Inside Ice Base Orionon the surface,Colonel O’Dell was playing poker with Vlad Lenin and two other Russians in the mess hall module when their plastic cups of vodka began to shake and the Klaxon sounded.
O’Dell looked at the puzzled Vlad. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the Russians. He darted out of the mess module, Vlad right behind him.
A group of Americans and Russians were already huddled around the main monitor screen inside the command center when O’Dell ran in. The display was blinking SOLAR EVENT.
“That can’t be right,” said O’Dell, stepping into the circle of concerned faces.
A lieutenant called up the computer display for CELSS, the Controlled Environmental Life Support System that kept the crew alive in space and in Antarctica. He located the sensor that was giving the abnormal reading.
“The readings are coming from below, sir,” he said, holding on to the console as the shaking intensified. “The only other explanation I can think of is the SP-100.”
O’Dell cast an involuntary, nervous glance at Vlad, who did not seem to comprehend what the lieutenant had said. The SP-100 was Ice Base Orion’s compact nuclear power plant, a hundred-kilowatt system buried a hundred yards away behind a snow dune.
“My God.” O’Dell took a deep breath. “Dosimeter readings?”
“I’ve got penetration of the outer wardrooms at two hundred seventy rems, sir. I’m recording sixty-five rems here in the command center, with each of the crew absorbing fifteen rems. We’re still below the safety threshold.”
But it was the shaking that was scaring the daylights out of O’Dell and the Russians. “Now what?”
“No choice, sir,” the lieutenant said. “We’ve got to retreat to the doghouse.”
The doghouse was an Earth capture vehicle under the command center and supply tanks, shielded from the SP-100’s high-energy protons by the command center’s aeroshell.
“Get as many of the crew inside as possible,” he ordered.
The American crew quickly obeyed and ditched the command center in orderly fashion. The Russians, however, looked around the empty command center, then dashed in the opposite direction to the outer air lock and their Kharkovchankas.
“Wait!” O’Dell called as he ran after them.
But they had cracked open the inner and outer doors and escaped by the time he reached the air lock. A blast of snow slapped O’Dell’s face as he grabbed a freezer suit, goggles, and gloves from the nearest storage compartment and ran outside.
The Russians were starting up their Kharkovchankas. O’Dell raced toward the row of Hagglunds transports and grabbed the door of the nearest forward cab.
“Where the hell do they think they’re going?” he said out loud, intending to hail them from the Hagglunds. The last thing he needed was Yeats or Kovich or the U.N. blaming him for more Russian deaths.
He was about to scramble aboard his Hagglunds when he felt a jolt. He looked down as a crack in the ice shot past his feet. His mouth opened in horror, and then he felt something sharp clamp down on his glove. It was Nimrod, Yeats’s dog, frantically pulling him with his teeth.
“Get out of here!” he yelled as he opened the door, but Nimrod jumped into the cab.
O’Dell heard what sounded like a series of thunderous explosions and looked back to see the base break away like an iceberg. Then he felt a rumble and watched in horror as the ice beneath him began to spiderweb.
The ice was melting!
He jumped into the cab with Nimrod. As soon as he closed the door, the Hagglunds lurched forward and back. Cracks radiated out on the ice below. My life is over, he thought, when the fiberglass cab dropped into the swirling, freezing water and was washed away. Then, feeling the transport bob up and down, he nearly choked with elation. “Goddamn, it does float!” he screamed to Nimrod, who was leaping from seat to seat in a frenzy.
The Russian Kharkovchankas, however, were dropping like stones beneath the bubbling surface of the icy waters.
O’Dell frantically switched on the windshield wipers. As the sheets of water were temporarily whisked away, he glimpsed a churning landscape. There was no Ice Base Orion, only what looked like a mushroom cloud forming in the air. For a wild moment he thought the reactor had blown, but the SP-100 didn’t possess the destructive power he was witnessing.
Another shock wave sent his head to the floor beneath the dashboard. He heard his skull crack against something sharp as the cab spun wildly away, Nimrod barking incessantly.
20
The rumbling inside P4’s obelisk chamber grew so loud that Serena could barely hear herself shouting at Conrad, who stood frozen like a statue, the Scepter of Osiris tightly gripped in his hand.
“Put it back!” she screamed.
Conrad stepped toward the altar when suddenly the floor beneath his feet split open and a blazing pillar of fire shot up and turned Colonel Kovich into embers.
Conrad leapt back from the gaping hole as the altar disappeared down a fiery shaft. What was left of the Russian exploded in a cloud of dust. The obelisk fell to the floor.
Serena reached down to grab it but lunged too far and teetered over the edge. For a horrific few seconds she hovered above the hell hole and could feel its searing heat burning her cheeks. Then Conrad, coming up from behind, yanked her back from the brink.
For a moment she was safe in his arms, looking up into his concerned eyes with gratitude. But before she could catch her breath a shock wave rocked the chamber and threw them off their feet. The obelisk slid across the floor.
“The scepter!” she shouted.
Yeats dashed to retrieve it. But as the vibrations grew more violent, his right leg gave way, and he tumbled back into the floor shaft. He managed to catch the ledge at the last second. Serena could see his fingers sticking up above the shaft, clawing at the stone floor.
Conrad picked up the obelisk from the floor and grabbed Serena. “See if you can reach him!”
With Conrad firmly clasping her hand, she peered over the edge of the shaft and was surprised to see Yeats swinging above the infernal abyss.
She knew she didn’t have the strength to pull him up, but she shouted to Conrad, “I think I can give him a tug and he can climb out himself.”
She stretched out her hand when another jolt hit, sending Leonid’s corpse sliding into the shaft. The corpse struck Yeats on the way down. Yeats’s fingers disappeared and Serena heard Conrad cry out.
“Dad!” Conrad shouted.
Then she felt Conrad pulling her away so he could look down into the shaft. He stood there, paralyzed, trying to comprehend that his father was really gone.
Serena looked around the chamber as everything shook. She didn’t want to leave. But she didn’t want to stay behind and melt either. So she put her hand on Conrad’s shoulder and said, “There’s no time to mourn for those we’re about to follow.”
Her words were enough to bring Conrad back.
“This chamber is going to turn into a furnace in a few seconds,” he said, picking up the pack Yeats had left behind and slinging it over his shoulder. “Back to the gallery!”
They ran to the outer corridor. The rumbling wasn’t so loud here, she thought, following Conrad down the long tunnel. But when they emerged into the Great Gallery, Conrad stopped and looked up.
“Now might be a good time for you to say a brief prayer,” he said.
“Conrad, what’s happening?”
