens at four-forty-five, and you only have about ten minutes of air-time.’
‘Thanks, Loretta.’
Inside the conference room, Kilkenny set his files and a legal pad on the granite table and poured coffee into one of the dark blue mugs that bore the consortium’s logo. Outside the snow was steadily falling on the wooded grounds surrounding the building.
One of the files he brought with him contained the current financial projections for the biotech firm UGene. The Michigan Applied Research Consortium, known as MARC, had provided UGene with several million dollars of venture capital in exchange for a significant piece of the company. That investment paid its first dividends when Kilkenny orchestrated UGene’s initial public offering on Wall Street, a feat which turned him into a paper millionaire.
It still amazed Kilkenny how much his life had changed. Three years earlier, he was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, commanding a squad of SEALs and existing on a military paycheck. Now he was crunching numbers and helping promising young companies develop their potential – and getting rich in the process.
‘It’s called snow,’ a basso profundo announced from the doorway, cutting through Kilkenny’s drifting thoughts.
‘I’m familiar with it, Oz,’ Kilkenny replied without looking. ‘I grew up here.’
‘Then you have my condolences.’
At six-foot-six and 220 pounds, Oswald Eames had the physical presence to justify a voice that broadcast in the Barry White-James Earl Jones spectrum. Kilkenny turned his chair around as Eames entered the conference room, followed by his partner, Lloyd Sutton.
‘Thanks for coming, gentlemen,’ Kilkenny said. ‘Have a seat.’
Sutton shot a nervous glance at Eames as he shed his overcoat. ‘What’s this all about, Nolan? The fourth-quarter numbers?’
‘Partly, though the numbers are fine,’ Killkenny said reassuringly. ‘I’ve got the preliminaries from our accounants and there are no surprises.’
Kilkenny handed out copies of the financial statements and quickly ran through the highlights: Bottom line, UGene was generating a modest profit – which was no small feat for a newcomer in the notoriously capital-intensive world of biotechnology. What kept UGene from burning through its IPO cash horde like one of the many over-hyped dot-coms was the total focus of Eames and Sutton on ‘bioinformatics’ – the company’s main product line, biological information. UGene specialized in parsing the genomes encoded in lengthy strands of DNA, identifying genes and proteins, and determining how they function inside living organisms.
‘Any updates on the most recent batch of patent applications?’ Kilkenny asked.
‘It’s the Wild West all over again.’ Eames’s reply masked little of his frustration. Like the work of early cartographers in the American West, what the scientists from the Human Genome Project and Celera produced was little more than the first decent map of a previously uncharted territory. The real work came in exploring this vast frontier, and biotech companies were staking claims – in the form of patents – over potentially valuable sections of genetic real estate.
The genetic gold rush was on, complete with prospectors in lab coats and outlaw claim-jumpers in dark suits armed with lawsuits and patent applications instead of six-shooters. ‘Most of our work is clear and uncontested,’ Eames continued, ‘but there are a few sequences we’re going to have to fight for.’
‘That’s why I prefer my side of the business,’ Sutton offered. ‘The patents on my work are based on inventions and processes – they’re totally unambiguous. Gene patents are a claim of ownership over a naturally occurring molecule.’
‘Are you saying we shouldn’t try to patent what Oz and his lab team finds?’ Kilkenny asked.
‘Not at all. As long as it’s legal to do so, we have to file patents on our work, if for no other reason than to prevent some company from shutting us out of a potentially profitable line of research.’
‘Lloyd and I have had this conversation before,’ Eames explained to Kilkenny, ‘usually after a couple beers when we’re both feeling philosophical.’
‘Sounds like the old debate between discovery and invention. You can’t patent the fire, but you can patent the matches.’
‘Exactly, Nolan,’ Sutton agreed.
‘Since you brought up your side of the business, Lloyd, how’s work coming on that package for NASA?’
‘Slow, but we’re getting there. The biggest problem we’ve run into is vibration. Our equipment has to withstand a launch and a jarring impact on Europa.’
‘Take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’,’ Eames summarized.
‘I sent out a unit this week to NASA for testing. We should know something in a few months.’
‘Good,’ Kilkenny said. ‘Where are we on building depth?’
‘We’ve sampled just over twelve hundred individuals from a variety of ethnic backgrounds,’ Eames replied, ‘including multiple family members, so we’re making progress on building a database of genetic norms and variations. I’m just starting to get DNA in from zoos around the country, as well as material from the agriculture firms you cut deals with, but we’re about where we expected to be with the flora and fauna side of our database.’
‘What about the Jurassic Park stuff?’ Kilkenny asked.
Sutton rolled his eyes. He hated Kilkenny’s nickname for the extinct and endangered species portion of the database. ‘We have the first few samples, with more expected to trickle in over the next few months. Sorry to say, but there’s not a T-rex in the lot.’
