Vostok Page 9

  Ben surfaced the sub so that we could take a look. The berg was a plateau of ice as big as three aircraft carriers, its waterline ringed by a turquoise lagoon, an effect created by its submerged alabaster mass. A twenty-foot ledge, forged by lapping waves, hung over the surface.

  The face of the berg was mesmerizing—a two-hundred-foot-high curl that resembled a tidal wave frozen in time. Dark blue ice rose from the sea to form its textured vortex, melding into glistening clear ice capped by its snow-covered lip.

  Antarctic clear ice was the oldest ice on the continent, its presence on the tabular berg tracing back to the glacier that calved it into Prydz Bay. Over eons, tons of snowfall had accumulated and had been compressed on the glacier. Air bubbles trapped in the ice were squeezed out, rendering the ice as clear as crystal and as old as half a million years.

  The blue ice was a phenomenon associated with melting and re-freezing, a process that forced out trapped air, allowing the blue color in the visible light spectrum to pass through while blocking the red color.

  Circling the tabular berg, we came upon a third color: green.

  As glaciers cross the Antarctic continent, their roots crush and absorb minerals from the underlying bedrock. When the ice melts, phytoplankton feeds off the minerals and grows. In turn, krill feed on the phytoplankton, and penguins, seals, and whales feed on the krill.

  The Antarctic food chain would not exist without its glaciers.

  Hours later, we came across the top of that food chain.

  We had been following a pair of minke whales. Thirty feet long, these ten-ton baleen mini-giants were less than half the girth of their rorqual cousins, the humpback and fin whales, and were quite plentiful in Antarctic waters. Ben was keeping us within visual distance of their white underbellies when a dozen blips suddenly popped onto my sonar screen.

  Orca.

  The wolves of the sea circled the minkes, separating the smaller female from its mate. Two big male orcas remained on the periphery, breaching high in the air to flop hard onto the surface as if to mark the kill zone.

  The assaults were carried out by the juvenile killers and a few of the adult females. Over the next forty minutes, we watched from one hundred and seventy feet below the blood-drenched surface as the remaining minke fought to breathe—until one of the big bulls landed on its back in an attempt to drown it.

  I turned in my seat and jumped, confronted by a black-and-white monster whose emerging presence occupied the entire starboard side of the acrylic glass. The bull killer whale stared at me as if we were a threat to its pod’s dinner.

  The sea became alive with squeals and clicks as the pack’s males echolocated us. A nerve-racking game of cat-and-mouse ensued as the two six-ton predators bumped and prodded the Barracuda with their snouts until we vacated the area.

  Dusk came quickly, offering us an opportunity to practice piloting in the dark. Ben engaged the exterior lights while I used the sub’s sonar to guide us west through the shallows of Prydz Bay.

  Four hours and twenty minutes after we had tumbled into the sea, the Barracuda leaped out of the water and slid onto the ice. Physically exhausted, Ben and I climbed out of the submersible and into the back of an awaiting snow vehicle while our underwater vessel was loaded onto its trailer.

  We continued this training regimen over the next week, alternating our roles until I became a competent pilot. During this time, True occupied his days “recouping” in the company of a Swedish weather technician named Jennie Backman. I was thankful for her distraction.

  Then on day eight, we received a radio communiqué from Vostok Dome, and everything changed.

  8

  Vostok, East Antarctica

  Earplugs, bench seating with webbed backs, tiny windows, and a ride that induced hemorrhoids, we were back onboard another C-130 transport, this time bound for our final destination—a minus-forty-degree desert of ice located a thousand miles to the southeast of Prydz Bay.

  Vostok. After six months of head games and fears, I was finally on my way. And I was truly excited. Perhaps it was the past week of training with Ben, but my attitude and confidence level had changed. The simple truth was that Vostok really was the holy grail of science, an unexplored frontier that could potentially reveal how life came to be on Earth. For whatever reason, Ben and I had been chosen among thousands of explorers to be its Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and my ego was running wild.

