Ice Reich, page 15
"It didn't kill everyone."
Her head jerked up. Hart felt he could hardly breathe.
"It didn't kill everyone," he repeated. He clumsily stepped out from the storage locker. She whirled.
"You!"
"We found a diary and— " He lifted a hand toward her.
Instantly, her anger fastened on him. "My God! How long have you been standing there? How dare you— "
"Greta, please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I came to the lab to share this news but you weren't here and then I heard footsteps and, and…" It sounded lame, he knew.
Her face was shiny with tears. "What did you hear? How long were you there?"
He shrugged.
"You heard everything, didn't you?"
"Yes, but I wasn't trying— "
"Get out, leave here now!"
"Two survived the disease— "
"Get out, get out, get out! God, I hate both of you so much!"
He backed to the door, cringing from her rage, and then shut it behind him, leaning against it, his eyes closed.
Inside, he heard her wail. "God, how I wish I could get off this cursed ship!"
* * *
Hart couldn't sleep, his mind a tumult of emotions. Always a disaster, every time he went near her. Would she tell Drexler? He'd be lucky they didn't throw him overboard as a damned spy. Lord, he was tired…
Then there was a thump and he found himself stunned. He realized he'd slept finally, and not just slept but descended into the drugged sleep of the exhausted. Now he had rolled out of his bunk. The deck was sharply canted and bright polar sunlight poured through his porthole. "What the hell?" Were they sinking again?
The pilot became aware of loud banging and clanging but realized groggily that it was the noise of purpose, not confusion. There was a deeper rumble of pumps. He looked at his watch. It was early afternoon; he'd slept a long time. Groaning, he stood unsteadily against the tilt, feeling gritty. The Norwegian diary had skittered across the floor and he picked it up and inserted it under his mattress, then dressed clumsily and made his way to the top deck.
The Schwabenland was moored against the half-sunken Bergen, sailors swarming over both. Cables from the higher German ship had been strung to winches on the Norwegian one. Some of the German cargo had been temporarily unloaded onto the Bergen's deck and more— the numbered crates that had puzzled him— were being ferried ashore. Selective flooding of compartments and winching had tilted the Schwabenland far enough to port to allow the breach in the hull to clear the water. Lifeboats had been tied alongside the long gash and sailors were beating, cutting, and riveting metal. At the raised bow of the Norwegian ship a section of plating was being cut away with a shower of sparks. Ropes had been strung to bar entry to the interior of the Norwegian whaler but even so, the sailors wore precautionary gauze masks. Heiden was stalking this way and that, closely observing and issuing orders.
Hart looked for Fritz and didn't spot him. He approached Heiden.
"Why are supplies going ashore? Are we staying?"
"No," Heiden replied. "Jürgen's idea. A cache for next year."
So the Germans planned to return. "Have you seen Fritz?"
The captain shook his head. "No. If you do, tell the lazy bastard to get to work."
"Do you know when we can leave?"
"When my ship is repaired." The tone was impatient and short.
The pilot backed off and went to the stern, looking morosely out across the cold lagoon. Once more, Antarctica had proved a disaster. Drexler despised him, despite their successful flight together. Greta apparently hated him. The clash with the whalers had probably eliminated any chance of cheerful publicity. Fritz had disappeared. He felt utterly alone.
And then she was at his elbow, the hood of her parka down, her red hair stealing softly across his shoulder as she leaned on the railing. He started, it was so sudden.
"Who survived?"
Her question was clinical, betraying nothing. She looked at him flatly. "Well? Who survived, Owen?"
"Two of the sailors," he half stammered. "The Norwegian whalers. They lived, and took a lifeboat, and sailed out of the lagoon. I doubt they finally made it."
She nodded, absorbing this. "How?"
"I don't know. They didn't know. They were exploring a cave, and they came out, and then the disease hit except that they didn't get it…"
"A cave? What cave?"
"The one Fritz and I found. I mentioned it last evening at the meeting. There, you can see it from here." He pointed across the caldera to the crater wall.
