Beneath the Ice Page 4

  “Ignorance is never good,” Griffin said.

  “That’s where you are wrong, friend,” Perry said, standing. “Sometimes ignorance is bliss.” He started for his room then stopped. “This may not come easy for you, Dr. James, but you’re going to have to trust me.”

  Eric Enkian gazed into the cerulean sky, where the late spring sun hung like an enormous heat lamp, baking everything it touched. Las Vegas was hot. It was always hot, and the temperatures would continue to rise with each passing day. He removed his hardhat and wiped his brow. Frowning, he turned back to the thin man in the gray suit and white dress shirt. A white hardhat rested on his narrow head. He wondered why a man would wear a suit to a job site so exposed to the hot sun but decided he didn’t care enough to pursue an answer. Architects were a breed unto themselves.

  “I know this may sound like heresy to a man such as yourself,” the architect said, “but using synthetic stone will speed construction and save you a great deal more than pocket change.”

  Eric forgot the sun for a moment and looked deep into the man’s eyes. They were weak eyes—eyes that went with a weak body. His mind was his only redeeming factor. Stewart Teller was the finest and most sought after architect in the western United States. His high-rise buildings were as innovative as they were beautiful. It was this skill that forced Eric to tolerate the man.

  “You see,” Stewart went on, “the synthetic stones are designed with ribbing on the back and interlocking channels to make installation easier. They’re virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. So the building will be just as beautiful but will go up faster and for less money.”

  Unlike the architect, Eric wore comfortable slacks, a yellow T-shirt, and expensive sneakers. He hated suits and generally hated those who wore them. At six-feet-four, Eric towered over the shorter man. His well-muscled frame and square jaw made both men and women take a second glance—the former with envy, the latter with lust. He was closing in on sixty, but a meticulous diet and rigorous exercise left him looking a decade younger.

  Turning from the expensive architect, he focused his attention on the metal skeleton that stretched for the blistering sky. Steel girders spanned the distance between their vertical counterparts, forming an imposing matrix that towered thirty-three stories above the bustling Vegas boulevard. There were two towers of equal height—sixty-six floors altogether.

  Always sixty-six.

  Workmen moved at an even pace around the building like ants on a discarded watermelon rind. They worked with purpose and steady determination. Eric liked that. It was the way things should be. Purpose. Determination. Production. The ancients knew the formula and had built structures that boggled the twenty-first century mind.

  “I know that mining is your business, Mr. Enkian,” Stewart said, “so naturally you’d have a predilection for natural stone, but we can achieve our goals faster and more economically with this slight change. I’m sure you see my point. Perhaps we can use some stone from one of your mines on the interior. In fact, I have some art ideas—”

  “Stone,” Eric said. “I’ll provide the stone.”

  “Um, that’s not my point, sir. I’m saying that synthetic stone panels would allow us to move ahead of schedule and provide a structural enhancement that would benefit—”

  Enkian stopped and turned dark eyes on the man. “Stone. My stone. You tell me the dimensions, the needed density, the ideal porosity, and whatever else you think is important, and I will find it and provide it. But the exterior will be natural stone—taken from ground I own.”

  “I have no doubt that you can provide the very best, Mr. Enkian. I mean, a man with as many and as varied mining interests as you have around the world can certainly bring beautiful material to the project, but it will slow things down.”

  “Stone is more than decoration, Mr. Teller. It is the heart of our planet, and it will be the skin of my new building. Is that clear?” Enkian watched the man squirm then acquiesce.

  “I’ll have the structural dimensions and requirements sent to your—to which office should I send it?”

  “I leave today for Mexico City. Send it electronically.”

  Stewart said he would see to it. “It’s going to be a grand building, Mr. Enkian. Photos of the EA Mining towers will grace all the architecture magazines around the world. It will make you famous.”

