Beneath the Ice (32 page)

Tia nodded and chose twenty men to accompany
her.

“Set up for what?” Jack asked.

“Church,” Enkian said with a smile.

“Somehow I think our ideas of church are
very different.”

“
You’re coming up on the water,” Gleason
said.

Perry acknowledged the transmission and felt
himself tense. His rate of descent didn’t slow. The only sensation
he had was something pressing against his feet. He steeled himself
as if the frigid water were about to pour over him. He felt no
change in temperature, but the fans that circulated the warm air in
the suit sped up.

“Feet wet,” Perry said. “Descent unaltered.”
The suit was designed to be slightly heavier than the surrounding
water displacement, allowing him to sink. He tilted his head
forward and watched as water lit by his helmet lights rose to his
face shield. Bits of slush floated on the surface.

“All sensors are operating, Perry. External
temperature is . . . cold. Suit temperature remains constant. Still
comfy?”

“Still?”

“We’re with you all the way, buddy.”

“I know,” Perry said. “Next stop, Lake
Vostok.”

“Bring me a postcard. You know how my kids
love to get postcards.”

“If we survive this, Gleas, I’m taking
everyone to the Bahamas. I’ll have to dock Jack’s wages to do it,
but he won’t mind.” Perry heard something distant.

“Jack said he does mind.”

“Descent seems to be slowing,” Perry
said.

“We show it constant up here. It may be an
optical illusion. You’re surrounded by water, so your reference
points may look different.”

“The only reference point I have is the ice
in front of my face.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“You’d think there would be a few road
signs.” Perry closed his eyes and tried to relax. He wondered what
was happening on the surface.

Jack stood next to Gleason and watched as
men carried boxes through the loading air lock. Tia had disabled
the air lock by jamming the outside door open. “So much for a clean
environment.”

“That ended the moment they walked in,”
Gleason said. “To think we wasted all those hours in clean
suits.”

Griffin marched up to Jack. “It’s bad enough
that they left a mechanical device filled with batteries, cable,
plastic, and who knows what else on the lake bottom, but now this.
Are you going to allow this to go on?”

“What do you expect me to do, Griffin?” Jack
asked.

“Stop them.”

“How?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Griffin stammered.
He looked around then marched to Enkian.

“Don’t do it,” Jack whispered.

“Enkian, this is an outrage. You’re
contaminating the work field more than you already have done.”

“Then it doesn’t matter,” Enkian said,
looking down at the shorter man.

“I doubt those boxes have been
sterilized—”

“They haven’t,” Enkian said.

“At least Sachs took special precautions.
You’re—”

The slap caught him off guard. Griffin fell
backward onto the ice, his hand to his jaw.

“Griffin,” Gwen screamed and ran to his
side.

Jack started forward, but Gleason grabbed
his arm. “Don’t escalate things, Jack. Griffin will have a bruise,
but that’s all. We have to pick the battles. Let this one go.”

Jack pursed his mouth then closed his eyes.
Gleason was right. “That man’s mouth is going to get him killed. Us
too probably.”

“What do you suppose they’re doing?” Gleason
wondered.

“Beats me, but it’s bound to be weird.” Jack
watched as the men brought in box after box, struggling under the
weight of them.

“Those boys better be careful,” Gleason
said. “Unless they’re used to working at altitude, some of them are
going to start keeling over.”

“What do you suppose Enkian would do
then?”

“Drag them outside. He’s brought plenty of
spares.”

“He’s about to enter the lake,” Sarah
said.

Jack and Gleason turned back to the monitor.
Gleason keyed the mike. “You’re almost there, Perry. A few feet
more to go.”

“Understood.” The voice was loud and strong,
but it still sounded far away. Jack prayed for his friend below the
ice.

Chapter
28

The ice wall
disappeared,
and Perry felt himself
falling. He was surrounded by black, the lights on his helmet
pressing against a darkness they could not expel. He jerked and
raised his arms to balance himself, but it was a useless gesture.
The sudden loss of all visual clues slammed the accelerator on his
heart. Panic was tempting him.

