Mercer was just reaching for the microphone to suggest that they should stop for the night when Igor’s voice filled the Sno-Cat. “On other side of this last ice wall is base camp. We just saw it! We are coming back for you now. Hot meal and warm bed in fifteen minutes.”
Like a wraith, the Land Cruiser came out of the swirling snow, ice dust caught in the corona of its lights dancing on the wind. Dieter, who had to be exhausted from nineteen hours of driving, executed a U-turn when Mercer flashed his headlights. The last dash to the camp was surreal. Mercer was tired and should have turned over the driving to Marty. He had to fight to keep himself alert. The falling snow mesmerized him, drawing his attention to individual flakes with alarming frequency. He squeezed his eyes closed, shaking his head to clear it.
“You gonna make it?” Ira asked.
Mercer shot him a crooked grin. “If I don’t, you don’t.”
The first camp building erected by Geo-Research’s advance team stood alone. Constructed in sections of insulated plastic, it had been snapped together like a child’s toy. Once they all got to work in the morning, this building would be the mess hall/communications shack. For tonight it was their communal bunkhouse. Around the building were pallets for the four ten-person dormitories, two room-temperature laboratories, and two ambient labs used to store and study ice cores. The disassembled ice-coring drill tower was in one of the trailers.
“I just hope Werner’s a deep sleeper,” Mercer told Ira.
“Why?”
“Because when we get inside I’m having a drink and I don’t want to hear him complain.”
“We’ll join you,” Marty said. “I’ve got bourbon and Ira brought a bottle of scotch.”
Dawn broke crisp and clear. After a breakfast of powdered eggs and coffee, Werner Koenig handed out work assignments and the crew set themselves to building their camp. While the Geo-Research team all sported matching black snowsuits with their company’s name and their own stitched in gold over their hearts, Igor’s people and the Society’s group wore a mishmash of Arctic gear, some of it army surplus and some of it store-bought. The only thing they all shared in common was the heavy moon boots. They were cumbersome but with so much fresh snow on the ground they were also necessary.
After running the Sno-Cats over a wide area to compress the snow, the floors of the buildings were laid out in a rough circle with the mess hall at its center. Then the ’Cat hauling the wall sections made a circuit of the camp and the numbered pieces were dropped at each base. It was a matter of standing the walls onto the insulated floor and locking them with a special tool provided by the manufacturer. Roofs were placed with a crane mounted on one of the Sno-Cats. In all, the whole process took three hours per building.
The early energy that sustained the crew waned as the frigid air sapped their strength. And yet they slogged on. By five in the afternoon the last cold lab was finished. They ate in silence that night after loading two of the dormitories with their personal gear.
The following day was spent storing all the provisions and stocking the laboratories. The work was easier than the previous day’s and the temperature had risen above freezing. The steadily drifting snow turned into a constant drizzle that soaked anyone outside in a matter of moments. The compacted snow became ice as flat and slick as a hockey rink. Mercer’s suggestion to use a Sno-Cat to corrugate the crust with its tracks was met with remarkable success.
At dinner, Werner thanked everyone for their work, praising each one by name for their contribution. He said that Geo-Research would finish the last few chores in the morning, freeing up the others to begin their work. The scientists would arrive by a ski-equipped cargo plane in the afternoon and he asked Igor and Marty for a list of any additional equipment that they felt they needed so it could be put aboard.
“Oh, Igor, I have a communication for you from Dr. Klein.” He handed a piece of paper to the Russian.
Igor read it and grunted.
“Looks like bad news,” Mercer said, stacking the dishes on the table for Ingrid, the cook’s assistant that Marty had bedded aboard the Njoerd, to pick up.
“Da, she won’t make tomorrow’s flight here. She must wait two days for the first helicopter resupply.”
“What happened to her anyway?”
“I don’t know. Some accident is all I was told.”
“I don’t blame her for wanting to miss the construction party,” Marty Bishop said with a tired sigh.
“I do not think she is shy of work,” Igor defended. “I have not met her, but her application to join my team was impressive. She has climbed the tallest mountains on four continents, including the Vinson Massif, Antarctica’s highest point. And almost made it to the top of Everest. She works as a trauma doctor in Munich’s largest hospital and has published several papers on survivor’s stress. When I contacted her references, all gave her highest marks.”
“Sounds impressive to me,” Ira said.
Igor grinned. “She also sent picture with her application. You want impressive? Wait until you see her.” He bunched his fingers and kissed them away like an Italian. “Beautiful.”
The sled weighed nearly two hundred pounds and had been designed to be towed by a vehicle. When they started their search the third morning, they tried using the Land Cruiser, but the uneven terrain made it too difficult to control. It fell on the men to push the ground-penetrating radar unit, an exhausting task since their search grid was on a long slope. The uphill legs left the men panting and dangerously overheated.
All were thankful that the area wasn’t larger than it was.
Because Camp Decade had been secured to an under-ice mountain, it had remained stable as the glacier flowed around it. The Surveyor’s Society had requested Geo-Research establish their new base within a quarter mile of where Camp Decade lay hidden. On the fourth pass with the sled they found a corner of the base, a discovery met with cheers but they knew that was only part of the battle. Now they had to map the entire facility and locate the main entrance, where they would sink their shaft.
Camp Decade was laid out like a huge letter H. One long leg contained storage areas and a cavernous garage that once had a ramp to the surface. The other leg was designated for crew accommodations and laboratories, with the bulk of the administration area connecting the two segments. There were countless side chambers attached to the complex as well as a long tunnel running from the garage that led to the small nuclear reactor that had powered the facility. The Air Force had assured the Surveyor’s Society that there had never been a single incidence of radiation leakage, and the reactor had been one of the few things removed when the camp was abandoned.
As Mercer watched the monitor attached to the radar set reveal dark shadows thirty-five feet below them, he kept a surreptitious eye on the Geiger counter he had borrowed in Iceland. The unit was an old Victoreen model CDV-700 6A that he had cajoled from Thorsteinn Jonsson, the director of Reykjavik’s small geology museum. He hadn’t seen Jonsson since the volcanologist had hosted the conference that first brought Mercer to Iceland years earlier, and Jonsson had been reluctant to lend out his only counter until Mercer gave him a hundred-dollar “rental fee.”
The photograph of cancer-ravaged Stefansson Rosmunder was too compelling for Mercer to trust the Air Force’s assurances. Before first light, he’d gotten up and walked the entire area, sweeping the ice with the Geiger counter. The machine hadn’t uttered more than a few clicks, which indicated normal background radiation. There was one spot, presumably over where the reactor had once been buried, that sped up the counter but the levels were far below anything dangerous.