CHAPTER 82
Snow Camp Alpha
Drill Site #5
East Antarctica
“What’s our depth?” Robert Hunt asked the drilling tech.
“Just passed 6,000 feet, sir. Should we stop?”
“No. Keep going. I’ll report in. Come get me at 6,500 feet.” They had hit nothing but ice for over a mile — the same as the last four drilling sites.
Robert pulled his parka tight and walked from the massive drilling platform toward his field tent. He passed a second man on his way. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t remember his name. The two men they had given him were quiet; no one said much about themselves, but they were hard-working and they didn’t drink — the best you could hope for in drill operators in extreme conditions. They were both dumb as a sack of hammers, but it likely wouldn’t matter.
His employer would probably give up soon. Hole number five looked like the four before it: nothing but ice. The whole continent was a giant ice cube. He remembered reading that Antarctica had 90% of the world’s ice and 70% of its freshwater. If you took all the water in the world, in every lake, pond, stream and even water in the clouds, it wouldn’t come out to even half of the frozen water in Antarctica. When all that ice melted, the world would be a very different place. The sea would rise 200 feet, nations would fall, or more accurately, drown. Low-lying countries like Indonesia would disappear from the map. New York City, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and most of Florida — also gone.
Ice seemed to be the only thing Antarctica had in abundance. What could they be looking for down here? Oil was the logical answer. Robert was, after all, an oil rig operator. But the equipment was all wrong for oil. The bore diameter was wrong. For oil, you wanted a pipe line. These bits were making holes big enough to drive a truck through. Or lower a truck. What could be down there? Minerals? Something scientific, maybe fossils? Maybe some ploy to stake a claim on the land? Antarctica was massive — 17.5 million square kilometers. If it was a country, it would be the second largest in the world — Antarctica was just 20,000 square kilometers smaller than Russia, another hell-hole he had drilled — with much more success. Antarctica had once been a lush paradise around two million years ago. It stood to reason that there would be an unimaginable oil reserve under the surface and who knows what else—
Behind him, Robert heard a loud boom.
The pylon sticking out of the ground was spinning wildly — the bit was hitting no resistance. They must have hit a pocket. He had expected this — research teams had recently found large caverns and gaps in the ice, possibly underwater fjords where the ice ran over the mountains below.
“Shut it down!” Robert yelled. The man on the platform couldn’t hear him. He ran a hand across his throat, but the man just looked dumbfounded. He grabbed his radio, and shouted, “Full stop!”
On the platform, the long pipe sticking out of the ground was starting to wobble, like a top starting to lose its balance.
Robert threw the radio down and ran toward the platform. He pushed the man out of the way and entered commands to stop the bit.
He grabbed the man, and they ran from the platform. They had made it almost to the housing pods when they heard the platform shudder, buckle, and capsize. The drilling column had broken off and spun wildly in the air. Even 200 feet away, the noise was deafening, like a jet engine roaring at full speed. The platform sank into the snow and the bit came forward, digging into the ice like a twister on the Kansas plains in Tornado Alley.
Robert and the other man lay face-down, enduring the shards of ice and snow raining down until the bit finally came to a stop.
Robert looked up at the scene. His employer wouldn’t be pleased. “Don’t touch anything,” he said to the man.
Inside the living pod, Robert picked up the radio. “Bounty, this is Snow King. I have a status update.” Robert wondered what to report. They hadn’t hit a pocket. It was something else. The bit would have chewed through any kind of rock or ground, even frozen. Whatever they had hit had taken the bit clean off. It was the only possibility.
“Copy, Snow King. Report status.”
Less is more. He wouldn’t speculate. “We’ve hit something,” Robert said.