Breakthrough (4 page)

The communications room served as the headquarters where most of the Pathfinder’s research was done.  Packed with wall to wall instruments, it was roomier than they were expecting, and clean as a whistle; a reminder that Emerson ran a tight ship.   They ducked slightly as they stepped into the room.  Several of the team members were there with one seated at what looked to be the control panel for their remote wonder.  Tay stood behind his seated comrade, looking over some instruments.  He stood up quickly just as Emerson nodded and headed back up to the bridge.

“You guys ready?  We’re done checking out.”  He looked out the small window.  “Should have plenty of daylight depending on how many samples you need.”  He motioned to one of the men next to him.  “Grab them a couple seats, Pete.”

Clay and Caesare sat down and scooted forward, close enough to see the monitors clearly.  Two were displaying a video feed, one of the rover swinging from the metal arm outside, and the other showing the view looking out from the Triton’s bubble.  The gentle waves, distorted through the craft’s reinforced Plexiglas, could be seen slapping against a small section of the ship’s hull.

“All right, all systems go?” Tay asked, looking around the room.  Most of the members turned from their instruments and nodded with an “
aye”.

“All right, let ‘er drop,
” he called out.

The crew
member in the seat reached forward, grasped a chrome handle and pulled back firmly.  All eyes went to the first monitor and watched it fall from the steel arm into the water a few feet below.  Tay smiled and looked back at his visitors.  “That was always the worst part with the tethered rovers.”

The second monitor showed water sloshing across the Triton’s bubbled window, with roughly half beneath the water line. 

“Everything up on screen, please.” Suddenly the other monitors came to life displaying a variety of statistics and graphs.  The largest monitor providing information on battery charge and graphs for each of the rover’s nine motors.  Each graph listed the current and RPM of its individual motor, giving an impressive level of granularity.  “Looking good.” 

In the chair, Jim Lightfoot grasped a large joystick and gave it a gentle twist. The rover banked right and began moving away from the ship.

“Okay,” Tay said standing up straight.  “How deep was your sub when it had the problem?”

“Five hundred and seventy meters.”

“Alright Lighty,” he said patting his teammate on the shoulder.  “Let’s take her down.”

With a gentle push forward the Triton’s view became clear as it slipped below the surface.  The water was crystal clear with the colors becoming dark blue as the
craft descended into the ocean’s depths.

“Full steam ahead.”

Lightfoot continued to push forward on the joystick and the small specks floating in the water suddenly raced past as the rover accelerated.  Clay looked up and watched the RPM’s of the motors jump.

“Lights on,” called Tay.  Instantly the increasingly dark water became a tunnel of white light as the LED’s ringing the front of the Triton came to life.

Caesare looked at Clay clearly impressed.

“Passing thirty meters,
” called out a crew member.

“So you guys think metal deposits in the soil are what threw off the sub’s instruments?”

“That’s the theory.  The area seems to be highly magnetized.  If the soil is rich enough it could be influential.”

“Have t
o be damn rich I would think,” Tay said looking back at the screens.  “Maybe we should stake a claim and start mining.”  He said with a grin.

Clay smiled in response.  He hadn’t considered the possible commercial aspects of such a discovery.  The soil would have to be surprisingly rich to interfere with the sub’s signaling, and any soil with that level of density might prove very attractive to mining companies. 

“Who knows,” said Tay.  “You guys might just solve the old triangle mystery.”

And litter the Caribbean with thousands of mining rigs
, thought Clay.

“Passing one hundred meters.”

The video feed now showed nothing but the white light in front of the Triton’s window, surrounded by a ring of black water.  The specks in the water zipped by now, looking more like strings than dots.  It reminded Clay a little of the special effects of stars speeding past in the old science fiction movies.

“How much physical range does the Triton have in those batteries?”
Caesare asked.

“Depends on our speed,” replied Tay.  “With our planned speed and depth we should be able cover a few square miles and still have enough to get her back to the ship.”

“Passing two hundred meters.”

“You guys realize that we’ll only be able to scoop the soil down to six or seven inches deep right?  We only have-”  Tay stopped speaking as he noticed some interference in the video monitor.  “That’s strange, we’ve never seen interference at this depth before.”  He turned his head slightly without taking his eyes away.  “Let’s record this
,” he called.  Behind him a crew member typed a few strokes on his keyboard and another monitor began displaying a copy of the Triton’s video feed.   A red circle appeared in the upper right hand corner indicating a recording in progress.

“Passing three hundred meters.”

The interference was getting noticeably worse now, reminiscent of the old TV antennae reception that Clay had used as a boy.  The snow was quickly taking over the screen.