  “I care nothing about fame. I am not so shallow. This building is a response to my growing mining concerns in Nevada, nothing more.” Again, Enkian studied the metal skeleton. EA Mining had a dozen such buildings around the globe, each one designed by the best architects and engineers, each one a testament to the mining empire he headed. In Nevada he pulled gold, copper, tungsten, barite, and gypsum from the ground. In other countries, he scooped out coal, gravel, platinum, uranium, and even diamonds. Marble was sliced away in quarries and iron hauled to the surface. Not even the sea floor was safe. Enkian had helped design a process of manganese nodule mining that was cost-effective, making EA Mining one of the first companies to harvest the ocean floor profitably.

  For decades EA Mining had been one of the most successful mining operations in the world; now it was second to none. That gave Enkian a large measure of pride. It also made him one of the richest men on the planet. His name appeared annually in Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest people. Their estimate of his wealth was only 10 percent correct.

  Noise from the workers snapped Enkian back to the moment. Whistles and catcalls joined the sounds of hammering, humming heavy equipment, and the crackle of welding. He turned to see what he had expected. His assistant, Tia Matteo, was walking toward him.

  Tia was younger than Enkian by a decade and a half, slim and tall with black hair that reached her belt line. She moved with the grace of a dancer and the power of an athlete. Her jawline was smooth and met in a delicate curve at her chin. Her blue eyes broadcast her intelligence and a delicate nose graced her face. Enkian knew she could cause more whiplashes by walking down the street than a fifty-car pileup on the freeway. It humored him to watch how men responded to Tia. If they only knew, he thought.

  “Hey baby, why don’tcha bring some o’ dat over here?” one of the workers called. Enkian recognized him as one of the foremen. Laughter and more wolf whistles followed.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Enkian,” Stewart said. “I’ll put an end to this right now.”

  Enkian raised a hand stopping the man midstep. “Wait.”

  “But . . .”

  “I said, wait.”

  “Don’t walk by, sweetheart,” the foreman said. “I got what ya want right here.”

  Enkian watched as Tia stopped and turned toward the man. She flashed a smile that made the sun dim, then walked over to the worker.

  “Look out, guys!” someone yelled. “He’s reeling her in.” Laughter floated in the hot air.

  Tia stepped to the man and leaned over to whisper in his ear. “That’s it, sweetheart, tell Daddy what you want.”

  She did.

  Enkian could not hear what his assistant had said, but he didn’t need to. Whatever words she uttered drained the blood from the foreman’s face. Tia turned and resumed her course.

  “Hey, boss,” a welder called out. “Did she give you any good ideas?”

  The foreman didn’t respond immediately. He stood as still as the steel columns behind him.

  “Come on, boss, share with the rest of us.”

  “Shut up! Get back to work. The next guy who talks will be draw-ing unemployment.” The foreman walked away, his face red, his head down. Slowly, stunned workers returned to their jobs.

  Enkian smiled as Tia approached. They exchanged knowing glances. Again, she leaned forward and whispered, this time in Enkian’s ear. He nodded, then asked, “Everyone? You’re certain?”

  “Yes,” was all she said.

  Enkian smiled. “Good. Very good.”

  She raised her hand to adjust the hardhat she wore. Despite having seen it many times, Enkian c
ouldn’t help noticing the tattoo on the back of Tia’s right hand. He stared at it. The dragon seemed to stare back.

  Enkian turned to Stewart. “That foreman. Have him fired.”

  “He doesn’t work for me, Mr. Enkian. He works for the general contractor.”

  “Then have the general contractor fire him. Fire the construction company if you have to. That man is not to set foot on this site again.”

  Chapter 3

  It had taken four days for the small group of Seabees and Perry’s crew of six to erect the dome that would house their activities. Unlike the dome that had been set up the week before, this one contained only two rooms: the four-thousand-square-foot work area and a bathroom.