  The call from Ming Liao had upped the ante. Something had happened on the first Valkyrie drone launch, an unexpected find. Ming refused to provide any details other than to say that she wanted her two pilots on site immediately.

  True was brooding. He had not wanted to leave his new lover. Conversely, I hadn’t thought about my family since arriving at Davis. Part of it was the mental and physical demands of learning how to pilot the submersible; part of it was my own acceptance of the mission.

  The gray-haired Russian scientist seated across from True and me had been staring at my face ever since we had taken off. Twenty minutes into the flight, he leaned toward me and shouted over the engine noise, “You are Wallace, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mikhail Kopilevich, geologist. This will be your first time at Vostok?”

  “Yes. What about you?”

  He snorted. “Eighteen summers on top of four winters. My first trip from Mirny Station was in winter on supply tractor. It took us entire week to travel thirteen hundred kilometers in minus twenty-five degrees Celsius. You know what is minus twenty-five degrees Celsius?”

  “About minus seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit.” I leaned in. “How do you Russian scientists handle such extreme cold?”

  He winked. “We know survival secrets.”

  “Anything you’d care to share?”

  “First, you share something with me. Why does Chinese woman exclude my country from this new field operation? Without Russian Antarctic Expedition there is no Vostok Station. There is no discovery of lake.”

  “From what I understand, the coalition scientists involved in this new research station were afraid your team was not adhering to strict contamination protocols. You used Freon and kerosene to lubricate your borehole. Some of these chemicals tainted the bore samples and could have breached the lake.”

  The geologist snapped. “We stopped borehole before we reached lake! Vostok is under tremendous pressure. On breakthrough, water will rush up borehole, freeze, and seal chemical fluids.”

  “It’s not my expedition, Dr. Kopilevich. I’m simply an invited guest.”

  “I think you are more than invited guest, Dr. Wallace. You should know new equipment is developed by St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute to ensure lake remains uncontaminated upon intrusion. Visit our station; I will give you personal tour.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Consider this gift from new friend.” The Russian reached into his bag and removed a thirty-ounce tub of butter. “When Vostok weather becomes too cold, eat fistful of butter. It will make you warm inside.”

  Standing on an ice runway two hours later, I seriously contemplated scooping a mittenful of butter into my mouth.

  Vostok greeted us with a punishing forty-mile-an-hour katabatic wind that dropped minus thirty-eight into another realm of cold. It abused our carefully planned layers of Extreme Cold Weather gear and seeped into our bones. It formed snotsicles on my upper lip and pelted my tinted goggles with shards of snow.

  Dragging our duffle bags, we waddled like penguins to an awaiting bright red truck as our team of Chinese technicians loaded the crate containing the Barracuda onto a sled.

  The Hägglund was a Swedish snow vehicle with cab space for eight passengers and a trailing sled that could tow up to two tons. Powered by a Mercedes turbo diesel engine, the truck rode on four rubber tracks and a loose suspension system that gave us a nauseating herky-jerky ride, made worse by its twelve-mile-an-hour maximum speed.

  Forty torturous minutes later, we arrived at the dome.

  T
he structure that housed the expedition was a three-story-high, three-hundred-fifty-foot-in-diameter geodesic dome, its gold-painted roof composed of an array of trianglular panels that were far more stable than the standard rectangular-cut structures. Highly resistant to snow, ice, and wind, the dome needed no internal columns or interior load-bearing walls, and required less power to heat than box architectural designs. Erected using prefabricated components, it could be disassembled if need be and moved quickly, which was a major consideration when taking into account the fact that Vostok’s waters were spread out over 6,060 square miles. Different sections of the lake could produce vastly different discoveries—and life-forms.

  Finding life in Vostok depended on two major issues. The first dealt with how the lake had formed. Was it simply a basin that had filled with meltwater fifteen million years ago, or had it been a flourishing natural lake that rapidly froze over during Antarctica’s last major climate change? Geologists examining satellite photos generally agreed that Vostok’s shape and location rendered it a natural rift lake, formed thirty million years ago when tectonic forces had split open to forge a long, narrow water basin. Surrounded by the East Antarctic highlands, Vostok’s surface waters would have frozen over quickly when temperatures dropped, potentially entrapping its aquatic life-forms.