“Alright, let’s slow her down,
” Tay cautioned.

Lightfoot pulled back slowly on the joystick.

“Passing four hundred meters.”

“Slow her down
, slow her down,” barked Tay.

“I’m trying,
” replied Lightfoot.  He pulled back harder on the stick.  There was no noticeable change in speed.  The specks were still flying past and becoming very hard to see with so much interference.  They were almost invisible now.

“Turn us out!”

Lightfoot twisted the joystick trying to bank the Triton out of its steep dive.  The picture shifted only slightly.

“We’re losing her!” Lightfoot shouted.

He gave it everything and pushed the stick hard to the right.  The rover continued its path downward.  He jammed it left.  “I’m getting no response!”

Tay jumped past Lightfoot and slammed his hand down on one of the buttons on the control panel.  “Blow
the tanks before we lose signal!”

A moment later the video screen faded to black.  The interference was gone along with the signal.

There was a long silence before Tay spoke.  “Shit.”  He sighed and rubbed his forehead.  “Let’s try and track it with sonar and see where it lands.  With any luck it emptied its tanks and will float to the top.”  He backed up and leaned against a metal desk along the opposite wall, thinking a moment before turning to Clay.  “If it doesn’t come up, we’re going to have to call in another ship with a tethered rover.”

“How long will that take?”

“Depends on how far away they are.  Probably a few days.  We have more than enough room for you two if you’d like to stay.”

“Thanks.”  Clay looked around the room.  “Do you have a phone I can use for a ship to shore?” 

“Yeah,” replied Lightfoot, standing up.  “I’ll show you.”

Caesare
frowned and watched them leave.  Three more days.  That was one call Admiral Langford would not be happy to get.

Tay turned back to
Caesare.  “Well you sure have something down there.”  He looked back at the blank monitor.  “Triton uses ultra-low frequency at 3 hertz, which should be immune from damn near everything.  Whatever your problem is, it’s not mineral deposits.”

7

Alison walked down
the darkened hall with a cold Coke in her hand.  She didn’t care for sodas but she needed the caffeine.  She looked at her watch; it was almost midnight and she was thinking about home, especially after sleeping in her office the last few nights.  As Alison entered the lab, she saw Lee still sitting at this desk, looking at the racks of servers and their countless green lights flashing and illuminating the dark walls with a soft glow.

“I didn’t know you were still here,” she said, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to him.

He smiled without looking over.  “I really should go home, I’m beat.” 

“Why don’t you?”

He looked at her now with a smirk.  “Why don’t
you
?”

“I guess I just want to see what your servers can do,” she said playfully.

“It could be a long time Ali,” he said, looking back to the servers.  “It could be years before they spit something out.  Hell they may never spit out anything at all.”  He opened his eyes wide trying to fight off the exhaustion.  “But I’m just like you, too excited to go home, and sitting here watching it work is…I don’t know…addictive.”

By
it
, he meant the large flat panel monitor on his desk.  On its screen were displayed the collective results from over a hundred servers which were constantly processing.  On the top half of the screen, dozens of jagged lines stretched from one side to the other, like the line graphs found in spreadsheet programs.  The lines represented various streams of raw data recorded twenty-four hours a day for the past four years; frequencies, interval clicks, pitches, video, everything.  The lines jumped up and down vertically, weaving in and out while the system looked for relationships between the streams and their trillions of bytes.

Lee looked at the last rack along the wall.  The systems there had a noticeably different look with far fewer lights
, and unlike the servers, these lights all blinked at exactly the same time.  It was the rack that held the data itself, thousands of terabytes and a seemingly infinite number of variables, all of which IMIS was diligently sifting through.

Alison knew that Lee had a special place in his heart for the equipment.  He worked hand in hand with IBM in setting things up and was part of the programming team which designed the artificial intelligence software that was now working through all of the data.  He was also the expert on all of the digital camera and recording systems located strategically around the giant tank, recording every conceivable angle of
Dirk and Sally’s movements and body angles.  The system was now going over those shots frame by frame along with everything else.  As a marine biologist, how the intelligence of the machines worked was beyond her but Lee was as sharp as they came, and he had spent thousands of hours testing the algorithms.  If it failed, she knew it would not be due to lack of effort on anyone’s part.  Her worst fear, in fact, all of their worst fears, was that they would be long retired, or even dead before IMIS found anything.

She looked at the screen with Lee and watched the pictures of dolphins flash across, frame by frame, beneath the dancing, jagged streams of data.

“Do you think we’ll ever see anything?” she asked lowering her chin onto her crossed arms.

After a few moments
he sighed.  “I don’t know.  I sure hope so.”  He turned and gave her a wink.  “If not, it’s sure been a great ride eh?”