She followed his arm, then looked back again. Her tone was still peculiarly detached, as if she'd used up all her emotions the night before. "What was in the cave?"
"I don't know. They didn't say. We didn't explore. There's a hot spring and a sulfur smell— I think it's an old lava tube— and that's all I know. I thought you might know. That's why I came to your lab."
She thought a long time about this. "Do you know what the temperature of this harbor is?"
"No."
"One point eight degrees centigrade. Comfortably above freezing. Peculiar, no?"
"Is it?"
"The ocean outside the crater is below the freshwater freezing point; only salt and pressure prevent it from turning solid. But in here the water is warmer. There's no ice and the crater slopes have little snow: this is a warm place, yes?"
"It's a volcano, Greta."
She nodded. "Exactly. Alive with heat and energy." She looked across the water, studying the cave. "I remember you spent part of your childhood spelunking. Correct?"
He grinned uncertainly. "The best years of my life."
"Owen, I want a cure."
"A what?"
"An antidote to whatever killed the Norwegians. Do you think it could lie inside that cave?"
"That's what I came to ask you. Last night, I mean. I… I'm sorry I listened."
"You should be sorry." She smiled sadly. "Do you know why I don't always like you, Owen?"
He didn't answer.
"Because you always seem to know a little too much about me. Just like Jürgen."
He didn't know how to respond.
"Well, I have reproduced a microbe, and now I want a way to kill it. As a safety valve. As a way to retain control over whatever you crazy men try to do next. And I'm intrigued by this cave. Will you take me there?"
"Me? I thought you were angry."
"I am angry. But I'm also calm. I can't afford the luxury of my anger."
"So is this for Jürgen? Or for Germany?"
"You won't help me?"
"I didn't say that."
She bit her lip. "It's for science."
"Ah. Like this voyage."
"And for me."
He bowed his head in acknowledgment. "Then I'll do it."
"And for us."
"Which us?"
She didn't reply.
"You want to go now?"
She shook her head. "Tonight. When Jürgen can't see. He'd never let me go with you."
"We'll be looking for a cure?"
"We'll be looking for something to make all this madness worthwhile."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"It looks dark."
"It's a cave, Greta."
They were standing by the spring. The brief night of late Antarctic summer was ending and the dome of brilliant stars above the crater rim was fading into a ceiling of faint blue. Across the dark caldera the lights of the Schwabenland illuminated its embrace with the crippled Bergen.
Up to this point, Greta had been bold and assertive: collecting exploration gear from hanging lockers, commandeering a row ashore from the night watch on the vague pretext of inspecting the ashes of the pyre, and shouldering a pack for the hike along the beach. She'd said little, determined to get away from the ship while the other officers were still asleep. Now that she and Owen were facing the mouth of the lava tube with its scent of sulfur, he could hear a note of hesitation in her voice. Going underground did that to people. Hell was imagined deep within the earth.
"Thousands of years ago people used caves for shelter," Hart said, trying to be reassuring. "And we'll have plenty of light." He snapped on a flashlight and led the way to where he and Fritz had unearthed the diary. Then a gas lantern was pumped and lit. They blinked in the glow, reassured by its steady hiss. "We'll go slowly. You pick the direction and I'll try to find the way." He gestured to the lengths of bright cloth hanging from his belt. "We'll tie a survey ribbon at every turn and junction. Like Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs."
She smiled at that memory. "All right." He knew that despite her natural uneasiness she'd made up her mind to go in. Just like Drexler, he admitted. Another German who doesn't back off.
Unlike a limestone cavern there was nothing colorful about this volcanic one. The tube was like entering the encrusted circulatory system of a smoldering heart. The basalt was a dull black-red and there were no stalactites. In a few places water dripped.
For the first hundred yards the entry tunnel was fairly level and broad. A few openings branched out to tempt a detour but Hart's flashlight revealed that they ended quickly in collapses of rock. Slabs of basalt had also fallen off the ceiling of the central tunnel, periodically forcing the pair to squeeze around them. The pilot didn't reveal his uneasiness at the possibility of a cave-in but wondered how often eruptions or earthquakes occurred. Giving some reassurance was the occasional boot print. The Norwegians had come this way and nothing had disturbed their mark in the year since.
