Arctic Fire (15 page)

After a little bit of wandering, Pike finally
found his room. It wasn’t the Plaza, but it would do he smiled. It
was a typical hotel room, a queen bed flanked by two dressers and a
small, round table in the corner with a flat screen TV mounted on
the wall. All in all it would suit his needs nicely.

He called room service and ordered a steak, put
away his clothes and set up his laptop. While enjoying his steak,
he did some research on his latest conspiracies on the moon
landings. After eating, he planned to lay down and rest his eyes
then get back up and do some more surfing, but that never happened
as the busy schedule of the past several days caught up with him
and he never woke back up.

The phone rang with the intensity of a foghorn,
shattering his sleep and dashing his dreams to pieces on the rocks
of reality. Absently he reached over and picked it up and muttered
a hello, or the closest thing to it he could manage.

“Good morning Mr. Pike,” the far too cheery
voice on the other end of the line said. “Mr. Cain would like you
to join him in his office in one hour for a working breakfast. Can
I tell him you will attend?

Like I’m going to tell him no? Pike thought.
“Yes, please tell Mr. Cain that I will be there.”

“Thank you sir. Your morning coffee and paper
will be waiting for you on a cart outside your door. Someone will
be there at 6:50 to show you the way to Mr. Cain’s office. Have a
pleasant day.” And she hung up.

Pike rolled over and looked at the clock, 6:01.
He lay there for a moment and stretched, “I guess Mallory was
right, the honeymoon is over, time to earn my pay,” he said as he
got out of bed and headed for the shower.

Feeling refreshed and awake after his shower,
Pike wrapped his robe around him and opened his door. Just as the
anonymous voice on the phone had promised, there was a small
serving cart with a large, silver-domed platter and a folded
newspaper beside it sitting right outside his door. He wheeled it
into his room and when he removed the lid, he found a Starbucks
grande black and white mocha, his favorite, and a single Krispy
Kreme doughnut. He took a sip of his coffee and instantly felt a
twinge of homesickness. After he got dressed, he still had a few
minutes to kill before he had to meet Cain so he grabbed the
doughnut and the newspaper and sat in the high-back leather chair
next to the window.

He took another sip of coffee, a rather large
bite of the doughnut and then opened the paper and immediately did
a double take. It was the
Seattle Times
, but what really
amazed him was that it carried today’s date. Pike shook his head,
took another sip of coffee, another bite and read the paper. It was
remarkable the things you could do if you had the money.

Pike had just finished reading the comics when
he heard a knock. He grabbed his coat and laptop and headed for the
door. He was pleasantly surprised to see that Mallory was his
escort.

“Good morning Beth.”

“Morning Gabe. All ready to go?”

He gestured with his coat and laptop. “Lead the
way.”

They walked down the short hallway to the
elevator which emptied into the casino. The lights, bells and
whistles of this mini floating Vegas were quiet now, all the
one-armed bandits silent and the gaming tables empty.

There was a small restaurant/coffee shop that
had a few people in it. Several looked like they were nursing
hangovers and there was a couple in the corner who looked like they
hadn’t gone to bed yet. While the coffee shop may have been the
cemetery, the Starbucks next to it was the wake. There were no
living dead in there as most of the people were main-lining their
caffeine, getting a jump on the day.

Half the tables were full, cups of coffee
steaming and keyboards clicking as the reporters were filing their
reports, snacking on biscotti and trying ever so subtly to peer
over to see their neighbor’s screen, checking out the competition
and seeing if anyone knew more than they did.

That explains the coffee, Pike thought to
himself as they walked by Starbucks, but how he got the paper was
still a mystery.

They came to the end of the casino and stopped.
“We have a little time,” Mallory said, turning to Pike. “Nigel’s
office is in the bow; scenic route or expressway?

“Since we have the time, let’s take the scenic
route.”

Mallory nodded and pointed to the right. They
entered through a set of double doors, then went down a short
hallway and opened another set of doors where Pike was struck with
a sudden flash of vertigo. For moment, he thought he was going to
fall off the edge of the iceberg.

