Karl studied the constantly changing red letters and numbers on the digital displays spaced around the map. "When is the critical moment?"
"The final process for splitting off the ice shelf is timed for six hours. . ." Holtz paused to stare up at a series of numbers showing the time left until doomsday. "Twenty-two minutes and forty seconds from now."
"Any problems that might cause a delay?"
"None we're aware of All computerized procedures and their backup systems have been inspected and scrutinized dozens of times. We have yet to find the slightest hint of a possible malfunction."
"An amazing feat of engineering," Karl said quietly, while gazing at the colored tubing surrounding the ice shelf. "A pity the world will never know of its existence."
"An amazing feat indeed," echoed Holtz, "boring a ten-foot-diameter tunnel fourteen hundred miles through the ice in two months."
"The credit goes to you and your engineers who designed and built the molecular tunneling machine,"
said Elsie, pointing at a large photo on one wall. The picture showed a hundred-foot-long circular boring machine with a thrust ram, a debris conveyor, and a strange-looking unit on the front that pulled apart selected molecular bonds within the ice, producing powder-snow-size chunks small enough to be transported to the rear of the conveyors to the open sea. A secondary unit rebonded the tiny chunks into near-perfect crystalline solid ice that was used to line the tunnel. When in full operation, the tunneler could bore through fifty miles of ice in twenty-four hours. Having accomplished its purpose, the great machine now sat under a growing sheet of ice outside the mining facility.
"Perhaps after the ice melts, we'll have an opportunity to use the tunneler again on subterranean rock,"
Karl said thoughtfully.
"You think the ice will melt away?" asked Elsie, puzzled.
"If our calculations are ninety-five percent correct, this section of the Antarctic will end up eighteen hundred miles north of here two months after the cataclysm."
"I've never quite understood how all this is going to break off the entire ice shelf and send it out to sea"
said Elsie.
Karl smiled. "I'd forgotten that you were the family intelligence collector in Washington for the past three years and were not provided with details of the Valhalla Project."
Holtz held up one hand and pointed to the giant display board. "As simply as I can explain it, Miss Wolf, our nanocomputerized machine constructed a vast number of molecular replicating assemblers, which in turn constructed over many millions of tiny molecular ice-dissolving machines."
Elsie looked pensive. "In other words, the replicated assemblers, through molecular engineering, can create machines that can produce almost anything."
"That's the beauty of nanotechnology," replied Holtz. "The replicating assembler can copy itself in a few minutes. In less than twenty-four hours, tons of replicated machines, moving trillions of atoms around, drilled holes into the ice every six inches above and below the tunnel. Once the ice tubes were drilled to a predetermined depth, the nanocomputer closed down all further instructions to the machines. In sixteen hours, the moment our meteorologists have predicted a strong offshore wind in combination with a favorable current, a signal will be sent to reactivate the machines. They will then finish the job of dissolving the ice and separating the shelf from the continent, allowing it to drift out to sea."
"How long will that take?" asked Elsie.
"Less than two hours," answered Holtz.
"Then ten hours after the final break," Karl explained, "the displaced weight of the Ross Ice Shelf will have moved far enough away from the Antarctic continent to throw off Earth's delicately balanced rotation just enough to cause a polar shift in unison with a crust displacement, sending the world into a devastating upheaval."
"A world which we then can reshape into our image," said Elsie vaingloriously.
A man in the black uniform of a security guard came rushing out of an office and approached the group. "Sir," he said to Karl, handing him a sheet of paper.
Karl's face darkened for a brief instant, before turning reflective.
"What is it?" Elsie asked.
"A report from Hugo," Karl answered slowly. "It seems an unidentified aircraft is approaching from across the Amundsen Sea, and refuses to answer our signals."
"Probably the supply plane for the ice station at Little America," said Holtz. "Nothing to be concerned about. It flies in and out every ten days."
"Does it always pass over Valhalla?" asked Karl.