“It sure has.”  She patted his arm softly.  “Let’s go home.  It’s about time we slept in our own beds.  Besides we don’t want your wife down here chewing us out.”

Lee laughed and stood up.  “Yeah, you don’t want that.  Trust me.”

Alison sat in her car and watched Lee drive away.  The lamppost overhead showered her small Chevy with yellow light as she stared past the building and out at the dark ocean behind it.  She had dreamt of this day for years and now that it was here she was scared to death.  The tens of thousands of hours she’d spent studying and planning and documenting, it was all to get to this point; Phase Two.  She knew that of all of the work they would do, Phase Two was the biggest unknown.  Not gathering information, but actually being able to translate it.  Lee was right, it was a long shot.  There was no way to know whether any of it would be decipherable using something so potentially limiting as human logic.

Alison realized that she had been afraid of this phase from the very beginning, and had simply ignored it, suppressing her fear by focusing on all the work that was still ahead of them.  What if it didn’t work?  What if the last six years had been a complete waste, getting
this far only to find a brick wall and a giant computer system that couldn’t make heads or tails out of their data.  What if the data was collected wrong?  What if they had left a major piece out, something that never occurred to them?

Alison leaned back against the vinyl seat and closed her eyes. 
God please let this work.  Please don’t let me die without ever knowing.

8

The Antarctic was unforgiving in November.  At two full miles above sea level the interior of the continent could reach temperatures of -130 degrees.  The Halley research station was located near the south end of the Ronne Ice Shelf and served as a research outpost for some of the most intense climate studies on the planet.  Shared and co-funded by the United States and Europe, the station was used year round by various teams conducting research, the bulk of which was measuring climate warming changes over the last several thousand years.  Using ice samples drilled from the frozen ground, the evidence was overwhelming; the planet was warming quickly, faster than any natural cycle recorded.  Whatever the arguments and theories back home regarding cause and effect, the result was indisputable.  The atmosphere was warming and the ice continent was melting.

Leo
Torbin and Gale Preece were staffed at the Halley remote field camp for another three weeks.  They had completed their studies and spent most of their remaining time compiling data while huddled together in the outpost’s small concrete framed structure, and habitually monitoring their diesel fuel level.  At two o’clock in the morning, they lay in their cots long since accustomed to sleeping through noise that would have had most people wondering if they were going to live to see the next day.  Specially designed blankets covered them to their necks.  Leo’s wool-capped head stuck out from under his blankets while Gale’s remained completely concealed below the thick fabric.   A slow rise and fall of the blanket was the only evidence that Gail was even there.

On the plain gray walls hung a variety of tools, clothing,
pots and pans; necessities of a humble and tenuous residence.  In the furthest corner from the door, next to the large propane heater, sat a metal desk covered with stacks of handwritten papers and two Toughbook laptops, specially designed to work in extreme conditions.  A second door with a sign reading “Toilet” remained shut, providing a small amount of additional insulation from the howling winds outside and their constant onslaught against the concrete walls.

At first the sound of a strange rumble was drown
ed out by the winds outside, but as it grew, the rattling equipment throughout the room grew louder.  The walls of the shelter began to shake violently, causing some of the pans to leap from their hooks and fall onto the floor.  One of the laptops vibrated across the desk and fell off, crashing into a metal bucket and sending it sliding across the floor.  The thunderous rumble became deafening. 

Leo jumped from his cot half awake and tried to grasp something for support.  He turned just in time to see the shape of Gale tumble from her bed and onto the floor.  He reached and grabbed her arm, trying to pull her to him as she struggled to get the blanket off.  It was an earthquake!

Holding onto each other they managed to pull themselves into the nearest corner and covered their heads.  Everything seemed to be falling around them now as the small building swayed eerily from side to side.  Leo grabbed the rest of Gale’s thick blanket and wrapped it around them.  Under the blanket they quickly found themselves praying that the structure would hold.  He dropped his head and squeezed Gale tight.

The earthquake lasted less than two minutes but the wind took five hours to die out.   By seven a.m. conditions had receded to a gentle ten miles per hour when the thick metal door of the still-standing Halley outpost swung open.  Leo and Gale both stepped out, clothed in full protective suits and never so happy to see the sun.  In all of their time spent in Antarctica, it was the closest they had come to dying.  All it would have taken was even a small hole in the wall and the wind would have done the rest.

They looked around at the icy desert, stretching out as far as they could see.  Leo looked up at the transmission tower and frowned.  The tower was in perfect shape
but the shortwave transmitter inside was smashed.   Thankfully their backup line of communication was unharmed.  He pulled the brick sized satellite phone out of his large jacket pocket and flipped up the giant antennae.

