Slocum and Chief Engineer Ophir were manically proud of the drilling machine they’d developed and employed to dramatic effect. The diamond-toothed titanium-alloy plasma-seething bore had thus operated like a hot knife through butter, or, in this instance, a plasma-stream through ice.
“Safety is paramount, gentlemen!” Dr. Slocum, cartoonish as a military propaganda actor, made this ritual admonishment at the daily camp briefing. He waved his left arm stump to reinforce the point. Everybody knew the tale of how Doc Slocum lost his hand: it got pinched above the wrist as he reached for a dropped satchel (that supposedly contained the last vial of Emerald Ichor of Life known to exist) and the crack in a sheet of Antarctic ice slammed shut. Bruno Hopkins, the Malamute wrangler, scoffed and privately explained Slocum actually got it lopped with a tomahawk by a jealous tracker from Nova Scotia after the doctor got caught during a heavy petting session with the tracker’s sweetheart.
To date, the team had succeeded in minimizing accidents—three casualties and a dozen injuries was cause for celebration six weeks into a hell-bent for leather expedition such as this one.
“It’s a ziggurat,” Telemachus Crabbe said as he spooned salted porridge into his mouth. He was a sinewy, tow-headed lad with the sober demeanor of a government clerk. Mariners, merchants, and soldiers of lineage dating to medieval times, Crabbe’s immediate family hailed from the Dutch West Indies before the territory got sold to the USA. Crabbe followed family tradition and had at the tender age of fourteen established himself as a skilled sailor, diver, and crack demolitionist. “Made out a metal. Huge, too. Fifteen, sixteen stories. Gotta be thousands of years old if the bloomin’ glacier covered it.”
“Slocum say so?” Dred whispered in case any of the men crowding past decided to eavesdrop. The boys hunched over their bowls at a mess hall bench. Drilling would commence within the hour.
“Nah, nah, Slocum’s pal, Kowalski. I heard him gabbing to someone in the radio shack. Heh, probably your grandfather, or somebody else back home.” Crabbe glared at his empty bowl as if it had slighted him. Despite his rawboned frame, he could out-eat any three roughnecks in camp. “What’s more, it may be a mate to another one they found six months ago in the Atlantic, off the coast of New England.”
“ There’s some scuttlebutt. Doesn’t sound like anyone has explored it yet . . . ”
“Too deep. Our subs can’t descend without getting crushed.”
Dred didn’t argue the point. Sword Enterprises seeded disinformation among its own ranks as a matter of protocol. R&D had built various robots and at least one experimental submarine capable of withstanding the deepest oceanic pressure. If the Atlantic structure existed (and who could say?) and hadn’t been breached, it bespoke of skullduggery or mysterious possibilities, mostly unpleasant.
Crabbe pushed away from the table. “I have to blast off for the site. See you in a bit?”
“I’ll be there with bells on.”
POLE OF COLD
Macbeth dreaded entering Dreamtime. A fragment of his waking self inevitably calved from its subconscious and wandered at loose ends. Mother once said it was the influence of Isis, whose constellation had ascended the evening of his conception. He should learn to manipulate the phenomenon.
In this lately recurring nightmare, he was a withered gray caricature of himself, yet no wiser. He and Dr. Amanda Bole (why couldn’t he at least dream of Dr. Bravery?) passed through galleries of the vault that housed Big Black’s mainframe. The vault, a huge, partially worked cavern three quarters of a mile beneath Sword Enterprises HQ, connected to a subterranean cave system that extended through the roots of the Catskills. One gallery hosted a series of upright metal tubes with thick glass portholes. An indistinct figure floated inside each tube, suspended by murky fluid.
“Safety is paramount, gentlemen!” Dr. Slocum, cartoonish as a military propaganda actor, made this ritual admonishment at the daily camp briefing. He waved his left arm stump to reinforce the point. Everybody knew the tale of how Doc Slocum lost his hand: it got pinched above the wrist as he reached for a dropped satchel (that supposedly contained the last vial of Emerald Ichor of Life known to exist) and the crack in a sheet of Antarctic ice slammed shut. Bruno Hopkins, the Malamute wrangler, scoffed and privately explained Slocum actually got it lopped with a tomahawk by a jealous tracker from Nova Scotia after the doctor got caught during a heavy petting session with the tracker’s sweetheart.
To date, the team had succeeded in minimizing accidents—three casualties and a dozen injuries was cause for celebration six weeks into a hell-bent for leather expedition such as this one.
“It’s a ziggurat,” Telemachus Crabbe said as he spooned salted porridge into his mouth. He was a sinewy, tow-headed lad with the sober demeanor of a government clerk. Mariners, merchants, and soldiers of lineage dating to medieval times, Crabbe’s immediate family hailed from the Dutch West Indies before the territory got sold to the USA. Crabbe followed family tradition and had at the tender age of fourteen established himself as a skilled sailor, diver, and crack demolitionist. “Made out a metal. Huge, too. Fifteen, sixteen stories. Gotta be thousands of years old if the bloomin’ glacier covered it.”
“Slocum say so?” Dred whispered in case any of the men crowding past decided to eavesdrop. The boys hunched over their bowls at a mess hall bench. Drilling would commence within the hour.
“Nah, nah, Slocum’s pal, Kowalski. I heard him gabbing to someone in the radio shack. Heh, probably your grandfather, or somebody else back home.” Crabbe glared at his empty bowl as if it had slighted him. Despite his rawboned frame, he could out-eat any three roughnecks in camp. “What’s more, it may be a mate to another one they found six months ago in the Atlantic, off the coast of New England.”
“ There’s some scuttlebutt. Doesn’t sound like anyone has explored it yet . . . ”
“Too deep. Our subs can’t descend without getting crushed.”
Dred didn’t argue the point. Sword Enterprises seeded disinformation among its own ranks as a matter of protocol. R&D had built various robots and at least one experimental submarine capable of withstanding the deepest oceanic pressure. If the Atlantic structure existed (and who could say?) and hadn’t been breached, it bespoke of skullduggery or mysterious possibilities, mostly unpleasant.
Crabbe pushed away from the table. “I have to blast off for the site. See you in a bit?”
“I’ll be there with bells on.”
POLE OF COLD
Macbeth dreaded entering Dreamtime. A fragment of his waking self inevitably calved from its subconscious and wandered at loose ends. Mother once said it was the influence of Isis, whose constellation had ascended the evening of his conception. He should learn to manipulate the phenomenon.
In this lately recurring nightmare, he was a withered gray caricature of himself, yet no wiser. He and Dr. Amanda Bole (why couldn’t he at least dream of Dr. Bravery?) passed through galleries of the vault that housed Big Black’s mainframe. The vault, a huge, partially worked cavern three quarters of a mile beneath Sword Enterprises HQ, connected to a subterranean cave system that extended through the roots of the Catskills. One gallery hosted a series of upright metal tubes with thick glass portholes. An indistinct figure floated inside each tube, suspended by murky fluid.
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