Beneath the Ice (17 page)

The phone rang, startling Henry.

He answered. He listened. He began to
pray.

“When?” he asked the
caller. “That was almost a full day ago . . .
You’ll keep me advised? Good. Thank you for
calling.”

Henry Sachs hung up the phone and wondered
what to do next. Ironically, the call had come from Seattle, from
the Coast Guard base. The base commander had taken it upon himself
to notify Henry of the downed plane. He knew Perry was scheduled to
stay on the project site for several more weeks. He felt some
comfort in that. What brought him no comfort was what he had to do
next—phone six now-bereaved families.

Chapter
14

Perry stood to one
side
of the hole in the ice. Over the last
few hours Hairy had made significant headway, moving faster than
expected. Perry checked the rigging again, just as he had five
minutes before. The support structure they had erected earlier
remained rock solid, and the cable that con
nected Hairy to the surface moved easily along its
guides.

Again Perry leaned over the four-foot-wide
hole and stared into its open maw. It was remarkable that Hairy
could do what it was doing, melting the ice before it and sinking
through the slush left behind. A thick-walled hose trailing after
Hairy carried water out of the hole so that it wouldn’t refreeze
and close off the opening.

“It’s a patient man’s game,” Larimore said.
“I’m afraid I’m ill-equipped to play it.”

“Moving through two miles of ice is going to
take some time,” Perry said. “Too much energy to the heating
elements could cause problems with the onboard sensors.”

“It’s hard to believe,” Larimore added,
“that this robot is moving downward under its own power.”

“Its own weight,” Perry corrected. “There
are small tractor-like treads on the side that keep it centered in
the ice shaft, but they provide no appreciable forward
movement.”

“And they plan to send one of these to
Europa?”

“Yes. According to Sarah it will be much
smaller and will have to work without all the rigging we’ve hooked
up. We have an advantage that the space-going cryobot doesn’t. We
can pump out the slush, provide an unlimited power source for the
heating element in the head, and, once it breaks through to the
lake, control it in real time. By comparison, this is a walk in the
park.”

“Some park,” Larimore said. The navy
commander seemed alien and somehow different in his clean suit. “Do
we really have to wear these? When we were putting some distance
between us and the bomb, we didn’t bother with these things.”

“That was an emergency
situation,” Perry replied. “We had
no
choice. We want the Chamber as unpolluted as possible.
Breach-ing
protocol once for an emergency
situation doesn’t change our goal.”

“You got that right,” Gwen said. “It may be
a moot point. No matter what we do, we’re bound to introduce
something to the lake that wasn’t there before.”

“I bathed, I promise,” Larimore said, as if
trying to lighten the moment.

“You can’t bathe enough,” Gwen said
seriously. “Human skin is covered with microscopic animals. Even
our breath is loaded with bacteria. We’re all walking worlds for
microscopic life. It has always been that way.”

“Suddenly I feel dirty,” Larimore
quipped.

“You are,” Gwen said. “We all are. And now
we’re going to plunge a mechanical device into pristine waters.
There’ll be no going back.”

“Hairy is cleaner than an operating room,”
Perry said. “Sarah saw to that.”

Gwen shook here head. “It
may have been clean when it start
ed down,
but there are microorganisms in the ice.”

“You mean we’re taking microscopic bugs from
the surface down with the device?” Larimore asked.

“That’s right,” she said
with a sigh. “That’s been the big prob
lem
all along. It’s impossible to make the journey without taking
un-wanted passengers with us.”

Perry understood her point and felt badly
about running such a risk, but he also knew that it had to be done.
“The lake may not be as pristine as you think, Doctor. It’s my
understanding that there is still some uncertainty about how these
lakes form. Isn’t it possible that the water could have percolated
in from below and not be the result of melted ice?”

“It’s possible,” Gwen allowed.

“And the geological heat source is certainly
contributing something to the water. If the water remains liquid
because of ground heating, then the geothermal heat may also be
contributing to the water.”

