“What’s with the security?” he asked Sol. “The polar bears particularly aggressive near here?”
“No polar bears here, Sam. Just birds and seals. You’re thinking of the Arctic.”
Aston rolled his eyes. “I know that. I was being facetious. But it’s more than just birds and seals.” Sol frowned and Aston was pleased to have turned the tables. He was the biologist, after all. He wouldn’t be condescended to by this guy. “Yeah,” he said. “You can’t forget the ATIs.”
Sol quirked an eyebrow. “What’s an ATI?”
Aston grinned. “Antarctic Terrestrial Invertebrate.”
“You’re kidding me. What even is that?”
“Nope, not kidding. Nematode worms, mites, tardigrades, springtails, stuff like that.”
Others in the group had gathered to listen and Jahara Syed took up the point. “He’s right, it’s pretty fascinating. There are sixty-seven species of insects recorded here, which is nothing compared to the millions on all other continents, but significant for a place where until very recently people thought nothing could live.”
“They respond to temperature,” Aston said. “They might be awake for a few hours, or even less, then dormant, sometimes actually frozen, for days or weeks or even months, before they thaw out and go about their business again.”
“Well, that’s just creepy as can be,” Marla said quietly.
Aston was pleased to see that even Slater was paying attention, her fury momentarily forgotten.
“But we’re talking microscopic, right?” Jeff Gray asked.
“Like his package,” Marla whispered, just loud enough for Aston to hear.
“Not entirely,” Syed said. “But the biggest of them is a wingless midge that reaches a maximum of about thirteen millimeters in length.”
“So not likely to eat us in bed,” Jeff said.
“Nor is anyone else,” Marla said. “God, the jokes write themselves with this tool.”
“Well, if they did eat you, it would happen incredibly slowly,” Aston said with a grin, trying not to let Marla distract him too much. “Even so, they’re among the toughest creatures on the planet.”
Marla shook herself. “Bugs. I can’t believe that even down here we have to deal with damned bugs.”
“Bugs own the planet, really, but that’s a long series of lectures we don’t have time for,” Aston said. He turned back to Sol. “So, back to my original point. Why all the armed guards?”
Sol laughed. “Just company policy. Besides, it’s never a bad thing to have a few peacemakers around, don’t you think?”
To make peace between which people, Aston wondered, but kept the thought to himself. Slater glanced back at him, caught his eye. He gave a little shrug, but her expression remained neutral. She had been checking though, looking for his reaction to Sol’s casual dismissal of the armed guards. It made him happy that she was paying attention to what he thought of things. It boded well for a possible thawing of their own relationship. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part.
Sol led them into a large conference room, those tall narrow windows all along one side looking out over the frozen expanse of Antarctica, away from the sea, invisible some two hours away in the other direction. Slater wouldn’t meet Aston’s eye again and took a seat at the far end of the oval table, as far from him as she could get. To his annoyance, Jeff Gray sat right beside him. Did the man think they were friends now?
Aston looked around the table once everyone was seated, trying to guess what was happening here. Apart from himself, and Slater with her crew of Jeff and Marla, there was Sol Griffin, supposedly a physician, but obviously much more. To Aston’s left sat Anders Larsen the geologist, then Jahara Syed, the biologist. Next to her was Dig O’Donnell, an archeologist. And that gave him pause. He hadn’t thought about it before, but archeologists were experts in ancient civilizations. What use was there for that knowledge down here? The door, he presumed, which he still had trouble accepting as real. Still, if he put that concern aside, it was a pretty standard scientific crew, he supposed.
“Sorry, I’m late. Getting the squad to bunks.”
Aston turned at the voice, a strong Boston accent. The man who entered was African-American, a beast of a guy, well over six feet tall, muscles stretching his arctic camo outfit, bald head shining under the fluorescent lights. Clearly ex-military of some sort. He had a pistol holstered at his hip.
Sol smiled. “Just in time, Terry.” He raised a hand to introduce the man to the rest of the team already seated. “Ladies and gents, this is Terence Reid, head of security both here at the base and for the expedition in general.
“Good to meet you all,” Terry said. “No need to introduce yourselves, I know you all from your files.”
His grin was wide and friendly, but Aston thought it slightly disturbing the man had files on them all. He supposed some standard procedure was at play there, but he found it discomforting nonetheless. He watched Slater down the length of the table. She scrutinized Reid for several seconds, then looked at Aston. He raised an eyebrow, but she winced, seemingly annoyed that he’d seen her look his way. With a sigh, he turned his attention back to Sol.
Sol Griffin fired up a screen, but it remained blank as he addressed the gathering. “Well, you’ve all signed your NDAs, so now you get the full story. Any guesses?”
Aston wasn’t surprised when Jeff spoke up beside him. “I’ve been giving that a lot of thought. I doubt it’s just new energy sources. Especially given the team here. So here are some ideas.” He glanced around the table, oblivious to the frowns and impatient stares. They would all rather Sol got on with it, but it seemed Jeff was determined to answer the man’s obviously rhetorical question. “So much weird and unexplainable stuff has been found down here,” Jeff went on. “The blood falls, you heard about that one? From a lake under the ice that won’t freeze, but leaks blood red water out into the sea. Or the Antarctic pyramids, that are supposedly just mountains, but they’re so regular, I find that hard to believe. A lot of people are thinking aliens, or Atlantis, or Russian space experiments. For that matter, we know there was once a secret Nazi base here.”
Aston winced at the mention of Nazis, remembering the disturbing cave under Lake Kaarme. Then again, it had saved their bacon more than once. “Just let Sol talk, Jeff,” he said.
“What? You don’t think that stuff is fascinating?”
Aston sighed. “I’m a marine biologist, Jeff. I know the science of this stuff, not the nonsense. The blood falls, for example. It’s not weird and unexplained at all, some people just like to pretend it is. It’s actually the outflow of an iron oxide-tainted plume of saltwater. You know what that is? Iron-rich, hypersaline water intermittently emerges from small fissures in the ice from a subglacial pool under about 1,300 feet of ice. It was discovered over a hundred years ago, by an Australian geologist, as it happens. We’re good at discovering stuff. His name was Griffith Taylor, and the valley still bears his name. He thought it was caused by red algae, but it was later proven to be due to iron oxides. Science!” His hard stare dared Jeff to challenge him.
The cameraman shifted uncomfortably, clearly annoyed at being schooled in front of everyone. “What about the other stuff?”
“Equally bullshit, Jeff! I don’t have time to debunk every conspiracy theory you’ve ever read about. That’s the trouble with bullshit. You ever heard of Brandolini’s Law? It states the simple truth that the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. Which is why it’s so hard to make people see truth when the nonsense is so easy. You need more critical thinking, mate.”