Fast Ice Read online

  As the hatch slid back, frigid air poured into the stuffy cockpit, freshening it and making both men feel more alert. Jurgenson inhaled deeply and then pulled himself up, climbing through the hatch out onto the spine of his aircraft.

  Behind him lay the Dornier’s engine pod with its two inline propellers. They had come to a halt, but he could hear the hot metal parts of the engine pinging and creaking as the cold air circulated through.

  Down on the side of the fuselage, a door opened. Lieutenant Schmidt and two others climbed out onto the stubby lower wing, called a sponson. This secondary airfoil had been incorporated into the flying boat’s design to help with stability when the craft sat on the water, but it also made a perfect ledge to stand on when entering or leaving the plane.

  Perched there, Lieutenant Schmidt fired a harpoon into the ice. A rope connected to it spooled out. Schmidt and the two crewmen pulled hard on the rope, generating just enough manpower to drag the aircraft up against the shoreline.

  With the plane moored, Lieutenant Schmidt placed a long wooden board across the gap leading from the aircraft to the ice. “How much time do we have, Captain?”

  Jurgenson read the temperature. Fifteen degrees below zero. Yet with the sunlight and the lack of wind, it felt quite pleasant. It reminded Jurgenson of a day he’d spent in the Alps, skiing in the morning and sitting outside at a picnic table in the afternoon drinking good Bavarian beer.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “No longer.”

  The time limit wasn’t for the crew—they would be fine—it was to prevent the pistons from cooling too much, which would make it harder to vaporize fuel in the pistons and, thus, harder to restart the engines.

  He leaned back into the cockpit. “Keep an eye on the oil temperature. If it gets low, start the engines. I’m going ashore.”

  The copilot saluted and Jurgenson left him, walking along the top of the aircraft. After ducking past the propeller and underneath the wing, he hopped down onto the sponson. From there, he crossed the wooden plank to the shore.

  Stepping on the solid ground, he found the snow to be packed and firm with only a thin layer of powder over the top. Walking away from the plane, he marveled at the near silence. He heard only the sound of his own breathing and the snow crunching and squeaking beneath his boots.

  The landscape around him was vast, quiet and utterly stunning. The air itself was so cold it held no moisture. And though his breath seemed to freeze in his nostrils, he saw no sign of vapor when he exhaled. He found the white of the snowfield blinding, but in the distance he spied several peaks devoid of snow that looked to be dark volcanic rock. Glancing upward, he marveled at a sky that was the bluest he’d ever seen.

  He walked slowly, taking it all in. He couldn’t be sure, but he guessed he was standing farther south than any German in history. That had to count for something. He passed Lieutenant Schmidt, hammering his metal arrows into the ice, careful to ensure that the swastikas were prominently displayed.

  Next came the obligatory photograph. As Schmidt unfurled a Nazi flag, another crewman set up a camera. They gestured to the captain, urging him to join them.

  Jurgenson walked over and posed for the photo, standing lackadaisically. He kept his arms at his side as Lieutenant Schmidt and the others stuck out their arms and hands in the salute.

  Official functions completed, the captain walked farther down the narrow stretch of ice, arriving beside one of the scientists who crouched at the edge of the lake.

  The man was taking samples, casting a large glass bottle into the water, allowing it to sink and fill, before drawing it back to him with a length of twine.

  “What do you think?” Jurgenson asked, crouching beside him. “Volcanic?”

  “Ja,” the scientist said. “With great certainty. You can smell the sulfur from here. This lake is definitely being heated by geothermal forces.”

  “But aren’t we on top of a glacier?”

  “You are correct,” the scientist added. “That’s what makes this a rare discovery—geothermal heat burning through the heart of the glacier. Very unusual. And then there’s this.” The scientist pointed to one of the glass bottles beside him. It contained an earlier sample from the lake.

  “The water is filled with contaminants. It should be pure meltwater, but it’s not.”

