Chapter 1: Siple Island

“Satellite data shows a huge gravitational anomaly on the coastal area, here, near Mount Siple. We’ve got to get you in there to perform a ground survey. A quick and dirty Navy over-flight with magnetic anonomaly detection gear returned nothing useful. We know that something is there but we can’t get a handle on it. It’s massive, it’s something deep, and it’s unknown. We expect that your penetrating ground study will tell us more about whatever the hell that mass is.”

Michael stared at the satellite reports. He couldn’t dispute what he’d just heard. Most of the readings-gravity and surface penetrating radar-indicated something unusual. He wondered why the magnetic probes came away with nothing useful. Well, odds were that it was actually something natural, a deposit or a fault intrusion, something unusual for anywhere else but Antarctica.

Antarctica is a huge continent holding larger mysteries which science only recently began to answer. Problem is, of all the areas of the vast south polar continent, Marie Byrd Land remains the most remote, the least investigated, and the most difficult to reach.

“It’s twelve hundred miles from the closest base to Siple Island. How do you propose to get me there with enough gear and supplies for ground studies? It will take at least a week to get set up, make some evaluation runs, and get out of there.”

The agency man looked nervously at his stack of reports, then faced Michael straight on.

“No, not a week. We want a thorough ground sweep. We’ll take you in with a team to set up camp, and we’ll leave you there with an assistant. You’ll be in there for two weeks; more likely three, depending on what turns up.”

Michael sat stone-faced, saying nothing. His mind churned with probable risks and it was not a good plan.

It was already too late for antarctic field work. He’d been enjoying late-season cross-country skiing at his cabin; it was the fall season in Antarctica. Days were already dark with a brief twilight at mid-day. They’d be facing early winter storms and risking isolation on the coastal ice shelf, with little chance of help reaching them if anything went wrong.

“Our big problem is the distance. At twelve hundred miles, it’s right at the range limit for the C-130’s. It’s too far for the Hercs to go in and get back without a refueling stop. There’s no place for refueling since they shut down the Byrd station up on the plateau.

“We’ve arranged for an icebreaker to take you and your gear to the site. They’ll provide crew and snowmobiles with sleds to haul your stuff to the island and help you set up. You’ll check in daily by radio, and when you’re ready to come out, they’ll come in for you. They’ve got a helo deck so they can pull you out in a hurry if necessary. Don’t worry about bringing back the gear if things get dicey. That’s expendable. What we want is the data. We’ll be sending satellite up-link equipment with you for that. Try to transmit daily data feeds. We’ll have analysts working it up as it comes in.”

“You do realize that this is a hell of a risky situation you’re putting us into?”

“We don’t see it that way. It should be easy getting in, then an easy couple of weeks running back and forth with your snowmobiles and instruments, and then an easy out. The ship will stand by right off the ice shelf in radio range, ready to pull you out of there. What could be safer than that?”

Michael had never been in the habit of teaching pigs to sing. It was a waste of time and it annoyed hell out of the pigs. Obviously this fool and his superiors had never studied a single report about polar weather or antarctic operations.

“Alright, but we’ll need extra supplies for an extended stay in case the weather window closes. Storms can shut down an area for days, even weeks at a time. Trying to get a ship-board helicopter launched and recovered during storm conditions could be damned risky, if not impossible.”

“Sure, sure, no problem. I’ll tell the supplies team to offload an extra four week’s rations and fuel, just in case. Now, here’s the plan our analysts worked up. We’d like you to lay out this grid, using GPS coordinates...”

Michael spent the next day feeling uneasy about everything. He couldn’t understand why the agency was in such a hurry to survey the site. They had good satellite data, despite the confusing Navy mag-det readings. That should be plenty to keep them busy until the following antarctic spring when conditions would be safer. What was the damned hurry?

“The damned hurry” was the size of the anomaly at Siple Island. The agency deputy director sat at his desk, reviewing the report summary.

“Is this right? Are you sure there’s no error? This is the actual estimate?”

“Yes, sir. That’s it. I had the team review it a second time, and then I called in an independent section to double check everything. We ran it twice through the computers. We had a team of programmers double-check our algorithms and modeling assumptions. That’s the most accurate assessment possible. I know it’s a bit much to swallow but we either believe it, or we go back to square one with all of our systems and throw out everything we’ve done up to this point.”

The deputy director nodded, and shuffled the stack of papers closed, sliding them into their envelope.

“Thanks, Richard. I know you and the team have done a good job with this. I had to ask. Don’t be surprised if I call you in when I meet with the chief. I’m sure he’ll have the same skepticism I did, when I tell him these results.”

Damned right, he will, Deputy director Jameson thought to himself. Scientists have known for years that there are volcanoes, mountains, rivers and lakes beneath the antarctic ice shield. But who the hell would ever believe that a manufactured object one-half mile wide and three miles long would be buried under the ice in a place where humans have rarely, if ever, visited before?’