  This led to one of the key questions our expedition had been organized to answer: had complex life-forms survived?

  Most species found on Earth rely on food sources dependent on photosynthesis, the process by which plants make energy from sunlight. Vostok’s waters were isolated in darkness, and yet in both the deep ocean and certain rift lakes, unique ecosystems had evolved based on a process by which certain microbes created energy through a chemical reaction called chemosynthesis. The process began when geothermal vents released superheated chemical-laced waters rich in hydrogen sulfide into the lake or sea. Chemosynthetic microbes spawn microbial mats, which in turn feed plants and grazers such as snails, limpets, and scaleworms. Fish consume the grazers, predators eat the fish, and suddenly you have the foundation of an entire ecosystem devoid of sunlight.

  Our truck parked before the main entrance of the dome—a prefabricated aluminum structure that served as a weather room. Grabbing our gear, we braved the wind for another twenty strides and hurried inside, our boots tracking snow onto the rubber mats.

  A sign was posted in English, Chinese, German, and French:

  All Personnel must DEGOMBLE before entering dome.

  Ben translated. “They want us to brush off the powdered snow.”

  True took the opportunity to slap the back of my headgear clean of debris. “Wouldn’t want ye tae mess up the dome, Dr. Wallace.”

  “True, if you’re that unhappy being here, then just go home. Or catch the return flight back to Davis and carry on with the Swede. I really don’t need a 260-pound babysitter with an attitude.”

  The big fella thought for a minute, then grinned. “Nah, I’ll stay. Maybe Dr. Liao needs tae be degombled, ye think?”

  “By you?” Ben blurted a sarcastic half-laugh. “Pal, she’s so far out of your league you can’t even see the playing field.”

  “A hundred dollars against your thousand says we bed together at least once before the mission is through.”

  “Done!” Ben shook True’s hand. “I’ll say this for you Highlanders—you aren’t afraid to go down swinging.”

  “And I say him that’s born to be hanged will never be drowned.”

  Having degombled, we entered the dome.

  The temperature inside was a balmy thirty degrees, the air warmed by portable blowers, the ice covered by plywood sheets. Mobile lights pointed up at the domed ceiling, cabled to power generators that lined the periphery.

  Ming had organized the facility into quadrants. Accommodations for her crew and the dozens of participating scientists were relegated to Tent City, an assortment of colorful nylon tents clustered by nationality. The smallest were single crawl-ins; the largest were six-person walk-ins with extended porches and multiple storage areas.

  A mess station was set up next to the living areas. Crates held frozen microwavable meals, and coffee and hot beverages were available around-the-clock, provided one supplied his own mug and utensils. Folding tables and chairs accommodated diners and poker players. A row of port-a-potties lined the dome wall next to a supply trailer and first-aid tent.

  The last two areas were devoted to science. Mission Control consisted of two long rows of folding tables that held three computer stations, a rack of video monitors, and a half-dozen crates on skis supporting the generators that supplied power to the Valkyrie units. An Army tent erected behind the command post doubled as a meeting area and Ming’s sleeping quarters.

  The last quadrant was almost completely occupied by a portable lab contained in an inflatable Level-3 containment bubble.

  These four sections, each of which occupied about half an acre, surrounded a much larger central work area of exposed ice cordoned off by neon-orange fencing. Towering two stories above this site stood a gantry designed to hold our submersible.

  Ben pointed to the chaos of twisted steel. “The Barracuda will be suspended nose-down for our launch. About a mile into our descent they’ll begin pumping water into the hole to re-seal it behind us. We can’t enter the lake until the hole is frozen over, otherwise the pressure will blast us back into the dome like Old Faithful.”

  I turned to see Ming exit the Army tent. She was wearing an orange fur-lined parka, jeans, and white “bunny boots” insulated with wool felt. Seeing us, she waved, a smile stretching across her tanned face as she approached.