He took several deep breaths. He wasn’t
falling. The cable was still attached to his suit. The motion he
had felt was the pressure of the current that Griffin had described
earlier. It had pushed Hairy around a little; of course it would
push him.

“You okay, pal?” Gleason’s words oozed from
the communication system. They sounded good but far too distant.
“Your heart rate just went through the roof.”

“Yeah . . . yeah, I’m fine. Just startled
when the current hit me.”

“Take a minute,” Gleason
said. “There’s bound to be some dis
orientation.”

“You think?”

“I don’t need to tell you where you are,
Perry. You’re in a place no one has ever been before.”

“Except the guys who built the
ziggurat.”

“Yeah, well, they haven’t been around for a
while. Tell us what you see.”

The comment puzzled Perry
at first. They were seeing what he was seeing. The video feed
traveled from cameras on his suit to the surface. Then it hit him:
Gleason was making an effort to get Perry to focus, to talk, to
calm down. He wished he were a character in
an adventure novel. Those guys never showed any fear. But he
was
n’t. He was a human pendulum swinging
in the dark at the end of a very long cable. Perry decided talking
was a good idea.

“
It’s dark. Really dark. My lights are penetrating only a few
feet—no,
wait, scratch that. I think it’s
an illusion. There’s nothing for the light to fall on. I’m getting
no bounce-back.”

“That’s our take on it, Perry. I should have
thought of that after seeing the images from Hairy.”

Perry tried to focus his eyes, but there was
little to focus on beyond his helmet. He raised a hand and saw the
suit’s white shell appear. There was no hand to see, just the
manipulator which operated from within the suit. The pressure would
be too great for a mere glove. The light bounced back with such
intensity that it hurt his eyes. “The water is so clear it’s as if
I’m floating in space. I was expecting some particles in the water.
This stuff is cleaner than tap water.”

“How do you feel about kicking up the power
on the lights?”

The suit was designed with several sets of
light banks. Each bank carried two groupings of halogen bulbs.
Perry couldn’t have them all on while descending the shaft. That
much light reflecting off the ice would have blinded him. “Will
do.”

Slowly—Perry had no other way of moving—he
reached for the control panel on his left wrist and activated the
other lights. The buttons were protected from the pressure and
water by a plastic shield.

The area around Perry lit up. He was
centered in a sphere of light. He let slip a nervous laugh. “I feel
like a UFO.” This time, he could see bits of white floating in the
distance. “Ice specks.”

“We see them. Griffin says you pushed out
ice bits when you emerged, just like Hairy did.”

“Makes sense.”

“You should press on,” Gleason said. There
was an edge to his voice. It didn’t take much imagination to guess
that Enkian was growing impatient again. “Sarah says you should
orient yourself ten degrees north and proceed straight ahead. Depth
below you is 220 meters, but that will decrease as you move
forward.”

“Understood,” Perry said,
glad to have something to do. “Activating heads-up display.” He
pressed another button on the control panel and several orange
displays appeared around the periphery of the face mask. He could
see the outside temperature, which was well below freezing, the
water being kept liquid by the high pressure. He could also see
that the temperature inside the suit was a comfortable sixty-one
degrees. He found the compass indicator and took a bearing.
“Engaging props.” Small propellers positioned at his shoulders and
waist began to move him forward. An
onboard computer gauged Perry’s vertical orientation and
automatically
adjusted the speed of the
independent propellers to prevent him from tumbling like a sock in
a dryer.

“Sarah says propulsion is normal.”

“Yeah, it’s working fine,” Perry said.

Gleason came back on the line. “Our friend
wants you to make the best speed possible.” His words were
terse.

“This thing only has two speeds: slow and
slower. If he has any complaints, he can come down here and show me
how to do it.”