  The captain looked closer, staring into the glass jar. A temperature gauge bobbing inside read thirty-eight degrees, but ice had begun forming along the top. As the scientist stirred the water to break up the ice, a swirl of green impurities could be seen in its vortex.

  “Sediment?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Or even living material, possibly—”

  “Captain,” a voice shouted.

  Jurgenson stood up and turned back toward the plane. One of the crewmen was standing on the aft section of the Dornier, holding on to the tail and pointing across the lake, back in the direction where they’d landed.

  “The water is icing over,” the crewman shouted. “We need to take off or we’ll be trapped.”

  Jurgenson turned. He could see the aqua blue color fading to lead in the distance. Even at the shoreline beside them, a paper-thin sheen of ice had begun forming, a sheen that hadn’t been there minutes before.

  “Everyone back to the plane,” Jurgenson ordered. He helped the scientist cap the samples and store them on a carrying tray, then left him and raced toward the plane. He reached the gangplank, bounding over it and climbing up onto the top of the aircraft.

  He took a few steps toward the tail. From higher up, he could see more clearly. What he saw chilled him more than the frigid air. Ice was growing up along both shores fast enough for the naked eye to track it. At the same time, it was spreading across the lake, moving from both sides toward the middle, like frost creeping across a windowpane in a time-lapse exposure. For the moment, a channel in the center of the lake remained clear.

  He bounded across the top of the plane, ducking under the wing and heading for the cockpit. “Start the engines.”

  “But not everyone is aboard yet,” the copilot replied.

  “Start them anyway,” Jurgenson ordered. “Hurry.”

  As the copilot went to work, Jurgenson paused at the front of the plane, glancing back along the shore. The scientists were lugging their equipment and water samples toward the craft, waddling through the snow as they approached the plane. Schmidt was foolishly hammering in one last marker. “Come on,” Jurgenson ordered. “Move.”

  The aft propeller screeched into motion, with the engine belching black smoke. The pistons fired and the propeller spun up quickly, becoming an instant blur. Down below it, the scientists clambered aboard. Lieutenant Schmidt was still coming.

  The captain dropped into the cockpit and slammed the hatch above him. “Number two up and running,” he said. “Start number one.”

  As the forward engine fired up, Jurgenson took over. He adjusted the propellers and prepared to move.

  “Head count,” he demanded over the intercom.

  “All on board,” a breathless Lieutenant Schmidt called out.

  “Release the line. And shove us off. We need space to turn.”

  In the aft section of the aircraft, Schmidt cut the line and used the plank to push the Dornier back from the ice. It moved sluggishly, drifting a few feet out, but that was all the space Jurgenson needed.

  He eased the throttles forward while stepping hard on the rudder. The effort coaxed the plane into a tight turn, the tail swinging around until the nose was pointed back down the length of the lake.

  With the aircraft lined up, he set the props for takeoff and pushed the throttles to full. The engines mounted above the fuselage roared and the Dornier began to pick up speed as the power streamed through the airframe.

  At first, The Whale moved like its namesake, plowing forward with brute force, shoving
the water aside and picking up speed slowly. But as the airflow over the wing increased, the plane rode higher on its keel, reducing the drag substantially. Now The Whale began to fly across the water, picking up speed briskly.

  Up ahead, the ice continued to grow, a crystalline pattern merging from both sides.

  “How could a lake freeze so quickly?” the copilot asked.

  “We must have stirred up cold water from down below,” Jurgenson suggested. “Full flaps. We need lift.”

  The copilot deployed the flaps and the Dornier rose until it was skimming across the water, desperate to fly but not yet free.

  “We’re not going to make it,” the copilot warned. He reached for the throttles to pull them back.

  Jurgenson blocked the man’s hand and kept the engines at full power. The aircraft charged into the leading edge of the rapidly forming ice. It was slush at this point, but it sprayed up against the metal skin of the aircraft, freezing instantly. The struts on the wing and the aft section of the fuselage and part of the tail were coated in seconds.