The tube dead-ended at a chimney, or at least that's what it seemed like to Hart. A large vertical tunnel hundreds of feet high and deep led upward and down into the mountain. He shined his light to where the beam was lost in the gloom, the fissure giving him a slight sense of vertigo.
"Here we are at the elevator shaft," Greta murmured, studying the cleft. "Where's a button to push?"
"This must have been a major lava corridor when the volcano was erupting." When Hart pointed the light downward it illuminated some boulders choking the shaft, dark openings indicating a way around them. There was a welter of boot prints on the shelf. "The Norwegians were as uncertain as we are, Fräulein Biologist. Which way should we go?"
She glanced around, thinking. Greta still had a remote, distracted air of cool professionalism. It was the first time Hart had spent this much time alone with her and yet she wasn't focused on him at all. He accepted this philosophically. He realized that for the moment he was a means to an end, a way to reassert her independence from Jürgen Drexler. Still, he was here and Drexler wasn't. He smiled at the thought of the German's reaction in the morning when the night watch reported the pair had gone ashore together and not come back.
Greta knelt, peering over the edge. "Down, I think. If you can get us back up."
He nodded. "We'll leave one of the lines tied here. I don't know how far these tubes go but most shouldn't be this steep. I hope."
"I want to go down because the waters from that hot spring must ultimately come from deeper in the mountain where the source of heat is. Life needs energy and heat, yes? So I think we should descend."
"Maybe the antidote, if there is one, isn't biological," Hart reasoned. "Could it be something chemical? Minerals in the water?"
"I don't think so. If the bacteria are indigenous to this island they should have adapted over the eons to the local chemistry. Yet who knows? Maybe these two sailors simply missed the initial infection, or had a natural immunity, or didn't develop symptoms until they escaped by boat. This may be a hopeless quest. But what I'm looking for are two forms of life in uneasy coexistence: the disease bacteria, and something toxic to it, evolved in self-defense. A biological stalemate, if you will. Something that can keep that terrible plague in check."
"You're the scientist. Down it is."
He tied a line on an outcropping of rock and let it uncoil into the darkness. Another line, doubled, lowered their packs. "I'm not really a climber, or even much of an amateur cave rat, but I know enough to go slow," he advised. "Move only one hand, or one foot, at a time. And don't hug the rock, it makes your foot want to slip off its hold. Lean out a bit so your body is vertical." He tipped his hand to show her.
"All right." She looked uncertain but determined. "After you."
He went first, guiding her progress with the flashlight. In truth, Hart admitted, she was as good at the descent as he was: not as strong, perhaps, but balanced, lithe. If she was afraid she didn't show it. They climbed down a hundred feet to a point where a boulder had jammed in the tube. She arrived breathless but elated. "Goodness!" She laughed. "I know I can go down, but can I get back up?"
"The way you're going, you'll be carrying me." He led the way down again.
There was a squeeze around the boulder, then a drop of another twenty feet. From there the tube descended at more of an angle, its floor jumbled rock. It was slow, rugged going. The cave continued to warm as they explored deeper and soon they shed all but trousers and shirts. The bitter chill of Antarctica seemed far away.
The floor smoothed but the ceiling continued to get lower. Suddenly Hart paused. He'd felt a tremor. From somewhere there was the distant echo of falling or shifting rock, like the groan of something disturbed.
"What was that?" Her elation had disappeared.
"Earthquake, I think. A small one."
"My God."
"This is dangerous, Greta. I have to warn you of that. We're in a volcano, after all. Do you want to go back?"
There was a silence as she considered. "No. I have to know."
"All right."
He led on. Soon they were stooping, then on all fours. Finally it narrowed ahead to a belly-crawl. "Owen, are we going the right way?"
"I don't know. Wait here." Hart crept ahead, then came back. "I hear water."
"But are we at an end?"