‘Make lousy house pets, anyway,’ Eames added. ‘Better off sticking with your dogs.’
Kilkenny checked his watch. ‘Gentlemen, thanks for the update. Now I have a little surprise for you.’
A high-definition video monitor on the wall of the conference room displayed a bright blue test screen. A moment later, square bits of a still image appeared like scattered pieces of a puzzle trying to assemble itself. The image blinked once and filled the screen as the satellite connection between MARC and the LV Research Station was established.
‘Hello from scenic Lake Vostok,’ Nedra said with a smile, Collins seated at her side. ‘How are things back in the world?’
‘Cold, and we’re getting a bit of snow right now,’ Kilkenny replied.
‘You poor boys,’ Nedra said. ‘It’s a lovely morning here. The sun is shining, just like it does all day, every day, and it’s a balmy minus forty-four.’
‘You want to trade?’ Collins asked.
‘No way,’ Eames replied. ‘Michigan is more than cold enough for me. I don’t know how you two can stand it down there.’
‘Actually, it’s very cozy,’ Nedra said. ‘I’ve even managed to get a pretty good tan.’
Nedra turned in her chair and rolled the waist of her sweatpants down just enough to reveal a tan line on her hip. Collins laughed at the embarrassed looks on the faces of the three men in Ann Arbor.
‘You’ve been sunbathing at the South Pole?’ Kilkenny asked.
‘They’ve been down there too long, Nolan,’ Eames said. ‘NASA better pull them out ASAP.’
‘When there’s no wind, the sun’s strong enough to keep you warm,’ Nedra explained. ‘It’s like spring skiing at Tahoe.’
‘Enough of this chit-chat,’ Eames said. ‘What are you bringing home for us?’
‘It better be more than a T-shirt,’ Sutton added.
‘Oh, it will be,’ Collins promised, ‘considering what you’ve invested in this project.’
Nedra looked directly at Eames and Sutton. ‘The life flourishing in Lake Vostok is far beyond anything we anticipated. We’ve got some great samples for you guys to work on. Did IPL send you any of the pictures?’
‘Yeah, just got ‘em,’ Kilkenny replied. He slid a file across the table to Eames and Sutton.
‘Jesus, that’s beautiful,’ Eames said as he spread the glossy prints on the table.
‘Cousteau would’ve been proud,’ Kilkenny agreed.
‘We loaded the last samples yesterday and the cryobot is on its way back to the surface,’ Collins said. ‘As the pictures show, there’s some pretty bizarre stuff down there, and we’ve only just started exploring this lake. I hope we can count on UGene’s continued support of this project.’
‘Once we get these first samples analyzed, I’m sure there won’t be any trouble funding a more comprehensive investigation of Lake Vostok,’ Kilkenny predicted. ‘Since NASA’s announcement in December, I’ve taken calls from several drug companies offering millions for a peek at your samples.’
‘Lloyd and I have increased the scan rate on our sequencers,’ Eames said. ‘Depending on the size of the genome, it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks to decode whatever you’re bringing back.’
‘And we’re working on some more improvements to make the process even faster,’ Sutton added.
‘I’d be even happier if you’d make your equipment smaller and lighter,’ Nedra said. ‘As you already know, space on the Europa Lander will be at a premium.’
‘We’ll do what we can,’ Sutton promised.
‘While you two are busy raising the cryobot and getting packed for the trip home, I’ll be working my way south to pick you up,’ Kilkenny announced.
‘What? You’re coming here?’ Collins asked, incredulous.
‘Yeah. Something came up and the NSF agreed to let me have a seat on one of their planes. If everything stays on schedule, I’ll be knocking on your front door in couple of weeks.’
The image on the wall monitor began to degrade.
‘Looks like our time is up,’ Kilkenny announced. ‘See you soon.’
Collins and his wife waved, then the image disintegrated and the screen turned solid blue. Kilkenny switched the monitor off. ‘It’s not every day you chat with someone at the South Pole.’
‘These photographs are amazing,’ Sutton said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this.’
‘Twenty million years of total isolation will do that to an ecosystem,’ Kilkenny said. ‘The Galapagos Islands were never cut off like Lake Vostok.’
Eames looked up from the photos. ‘All this good news calls for a celebration. Everyone up for dinner?’
‘I’m in,’ Kilkenny replied.
‘I’ve got plans,’ Sutton said apologetically, ‘but let me make a quick call. I’m sure I’ve got time for a drink.’
They ended up at Connor O’Neill’s, a Main Street restaurant modeled after the pubs of rural Ireland. In the front corner, a live band filled the place with a rollicking ballad that incited several patrons to holler and clap along with them.
‘Evening, Oz,’ a waitress called out as they entered, her accent authentic Dublin. ‘I see you brought some friends with ya tonight. If you like, there’s an open table by the fire.’