  Jurgenson felt the controls grow heavy and sluggish. But the high-mounted wing and the propellers above it were still clear and dry. It was now or never.

  Jurgenson pulled back on the yoke. The Dornier lifted free of the lake, climbed for a moment, then began to drop. It kissed the surface once, skipping and bouncing higher. This time, it held on and began clawing its way toward the sky.

  “De-ice the wings and tail,” Jurgenson called out.

  His copilot flipped a pair of switches. “Heat’s on.”

  The de-icing system channeled electrical power through heating coils in the wing and tail. The coils would melt the ice, but the process was slow. In the meantime, Jurgenson fought to keep the aircraft flying.

  “We’re too heavy,” he said, pressing the intercom button. “Dump all excess weight or we’re going to fall out of the sky.”

  Focused on the instruments and keeping the wings level, Jurgenson had no idea of the panic his directive had set off in the aft section of the aircraft. The cargo hatch was shoved open. Spare parts, equipment and cold-weather gear were thrown out. A sled, several pairs of skis and a fifty-pound sack of rice, provisioned to keep them alive if they ended up stranded, went next. Everything that could be thrown out was, except for Lieutenant Schmidt’s weighted markers, which the navigator guarded with zealous intensity.

  With the aft compartment cleared, the plane was three hundred pounds lighter. Just enough to keep it airborne.

  And then the number one engine sputtered.

  “Ice in the fuel line,” the copilot said. “Damn those tanks on the Bremerhaven.”

  He opened a valve that let more heat from the engine into the carburetors in hopes of keeping the ice from choking off the fuel supply. It was too little too late.

  The engine died and the Dornier began to shake. It was about to stall and crash. Jurgenson had no choice. He put the nose down, picking up enough speed to control the descent. But there was no way to remain airborne.

  They glided half a mile and hit the snow with jarring impact, not hard enough to destroy the plane but firm enough to damage it.

  The fuselage groaned with the impact. Rivets popped and ricocheted through the interior of the Dornier. Jurgenson felt the aircraft yawing as the nose slid left and the tail swung out to the right. The plane was skidding like a car on wet pavement. He tried to control it by stepping on the rudder pedal, but it had little effect.

  They slid across the hard-packed snow and then went up a slope. The speed began to drop as they climbed the hill and the plane stopped suddenly as the left wing dug into a snowbank and spun them around.

  Jurgenson reached for the controls, instinctively shutting off the fuel pumps and the electrical system. Looking around, he saw no sign of fire. Inhaling deeply, he smelled no smoke or leaking fuel.

  They were stopped and alive. They wouldn’t burn. Beyond that, there was little to celebrate.

  After sitting in stunned silence for a moment, Jurgenson stood up. He opened the hatch and popped his head out.

  They’d come a thousand feet up the side of a hill before settling into deeper snow. The aircraft was turned at a forty-five-degree angle, as if it had been trying to get its nose around and head back down the hill before getting stuck.

  Looking back, he saw all the damage he needed to see. The leading edge of the tail was gashed and bent badly. A rip in the side of the airframe ran from one of the sponsons all the way back to the rudder. There was no need to look further. The Whale wouldn’t be flying again.

  Dropping back into the cockpit, Jurgenson slumped into his seat. “This will not help my standing with the men in Berlin,” he said. “Radio the Bremerhaven. Give them our position and tell them we need assistance.”

  As the copilot powered up the radio and made the dreaded call, Jurgenson looked through the window. He saw the lake in the distance, but the brilliant turquoise color was gone. The lake had turned a drab, solid color that made it almost indistinguishable from the ice and snow around it.

  Never in his life had Jurgenson seen a body of water freeze so quickly. It didn’t seem possible. Not at thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Not with geothermal heat warming it from below.

  He wondered if it had something to do with the sediment that the scientist had captured in the jug. Perhaps they’d found something remarkable after all.