"Not directly, but it comes within a few miles as it makes its descent toward the ice station."
Karl turned to the security guard who had carried the message. "Please tell my brother to observe the approaching aircraft closely. If it deviates from its normal flight path to Little America, have him notify me immediately."
"Are you troubled, brother?" asked Elsie.
Karl looked at her, his face showing traces of concern. "Not troubled, my sister, merely cautious. I do not trust the Americans."
"The United States is a long way away," said Elsie. "It would take an American assault force more than twenty-four hours to assemble and fly over ten thousand miles to Okuma Bay."
"Still," Karl said patiently, "it pays to be vigilant" He looked at Holtz. "Should a distraction arise, can the signal to split the ice be sent early?"
"Not if we want absolute success," Holtz replied firmly. "Timing is critical. We must wait until just before the peak of the flood tide to activate the molecular ice-dissolving machines. Then the ebb tide will carry the great mass of the ice shelf out to sea."
"Then it appears we have nothing to fear," said Elsie optimistically.
Karl dropped his voice, speaking slowly, softly. "I hope you're right, dear sister."
At that moment, another security guard approached and passed Karl a message from Hugo. He read it, looked up, and smiled faintly. "Hugo says that the American supply plane is on its normal course ten miles beyond our perimeter and is flying at an altitude of thirty-five thousand feet."
"Hardly the height to drop an assault team," said Holtz.
"No nation on Earth would dare fire missiles into our facility without their intelligence agencies penetrating our operation. And none have. Hugo's security force has diverted and blocked all outside probes into Valhalla."
"Diverted and blocked," Karl repeated. But his mind was not so sure. He recalled one man who had already defied too many of the Wolf family's aims, and Karl could not but wonder where he might be.
<<37>>
Under a sky concealed by a thick layer of clouds, a NUMA executive jet landed on a frozen airstrip, taxied toward a domed building, and rolled to a stop. Little America V was the fifth in the line of United States ice stations to bear the name since Admiral Byrd had established the first in 1928. Once situated several miles from the edge of the Ross Shelf near Kainan Bay, the sea was now only a short walk away, due to the calving of the ice pack over the years. The base served as a terminus for the 630-mile-long well-traveled ice road to the Byrd Surface Camp on the Rockefeller Plateau.
A man bundled up in a lime-green parka and fur-trimmed hood removed his sunglasses and grinned as Pitt opened the passenger's door and stepped to the frozen ground.
"You Pitt or Giordino?" he asked in a rumbling voice.
"I'm Pitt. You must be Frank Cash, the ice station chief."
Cash merely nodded. "I didn't expect you for another two hours."
"We hurried."
Pitt turned as Giordino, who had closed the down the aircraft, joined them. Giordino introduced himself and said, "Thank you for working with us on such short notice, but it's a matter of extreme urgency."
"I have no reason to doubt you," said Cash astutely, "even though I received no instructions from a higher authority."
Unable to talk their way into joining the special force assault team that was being formed to raid the Wolf compound and halt the coming cataclysm, they h
ad been told in no uncertain terms by Admiral Sandecker to remain in Buenos Aires out of harm's way. Pitt's reasoning had been that he and Giordino were essential to the raid, because it was they who had discovered the horrifying truth behind the man-induced cataclysm and knew more about the Wolfs and their security tactics than anyone else. And, since they were already in Buenos Aires and five thousand miles closer to the scene of conflict, they could get there before the assault team and scout the facility.
His plea had fallen on deaf ears. The argument by the high-ranking military had been that they were not professional fighting men who were trained and conditioned for such a strenuous and difficult operation.
In Sandecker's case, he was not about to allow his best men to commit suicide in the frigid wastes of the southern polar continent. Pitt and Giordino, however, true to form, had taken a NUMA executive jet, and instead of flying it back to Washington as they had been ordered, they'd filled it to the brim with fuel and taken off for Antarctica, in hopes of entering the Wolf mining plant through the back door, without the slightest plan in their heads of how to cross sixty miles of frozen waste to the Wolf operation once they landed in Little America.
