Ice Station (39 page)

“It's a way in,” she said.

Eight digits were already displayed on the screen. 24157817. Then
there were sixteen blank spaces to be filled in with the entry code.

“Sixteen gaps to fill,” Montana said. “But what's
the entry code?”

“More numbers,” Hensleigh said thoughtfully. “It's
got to be some kind of numerical code, a code that follows on from the
eight numbers already on the screen.”

“But even if we could figure out the code, how do we insert it
into the spaces?” Montana said.

Hensleigh leaned forward and pressed the first black button on the
keypad.

A number “1” appeared instantly on the screen—in the
first blank space.

Montana frowned. “How did you know that?”

Hensleigh shrugged. “If this thing has instructions written in
English, then it's man-made. Which means this keypad is also
man-made. Which means it's probably just a regular keypad, with
numbers set out on it like on a calculator or a telephone. Who knows,
maybe the guys who built it just didn't get round to putting
numbers on it.”

She hit the second button.

A “2” sprang up in the next blank space. Hensleigh smiled,
vindicated.

Then she began to whisper to herself. “Sixteen-digit code, ten
digits to choose from. Shit. We're talking trillions of
possible combinations.”

“Do you think you can crack it?” Montana said.

“I don't know,” Hensleigh said. “It depends on what
the first eight digits are supposed to mean, and whether I can figure
that out.”

At that moment, Montana leaned forward and pressed the first button
fourteen times. On the screen, the blank spaces filled up quickly.

The screen beeped suddenly. And then a new prompt appeared at the
bottom:

24157817 12 11111111111111

INCORRECT CODE ENTERED -

ENTRY DENIED ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE

The screen then reverted back to the original screen, with the
original eight numbers and the sixteen blank spaces.

Hensleigh looked at Montana, perplexed. “How did you know
that?”

Montana smiled. “It gives you a second chance if you enter the
wrong code. Like most military entry-code systems.”

At the other end of the cavern, Gant was crouched down on the ground
over by the fissure she had found at the base of the ice wall. She
pointed her flashlight inside the horizontal fissure.

She wanted to know more about this cavern. There was something about
the cavern itself and the man-made “spaceship” they had
found in it that made her wonder....

Gant peered in through the fissure. In the beam of her flashlight she
saw a cave. A round, ice-walled cave that seemed to stretch away to
the right. The floor of the cave was about five feet beneath her.

Gant lay down on her back and shimmied through the fissure, and began
to lower herself down to the floor of this new cave.

And then suddenly, without warning, the ice beneath her gave way and
she fell clumsily to the floor of the cave.

Clangggggg—!

The sound of her landing on the floor of the cave reverberated all
around her. It had sounded like someone hitting a piece of steel with
a sledgehammer.

Gant froze.

Steel?

And then slowly—very slowly—she gazed down at the floor
beneath her.

The floor was covered with a thin layer of frost, but Gant saw it
clearly. Her eyes widened.

She saw the rivets first—small, round domes on a dark gray
background.

It was metal.

Thick, reinforced metal.

Gant panned her flashlight around the small cave. It was cylindrical
in shape—like a train tunnel—with a high, round ceiling
that rose above the horizontal fissure through which she had come. The
horizontal fissure was about halfway up the wall. In fact, Gant could
almost see back through the thick ice wall above the fissure,
as if it were translucent glass.

She swung her flashlight around and pointed it at the tunnel leading
away from her.

And then she saw it

It looked like a door of some sort, made of heavy gray steel. It was
set into the ice and was completely covered in frost and icicles. It
looked like a door on a naval vessel or submarine—solid-looking,
hinged on a sturdy metal bulk.

“Jesus Christ,” she breathed.

Pete Cameron called the Post's
office in Washington D.C. for the third time. He was sitting in Andrew
Trent's living room.

At last, Alison picked up.

Cameron said, “Where have you been? I've been calling all
afternoon.”

“You're not gonna believe what I found,” Alison said.

She recounted for him what she had found on the All States Libraries
Database: how the references to latitude and longitude that Cameron
had picked up at SETI referred to the location of an ice station in
Antarctica—Wilkes Ice Station.

Cameron pulled out his original notes from his visit to SETI, looked
at them as she spoke.

Then Alison told him about the academics who lived down at the ice
station and the papers and books they had written. She also told him
about the Library of Congress and the “Preliminary Survey”
by C. M. Waitzkin.

“It was signed out to an O. Niemeyer in 1979,” she said.

Cameron frowned. “Niemeyer? Otto Niemeyer? Wasn't he
on the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Nixon?”

“Under Carter, too,” Alison said.

Andrew Trent came into the living room. “Did someone say
Niemeyer?”

“Yeah,” Cameron said. “Otto Niemeyer. Know him?”

“Know of him,” Trent said. “He was Air Force.
Full colonel. Got on a plane in '79 and never came back.”

“That's the one,” Alison said over the phone. “Hey,
who is that?”

“Andrew Wilcox,” Cameron said, looking at Trent.

“Oh, hey, Andrew, nice to meet you,” Alison said. “And
yes, you're right. Niemeyer got on a silver Air Force Boeing 727
at Andrews Air Force Base on the night of 30 December 1979, heading
for destination unknown. He never returned.”

“Aren't there any records about where he went?” Pete
asked.

“That's classified, baby,” Alison said.
"Classified. I was able to get a history on him, though.
Niemeyer flew Phantoms in Vietnam. Got shot down over the Mekong Delta
in '65. POW for a year. Both legs broken. Rescued in '66.
Drove a desk at the Pentagon after that. Headed the USAF's
Procurement Division for six years from '68 to '74. Appointed
to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1972 by Nixon, continued there under
Carter.