The door opened to an enclosed walkway whose top
and sides were made of clear Plexiglas. There were no metal or
wooden railings to give a feel of security, just a clear openness
creating the impression of walking off the face of the earth.

Pike stepped forward and looked through the
glass with the wonder of a small child seeing an elephant or
giraffe for the first time.

The morning was dull and overcast and the sky
and sea blended together at the horizon, making it difficult to
tell where one ended and the other began. With no point of
reference, Pike almost felt like they were floating in space.

“Wow.” Pike said after regaining his composure
and balance. “When you said scenic route, you weren’t kidding.”

Mallory smiled. “Come on, we’ve got a ways to go
and you don’t want to be late for your first day on the job.”

Pike smiled. “No, no I don’t.” They walked
quietly, enjoying the view for nearly 200 yards to the end of the
walkway. They entered a small conference room that had chairs and
tables to accommodate about thirty people. “A short cut.” Mallory
said as they went through the conference room to the elevator on
the other side. As soon as the door swooshed shut, Pike felt his
stomach becoming queasy. Suddenly the reality and enormity of the
job finally landed squarely on his shoulders. He loved personal
challenges; he only hoped he was up to the task at hand. The
elevator ended its short trip with a small jolt and as if that were
his cue, Pike felt himself taking a deep breath.

When the doors opened, Pike found himself
starring into a large, circular room. Instantly he knew where he
was. He remembered seeing the tower and presumed it was some sort
of enclosed radar or communications station. Now he knew it was
none of the above, he was in the base of the lighthouse; this was
Cain’s private office.

Immediately he noticed the room was split into
three levels. The main floor was the largest, covered with
luxurious carpeting and comfortable couches and chairs
strategically placed throughout, looking much like a sunken living
room. This level was surrounded by a four-foot high, six-foot wide
walkway that encircled it. Here, the walls were covered with rich
cherry and teak-wood paneling and shelving, displaying artwork and
many, many books. Cain’s workstation was also on this level,
discretely built into the wall. Jutting out and curving up
alongside the wall was a wrought-iron staircase that lead to a
walkway at the top of the room that was surrounded by white
stanchions with guide ropes strung between, reminding Pike of the
railing of some great ocean liner. It was all crowned with the
rounded dome, painted a light, sky blue. Pike wouldn’t have been
surprised to see a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel on
it. He did think it a bit odd to have an observation deck, with
nothing to observe but the room below, but if this was Cain’s only
eccentricity, then he would consider himself lucky.

“Elizabeth, Gabriel, do come in.” Cain greeted
them with a genuine smile and an air of excitement in his voice. He
got up from his desk and ushered them down to the main floor where
a mini breakfast buffet had been set up. Cain sipped coffee and
talked with Mallory while Pike filled his plate.

“This is where the rubber meets the road as they
say Gabriel.” Cain began. “This is a revolutionary, if not
visionary way to deal with the crisis that is looming so close on
the horizon. This project will be bring much needed clean drinking
water to those who need it the most, providing a stable and safe
environment. Whether it’s providing life-saving relief from a
deadly drought in a third world country or shoring up the supplies
to an industrial nation, I humbly believe this is the answer.”

Cain paused for a moment, almost as if he were
expecting applause, then his faced looked slightly embarrassed.
“Forgive me if you will Gabriel; I get carried away at times.
However, I won’t apologize to Elizabeth,” he said, smiling at his
assistant. “She’s used to my ranting by now.”

“Given what I have seen, I really am impressed
with the engineering feat you have accomplished here. This project
is light years ahead of your first attempt at bringing safe
drinking water by simply breaking off a hunk of ice and dragging it
south. Yesterday after we arrived, I had a chance to look around
and noticed that the ice on your berg here seems to be denser than
regular ice. What process have you used?”

Cain smiled. “I hadn’t really thought of this
before but this is really rather ironic, in two ways I suppose.”
That statement made even Mallory pay attention, thinking she had
heard all of this before.