"Not necessarily. There were tight places in the caves in Montana, and then you'd squeeze through and find a big room. Maybe this will be the same. But we can also squeeze and get stuck, or, if we're not careful, pop through to another elevator shaft. So I'm going to tie a rope around my waist and you're going to play out the line— I'll show you how— while I explore with the flashlight. Can you do that?"
"Of course."
He wriggled forward as the ceiling pressed down. His beam of light continued to be lost in the dark vacuum ahead, an encouraging sign. The rough rock began scraping on his pack and so he shrugged that off, leaving it for a moment. A final tight spot… and then his arms and head were jutting into empty space and he could hear the sound of a river echoing off rock walls. He shone the light around. He had found a grotto. The beam danced on flowing water.
"Owen, what do you see?" Her call seemed faint behind him.
"Maybe what we're looking for!"
He climbed out of the tunnel and dragged out his pack, lowering it to the floor below. On his instructions Greta doused her lantern and shoved her gear ahead as he slowly reeled in the rope.
Her head poked through and he grasped her under the arms and pulled. She slithered out and instinctively grasped him as she landed and he held her a moment longer than he needed to, his face in her hair, imagining he could feel the rush of her heart. Then she gently pulled away. "I think we should light the lantern," she said.
* * *
The grotto was a rock chamber about two hundred feet long and thirty feet high. It was split by a stream that emerged from a different dark opening and disappeared down a chute at the far end. A jumble of boulders occupied most of the floor but the water had deposited a sandy bar in the middle, dry and soft. A hot spring bubbled nearby and its water joined the main flow. The cave was pleasantly warm. Rocks near the spring radiated like heaters.
"We should eat," Greta said. "I'm famished."
They sat in the lantern's pool of light. Each had brought a blanket in case their stay became extended and they unfolded these now on the sand. There were tins of ham and cheese and a rich brown bread from the Schwabenland's ovens. Owen pulled out a bottle of wine. "I liberated this from Heiden's stock in the galley," he confessed.
She smiled. "It's cozy here. Warm. Almost like a little restaurant. I'm getting used to the dark."
"And do you think we're near what we're looking for?"
"I don't know. I'll look at the water after I eat. It's so strange being down here: they didn't teach us about caves at the university. I have no idea what to expect." She took a swig of the wine; there were no glasses. She used her fingers to dab at the corner of her mouth.
The biologist sat then looking at the sand, lost in thought. She's so pretty, Hart mused, admiring the facial sculpture of highlight and shadow in the gaslight. Some hair had come loose from where she'd bound it in a ponytail and it trailed across her cheeks. So alluring, yet so remote. What drove her to risk penetrating this dark hole?
"Greta," he said, "why are we here?"
"What? To explore— to search for an antidote, of course."
"Yes, but why the sudden urgency? And why the turnabout? You didn't seem to mind making the lab cultures at first. Not at the meeting. But then something happened with Schmidt. Last night you talked about spores. Why are they so important?"
"Oh. Him." She shook her head as if dismissing her other thoughts and took a bite of bread. "Everything has happened very fast, Owen. The Norwegians. The iceberg. This island. The Bergen. It made sense to me to try to find out what happened to those poor men, if for no other reason than to protect ourselves. That's why I agreed to do the cultures. But Schmidt was ahead of me, I think. And Jürgen. They wanted to understand where a disease came from in such a sterile environment. And so he searched the lungs and respiratory tracts for spore coats."
"Which are…?"
"A casing. A bit like a seed coat or an eggshell. Some microbes develop them when displaced from their preferred environment. They're like a cocoon and the organism is in stasis within, waiting for favorable conditions when it can break out and multiply. Schmidt thinks this could explain the infection. The spores were on the island from an unknown source. Somehow the Norwegians got into them and breathed some in. The body's enzymes cracked them open, like a Trojan horse, and they began doubling every twenty to thirty minutes: first two, then four, then eight— in a single day you can have billions. People begin coughing and sneezing. Finally the muscles seize, the nerves burn like fire, the organs dissolve… and you're dead."