Perry turned to see Gwen scowling at him
through her face shield. “If there’s a pile of garbage on your
front lawn, should I feel free to dump my waste there as well?”

Perry laughed. “Point taken, Gwen.”

“Those things you describe may have created
a closed-system environment. They’re not contaminating what’s
there; they may be maintaining it.”

“Quarter mile,” Gleason announced. He was
standing behind Sarah, who was seated before a table that held two
computer monitors. Her hands were folded in her lap. There was
little for her to do but watch the electronic readouts. It was
going to be a long vigil, one that would have to be shared. Sarah
had estimated, based on the ice densities given her by Griffin,
that Hairy would take forty-eight hours to core through the ice
sheet. That estimate assumed a speed of over three feet per minute,
a speed she had told Perry was remarkably fast.

“Where’s your brother?” Larimore asked
Gwen.

“He got bored and went to his room. There’s
little to do here but wait for the outside world to find us.” She
paused. “I think he’s planning on leaving with the next plane,
which he assumes will be here soon—once someone realizes that the
C-5 didn’t arrive.”

“I see,” Perry said. “What about you? Will
you be going with him?”

“No,” she said quickly enough to surprise
him. “I don’t approve of what you’re doing, but you have my
interest. If you’re going to breach the ice sheet anyway, I might
as well be the scientist who sees it first.”

Perry smiled. “Curiosity wins out
again.”

“A scientist without
curiosity is like a car without wheels,” Gwen
said.

“For once, I think your brother had a good
idea,” Larimore said. “I’m useless here. I think I’ll hit the rack
for awhile. What are you going to do, Perry?”

“I’m going to try and split them up,” he
answered, nodding at Gleason and Sarah, their eyes glued to the
monitors. “They need to take shifts. Staying up for forty-eight
hours won’t do them or the project any good.”

“Good luck,” Larimore said and headed for
the air lock.

Once Larimore was out of the Chamber, Gwen
turned to Perry. “Do you think it’s wise to leave him alone?”

“Commander Larimore?” Perry asked.

“Yes. He’s the most likely suspect for
putting the bomb on board that plane.”

“Perhaps,” Perry said. “But then again, you
could have done it, or your brother, or Sarah.”

“Or you,” she snapped.

“From your point of view, you’re correct.”
Perry thought for a moment. “I can’t keep an eye on everyone at all
times and neither can you. There’s only one person who knows if the
bomber is among us, and I doubt that person will volunteer the
information.”

“So we just give up? We just surrender to
the situation?”

“We remain vigilant. The
only other option is to lock every
one
in
their rooms, and that would be useless.
The doors don’t even have locks.”

“I’ll confess to being . . . uncomfortable,”
Gwen said. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep again until I’m in
my own bed with all the doors locked and bolted.”

“Understandable,” Perry said. What Gwen
didn’t know, and what Perry didn’t feel compelled to tell, was that
he had already had a conversation with Jack, Gleason, and Dr.
Curtis—the three men Perry trusted completely. Together they would
keep an eye on the other team members. After Griffin had left the
Chamber, Jack and Dr. Curtis followed. Perry had not gone with them
but knew they were “chatting and snacking” in the commons area, but
they were also tracking the movement of the others into the Dome.
Perry and Gleason covered the Chamber. It would be a tag-team
effort, but two of his team would be awake at all times and able to
account for the whereabouts and activities of the others.

Their work had just doubled.

The dials Sarah watched were virtual. There were no
metal hands pointing at letters painted on a disk, just light green
lines “drawn” on the computer monitors. There were two monitors.
The one to her right displayed the onboard camera’s view; at the
moment, it showed only milk white and occasional bubbles. The one
on her left displayed six gauges. To her right sat the joystick
controls she had been practicing with over the last few days. At
the moment the joystick was as useless as a paperweight. Hairy was
following its program of melting its way through the ice. Gravity
provided the propulsion, and since it was moving in a shaft just a
hair larger than itself, there was no room to turn.

Sarah shifted in the uncomfortable seat.

