He didn’t tell the others what he had done, nor did he reveal the counter as they worked now. He’d seen people panic at just the presence of one of these little machines. To the uninformed, the slow clicks of ambient radiation sounded as dangerous as the tail shake of a rattlesnake. He kept the counter in a pack hanging from the side of the sled and wore the earphones that Thorsteinn had given him. Since he was the only person who knew how to operate the radar unit, no one questioned the extra equipment. If he’d found something, he would have told them immediately, but after completing half of this slower sweep, he felt that the military had told the truth about the site. There was no hazardous radiation anywhere near Camp Decade.
At noon, Mercer downloaded the raw data they had accumulated onto a laptop computer that would create a digital version of the base. Because of the thick ice, the resolution was poor and the images were grainy and blurred, but there was still enough detail for him to pick out individual features. The radar had penetrated through the roof of Camp Decade, so the pictures resembled an X ray. Inside the facility, he could see wall partitions and even furniture. It was eerie because he was the first person to see inside the camp in fifty years.
He was also very relieved. While the facility was anchored to bedrock and protected from glacial pressure by a peak of rock on its upflow side, he had harbored the fear that the entire place had been ground to debris by the shifting ice. The radar scans showed it had had little problem weathering the past five decades.
“All right, let’s wrap this up for now,” Mercer said, shutting off the radar and checking the computer and GPS system that was part of the sledge. “We’ll compare this data with the original drawings done by the engineers who built this place.”
Even without the additional Geo-Research scientists, the mess hall was crowded for lunch, and they had to wait until afterward to clear enough room on one of the tables to spread out their findings. The original drawings had been scanned into the computer, so Mercer brought up the shadowy images recorded this morning and overlaid them with the neat architectural sketches. Instantly, they had the orientation of the base locked down and saw they had only mapped a third of the sprawling complex. Still, it was enough for them to extrapolate the location of the main entrance and determine its GPS coordinates.
Mercer pointed to the spot on the computer screen. “X marks the spot.”
“You sure?”
“Do you think I want to dig two holes out there? With your permission, Marty, we can start tunneling through the snow to reach the base.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Bishop replied. “Why don’t you go out and mark the area over the entrance? Ira, you go get the Sno-Cat with the crane and plow attachments and haul over the plastic sleeves and hotrocks. I’ll tell Werner that we need one of his people for a while.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Mercer agreed.
“How goes your search?” Igor Bulgarin had appeared with Erwin Puhl at his side. Both men had just entered the mess hall and were covered in snow.
“Oh, God!” Ira made his face into a frightened mask. “It’s the Yeti!”
Roaring with laughter, the Russian placed a huge arm on the much shorter Puhl. “And this is my Yetette.”
“We’ve already located the entrance, Igor. We’re going to start digging right now.”
“So quickly?” Bulgarin sobered. “You Americans, I don’t know how you do it.”
“I take it you’re not having any luck finding meteorites?”
He laughed again. “Is success if I find one or two this trip.”
“How’s Koenig’s group coming?” Mercer asked.
“All morning they work to mount the drill tower on one of the trailers to make it potable.”
“Portable,” Erwin corrected. “Beverages are potable.”
“This coffee isn’t.”
“Da, portable. Is not going well, I think.” He frowned. “Germans are supposed to be good engineers. These people, bah! Like children with Legos.”
“How about you, Erwin?” Mercer asked. “What’s the weather forecast?”
“That I can’t tell you.” Puhl removed his coat. “But don’t expect the satellite phones or radios to have the best range for a while.”
“Atmospheric interference?”
The scientist nodded. “And it’s just beginning. In another four or five days we can forget about contacting the Njoerd except for a few periods of calm when the solar wind dies down.”
“Erwin thinks some communications satellites in orbit are going to be kaput because of radiation,” Igor added.
Marty stood. “Then let’s bust a hump. I want to be able to call my father and tell him we’ve reached the base before this gets worse.”
It took a few minutes to sort out their coats and boots, zip up properly, and secure the Velcro straps around their gloves. It wasn’t cold enough to need face guards, but each man leaving or entering the mess hall had all but a bit of his eyes exposed from under hoods and neck gaiters. Mercer put on his glacier glasses and threw open the door, then leaned into the wind that lifted a dense fog of snow.
Waist-high guide ropes had been strung between the buildings, he noted, to help people during whiteouts. It was not unheard of for someone to become lost during a storm and die just a few yards from camp.
After staking where he wanted to drive the shaft, Mercer studied the snowfield while he waited for the others. Judging the angle of the hill and testing snow in his hands, he realized they could use the ’Cat’s plow to drag away much of the accumulation.
On the wind, he could hear his long-dead grandfather, a quarry foreman from Barre, Vermont. “Never do work yourself that a machine can do for you.” Mercer smiled at the memory. Scraping away much of the surface snow would save them days of backbreaking labor to reach the firn line, where they could employ the hotrocks.
When Ira and Marty arrived with Bernhardt Hoffmann, a young Geo-Research worker, Mercer told them what he wanted to do. By taking thin bites out of the snow, they began digging a trench over the entrance, removing about half a foot of grainy ice with each pass. To keep the slopes gentle, the trench grew to over two hundred yards long. Like a tractor plowing the same part of a field, the ’Cat dug deeper and deeper until the walls of ice flanking the excavation were taller than the vehicle’s roof.
Mercer stopped the work and used a shovel to dig into the walls, testing their strength. While he was more familiar with soils and rock, he was confident that the trench was stable enough to continue for another few vertical feet. He would use some of their stiff sheeting to line the trench for added support before boring with the chemicals.
At one point that afternoon an old Douglas DC-3 cargo plane fitted with skis lumbered over the camp low enough to make Mercer duck unconsciously as he stood on the lip of the trench. The aircraft banked away, sunlight sparking off its windows, before returning upwind. It lined up with the makeshift landing strip Werner Koenig’s people had packed down with the other Sno-Cats. The plane was at least sixty years old and yet roared flawlessly, flaps down, nose pitched high, and dragon’s breaths of snow billowing up in the wake of her radial engines. Her skids hissed against the snow and the pilot had to fight to keep the plane centered as she slowed. It was like a scene in an old movie, Mercer thought, as he watched her pivot for her taxi run back to the camp.