Eternity Base (19 page)

Conner peered down the dark corridor again. "Where do you think we'd find that?"

Devlin shrugged. "I don't know. Let's take a look."

Conner turned back to the rest of the party. "Sammy, you and Riley stay here with everyone. I'm going with Devlin to see if we can get the power on or at least find a portable stove or something."

Riley nodded, busy wrapping a binding around the dressing on Vickers's head. The bleeding appeared to have finally stopped. "Those of you staying here, break out your sleeping bags and get inside. No sense losing any more heat than you need to."

Devlin and Conner walked side by side down the wood planking. After thirty feet the walls disappeared on either side and they entered a cross corridor. To the left the corridor opened on two doors, one on either side, and then ended about ten feet in. To the right the corridor also opened on two doors. The right-hand corridor ended just beyond the doors, but not cleanly. A pile of snow and ice blocked the way.

Devlin shone his light where pipes on the ceiling disappeared into the pile. "Looks like that's where some ice buckled the ceiling."

"Let's try the doors," Conner suggested. They turned left and tried the door on the left side first. It wasn't locked and opened easily. The light of the flashlight revealed a room about thirty feet long and ten feet wide, full of electronic equipment. Conner remembered Freely telling her about the prefab units that had been flown in to make up the station. This was obviously one of them.

After a few moments' inspection, Devlin turned back for the door. "Looks like some sort of communications setup. We need to find either a storeroom or the power plant." He pointed his light at several large boxes hanging from the ceiling. "It looks like each of these units is heated separately with electric heaters and the corridors are kept at normal temperature. This setup reminds me very much of what I read about Eights Station."

Conner remembered Eights Station from her research. It had been established at the base of the Antarctic Peninsula in 1962 and had consisted of eight prefab units flown in by C-130 and buried under the ice, just like this.

"How would electric power be generated here?" Conner asked.

"Most likely oil-burning generators. That's what runs the majority of the bases here, although they would have had to airlift all that oil. At McMurdo they bring it in by ship, so it's not a major logistical problem. Here, I don't know."

"The man I talked to who helped build this place said they brought in quite a few bladders of fuel."

Devlin nodded. "Then we need to find whatever burns that fuel."

Next they went to the door straight across the corridor. This unit was a nicely designed living quarters with three sleeping areas, each separated by a thin wall. Traversing the entire length, they came to a door on the far side. They exited that and were faced with another side corridor extending off to the right and a door directly in front.

"Let's go straight through until we get to the end. There's supposed to be four of these in line, according to my source," Conner said. "If there's nothing in this row, we'll work up the middle one."

Devlin swung open the door and they stepped in. Large stainless steel tanks lined both sides of a narrow walkway. The tanks were open on the top, and banks of dead lights hung low over them. There were pumps and various tubes arrayed throughout the room.

"What is this?" Conner asked.

Devlin shined his flashlight inside one of the tanks. "I don't know. It reminds me of something I've seen before, but I can't place it right now."

They walked the length of that unit and through another door. Devlin pushed open the door to the last unit.

"Ah, this is more like it," he said as he swept his flashlight over the machinery inside. "This must be the power room. Look, there's a control panel." He walked over to a console full of dials and switches. "There's the 'on' for the master power, but I'm sure we have no battery power." He pressed the button with his thumb. Nothing.

"There must be a small auxiliary generator to start the main." He flashed the light on the other side. "Here we go."

Conner watched as he knelt down next to a medium-sized portable generator and unscrewed a cap. He shone his flashlight inside. "It's even got fuel. Hold the light while I prime it."

Conner hovered over Devlin's shoulder as he worked. She didn't know what he was doing, but he obviously did. After about five minutes he stood. "All right. Let's give it a shot." He took hold of a knob attached to a cord and pulled.

"Shit," he muttered when the cord didn't move. He pulled more carefully, and the cord slowly unwound. Then he squatted and exploded upward. The engine turned over once with a burp. "Damn. This thing is stubborn."

Conner didn't say a word. She found it remarkable that they were trying to start a generator that had been in frozen limbo for twenty- five years. The concept of a place where nothing deteriorated or rusted was hard to grasp.

After five more tries, the engine coughed, sputtered, and turned over for almost ten seconds before dying.

"I've got it now." Devlin adjusted the choke and pulled once more.

The generator sputtered again and then roared to life. Devlin let it run on high for a few minutes before he turned down the choke.

"All right. Let's see how we get the main started while that warms up." He took the flashlight from her hands and played it over the control panel. He laughed. "They've got all the instructions right here, almost as if they were expecting someone who didn't know how to run this thing. Hell, it's even numbered.

"We've already accomplished step one by getting the auxiliary started. OK. Two is to open up the main fuel line." He moved to the left of the console and looked up. "Here's the valve."

Conner heard a few seconds of metal screeching.

"OK. We've got fuel. Now we prime this baby." Devlin worked for a few minutes, following the instructions step by step. "Last—but not least—we open the power line from the aux to the main generator and give it some juice."

Conner watched as lights flickered and glowed on the console. Gradually they steadied. Devlin looked over the gauges. "Ready?" he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, Devlin pressed the starter button. The lights on the board dimmed, and they heard a sputtering noise behind the console. The sputtering shifted to a whine and then a rhythmic rumble after thirty seconds.

Devlin was examining another row of controls to the right. "Here's a bunch of switches labeled north, middle, south, east, and west tunnels." Conner looked over his shoulder at the schematic of the corridors of the base. At least she could get oriented now. The surface shaft where they had come down opened onto the north end of the east corridor.