There was no response.
Perry focused on steering the suit through the water with a control
built in the left arm. When the propulsion system was activated,
the left-hand manipulator became the equivalent of a steering
wheel. By twisting the wrist left or right, up or down, he could
control his motion in three dimensions. It had taken hours of
practice in the NASA tank, but he had final
ly gotten the hang of it. Here it was different. In the test
tank, Perry could see the bottom, the surface, and the tank’s
walls. Under the ice, Perry could see several meters in front of
him, but with nothing to reflect his lights, he was flying in a
fog. Like a pilot at night, he was maneuvering by instruments
alone.

“Depth is now 175 feet and rising,” Gleason
said. “The bottom is rising quickly.”

“Fine with me,” Perry said. “Cable is
feeding well?”

“Perfect.”

“I’m going to kick it into high gear.”

“Noted. Don’t get any speeding tickets.”

“Okay, Dad,” Perry
quipped. He set the propulsion system to the next level, increasing
his speed through the water another knot or two. He was moving
against the current but still making headway.
At least the trip back will be faster.

Something swam past, and Perry jumped in the
suit. “Did I just see that?”

“Sarah let out a whoop. She must have seen
it too. What was it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a look . . .
wait, there’s another one. Wow! Is Gwen seeing this?”

“Oh, yeah. She’s bouncing like a
cheerleader.” Perry could hear excited yammering over Gleason’s
words. “She wants you to get closer.”

“It’s in my path, so I have no choice.”
Before Perry was an amorphous blob of white. It pulsed. As he
neared, Perry could see long strands of tissue hanging from beneath
it. It also had pale green lights along its tentacles. “It looks
like a jellyfish of some kind.”

“Gwen says she doesn’t recognize it.”

“The thing is the size of a softball,” Perry
said. “How can it live down here?”

“I don’t . . . wait . . .”

“Perry, it’s Gwen.” Her
excitement carried over the distance.
“This is remarkable. This is unbelievable. I never would
have
guessed. It’s an unknown species of
cnidarian, a very simple form of life. The cnidarians we know of
have only two layers of tissue—no head, gut, or brain.”

“It’s pretty . . . in its own way.”

“The lights are bioluminescent. Now that
you’re closer I can see the lights moving. The comb jellyfish does
something similar. The lights run along its body. The interaction
of luciferin and luciferase produce flashes of light.”

“It doesn’t seem bothered by me.”

“It doesn’t think, Perry. It’s mostly water
and about one percent tissue. The rest is . . . ow!”

“Gwen? Are you there, Gwen?”

“It’s Gleason again,
Perry. Mr. Enkian isn’t keen on all the PBS
talk.”

“Understood,” Perry said, biting his tongue.
They were the first people to see this new form of life, and they
were being forced to ignore it.

“Depth is one hundred feet and
decreasing.”

Perry moved forward.

Jack turned his attention from the screen to
watch the action taking place near the center of the Chamber.
Boxes, some made of cardboard, others of wood, and still others of
plastic had been carried in from Enkian’s plane. The crew opened
each box with an unexpected delicacy. Unable to contain his
curiosity any longer, he stepped away from the monitor and
approached two of Enkian’s men who were opening one of the plastic
boxes. Two guards walked with him.

“Lunch?” Jack asked. “I hope you brought
enough to share.”

The men ignored him. Instead they reached
inside the container and gently removed an object.

“A rock?” Jack said with surprise. “You guys
transported rocks to Antarctica?”

The water remained clear, and Perry could see the
bottom rising to meet his feet. He slowed the propulsion system and
cut it off once his feet touched the soft, sandy surface. “Feet
down,” Perry said.

“What’s the surface like?” Gleason
asked.

“Sort of a sandy-mud. It’s
a little slippery, but I’m having no
trouble standing.” He looked around him. Bits of the bottom
float
ed in front of his helmet. Perry
wondered how long the bits of debris had rested on the bottom
before he came along to disturb them.
“I
can see the surface. It’s maybe five feet over my head.” The
pow
erful lights reflected off of the
shimmering surface, making it look as if a layer of mercury had
been dumped on the water.