  Perry, Jack, and Gleason had designed the structure from scratch. In some ways, it was one of the most challenging designs Perry had ever faced. When first presented with the difficulties of working in Antarctica, Perry assumed warmth and protection from the wind and ultraviolet light would be the most important considerations. He had been wrong. The more he learned of Lake Vostok and the need to keep it uncontaminated, the more he realized sterility was the most difficult job before him. He had requested and received consultations from scientists working for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta as well as microbiologists throughout the country.

  The number of bacteria, viruses, and microbes associated with the human body surprised him. Simple exhalation could be an ecological contaminant in a pure environment such as that found under two miles of ice. Microscopic creatures lived on the skin, in hair, mucus, saliva, and under fingernails and toenails. A simple cough could have unforeseen consequences.

  The reverse was also a problem. No one knew what might be living in the lake beneath the ice. For all he and the experts knew, the lake could harbor a virulent and deadly strain of bug that could kill them all, though few thought that likely. Infectious disease had a complicated host-disease cycle, something not likely to be found in the ice-capped lake. Still, the idea couldn’t be dismissed.

  Perry stood in the center of the dome and waited for the last of the team to enter. This was a practice run. To keep the Chamber as free of human contaminants as possible, each worker had to enter a “suiting” cubicle and don a “clean” suit and respirator that filtered all exhalations. A negative-pressure locker prevented air exchange between the Chamber and the “normal” facility.

  Jack was the last person through the locker. “Sorry to keep everyone waiting. I couldn’t decide what kind of tie to wear.”

  Perry smiled through the full-face shield that rested in the hood of his clean suit and looked over the others. Each wore a metallic silver suit with an antiglare face mask.

  “You look marvelous,” Gleason joked. “Personally, I would have preferred something in blue.”

  “Are they always like this?” Larimore asked Perry.

  “You have no idea,” Perry replied. “If I can have everyone’s attention, please.” A short-range transmitter carried his voice to the others. “Welcome to the Chamber. We will be spending a great many hours in here. We’ll consider this a clean room. We’re meeting in here so that each of us can practice donning our suits and passing through the various locks designed to keep the air uncontaminated.”

  “A noble effort, Mr. Sachs,” Griffin said. “But what of the structure itself? Was it decontaminated before it was erected?”

  “It was, Dr. James,” Perry said. Griffin’s attitude had settled into forced civility. Perry was thankful for that. “There are two domes overhead. One, as you saw from the outside, is made of translucent paneling. It will allow sunlight to pass through, warming the inner, second dome. External mechanical equipment keeps the air temperature a few degrees below freezing.”

  “So the ice doesn’t melt,” Sarah said.

  “Exactly,” Perry said. “We don’t want to be sloshing around in here, but we want it warm enough that we don’t have to wear thick, heavy clothing. Your suits come equipped with small electric heaters. You won’t roast, but you will be able to maintain an in-suit temperature above fifty. Warm clothing should handle the rest.”

  “What are those doors?” Griffin asked, pointing a silver-gloved hand toward the far west wall.

  “Equipment air locks,” Perry said. “The air lock system you came through connects the Dome with the Chamber, but it’s too small to admit larger supplies. Those doors lead to a larger area, where equipment can be assembled or disassembled as needed.”

  “How high is the ceiling?” Griffin asked.

  Perry knew where he was going. “Twenty-five feet. You’re wondering how we’re going to drill with a low ceiling overhead.”

  “You have over two miles of ice to drill through,” Griffin said. “Unless you have some engineering magic up your sleeve . . .”

  “I don’t, but Sarah does.”

  All eyes turned to Sarah Hardy. Perry saw her smile through the large faceplate.

  This was Sarah’s big moment, and she was flooded with apprehension and excitement. A quiet woman, she preferred solitude to gatherings. Now she was the center of attention, not of a party’s guests, but of several brilliant men and women. She blinked in disbelief. To think that she, a fifty-hours-a-week lab rat, was standing on an ice sheet at the bottom of the world, garbed in a clean suit was almost too much for her to take in.

  She saw Perry through the plastic face shield; he was smiling. Her heart skipped, and she felt a sudden wave of embarrassment. She forced herself to focus.