Devlin threw all the switches, and light suddenly streamed in through the open doorway. "All right!" he yelled.

Conner flicked on the light switch just inside the doorway. She squinted as the room was flooded with bright light from the overheads. "What's that for?" she said, pointing at the other end of the room.

Devlin turned. The far end of the unit was filled with a massive control panel with uncountable gauges. It made the main generator board look puny. A three-by-three panel with a triangular warning sign was recessed into the left side. Devlin walked the twenty feet to look over the setup.

"Oh, my god. I don't believe it. I don't fucking believe it." Conner hurried up to him. "What's the matter?" Devlin turned to her, his face ashen. "This is the control panel for a nuclear reactor."

Chapter Twelve

E
TERNITY
B
ASE,
A
NTARCTICA

“
How could they put a nuclear reactor down here? I thought reactors were huge and had lots of safety devices and all that," Sammy asked. It was the first time she had said anything since Devlin and Conner had returned from their recon mission. The members of the team were huddled in their sleeping bags, listening to an excited Conner finish her report on the base.

"I say we go to the first set of living quarters you found and set up," suggested Riley. In answer to his own proposal, he threw his gear over his shoulder, helped Sammy to her feet, and headed off. They left the corpse in the corridor, covered with a blanket, letting the cold continue its task of preservation.

Entering the room, Riley switched on the ceiling heaters as the rest of the team settled in. Devlin was still agitated by their most recent discovery—more than he had been over the discovery of the body. He answered the question Sammy had asked out in the corridor. "McMurdo had a nuclear reactor: the U.S. Navy set it up in '61 and got it on line in '62. They thought it would alleviate the problem of bringing in all the fuel oil every summer and would be a cheap and effective way to keep McMurdo supplied with power."

"What happened?" Vickers was seated on a chair, leaned against the wall, obviously feeling better.

"The plant was closed in '72—the year after this place was built. They had a leakage of coolant water into the steam generator tank. The navy shut the thing down, and it took them three years to remove

it. When we get back to Aurora Glacier Station, I can show you where the reactor was. They put it on Observatory Hill right near Erebus, which in and of itself wasn't too smart, since Erebus is still an active volcano.

"They shipped the reactor and a hundred and one drums of radioactive earth back to the United States and buried them somewhere. But even that didn't make the site clean enough. The navy had to dig out more earth and ship it back. The site wasn't opened up for what the military termed unrestricted use until 1979."

"There's no way they could have left a reactor down here unattended for twenty-five years," Conner said. "I don't know much about them, but I do know they require constant attention."

Devlin nodded. "You're right. But this one is off line. The plan must have been that when they reoccupied this place, they'd bring the rods with them and use the oil generators until they could get the reactor on line. But, even so, the fact that the U.S. government put a nuclear reactor—even one without the nuclear fuel—down here and abandoned is unbelievable."

Lallo was more concerned with immediate matters. "What now? We have to wait out the storm, but what do you want to do in the meantime?"

Conner stood in front of the group. "We need to explore. Now that the lights are on, we should be able to figure out what this place was built for and maybe who built it." She looked at Vickers. "Can you work?"

Vickers nodded. "The bleeding has stopped. As long as I don't hit my head again I should be all right."

"OK." Conner was all business. "Let's get out the cameras and take some initial footage. I want to start at the top of the staircase and work our way in, as if we were entering for the first time."

Kerns and Vickers started opening the cases of camera and sound equipment. Devlin grabbed his flashlight and headed for the door. "I'm going down to the power plant to see what I can find out about the actual reactor. They must have offset it from this base, and maybe I can find the location."

The room rapidly emptied until Sammy was left with Riley and Swenson. The pilot walked over to one of the beds and flopped down on it. "I'm going to catch me some shut-eye so I'll be ready to fly when this storm does break." With that he pulled the pillow over his head.

"Let's take a walk," Riley suggested to Sammy.

They could hear Conner and her camera crew clattering on the stairs in the access shaft. Riley walked to the doorway straight across the hall and entered the first unit that Devlin and Conner had explored.

Riley switched on the lights. It was obvious this was some sort of communications setup. Against the walls were several radio consoles with chairs in front of them. Riley flicked the on switch for one, and the set hummed. "They've got a lot of redundant commo equipment here," he remarked to Sammy. He pointed. "That's an HF—high frequency—radio. That looks like a SATCOM—satellite communications—rig. I used both types when I was in the service."

He fiddled with the knobs, trying to see if he could get something. A dull hiss was all that came out of the speakers. Riley suddenly slapped his hand on the panel in disgust. "Shit. Sometimes I'm so dumb. The antennas probably blew away a long time ago, if they ever put them out."

Sammy pointed to the far left corner of the room where a large number of wires ran into a shaft that disappeared into the ceiling. 'That must be where the antenna wires run up next to the entrance shaft."

A transmitter on the other side caught her attention. Several large boxes containing long-lasting batteries surrounded it. A placard on the front read "Eternity Base Transponder. Frequency: 45.83."

"What's this?" she asked.

Riley came over and examined the set. "That's how the builders of this base planned to find it once it was covered over. The transponder is set to be initiated by a plane's radio. The pilot dials up the proper frequency—45.83—on the radio and presses his transmit button. That turns on this transponder. The pilot then homes in on the radio beacon.