  He thumbed the intercom button. “Fritz,” he said, addressing the scientist by name. “Did you manage to save the water sample?”

  “Nein, Kapitän,” the scientist replied. “We had to throw it out to reduce the weight.”

  “A pity,” Jurgenson said. “I would like to have known what was swimming around in that strange blue water.”

  1

  RESEARCH VESSEL GRISHKA

  NORTH OF THE ANTARCTIC COAST

  THE PRESENT DAY

  The polar research vessel Grishka moved cautiously through the Southern Ocean a hundred miles from the coast of Antarctica. The ten-thousand-ton ship had a gray hull, a reinforced bow and a five-story superstructure painted a faded shade of international orange. She was three hundred feet in length but looked tiny when compared to the mountainous icebergs surrounding her.

  Some of those icebergs were flat and broad, tabletop monoliths the size of cities. Others were towering peaks, their Matterhorn-like shapes sculpted by the wind and waves into arrangements as different as they were remarkable. And yet among all the giants, it was the much smaller type of iceberg that threatened the Grishka.

  From her position on the bridge, Cora Emmerson gazed through binoculars, scanning the water for automobile-sized chunks of ice that floated low and were almost invisible.

  “Growlers dead ahead,” she warned.

  Unlike sea ice, which the Grishka could plow through, or the enormous icebergs, which were easy to spot and avoid, growlers were hard to see and could be deadly. They varied in size and shape and could weigh thirty tons or more. Worse yet, they were often angular instead of smooth-sided, resulting in a tendency to puncture a ship’s hull rather than glancing harmlessly off it.

  “We’ve got another set off the port bow,” Cora warned. “Five degrees to starboard and we’ll clear them all.”

  The captain of the ship, Alec Laskey, made the turn without questioning. Cora had been at his side on the journey down to Antarctica and had barely left the bridge since they began traveling north twelve hours before.

  She had remarkable stamina, he thought. And a keen eye. “I’m certain you must have been a sailor in a former life.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that rumor,” Cora said, “but I’ve been doing Antarctic research for years now. This is my seventh trip to the continent. And, before that, I worked for the American nautical agency NUMA. It would be a shame if I hadn’t picked up something along the way.”

 
“I’d say you picked up a few things,” Laskey replied. “You’re vigilant.”

  Yes, she thought. And I have reason to be.

  After months of searching, Cora’s expedition had discovered something both unique and dangerous. If she was right, it had the potential to alter the world. In the right hands it could be a salve for the damaged planet, but in the wrong hands it could be turned into a weapon. Regardless of its use, there were those who would prefer such a discovery had never been made at all.

  Whether it was paranoia or an overactive sixth sense, Cora had felt they were being tracked even before the discovery. Getting off the ice and aboard the Grishka had eased that fear. Until they reached Cape Town, however, she wouldn’t feel safe.

  “New heading established,” the captain said. “Are we clear?”

  Cora swung the binoculars back toward the growlers. They rose and fell as the bow wave of the ship passed, jostling against one another. A foam of bubbles appeared as one of the miniature icebergs rolled over, disappeared briefly and then bobbed to the surface with a different side pointed skyward.

  “Ice has been cleared and is falling behind us,” she said.

  Cora watched the growlers and then turned her attention to the path ahead. What had once looked wide open now appeared less so. A mile in front of them, a midsize iceberg—larger than the Grishka but smaller than the mountains of ice in the distance—was moving into their path.

  The iceberg was an odd shape. But, then, no two were ever alike. It had a flat top, like the city-sized bergs that broke off from the glaciers, but its nearest end was sharply angled. Small peaks rose from various parts.

  The ice itself was an odd color. Instead of pure white or a ghostly blue, this one looked jaundiced, as if it had been dusted with volcanic ash.

  “Is there a current here?” Cora asked.

  “West wind drift,” Laskey said. “Just like everywhere else around Antarctica.”

  “But nothing locally?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then why is that iceberg tracking east instead of west?”