‘Thanks, Hannah.’
‘You come here a lot?’ Kilkenny asked.
‘I’m a regular,’ Eames replied. ‘Didn’t I ever tell you I was Black Irish?’
Kilkenny considered for a moment if Eames was serious. While it was obvious that most of Eames’s lineage was African, Kilkenny had to concede the possibility that, somewhere in the scientist’s ancestry, there might be a Spanish sailor who washed up on the Irish coast after the English navy destroyed the famed Armada. ‘I guess that would make us cousins.’
Eames turned and smiled at him. ‘Glad you finally noticed the family resemblance.’
On the way back, they ordered three pints of amber ale from the bar and settled in at a table by the fireplace.
‘To Lake Vostok,’ Kilkenny offered, his pint of beer raised.
Eames and Sutton seconded the toast and drained an inch from their glasses.
‘May I join you?’ a woman asked.
Kilkenny looked up as a woman approached the table. She looked to be in her early forties, with shoulder-length blond hair and the wardrobe of a working professional. To Kilkenny’s surprise, Sutton rose and kissed the woman on the cheek.
‘Nolan, this is Faye Olson,’ he said proudly.
Kilkenny stood and shook Olson’s hand. ‘A pleasure.’
‘For me as well. Lloyd speaks very highly of you.’
Olson then turned to Eames, who remained seated. ‘Hi, Oz.’
‘Hello, Faye,’ Eames replied politely.
Olson shed her overcoat and sat at the table as Sutton flagged down a waitress for a glass of white wine. ‘So, what are you celebrating?’
‘Just some exciting new things for these two guys to work on,’ Kilkenny replied.
‘I know how good that feels. I just brought in a big historic restoration project for my firm.’
‘You got Gordon Hall?’ Sutton asked.
Olson nodded with a smile.
‘Congratulations,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I live out that way. Given the history surrounding that old place, it deserves to be restored. What are your plans?’
‘Judge Dexter built the main house in the 1840s, so that’s our key date. We’ll make some concessions for mechanical and electrical systems, things that can be hidden in the walls,’ Olson explained, ‘but the rooms and the details will be as authentic as we can make them. Right now, the house is cut up into four apartments, so all that stuff has to go, as well as a couple of houses that were built on the property during the fifties.’
‘What about the acreage?’
Olson smiled. ‘All seventy acres are included in the National Historic designation, so no developer is getting his hands on it. This was, after all, a stop on the Underground Railroad.’
‘So that view will remain unchanged?’
‘It’ll actually be improved. When we’re done, it’ll be a pristine example of a Greek Revival mansion set on a rolling meadow.’
‘Sounds like an interesting project,’ Kilkenny said, picturing in his mind Olson’s architectural vision.
‘It is,’ Olson agreed. ‘Lloyd, do you have the tickets?’
Sutton patted his breast pocket. ‘Right here.’
‘What are you seeing?’ Kilkenny asked.
‘Natalie Merchant is playing at Hill Auditorium tonight – Faye’s a big fan. We’re sitting in the main floor center.’
‘Good seats,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I saw her a few years ago. She puts on a very good show.’
Olson glanced at her watch. ‘I hate to steal Lloyd away from you, but we have dinner reservations next door and the show starts at eight.’
‘Have a good time,’ Kilkenny replied.
‘Thanks,’ Olson said. ‘Good to see you again, Oz.’
‘You, too,’ Eames replied.
As Sutton and Olson departed, the waitress returned and they ordered dinner and another round of beer.
‘I had no idea Lloyd was dating anyone,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I thought he just worked all the time.’
‘I think he learned from me that all work and no play makes Jack a lonely man.’
‘How’d you teach him that?’
Eames took another sip of his beer. ‘Faye is my ex-wife.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. My divorce was final last year and they just started dating a few weeks ago. The three of us have known each other for a lot of years. I met Faye when we were undergrads at UCLA. Shook both our families up when we started getting serious, but they got over the black-white thing by the time we got married. We spent the summer after our wedding backpacking across Europe. Those were good times.’
‘If you don’t mind my asking, what went wrong?’
‘It started with grad school. Faye stayed at UCLA and I went to Stanford. Long-distance relationships suck.’
‘Yeah, they do,’ Kilkenny agreed.
‘I hooked up with Lloyd at Stanford and we started laying the groundwork for UGene,’ Eames continued. ‘After Faye finished up her master’s, she moved up to be with me and took a job with a big architecture firm in San Francisco. We shortened the distance, but we still weren’t spending enough time together. It was mostly my fault. I fell in love with my work, and a man can only have one true love at a time. By the time I earned my Ph.D., Faye was ready to divorce me. I managed to talk her into giving me a second chance.’