"We'll figure out something when we get there." Pitt was fond of saying this.
Followed by Giordino's "I'll tag along, since I don't have anything better to do."
"Come on inside," said Cash, "before we turn into ice sculptures."
"What's the temperature?" asked Giordino.
"Pretty nice today, with no wind. Last I looked, it was fifteen degrees below zero."
"At least I won't have to send for ice cubes for my tequila," said Pitt.
The domed building, which was 80 percent covered with ice, protruded only five feet above ground.
The living and working quarters were a maze of rooms and corridors hacked under the ice. Cash led them into the dining area next to the kitchen and ordered them a hot lunch of lasagna from the station cook before producing a half-gallon bottle of Gallo burgundy. "Not fancy, but it hits the spot," he said, laughing.
"All the comforts of home," mused Giordino.
"Not really," Cash said, with a grim smile. "You have to be mentally deficient to want to live this life."
"Then why not take a job somewhere with a milder climate?" asked Pitt, noticing that all the men he'd seen at the station were bearded and the women had forsaken makeup and coiffures.
"Men and women volunteer to work in polar regions because of the excitement of pursuing a dangerous job exploring the unknown. A few come to escape problems at home, but the majority are scientists who pursue the studies of their chosen expertise regardless of where it takes them. After a year, they're more than ready to return home. By that time, they've either turned into zombies or they began to hallucinate."
Pitt looked at Cash. He didn't have a haunted look in his eyes, at least not yet. "It must take strength of character to subsist in such a bleak environment."
"It begins with age," Cash explained. "Men under twenty-five lack reliability, men over forty-five lack the stamina."
After waiting patiently for a few minutes, while Pitt and Giordino ate most of their lasagna, Cash finally asked, "When you contacted me from Argentina, did I hear right when you said you wanted to cross the ice shelf to Okuma Bay?"
Pitt nodded. "Our destination is the Destiny Enterprises mining operation."
Cash shook his head. "Those people are security fanatics. None of our scientific expeditions ever got within ten miles of the place before being chased off by their security goons."
"We're quite familiar with the goons," said Giordino, relaxing after filling his stomach.
"What did you have in mind for transportation? We have no helicopter here."
"All we'll need is a couple of snowmobiles," Pitt said, looking into Cash's face. The expression in the ice station chief's eyes was not encouraging.
Cash looked pained. "I fear you two have flown a long way for nothing. Two of our snowmobiles are in maintenance, waiting for parts to be flown in. And the other four were taken by scientists to study the ice around Roosevelt Island north of here."
"How soon before your scientists return?" asked Pitt.
"Not for another three days."
"You have no other transportation?" asked Giordino.
"A bulldozer and a ten-ton Sno-cat."
"What about the Sno-cat?"
Cash shrugged. "A section of one track shattered from the cold. We're waiting for a part to be flown in from Auckland."
Giordino looked across the table at his friend. "Then we have no choice but to fly in and hope we find a place to land."
Pitt shook his head. "We can't risk jeopardizing the special force mission by dropping in out of the blue. I had hoped that with snowmobiles we might have covered the distance, parked them a mile or two away from the mining compound, and then crept in unobserved."
"You fellas act like it's a matter of life or death," said Cash.
Pitt and Giordino exchanged glances and then both looked at the station chief, their faces set in grave expressions. "Yes," Pitt said severely, "it's life and death to more people than you can possibly conceive."
"Can you tell me what this is all about?"
"Can't," Giordino answered simply. "Besides, you wouldn't want to know. It might ruin your entire day."
Cash poured a cup of coffee and contemplated the dark liquid for a few moments. Then he said,
"There is one other possibility, but it's highly improbable."
Pitt stared at him. "We're listening."
"Admiral Byrd's Snow Cruiser," Cash announced, as if he was launching a lecture, which indeed he was. "A jumbo four-wheel-drive, larger than any vehicle built in her day."
