Conner had watched the steady stream of ice splatter down the chute for the past fifteen minutes. Now Riley’s feet appeared as he lowered himself into the room. “Who’s next?” he asked, shaking ice flakes off his parka.
Devlin zipped up his jacket. “I’ll go.”
Swenson stood. “No. I’ll go. I need the exercise to warm up. You take the next shift.”
Riley took the rope off his own waist and wrapped it around the pilot, then he filled in the rest of the group on his progress. “I got about four to five feet in. Most of the metal tubing is still good. It almost looks like the ice came in from the top, or else we haven’t reached the break in the wall yet. Let’s hope the ice didn’t crush the metal together.”
Swenson cinched the rope around his waist. “All set.”
Riley pointed. “I hung the shovel on the top rung.”
“OK.” With a weary smile, Swenson pulled himself into the tube.
The temperature in the reactor room had dropped considerably due to the open hatch and the slowly melting pile of ice in the far corner. Conner had gone through the bag of supplies and retrieved crackers and canned fruit cocktail. She handed a can to Riley as he sat down on his ruck.
“Thanks.” Riley smiled. He held up a can of fruit. “C rations. I haven’t seen these since ‘84.”
Conner returned the smile, then glanced over at Devlin. He looked worn and scared. The main emotion she felt for him right now was pity. She sat next to him with her food and he spoke to her for the first time since they’d started digging.
“I liked the story you did on me.”
Conner was surprised he brought that up now. “It was the best interview I ever did.” She touched Devlin’s shoulder. “I mean that.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you.” Devlin’s words were almost choked.
“It’s OK,” Conner whispered in his ear.
On the other side of the room, Sammy rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to hear this — not because of the implied intimacy between the two, but because she could see that Devlin’s nerves were frayed. As far as Sammy was concerned, things were going to get worse before they got better, and they couldn’t afford for anyone to come apart at the seams.
Sammy poked around in her can of fruit cocktail and tried to ignore Devlin and her sister. Conner put an arm around Devlin and started talking very quietly into his ear. They sat that way for a few minutes, interrupted only by the sprinkle of ice from the hatch as Swenson continued to dig away.
Sammy was surprised when Riley slid over until their legs were touching and started talking to her. “You have any thoughts about what you’re going to do when you get back to the real world?”
Sammy forgot the murmuring across the room and turned her attention to Riley. “Not really. I just want to get this over with.”
“I doubt that you’ll be able to go back to your old job, regardless of how this turns out.” Riley regarded her for a few seconds. “I know I haven’t said much since we met at the airport, but that’s because I’ve been concentrating on the job.” He considered that statement for a second. “All right, that’s not entirely true. It’s also because I’m not very good at talking to people. It’s also because I’ve been very caught up with my own loss.”
Sammy met his eyes. “I appreciate that. I’m not really sure how I feel myself. Why don’t you tell me what happened? You said earlier—”
She never finished analyzing those feelings as her world went upside down. It was as if a large hand grasped the reactor room and lifted it, tumbling everyone to the floor. The lights went out and a tremendous roar, like thousands of locomotives charging by, deafened Sammy’s ears. Her last thought as she was thrown across the room was regret that she and Riley hadn’t finished their conversation.
Chapter 24
The fact that the epicenter of the blast was underground muffled the kinetic effect of the explosion but utterly disintegrated Eternity Base, producing a puckered crater more than a quarter mile wide. The fireball lashed across the ice, searing the surface for more than two miles in every direction. The refreezing of the briefly melted ice produced a landscape that resembled sheets of glistening glass.
The immediate radiation was absorbed by the ice in a relatively short distance. The delayed radiation in the form of strontium 90, cesium 137, iodine 131, and carbon 14 was grabbed by the howling winds; as the elements rose in the atmosphere, the radiation began spreading over a large area.
The flash and thermal energy bathed the snowy plain in dulled white light — the swirling snow having lessened the effect — the heat at a bearable level here, more than fifteen miles from the epicenter of the blast. Five minutes before the hour, Pak had turned the vehicle so the rear pointed directly toward the base, but still the shock wave split through the storm and slammed into the back of the SUSV with gale force. The vehicle actually lifted a foot off its rear tracks before rocking back down and continuing on its way.
Pak said a silent prayer for Sergeant Yong, who had volunteered to remain behind and detonate the bomb and not slow them down with his wounds.
More than five hundred miles to the west of Eternity Base, needles on seismographs at McMurdo Station flickered briefly and then were still. Scientists scratched their heads, perplexed at the cause of the burp in their machines. Dutifully they recorded the data and forwarded it back to the United States. Over the next twenty minutes, other Antarctic stations forwarded the same data as their machines registered it.
The two favorite theories bandied about at the various U.S. stations were either an earthquake or a massive split of ice falling off the ice shelf into the ocean. They were both wrong.
The senior scientist at the Russkaya Station looked at the various reports on the seismic disturbance and noted that a strong electromagnetic pulse had just washed over his station. The former might be explained by an earthquake or ice breaking, the latter by a severe sunspot. Together, they added up to only one answer — a nuclear explosion. But how? Why? Most importantly, who?
Ah, well, the scientist shrugged, that was for people much more important than he to worry about. He wrote up a report and had his radioman send it over the one transmitter that had survived the EMP — an old tube radio that had been here since the base opened. All the modern solid-state circuitry radios had been fused by the electromagnetic pulse.
Sammy checked her body from head to foot, making sure all the parts were still functioning. Everything seemed all right. She sat up and turned her head from side to side, listening. Someone was moving nearby.
The total dark was the worst. Eyes wide open, she could see nothing. Suddenly a small light flared next to her and, in the glow, she saw Riley holding his flashlight.
“You OK?”
Sammy nodded. “I think so.”
Riley swiftly ran the light around the room. Devlin appeared to be unconscious, with several boxes of supplies piled on top of him. Conner was moving groggily, hands on her head.
Riley ignored both of them and jumped to his feet. He shone his light up into the shaft. A pair of feet disappearing into ice were all he could see twenty feet above. Riley turned to Sammy. “Hold the light for me. Swenson’s buried.” He rapidly climbed up.