“We should have brought a padded chair,”
Gleason said.

“A nice rocking chair would be good,” Sarah
said, then smiled at the image of a wooden rocking chair resting on
the ice.

“This is one slow video game,” Gleason
said.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of the men who
wastes hour upon hour with a game controller in your hand.”

“It builds character,” Gleason said.
“Besides, I have kids, and Perry is always buying them some new
game. Someone has to teach them how to play.”

“You’re close to Perry, aren’t you?” Sarah
asked. She noticed a tingling in the back of her brain, and her
stomach dropped.

“Yeah, we go way back. He’s good to me and
mine.”

Sarah turned her attention
to the gauges. The tingling in her brain was moving forward as if
crawling along the inside of her skull.
Not now,
she said to herself. “How .
. . how many children do you have?”

“Two. A twelve-year-old boy and a girl who’s
eleven.”

“A girl,” Sarah said. Her vision blurred,
and she felt her eyes begin to roll back. “You’ll . . . you’ll have
boys coming by . . . soon.”

“I plan on buying a big ugly dog to sit on
the front doorstep,” Gleason said. “If they get past the dog, then
they’ll have to get past me.”

“You sound like my father. He said I
couldn’t . . . date . . . until I was . . . thirty . . .” The
gauges disappeared. The monitors melted away. The world ceased to
exist.

“Smart man. Was your father an engineer,
too?”

She could hear his voice, but her mouth
would no longer work.

“I asked if your father was an engineer,
too.”

The darkness deepened from gray to
purple-black.

“Sarah? Are you all right?”

The Nothing had swallowed her.

“
Perry!”

Perry snapped his head from Gwen to
Gleason.

“Perry, I need you!” Gleason was kneeling
beside Sarah, who had been seated a moment ago.

Perry closed the distance between them
quickly and dropped to his knees. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Gleason said. “We were
talking, and she slumped over. I caught her before she hit the
ice.”

“Did you notice anything strange before she
fell?” Gwen asked. Perry was glad she had followed him.

“Not really,” Gleason said. “She was asking
about my family, and then her speech became slurred and halting.
Next thing I knew, she was keeling over.”

“Let me in,” Gwen ordered, and Gleason
stepped aside.

Perry watched as Gwen laid a gloved hand on
the fallen woman’s neck. She shook her head.

“What?” Perry demanded. “No pulse?”

“I can’t tell. These
gloves are in the way.” Gwen stripped off her clean-suit gloves
then the thinner pair she wore beneath. Again she pressed her
fingers to Sarah’s throat and nodded. “Pulse is strong
and regular.” Her eyes drifted to Sarah’s chest
and lingered.
“Breathing is even.” She
bent over and placed her face shield close to Sarah’s. “She’s
moving her lips, but I can’t hear anything.”

“We should get her into the Dome,” Perry
said.

“Agreed.”

“Take her feet, Gleason.”

Before Perry could slip his arms under
Sarah’s, he saw her eyes snap open. She blinked a few times then
sat up.

“Are you okay?” Gleason asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” She started to get
up.

“Take it easy,” Perry said. “You passed
out.”

“Nonsense,” Sarah said. “I’m fine. I must
have fallen asleep.”

“It looked like more than
sleep,” Gleason said. “You fell off the
chair.”

“I’ve been pretty tired. I think the thin
air is getting to me.”

Perry looked at Gwen and could tell she
wasn’t buying the story. Sarah shrugged off Perry’s grasp and stood
up. “See, I’m fine. I just let myself slip off. I’ve always been
able to go into a deep sleep.” She sat down at the table again as
if nothing had happened. “Did I miss anything?”

“I don’t know,” Gleason admitted. “I was
preoccupied with you.”

“I want you to take a break,” Perry said.
“And I want you to let Gwen have a look at you.”

“No need. I’m fine.”

“I insist,” Perry said. “In fact, I’m
pulling rank. I was coming over here to suggest that you two split
shifts anyway. Now is as good a time as any to start.”