As Leo removed his glove to
dial, Gale walked over to the snowmobiles.  One sat on its side yet both vehicles appeared undamaged.  The small shack housing the giant diesel tank looked like it held up as well as the larger building.  She turned and did a full scan.  Aside from the mess inside the main station, everything looked oddly normal.

“McMurdo, this is
Torbin at Halley camp.  Can you hear me?” he yelled into the phone while looking at Gale.  “Yes we’re alright.  Looks like we had an earthquake last night.”  He paused looking around.  “Critical systems seem to be in working order but we’ve lost the shortwave.  Repeat, we have lost shortwave communications.  We’re going to finish a sweep of the base and have a wider look around on the bikes.”  He listened again.  “Yes right, will do.”

Leo hung up and stuffed the phone back into his pocket.  “They want us to call back after we have a look around.  If there are any immediate problems
they will move the delivery up.  If not, they’ll bring another shortwave unit with them next week.”

Gale nodded.  “Well, the generator works so we have heat and electricity, and we’re certainly not short of food and water.”

Together they grabbed the overturned snowmobile and pushed it back up onto its treads.  “Could have been a whole lot worse.”  Leo checked the vehicle’s gas tank for any leaks.

Gale checked the ignition turning the key back and forth. 

“Wow, look at that!”  Gale turned and followed the direction of Leo’s arm and gasped.  In the distance, the blue sky above suddenly ended on the horizon with a giant wall of
white
. 

“What the hell is that?”

Leo shook his head.  “I don’t know.  It’s not a storm.”  He climbed onto one of the snowmobiles.  “Let’s take a ride and have a look.”

The Halley camp was over a hundred miles from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station and over a thousand miles from the supply station at McMurdo.  With help so far away they kept to a slow pace on the snowmobiles, taking almost an hour to get close enough.  It looked like many of the “white outs” seen in the Antarctic but this one was not moving.  Instead it seemed to linger in the air for as far as the eye could see. 

Side by side, Leo and Gale
entered what looked like a white fog and visibility quickly dropped down to a few dozen feet.  They slowed the machines even further to a crawl, carefully scanning the ground for any sudden rifts exposed by the storm.  They had been to this area many times as their camp was the primary station of study for the ice shelf, but they couldn’t tell exactly where they were.

Leo stopped, raised his darkened glasses and looked up.  The sun was completely blocked out which made it harder to see any detail on the white ground.  Gale put her snowmobile in neutral and pulled out a hand held GPS unit.

She raised her goggles up over her hood.  “We’re still about 5 miles from the first ridge.  How much further do you want to go?”

Leo watched the white fog carefully.  “I think it’s starting to clear.  Don’t know how far out it extends
though.  Let’s go up a little further and see if it thins out more.”

Gale
nodded and put the device back in the pocket of her oversized parka.  They continued creeping forward.

After several more minutes, the visibility slowly started to improve and the sun began to make some limited progress getting through.  They both watched the ground carefully as they slowly sped up.

“Look out!”  Suddenly, Leo stopped his snowmobile with a tight clench of the brakes.  His bike quickly started to tilt forward as he stood and pushed himself backward up and over the back of the seat.  He landed head first on the snow and barely crawled out of the way before his snowmobile lifted its end into the air and disappeared. 

Gale twisted her handlebars tight to avoid hitting him and nearly pitched into a sideways roll.  With gritted teeth, she was just able to stay on and avoid following his tracks which abruptly disappeared less than a foot away.  “Jesus!”

She jumped off and backed away. 
Gale and Leo retreated several more steps to assure themselves that they were safe.

“What the hell is that?”  He said, slowly stepping forward while Gale unconsciously tugged him backwards. 

Leo gradually inched toward the end of his tracks to see how far the drop was.   Near the edge he tested the strength of the snow with a few heavy steps.  Gale instinctively took his other arm to let him lean forward and peer over the edge.  He could see his bike lying on its side below.

“How deep is it?”  She asked from behind him reaffirming her grip.

Leo shook his head.  “It’s only about 15 feet down.  But…this is no hole,” he said waving her forward.  “Come here, carefully.”

She took several small steps forward until she was able to look over the edge.  She looked to the side where the air continued to clear and began to reveal how far the cliff extended.

“Oh my god.”

“Oh my god
is right.  This thing goes on for a long way.”  He pulled her back away from the edge with him.  “What does the GPS say?”

Gale
pulled the GPS out and checked their coordinates.  She looked at him with a worried look on her face.

“Where are we?” he asked.

She shook her head.  Worry was turning to fear.  “We’re nowhere
near
the Shelf.”