‘Anything?’ Hannah echoed.
Chandler’s assistant spoke up.
‘Most of the larger forms of life that existed in prehistoric times did so because the atmosphere of the time was markedly different from today’s and contained a far greater proportion of oxygen, allowing the existence of very large species like dinosaurs and insects with wingspans larger than today’s birds of prey.’
Ethan smiled as he saw Hannah shiver.
‘I’ve seen artwork of dragonflies as big as eagles,’ he said, enjoying Hannah’s discomfort, ‘and millipedes as big as anacondas.’
‘That’s right,’ Chandler went on, ‘species grew on an immense scale back then, but the changes in atmosphere of today mean that they would be unable to survive for long as they would suffer the same kind of problems as humans at very high altitudes. They simply would not be able to breathe properly and would be rendered comatose and die very quickly. It’s one of the reasons why, despite all you read in the news, dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus Rex could not be brought back to life even if the genetic sequence of such a species were fully decoded. They would die long before they reached their adult size.’
Hannah seemed relieved as she looked again at the Piri Reis map.
‘So what do you think is in that lake and what does it have to do with this base?’
‘If the Nazis thought that this area was holding something unique, such as new and novel forms of life, then it may have been an extra reason for them to explore the region, given their fascination with anything unusual that could be weaponized.’
‘But if these species are genetically so different from anything on Earth then how could they manipulate them with technology from the Second World War?’
Chandler’s eyes danced with excitement, glittering in the dim light as he spoke.
‘In the Pacific Ocean west of the southern tip of South America, the United States Navy laid an array of hydrophones to monitor the passing of Soviet submarines during the Cold War. The network was called SOSUS, an acronym for Sound Surveillance System. The phones lie deep below the ocean surface in what’s known as the deep sound channel, where temperature and pressure allow sound waves to keep travelling and not become scattered. In 1997 the sensors detected a sound that freaked out everybody who ever heard it. The varying frequency of the call bore the hallmark of a marine animal and was confirmed as a biological species by marine biologists who examined the recording. The call rose rapidly in frequency over a period of one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be detected on multiple sensors.’
Hannah raised a cautious eyebrow. ‘So?’
‘The sensors were more than five thousand kilometres apart,’ Chandler revealed. ‘The frequency of the sound means that the living creature that made the call would possess a mass five times greater than that of the Blue Whale.’
A silence filled the room as they digested the implications of what Chandler was saying.
‘A noise a bit like what we’ve been hearing in this chamber?’
Chandler nodded. ‘Enough to cause cavitation in the water itself,’ he replied. ‘The land mass of Antarctica may not be able to support large species any longer, but there is nothing to prevent them surviving at sea.’
‘It’s not the only time it’s happened,’ the assistant confirmed. ‘The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have even given names to the disturbing sounds they’ve detected, calling them things like Train, Whistle, Upsweep and Slow Down. Upsweep turned out to be an undersea volcano. But the 1997 sound was confirmed as biological, and they named it The Bloop. Likewise, Slow Down was recorded in the same area as the Bloop, lasted for seven minutes and was powerful enough to be detected on sensors two thousand kilometres apart.’
‘Every other possible cause of the noises has been eliminated,’ Chandler continued. ‘Ice floes calving in Antarctica, submarine earthquakes, volcanoes and man-made events. Whatever made those noises is alive and five times larger than a Blue Whale and it’s living in the deep ocean right now.’
The scientist stared up at the ancient Piri Reis map as he spoke.
‘Sailors from around the world have reported tales of huge monsters of the deep for thousands of years. For the most part it was always dismissed as the effects of re-telling and alcohol, but those same sailors would also speak of rogue waves a hundred feet high that would rear up and swallow vessels whole. Science dismissed those tales too until an orbiting satellite detected rogue waves all across the world’s oceans and large vessels started filming their encounters with them.’
Ethan, mesmerised by the tales, looked at Chandler.
‘So you’re saying that the Kraken might actually exist?’
‘No,’ Chandler smiled. ‘We’re saying that sailor’s tales of a gigantic sea creature able to take down large vessels were born of encounters with something very real. Dead giant squid have been washed ashore that were sixty feet long, but there is no theoretical limit to the maximum size for a cephalopod, and great white sharks over twenty feet in length have been filmed off South Africa — that’s the same size as the supposedly impossibly large predator featured in the movie Jaws.’
‘And that’s not all,’ his assistant said. ‘Scientists created the first synthetic life form, a micro-organism with a different genetic code to all other forms of life on Earth back in 2014.
The semi-synthetic microbe, a genetically modified E. coli bacterium, was endowed with an extra artificial piece of DNA with an expanded genetic alphabet — instead of the usual four “letters” of the alphabet its DNA molecule had six, a pair of extra base pairs, denoted by X and Y, which pair up together like the other base pairs and are fully integrated into the rest of the DNA’s genetic code. This shows that other solutions to storing information are possible and, of course, takes us closer to an expanded-DNA biology that will have many exciting applications, from new medicines to new kinds of nanotechnology.’
Ethan reeled with the volume of information, but he could understand the basic gist of what the two scientists were trying to say.
‘So life can exist in forms that don’t or haven’t yet occurred naturally on Earth, and Lake Vostok might contain forms of life that we haven’t seen before,’ he said. ‘That still doesn’t connect them to this base, right?’
‘Wrong,’ Chandler said. ‘Lake Vostok is a hundred and sixty miles long, thirty miles wide and at its widest point and covers nearly five thousand square miles. At fifteen hundred feet deep and with such a volume of water, it could contain life forms of considerable size. It’s an oligotrophic extreme environment, one that is supersaturated with nitrogen and oxygen to a degree fifty times higher than those typically found in ordinary freshwater lakes on Earth’s surface. The lake is under complete darkness, so there is speculation that any organisms inhabiting the lake could have evolved in a manner unique to this environment. If there exists a subglacial channel that maintains a permanent flow to the open ocean…’
Ethan got it immediately.
‘Then species could move in and out of the lake, perhaps move across large regions of Antarctica, and would have a native environment with enough oxygen to allow supr-sized growth.’
Chandler nodded.
‘In 2005 an island was found in the central part of the lake, and over the past few decades some hundred forty lakes have been identified beneath the ice sheet. It is suspected that these Antarctic subglacial lakes may be connected by a network of subglacial rivers. Centre for Polar Observation & Modelling glaciologists have proposed that many of the subglacial lakes of Antarctica are at least temporarily interconnected, and because of varying water pressure in individual lakes, large subsurface rivers may suddenly form and then force large amounts of water through the solid ice.’ Chandler gestured to the cavern outside. ‘That would explain the flooding regularly occurring here in the past.’