"When was that?" Giordino queried.
"Nineteen thirty-nine." There was a pause. "It was the inspiration of Thomas Poulter, a polar explorer, who designed and built a monstrous machine he hoped could carry five men and his pet dog to the South Pole and back. I guess you might call it the world's first really big recreational vehicle. The tires alone were over three feet wide and more than ten feet in diameter. From front to back, it measured fifty-six feet long by twenty feet wide and weighed thirty-seven tons fully loaded. Believe you me, she's some vehicle."
"She sounds overly elaborate," said Pitt, "for a vehicle designed to travel to the South Pole."
"She was that. Besides a grand control cabin raised on the front, it had its own machine shop, living quarters for the crew, and a galley that also performed double duty as a photographer's darkroom. The rear end housed storage space for a year's supply of food, spare tires, and enough fuel for five thousand miles of travel. Not only that, she was supposed to have carried a Beechcraft airplane with skis on her roof."
"What did such a monster use for power?"
"Two one-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower diesel engines linked to four seventy-five-horsepower electric traction motors, which could feed power to all or any one of the wheels individually. The wheels could all be turned for a crabbing movement and sharp turns, and even retract when crossing a crevasse.
Each wheel alone weighed six thousand pounds. The tires were twelve-ply and made by Goodyear."
"Are you saying this gargantuan machine not only still exists, but is available?" asked Pitt incredulously.
"Oh, she exists, but I can't say she's available or that she could travel across sixty miles of the ice shelf.
Sixty miles may not seem like much distance, but after the Snow Cruiser was completed, shipped to the Antarctic, and unloaded at Little America Three, not far from this station, her designer's best-laid plans went down the sewer. The engines had the power, but Poulter had miscalculated the gear ratios. The behemoth would do thirty miles an hour on a level road, but couldn't pull her mass through ice and snow, especially up a grade. Given up as a white elephant, she was abandoned. In later years, she was covered over by the ice, lost, and forgotten. It was always thought that as the ice shelf moved toward the sea, the Snow
Cruiser would eventually be carried away and dropped in the deep when the ice floe melted."
"Where is she now, still buried under the ice?" Pitt inquired.
Cash shook his head and smiled. "The Snow Cruiser is about two miles from here, dangerously close to the edge of the ice shelf. A rich old mining engineer got it into his head to find and rescue the vehicle, then transport it back to the States for display in a museum. He and his crew discovered it thirty feet deep in the ice and spent three weeks digging it out. They built an ice tent around it, and the last I heard actually got it running."
"I wonder if they'd let us borrow it?"
"Never hurts to ask," said Cash. "But I think you'd do better selling a basset hound on eating broccoli."
"We've got to try," Pitt said firmly.
"You got Arctic clothing?"
"In the plane."
"Better get it on. We'll have to hike to where the Snow Cruiser sits." Then Cash looked as though he'd suddenly thought of something. "Before I forget, I'll have a couple of our maintenance men throw a cover over your plane and set up an auxiliary heater to keep your engines, fuel, and hydraulic systems warm and the ice off the fuselage and wings. Leave a plane set for a week and she'll start to disappear under a buildup of ice."
"Good idea," Giordino acknowledged. "We may have to use it in a hurry if all else fails."
"I'll meet you back here in half an hour and I'll lead you to the vehicle."
"Who is the old guy who's heading up the salvage operation?" asked Pitt.
Cash looked lost for a moment. "I don't really know. He's an eccentric cuss. His crew usually calls him
'Dad.' "
With Cash in the lead, they walked a trail marked with orange flags across the ice for nearly an hour.
After a while, Pitt could see figures moving about a large blue tent surrounded by a series of smaller orange polar tents. A light snow was falling and forming a thin white blanket over the tents. Strange as it seems, the Antarctic rarely experiences a heavy snow. It is one of the driest continents on Earth, and a few inches below the surface, the snow is ancient.