‘How’d you pull that off?’ Kilkenny asked. ‘I’m interested in second chances myself.’
‘It was the promise of a fresh start. After Lloyd and I finished up at Stanford, we both signed on with the Life Sciences Initiative here at Michigan. Faye hired on with a preservation firm in town and we bought our first house. Things were pretty good for about three months, then I disappeared into my work again. By the time Lloyd and I officially formed UGene, my marriage was dead.’
‘Is it weird that your partner is dating your ex-wife?’
Eames sipped his beer and thought for a moment. ‘When you put it like that it sounds like something off a daytime talk show. Look, Lloyd and Faye are both entitled to happiness, and if they can find it together, then who am I to stand in their way?’
‘Very noble. Have you gotten over her yet?’
‘What kind of question is that?’ Eames asked defensively.
‘It’s just that I recently screwed up a relationship so badly that the woman I thought I’d be going home to is training to leave the planet, and our future is one very big question mark.’ Kilkenny raised his hands up. ‘So, if I’ve crossed the line, tell me.’
‘If you’re asking whether or not I’m carrying a torch for Faye, I guess the answer is no. Our divorce wasn’t ugly and I still care for her, but I think I’ve accepted the fact that we will never be together again.’ Eames sipped on his beer. ‘So what’s your sad story?’
‘When my hitch with the navy was almost up, a friend of mine here at the U asked if I’d give her a hand with a project she was working on – an optical computer processor.’
‘Sounds like something Lloyd would like.’
‘It is. Kelsey, my friend, and I have known each other since we were kids. She was quite literally the girl next door.’
‘Your old high school sweetheart?’
‘No, back then our families were so close that it would’ve been like dating my sister. After high school, I went to the Naval Academy and was pretty much gone for about twelve years, but we kept in touch. We were just good friends up until a couple of years ago when some crazy things happened that forced us to peel back a few layers. Marriage seemed like the next logical step.’
‘There’s your mistake, mixing love and logic. Oil and water, my friend, oil and water.’
Kilkenny nodded. ‘Our problems started after the craziness was gone and things got back to normal. I know Kelsey loves me … and we both take the idea of marriage seriously.’
‘So who got cold feet?’ Eames asked.
‘She did, but it wasn’t cold feet as much as a better offer.’
‘Another guy?’
‘No, a lifelong dream. Kelsey has wanted to be an astronaut since we were kids. She’s been in the corps for a few years, and last August, she got the call. I was excited as anyone for her, until we got the bad news.’
‘What?’
‘NASA needed her to go to Houston ASAP to begin mission training with the rest of the crew. They’d work right up to launch, then she’d spend the next five months on the space station. That kind of schedule wasn’t going to leave a whole lot of time to plan a wedding, at least not the kind she had in mind.’
‘Why didn’t you two just elope?’
Kilkenny smiled grimly. ‘That’s what I suggested. Not a Vegas quickie at the Elvis chapel, but a small private ceremony. No dice.’
‘Most women have pretty strong feelings about their wedding day.’
‘So I discovered. I also learned that, according to the etiquette books, a wedding is the bride’s party and the groom is just one of the invited guests. Long story short, I misread all the signs and started a fight in which I said some truly boneheaded things to her. During the few days when she wasn’t speaking to me, she gave some serious thought to our situation and decided it would be best for both of us if we postponed our engagement until after she returned from space. After all, seventeen months is a long time to be apart.’
‘Define postponed.’
‘My current status is single and unattached. Kelsey and I parted with no conditions and no promises regarding the future.’
‘Que sera sera.’
‘Yep. Doris Day is singing the sound track to my love life.’
‘I hear you, Nolan, and if I can offer you one bit of advice, as a man whose last romantic bridge is so badly burned that there’s nothing left but ash and some tiny bits of charcoal, it’s this: Get off your ass and do something about it. Wishing won’t fix nothing between you and Kelsey, and neither will hiding from it. I wished and hid my way right out of a marriage.’
‘Any suggestions?’
Eames took a draw on his beer. ‘She’s following a dream right now, that’s good. Make damn sure she knows you support her all the way and that you’ll be waiting for her when she returns from the heavens.’
After dinner, Eames returned to his office at UGene and spent the next several hours reviewing experimental data. His radio was tuned to a campus station that was playing a Natalie Merchant retrospective in connection with the concert. Eames recalled taking Faye to see the sultry vocalist back when she fronted for 10,000 Maniacs.
Eames left his office well after midnight. As he drove toward his home, he gave into an impulse and changed direction. He entered a modest neighborhood of well-kept homes and turned onto a street called Pineview. On their first visit to Ann Arbor, Faye had fallen in love with a cute ranch house that they eventually moved into.
Passing his former home, Eames saw that it was dark and Lloyd Sutton’s car was parked in the driveway.
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