Plans went overboard from almost the first moment the ship arrived at the Getz Ice Shelf on the southwest coast of Antarctica. The shelf, small by antarctic standards, extends along the coast for three hundred miles and varies from twenty to sixty miles in breadth. Several major islands, including Siple Island and its volcano, lay surrounded by shelf ice.

The volcanic cone of Mount Siple looms over all of them, ten thousand feet above sea level. Even from a distance of thirty miles it is huge, imposing, and foreboding. Its snowcapped form stands starkly outlined against a grim horizon.

The ship’s two-man helicopter returned from its initial reconnaissance, a sixty-five mile round trip.

“Impassable? Absolutely impassable? You mean, there is no way we can get this mission to the site across the ice?”

“Yes, that is exactly what I mean,” Michael told Agent Steve Barringer. “There’s an unbroken line of pressure ridges extending three miles deep across our route close inshore. The ice is stacked up at least seventy-five, maybe a hundred feet high for as far as we could see. Worse than that, there seems to be some shearing right along the coast where the shelf meets the coast. It alternates between ice heaps and cracks. Any one of those cracks could swallow a snowmobile, its driver, and the sled with its load. There’d be no hope of getting out. But that’s assuming we can even get to the ice cracks; those ridges can’t be climbed and they extend too far to go around.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Me? What do I suggest? This is your party, your push, remember? If you want my professional advice, we’ll turn around and go back to McMurdo. Then you’ll release this ship and its crew to return to their New Zealand port for the winter.”

“That’s not an option.”

“Alright. I was afraid you’d feel that way. If the skipper and the pilot are willing, we can-just maybe-still do this. Assuming the ship has enough helo fuel aboard, we can break this down into a two-man detail, with just enough gear, including food and cooking fuel for a four-week contingency, for a fast survey. We plan on ferrying enough stuff over for a five-day quick scan: one day to set up, three days to run the survey, and the last day to get ourselves off the ice and back to McMurdo, and I’ll pray that we’re off before the first bad storm hits.”

“Dammit, that’s not enough. The chief wanted every square yard of that area scanned. We can’t cut it that short!”

“You’re not listening to me, Agent Barringer. We do it with what we’re able to fly ashore, as I just explained, or we don’t do it. We can’t ferry enough gear and reserve supplies to carry out your full plan. In case you haven’t paid attention, it’s the late fall season and we’re lucky we haven’t yet been hammered with a serious storm. If a fast-moving weather front moves in, we could be stranded on that island for weeks before it lets up enough to get us out of there. I’ll give you today and tomorrow to revise the load and transport us there. You can do that, or wait until early summer. It’s your choice.”

Steve Barringer was an intelligent man. He knew next to nothing about Antarctica. Few men who had not spent a season on the ice really did, but he trusted those who had the experience.

His problem was pressure. He was under incredible pressure from his agency superiors to get this survey accomplished, and he was equally as baffled as his consulting geophysicist by the rush. Sure, there seemed to be something huge and unknown lurking over there, but why the hell couldn’t it wait another year? How long had it been buried there, anyway? It seemed damned unlikely to pop out of the ice and take off somewhere before they could get to it.

“I’ll call and tell them we’ve got problems. You get your stuff sorted out. See how much stuff the pilot can ferry with each flight. I’ll check with the skipper.”

The director looked up and said in a voice so soft and low that his deputy had to strain to hear it:

“You bring me a shadow, and if we hadn’t worked together for so many years I would have your ID on my desk and yourself escorted from the building, under guard, to the nearest psychiatric ward.”

Deputy Jameson shifted uneasily, but he trusted his old friend to stay calm in the face of the incredible evidence.

“Yet here it is, and it’s been confirmed. The satellite instruments prove that something massive of a manufactured shape is buried there. The Navy flight added disbelief to this ‘shadow’ by showing it has little or no magnetic properties. Yet our gravity readings show that it is something very, very dense. We can’t just ignore it, can we?” the Director grumbled.

“No, sir, I don’t think we can. It appears to be nothing threatening, but we can’t be certain of that. It’s been laying there, hidden, unmoving. We don’t know enough about it to say much of anything, except that it is huge, it is unnatural, and it is buried deep in the ice where we would expect to see nothing of its kind.”

“Then what do you recommend?”

“It’s in my report with my conclusions, there with the analysis data. But I’ve already taken some action. We need to learn more but our timing is lousy. Winter is coming on down there, and our access window is closing. I’ve got one of our leading geophysicists and an investigating agent on site. They’re preparing to run a ground sweep to get accurate shape and density readings on this thing.”

“Good, very good. Make sure it happens. You’ve got free rein to run this project. Make sure we get those results before that weather window closes.”