  Ben and I received bear hugs, True a nod. “Isn’t this exciting? There’s a briefing scheduled in my tent in one hour. Are you hungry? Let me call my assistant. She’ll show you to your tents, and you can get something to eat before the meeting.”

  Using her walkie-talkie, she summoned a brown-eyed, blonde-haired American woman in her mid-twenties, sporting a track star’s physique and a sorority girl smile. And just like that, True’s attitude changed. “Gentlemen, this is my research assistant, Susan McWhite. Susan, this is Dr. Zachary Wallace, Captain Ben Hintzmann, and … ”

  “Finlay MacDonald. But the ladies all call me True because the rumors, well, they’re all true.”

  Susan blushed as True kissed the back of her glove. “You’re a feisty one.”

  “And a man who loves a good wager,” added Ben.

  “Susan, please show our guests to their tents. Make sure Dr. Wallace and Captain Hintzmann get something to eat before they join the briefing; we could be a while.”

  “Yes, Zachary. You and Captain Hintzmann go on without me.” True winked. “Dr. Liao and I have a lot of catching up tae do.”

  “Mr. MacDonald, every person on this base has two jobs, yet you don’t seem to have any. Susan, would you assign Mr. MacDonald to a task that fits his particular skill set?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Let’s see, sheepherding is out … ”

  True grinned. “This one’s a pistol. I may have tae marry ye. But no worries, Ming, darlin’, ours will be an open marriage.”

  Susan led us to three double-occupancy nylon tents set up in the English-speaking section of Tent City. “These three are yours. Inside you’ll find sleeping bags, pillows, extra blankets, coffee mugs, and eating utensils. We’re under strict water rations, so safeguard your silverware. Anything else you need,” she glared at True, “any supplies, just see me.”

  We stowed our gear, then followed Susan to the dining area.

  She hung back to speak with me. “Ming didn’t mention it, but I’m a marine biologist specializing in cetaceans. I know you invented an acoustic lure for a giant squid. Did you ever think about creating something similar for humpback and gray whales?”

  “Actually, I’m more interested in intra-species communication, especially among orca. Last week while we were training, Ben and I witnessed a pod of orca attack and kill two minke whales. The coordination of t
he hunt was incredibly efficient.

  “But now let me ask you something, Susan. As a cetacean expert, do you accept Darwin’s theory that whales used to be land mammals? I believe in the first edition of his Origin of Species he claims the ancestors of whales were a race of bears, though the accepted natural-selection species is now a wolf-like carnivore called a Mesonyx.”

  “Honestly, Dr. Wallace, I’ve always disagreed with Darwin on this one. The first whales appeared about fifty million years ago. By most accounts there would have been tens of thousands if not millions of whales in the sea. That adds up to a mass exodus of a land species to a radically different environment. What would have caused it? And how do Darwin’s theories regarding natural selection account for the incredible adaptations and mutations needed to change a relatively small land animal into a fifty- to one-hundred-ton leviathan able to swim deep in the ocean? The skeletal and physiological changes alone are collectively beyond reason, and yet we’re expected to believe these evolutionary changes happened in only five to ten million years? Ridiculous.”

  “For the record, Susan, I agree. But I’d still like to hear your explanation.”

  “It’s simple really. The ancestors of modern whales were prehistoric fish. Take Leedsichthys. Here was an eighty-foot prehistoric gill-breather with massive pectoral fins. Subtract the gills and add lungs and a blowhole and you have a humpback whale. Whale sharks siphon krill in a similar manner to baleen whales; orcas possess jaws similar to most sharks. Other than the manner in which the species breathe, the differences are subtle. Yes, the tail movements are different, but the horizontal movements of a fluke are an adaptation conducive to breathing above the surface. Which is easier to accept: that a Leeds fish could lose its gills and evolve a blowhole and lungs or that a four-legged wolf-like creature could shed its fur, alter its entire physiology, and increase its size a hundred fold to become a whale?”