“There’s no science in committing suicide, son. At the end of the day, it’s a selfish act that leaves behind only sorrow. You need to wake up, Zachary. Wake up….”
“Zachary, wake-up!”
I was dead to the world, my brain encased in wet cement; yet through the inebriated fog, I felt a smooth velvet tingling of delight working its way around my groin, and through its arousal I awoke from my drug-induced stupor.
Then I realized the hand rubbing the inside of my thigh didn’t belong to my wife, and my eyes flashed open in sudden panic.
True stood over me, a shit-eating grin plastered over his face. “Ken that would wake ye. So who was ye dreamin’ aboot? Ming or my sister?”
“No one, you big douchebag. What time is it?”
“Time tae get dressed. Ye launch within the hour. That yer Gatorade?”
“Yeah, but don’t put your lips to it. I can only imagine where they were last night.”
“If yer referring to one Ms. Susan McWhite, she prefers her men scrawny and smart. Here’s tae ye.” He unscrewed the lid and took a big gulp, his eyes bugging out as he gagged on my urine.
I smiled. “If you’re hungry, lad, I can shit you a turd sandwich to go with it.”
The subject of bowel movements always comes up for astronauts and submersible pilots. Occupying a cramped cockpit over an extended period of time requires proper preparation. It was one thing for Ben and me to use a urine bottle and pop a few pills to temporarily shut down our bowels while we dove in Prydz Bay; Vostok was an entirely different mission. Each dive would average between fourteen and thirty hours.
Upon arriving at the dome, our submersible techs had swapped the Barracuda’s leather bucket seats for advanced models with built-in waste-collection systems. A suction hose disposed of urine into a cache beneath our seat. Bowel movements required the removal of a section of the seat, exposing a wastehole a third the size of a normal toilet. A privacy curtain separated Ming’s cockpit from ours. I won’t provide the rest of the gory details other than to say the three of us ingested plenty of large intestine suppressants in the hope of rendering the matter moot.
To utilize the waste-collection system required wearing a specially designed jumpsuit with easy access panels. Thus was born the ECU: Extreme Conditions Uniform. Lightweight and flexible, the ECU had panels in all the right places and contained built-in sensors to monitor our vital signs, an internal heating unit with a scalp-tight hood with ear holes for our headphones, and circulation cuffs fitted around the biceps, thighs, and calves, which inflated and deflated periodically to prevent cramps and blood clots.
Having consumed our pre-launch meal and used the toilet one last time, Ben and I emerged from our tents in our black ECUs like two modern-day Ninja.
Ming was dressed in her bodywear and looked incredible. Her technical team led us to the gantry where the Barracuda was suspended horizontally in its harness with the acrylic cockpit open. We climbed into our assigned seats while our techs plugged the hoses from our uniforms into their appropriate sockets.
True held up his iPhone to snap a photo. “For Brandy and William… and the Inverness Courier.”
For some reason, my thoughts turned to my old science teacher, Joe Tkalec.
True clicked off a few shots. “Oh, and ye’ll be happy tae learn tha’ Susan found me the perfect job. I’m working with the team that’ll be sealing yer borehole. I equate it ta givin’ Antarctica a suppository, followed by a frosty enema chaser.”
“You’re a class act, Finlay True MacDonald.”
We both smiled, but there was a look in my friend’s eyes that I’d not soon forget. It was the same look of worry I had seen moments before he launched me into the depths of Loch Ness.
Ming was a combination of nervous and giddy. Before settling into her cockpit, she offered each of us a yellow pill. “It’s just a little something to relax you. After all, there’s nothing for us to do during the descent, which will take hours.”
Having still not fully recovered from the Valium, I passed.
Ben pocketed his.
The three of us went through our checklists with the Mission Control techs while a small crowd gathered outside the gantry fencing. At 10:05 a.m. we received clearance to launch. We rotated our seats one hundred and eighty degrees to face astern.
Our pod’s hatch was sealed, causing my heart to flutter. A moment later the gantry activated, rotating the harness vertically so that the Barracuda’s nose was pointed at the ice, placing us on our backs like astronauts launching into Hell. We adjusted our harnesses, tightening any slack.
“This is Vostok Command. Captain Hintzmann, you have clearance to activate your Valkyrie lasers.”
“Roger that, Vostok Command. Activating Valkyrie units on my count: Three… two… one… activate.”
The two tubes on either side of the sub ignited, the lasers’ heat reflecting crimson against the ice, which was already steaming. We dropped two feet, then two feet more so that we were now ground level. Then we slipped beneath the ice, continuing a rough, herky-jerky descent as the frozen surface crackled and screamed in protest beneath the intense heat.
A borehole gradually opened beneath us. The melt and drop averaged four to six feet every ten to twenty seconds with an occasional stomach-wrenching drop into free fall.
I turned in my seat to take a look below. The ice bled like a fading sunset, slush splattering against the cockpit windshield. Every once in a while a dark pocket would open and we’d drop twenty feet, only to stop suddenly, the jolt absorbed by our cushioned bucket seats.
I checked our depth gauge after thirty minutes: 1,029 feet.
Vostok was 13,100 feet beneath the ice. At our present rate of descent, we wouldn’t reach the lake for another seven and a half hours.
Ben’s voice came over my headset. “How are you holding up?”
“I’ll need some aspirin before this journey’s through. How’s Ming?”
“Sleeping like a baby. I meant to ask you; Dr. Ahmed claimed there was air in Vostok — how is that possible?”
“It’s the sheer mass of the ice sheet. The pressure squeezes oxygen and nitrogen molecules trapped in the ice below and releases them into the lake. Vostok has been experiencing this gas exchange for millions of years. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found pockets of atmosphere. Of course, if there are any organisms alive down there, they would have adapted to this unique oxygen—”
“Enough already, you’re wearing my brain out. I’m popping one of Ming’s pills. Wake me when we get there.”
He was snoring less than ten minutes later.
The slush washing against the bow settled into a soothing rhythm. Curling on my side, I closed my eyes…
The wind whipped through the Great Glen, lapping white water across Loch Ness’s foreboding surface.
True helped me with the dive suit, a heavy contraption that seemed more suited for space. “I’m beggin’ ye, Zachary, don’t go down there. Jist marry my sister and leave the Highlands behind ye forever.”
“The creature’s trapped, True. I need to free it or kill it. It’s the only way to get these night terrors to stop.”
“All right, then. Find the entrance to that underground river and use yer explosives before that thing gets a whiff of ye.” True double-checked my dive suit, then peered into my helmet. “For a runt, ye got big balls. Better grab hold of ’em.”