Michael hurried to set up their base tent while the helicopter ferried supplies from the ship. He had ridden in with the first load, a sling-load of gear including their tent, sleeping bags, and duffel bags with extra clothing. He’d gotten the tent set up and the gear stashed while the pilot brought in another sling-load bearing their ground-penetrating equipment and food. The third trip delivered the snowmobile, fuel and oil, and a sled.

The fourth and final trip carried his helper, Dan Perkins, with their radio and satellite uplink equipment. Michael stood well clear while the helicopter approached on this last delivery. Twilight was almost gone. It was dark and difficult to see anything around him. He’d stumbled badly while carrying a crate and nearly sprained his ankle. The wind had come up and was blowing billowing streamers of snow. If things got only a little worse, the pilot would have real trouble. Any wind gusts or swirling snow would be dangerous when he came in to set down.

The helicopter approached, slowly, hesitating as it descended. Mike had set out flares and burning wads of oily rags pinned to the snow with spare tent stakes as beacons, something for the pilot to use as a ground reference. But the swirling down-blast from the blades obscured the markers in upswept clouds of powdery snow. Michael could see the pilot straining to guess his height above ground.

A hard gust pushed the helo up; it veered to one side and dumped its sling load. It was too high. The radio crates crashed forty feet down onto the hard snow pack. Several split open. The helo spun around and approached again. The pilot was forced to switch off his landing lights; they were blinding him in the clouds of swirling powder. He tried to see Mike’s ground flares as markers. The whole area was obscured under a blowing sheet of snow; all he could see was a swirling, rotating ground blizzard. There was no outside reference and the buffeting he was taking in the wind gusts upset his gyro horizon.

Michael could see the red flare in his own hand but nothing below his knees. The snow surface was a slithering, seething mass of sideways blowing snow, except where the helicopter down-wash was blasting it up into a huge, billowing cloud. The pilot struggled to get his equilibrium. It was hard to tell right-side up from upside-down. The helo surged up and swung away.

He circled tightly around, too high, Michael thought, and flew straight toward the glow of the flares from about a hundred feet out. The pilot descended as he came, trying to guess where his skids would contact the seething surface below him. Michael moved forward to guide him down, swinging his flare low before him.

Two things happened at precisely the wrong moment: a wind gust caught the craft from the side and its landing skid dropped and hit the snow pack, too hard. The helo bounced; another wind gust laid it over. It spun violently around when its rotor blades hit the snow. The blades shattered. Their pieces flew at Michael and the equipment crates. The tail rotor slammed down. Its blade broke loose and spun forward into the fuel tank. Gushing aviation gas engulfed the rolling, spinning helicopter in flame. Michael ran for his life.

Dan Perkins was thrown partially out of the door. He was crushed and dead before the flames reached him. The pilot, stunned from the impact of the crash, died when he inhaled superheated air from the flames. A moment later the helicopter was a burning mass of wreckage. It lay rolled against the radio and satellite equipment crates. Everything was blazing in the gasoline inferno.

Michael was down. A hail of blade fragments streaked past him while he ran. A knife-size chunk tore into his right leg, laying it open. He fell, rolled, and grasped at his torn snow pants, feeling the stub of the blade sticking out of his thigh. He fell. He sprawled flat onto the blinding, swirling snow; he lay in agonizing pain. Immersed in the swirling ground blizzard that covered him, he didn’t see the rolling, flaming wreckage destroy his camp and supplies.

What he couldn’t see on the far side of the tent was a secondary eruption of flame. Another blade fragment had struck one of the snowmobile fuel jugs, shattering the cold plastic. That sent a spray of gasoline into the air. It whirled downwind, touched the flaming wreck, and flashed back in a cloud of fire. The other fuel jugs swelled from the heat, their plastic melted, and hot gasoline gushed out. The fuel stash became a roaring inferno.

Michael fought to stay conscious. His camp was a blazing hell; soon, sub-zero cold would return and hell would be frozen over. Michael would join the two men already dead, but his death would take longer. He’d either bleed to death or freeze to death unless he did something to save his precious gear.

He tugged the metal shard from his thigh and ripped open the tear in his snow pants to reach his trousers and thermal underpants. Both were saturated with blood. He cut long strips of fabric from his snow pants with his pocket knife, slicing the pants where they’d been torn open. He cut into his inside trousers and thermals to lengthen the holes already there. He folded and stuffed his wool glove liners against the bleeding wound and wrapped them tightly with the strips of snow pant fabric.

Shock made him queasy and nauseous; he fought it. He had little time to prepare for survival. With the helo destroyed he didn’t want to think how long he’d be stranded here. There was no way that help could come from the ship.

He folded his knife and pocketed it, then slid the outer mitten shells back onto his hands. He crawled to the supply pile, pulling with his hands and pushing with his good leg, bellying forward in a clumsy scramble, dragging his injured leg stiffly, painfully along.