  “Well, as you know,” she began, “my specialty is robotics. Over the last few years, I’ve served as chief engineer on an ambitious NASA mission. One of NASA’s directives is to learn if there is life on other planets. Not little green men, but microbial life. Earth is the only planet that has life, so far as we know. However, there are some interesting possibilities fairly nearby.”

  “I assume you’re talking about Europa,” Gwen said.

  “Exactly. Europa is a moon of Jupiter and is roughly the size of our own moon. It’s one of the ten largest satellites in the solar system. What makes it interesting is that its surface is covered in ice—water ice. We think that three miles beneath the surface is slushy ocean, maybe sixty miles deep.”

  “Sixty miles!” Larimore exclaimed. “Our ocean is . . . what?”

  “About three miles deep on average,” Griffin said. “There are areas a mile or so deeper, but nothing like sixty miles.”

  “Exobiologists think Europa is a likely place to find microscopic life,” Sarah added.

  “Isn’t Europa too far from the sun?” Gleason asked. “Doesn’t life have to have some heat?”

  “Yes, it does,” Sarah said, “but as Gwen can tell you, some microscopic life can thrive in unimaginable conditions. They’re called extremophiles and have been found in everything from boiling water to ice.”

  “Including the ice beneath our feet,” Gwen added.

  “Europa is warmed from the inside—thanks to Jupiter, whose gravity pulls at it constantly. Europa orbits Jupiter every three and a half days. It is bathed in radiation from the planet and subject to extreme tidal forces. The end result is that the moon has a warm core that heats the water under its surface. My job was to help design a device that could travel through space, land on Europa, and bore through three miles of ice, while all the time sending back data. It’s called a cryobot.”

  “I didn’t think that program would be available for years,” Gwen said.

  “We have an advantage,” Sarah explained. “We don’t have to travel 380 million miles to do our job. We can control everything from right here.”

  “You plan to send a robot down through the ice?” Griffin said, his disgust apparent. “I don’t know how to make this any plainer. The waters of Lake Vostok have not seen the light of day for millennia. It has been sealed off from external contact. It is unspoiled, but you want to change all of that by dropping a mechanical device into the waters. That is the height of stupidity.”

  “Griffin—�
� Perry began.

  “Listen, you pompous pig,” Sarah countered. “You’re not the only one concerned with such things. At NASA our greatest fear was introducing an organism into the environment of Europa. We want to know what’s there, not deliver something. Hairy is cleaner than an operating room.”

  “But there is always the chance of leaving behind oil or some other substance,” Griffin said. “We are talking about a machine.”

  “It’s been thought through,” Sarah said. “My life is invested in this thing. I haven’t overlooked a single detail.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jack interjected. “Did you call the thing Hairy?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said. Her embarrassment was detectable even over the speakers in Perry’s suit. “It’s a nickname . . . sort of.”

  “Doesn’t sound too sterile to me,” Griffin chided.

  Sarah exhaled loudly then said, “A short article in the April 1995 issue of Discover magazine described hairless ice moles that could melt ice with their heads. The article said they were discovered by researcher Aprile Pazzo. Her name is Italian for April Fools’. It was a joke, but it caught on and appeared in other publications. Some called them ‘naked hotheaded ice borers.’ The hotheaded part stuck in my mind.”

  “So you call your cryobot Hairy,” Gleason said. “Well, it does roll off the tongue a little easier.”

  “When do we get to see this hairless ice-boring mole of yours?” Griffin asked.

  “No time like the present,” Perry said. “Give me a hand, Jack.”

  It took only ten minutes to cross the Chamber and open a plastic box that had been set near the equipment door. Perry and Jack pulled tools from a sealed plastic pouch and removed the metal bolts that locked down the lid of the container. Once the top was removed, the sides folded down like a flower opening to the sun. Perry pulled back plastic sheets to reveal a torpedolike device resting on a curved stand.