Breakthrough(15)

“What the hell is that?”

Leo shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s not a storm.” He climbed onto one of the snowmobiles. “Let’s take a ride and have a look.”



The Halley camp was over a hundred miles from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station and over a thousand miles from the supply station at McMurdo. With help so far away they kept to a slow pace on the snowmobiles, taking almost an hour to get close enough. It looked like many of the “white outs” seen in the Antarctic but this one was not moving. Instead it seemed to linger in the air for as far as the eye could see.

Side by side, Leo and Gale entered what looked like a white fog and visibility quickly dropped down to a few dozen feet. They slowed the machines even further to a crawl, carefully scanning the ground for any sudden rifts exposed by the storm. They had been to this area many times as their camp was the primary station of study for the ice shelf, but they couldn’t tell exactly where they were.

Leo stopped, raised his darkened glasses and looked up. The sun was completely blocked out which made it harder to see any detail on the white ground. Gale put her snowmobile in neutral and pulled out a hand held GPS unit.

She raised her goggles up over her hood. “We’re still about 5 miles from the first ridge. How much further do you want to go?”

Leo watched the white fog carefully. “I think it’s starting to clear. Don’t know how far out it extends though. Let’s go up a little further and see if it thins out more.”

Gale nodded and put the device back in the pocket of her oversized parka. They continued creeping forward.



After several more minutes, the visibility slowly started to improve and the sun began to make some limited progress getting through. They both watched the ground carefully as they slowly sped up.

“Look out!” Suddenly, Leo stopped his snowmobile with a tight clench of the brakes. His bike quickly started to tilt forward as he stood and pushed himself backward up and over the back of the seat. He landed head first on the snow and barely crawled out of the way before his snowmobile lifted its end into the air and disappeared.

Gale twisted her handlebars tight to avoid hitting him and nearly pitched into a sideways roll. With gritted teeth, she was just able to stay on and avoid following his tracks which abruptly disappeared less than a foot away. “Jesus!”

She jumped off and backed away. Gale and Leo retreated several more steps to assure themselves that they were safe.

“What the hell is that?” He said, slowly stepping forward while Gale unconsciously tugged him backwards.

Leo gradually inched toward the end of his tracks to see how far the drop was. Near the edge he tested the strength of the snow with a few heavy steps. Gale instinctively took his other arm to let him lean forward and peer over the edge. He could see his bike lying on its side below.

“How deep is it?” She asked from behind him reaffirming her grip.

Leo shook his head. “It’s only about 15 feet down. But…this is no hole,” he said waving her forward. “Come here, carefully.”

She took several small steps forward until she was able to look over the edge. She looked to the side where the air continued to clear and began to reveal how far the cliff extended.

“Oh my god.”

“Oh my god is right. This thing goes on for a long way.” He pulled her back away from the edge with him. “What does the GPS say?”

Gale pulled the GPS out and checked their coordinates. She looked at him with a worried look on her face.

“Where are we?” he asked.

She shook her head. Worry was turning to fear. “We’re nowhere near the Shelf.”





9





The front doors of the aquarium were locked and would not be opened again for eight hours. All displays were off and only a few overhead lights lit the long tiled floor. Darkened posters lined the walls, barely legible in the shadows, displaying some of the aquarium’s upcoming events.

With all the lights off in the lab the tiny blinking lights from the servers now gave the room an eerie glow. The hum of the machines was much louder without the white noise from the building’s air conditioning system. In fact, without the servers, there would have been no sound at all.

The colorful data streams continued to dance across the top of the monitor on Lee Kenwood’s desk. The IMIS system never stopped. It continued relentlessly processing the data.

Suddenly all of the lines came together for a single moment, the point of intersection instantly highlighted by a large green circle. A note sounded and letters appeared in the lower left hand corner. Words Translated: 1 - Estimated Accuracy: 77%

As suddenly as they had stopped, the streams began dancing again.