“Being, ‘The Blast from the Past’ you’ll
appreciate that the technology for this modern day project had its
berth in the early days of WWII and that its inventor’s name was
also Pyke, spelled with a Y.

“As Elizabeth can well attest and as you have
discovered a little through our earlier conversations, I enjoy the
what if
factors that can shape our lives without our even
being aware of it. In one of my rare down times, I stumbled across
a television program talking about secret weapons of WWII and how
some of our modern day technology is based on those early designs.
They talked about Germany’s ideas for a death ray, which led to
today’s lasers. A sonic cannon using sound wave to bring down enemy
aircraft; a variation of that same technology is used on cruise
ships today as a non-lethal way to ward off pirates. All
interesting stuff but it was a story about a man who wanted to
build ships out of ice that piqued my interest. Who was this madman
you ask? Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke.

“Let’s go back to the dark days of WWII.” Cain
was sitting down, but he leaned forward as he spoke, partly as if
he were revealing a secret, partly like a camp counselor telling a
ghost story around the campfire.

“Geoffrey Pyke has been described by some as,
‘not a scientist, but a man of a vivid and uncontrollable
imagination, and a totally uninhibited tongue,’ and to call him
eccentric would be an understatement. He would sometimes work from
his bed, not wanting to waste time by getting up and getting
dressed and he would sometimes call military officials to his
bedside for conferences.” Cain paused and sipped some of his
coffee, then continued.

“I’ll spare you some of the more ‘interesting’
ideas he came up with to win the war, such as sending in Saint
Bernard’s with flasks of brandy around their necks to get the
German troops drunk. However, he did have one idea that did get
quite a bit of attention.

During the early years of WWII, German U-boats
were wreaking havoc on allied shipping and threatening to cut
Britain off from the rest of the world. Pyke’s idea was to create
giant aircraft carriers to help hunt down the German U-boats and
save England.”

“What’s so unique about that?” Pike asked.

“His idea was to make them out of ice.”

“Ice?”

Cain smiled as he nodded his head. “His aircraft
carrier, the
HMS Habbakuk.
He named it after a minor prophet
in the Bible, whose name Pyke misspelled by the way. It had a hull
30 feet thick and was so large at nearly half a mile long, it could
handle all but the heaviest bombers the allies had at the time. The
entire ship was to be made from what was later to be called,
pykrete
, a mixture of water and wood pulp frozen solid.
Pykrete
was much stronger than normal ice, more stable, and
melted a much slower rate.

“One of his greatest supporters was Lord
Mountbatten, who was the head of Combined Operations. Mountbatten
was so taken by the project that he burst into Churchill’s bathroom
and dropped a chunk of
Pykrete
into his hot bath to show how
resistant it was to melting. I only hope Churchill wasn’t in the
tub at the time.” Cain laughed.

“Later, at a secret Allied Chiefs of Staffs
meeting, Mountbatten wanted to demonstrate the toughness of the
pykrete
, so he arranged for a demonstration. He had a block
of regular ice brought in and to everyone’s surprise, he took out
his revolver and fired a round into the ice, shattering it to
pieces. He then brought out a chunk of
pykrete
and fired
another round, only this time instead of penetrating or fracturing
the ice, the bullet ricocheted and just missed hitting Fleet
Admiral Ernest King.

“Having made his point, work proceeded on the
project with a small prototype being built in a lake in Canada. The
fact that it survived the hot summer was encouraging, but the high
projected costs and the successful landing at Normandy doomed the
project.”

Cain stood and walked up the staircase, then
motioned for Pike and Mallory to join him. When they reached the
top and stepped onto the walkway, Cain turned to them. “That was
Pyke’s dream,” he said pointing to the display below, “this is my
reality.” Cain pushed a button on a small control panel and Pike
heard and felt the drone of a several large electric motors.

Pike stood and marveled. Like a scene from a
James Bond film, the panels of the dome began to fall away as if it
were a giant orange peel. Instantly, light flooded the room as if
the heavens had opened up. Pike wouldn’t have been surprised to
hear a choir at that moment singing the Hallelujah chorus.