I run to the entrance and listen. Screams, rushing water. And there’s something else. A drumbeat. Or a pulsing vibration. Getting louder every second. More screams and men running. The car cranks, and it roars away.
I strain, but I can’t hear anything else. In the absence of sound, I realize I’m standing in two feet of water. It’s seeping in through the loosely stacked rock, and quickly.
I slosh back into the corridor. There must be a door to the lab. I bang around on the walls, but nothing works. The water is in the lab now; it will overtake me in minutes.
The tube — it’s open, one of the four. What choice do I have? I wade through the water and collapse into it. The fog surrounds me, and the door closes.
CHAPTER 92
Snow Camp Alpha
Drill Site #6
East Antarctica
Robert Hunt sat in his housing pod, warming his hands around a fresh cup of burned coffee. After the near-disaster at drill site five, he was glad they had reached 7,000 feet without so much as a hiccup. No pockets of air, water, or sediment. Maybe it would be like the first four sites — nothing but ice. He sipped the coffee and considered what might account for the drilling difference at the last site.
Beyond the pod’s door, a high-pitched sound erupted — the unmistakable whirl of a drill under low-to-no tension.
He ran out of the pod, made eye contact with the operator, and jerked his hand across his neck. The man lunged and hit the kill switch. The man was learning, thank God.
Robert jogged to the platform. The technician turned to him and said, “Should we reverse out?”
“No.” Robert checked the depth. 7,309 feet. “Lower the drill. Let’s see how deep the pocket is.”
The man lowered the drill, and Robert watched the depth reading climb: 7,400, 7,450, 7,500, 7,550, 7,600. It stopped at 7,624.
Robert’s mind raced with possibilities. A cavern a mile and a half below the ice. It could be something on the surface of the ground. But what? The cavern or pocket, whatever it was, was 300 feet deep. Its ceiling was almost a football field above its floor. The laws of gravity just didn’t work that way. What had the strength to hold up one and a half miles of ice?
The technician turned to Robert and asked, “Start drilling again?”
Robert, still deep in thought, waved a hand over the controls and mumbled, “No. Uh, no, don’t do anything. I need to call this in.”
Back at his pod, he activated the radio, “Bounty, this is Snow King. I have a status update.”
A few seconds passed before the radio crackled and the reply came, “Go ahead, Snow King.”
“We hit a pocket at depth seven-three-zero-nine, repeat seven-three-zero-nine feet. Pocket ends at seven-six-two-four, repeat, seven-six-two-four feet. Request instruction. Over.”
“Stand by, Snow King.”
Robert began preparing another pot of coffee. His team would probably need some.
“Snow King, what is the status of the drill, over?”
“Bounty, drill is still in the hole at max depth, over.”
“Understood, Snow King. Instructions are as follows: extract drill, lock down site, and proceed to location seven. Stand by for GPS coordinates.”
As before, he wrote down the coordinates and endured the redundant warning about local contact. He folded the paper with the GPS coordinates and placed it in his pocket, then stood, grabbed the two cups of fresh coffee and headed out of the pod.
They reversed the drill out and prepared the site with ease. The three men worked efficiently, almost mechanically, and silently. From the air, they might have looked like three Eskimo versions of tin soldiers racing around on a track, performing some sort of ballet in the snow as they danced around each other, lifting and stacking crates, opening large white umbrellas to cover small items, and anchoring white metal poles for the massive canopy that covered the drill site. When they finished, the two techs mounted their snowmobiles and waited for Robert to lead them.
He rested his arm on the plastic chest that contained the cameras and looked up at the site. Two million dollars was a lot of money.
The two men glanced back at him. They had started their snowmobiles, but one tech turned his off.
Robert brushed some snow off the chest and opened one latch. The sound of the radio startled him. “Snow King, Bounty. SITREP.”
Robert clicked the button on the radio and hesitated for a second. “Bounty, this is Snow King.” He glanced at the men. “We’re evacuating the site now.”