“Apparently, Niemeyer was a player on the stealth project in
'77. He was on the Air Force selection committee that chose the
B-2 stealth bomber, made by Northrop-Boeing. The official record,
however, shows that Niemeyer voted for the loser in the
tender, a consortium made up of General Aeronautics and a small
electronics company from California called Entertech Ltd.”

Pete Cameron said, “So why would he steal a preliminary land
survey about some university research station in Antarctica?”

“See, that's the thing,” Alison said. “I don't
think it's the same station.”

“What?”

Alison said, “Listen, I was looking in this book I bought by one
of those Antarctic guys, a guy named Brian Hensleigh. According to
him, Wilkes Ice Station was built in 1991.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But Niemeyer disappeared in 1979.”

“So what are you saying?” Pete said.

“What I'm saying is that Niemeyer was looking up a station at
that location twelve years before Wilkes Ice Station was ever
even thought of.”

Alison paused. “Pete, I think there were two stations.
Two stations built on the same piece of land. One in
1978—the one for which a land survey by C. M. Waitzkin was drawn
up—and another in 1991.”

Pete Cameron leaned forward, spoke into the phone. “What do you
mean, you think they built the second station on top of the
first one?”

“I don't think the people who built the second station—
Wilkes Ice Station—even knew about the first one,”
Alison said. “Brian Hensleigh doesn't mention it at
all in his book.”

“So what was it?” Pete said. “Niemeyer's station, I
mean.”

“Who knows,” Alison said.

At that moment, Andrew Trent saw the sheet of notepaper in Pete's
hand, took it, and began examining it.

Alison said, “So, what about you? Get anything newsworthy on your
travels?”

“You could say that,” Cameron said as he recalled in his
mind everything Trent had told him about his unit's slaughter, his
official “death,” and the Intelligence Convergence Group.

“Hey,” Trent said suddenly from across the room. He
held up Cameron's SETI notes. “Where did you get these?”

Pete broke off from Alison and looked at the notes he had made at
SETI.

COPY 134625

CONTACT LOST—> IONOSPHERIC DISTURB.

FORWARD TEAM

SCARECROW

-66.5

SOLAR FLARE DISRUPT. RADIO

115, 20 MINS, 12 SECS EAST

HOW GET THERE SO—SECONDARY TEAM ENROUTE

Pete told Trent about his visit to SETI, told him that the notes were
his record of what had been caught on the airwaves by SETI's radio
telescopes.

“And these coordinates,” Trent said, pointing to the words
“-66.5” and “115, 20 mins, 12 secs east,”
“they refer to a research station in Antarctica?”

“That's right,” Pete said

Trent looked hard at Pete Cameron. “Do you know anything about
Marine Force Reconnaissance Units, Mr. Cameron?”

“Only what you've told me.”

“They're a forward team,” Trent said.

“OK,” Pete said, seeing the words “forward team”
on his notes.

“Scarecrow...,” Trent said, staring down at the notes.

Pete looked from the notes to Trent. “What's a Scarecrow? An
operation?”

“No,” Trent said a little too suddenly.
“Scarecrow's a man. A Marine lieutenant. A friend of
mine.”

Pete Cameron waited for Trent to say something more, but he
didn't. And then suddenly Trent looked up into Cameron's eyes.

“Son of a bitch,” Trent said. “Scarecrow's
down there.”

“What do you mean?” Alison said a few minutes later.
“You think there are Marines down at that station?”

“We think so, yes,” Cameron said, excited.

“Jesus, there's a secondary team en route, too,” Trent
said, looking down at the notes again. “Shit.”

Trent turned to Cameron. “Hang up for a second. I have to make a
phone call.”

Cameron told Alison he'd call her back.

Trent quickly dialed a number. Cameron just watched him.

“Yes, hi, Personnel, please,” Trent said into the phone. He
waited a second, then said, “Yes, hi. I was wondering if you
could tell me where I could find Lieutenant Shane Schofield, please.
It's a family emergency.... Yes, I'll hold.”

Trent waited a full minute before someone returned to the line.

“Yes, hi,” Trent said. “What—oh, I'm his
brother-in-law, Michael.” There was a pause. “Oh, no,”
Trent said softly. “Oh, my God....Yes, thank you. Good-bye.”

Trent practically slammed the phone down. He turned to Cameron.
“Holy shit.”

“What?”

“According to the United States Marine Corps Personnel
Department, First Lieutenant Shane M. Schofield died in a
training accident in the South Pacific at 0930 hours yesterday
morning. Arrangements are being made to contact his family right
now.”

Cameron frowned. “He's dead?”

“According to them he is,” Trent said softly. “But that
doesn't necessarily mean it's true, now, does it.” Trent
paused. “The secondary team...”

“What about it?”

“There's a secondary team on its way to Wilkes Ice Station
right now, right?”

“Yeah....”

“And according to the United States Marine Corps, Shane Schofield
is already dead, right?”

“Yeah...”

Trent thought about that for a long moment. Then he looked up
suddenly. “Schofield's found something. They're gonna
kill him.”

Cameron got Alison back on the phone.

“Quick, send it through now,” he said.

“All right. All right. Just hold on a second, honey buns,”
Alison said. Cameron heard the clicking of computer keys at the other
end of the line.

“OK, I'm sending it through now,” Alison said.

On the far side of the living room, Trent flicked on his computer. He
clicked through several screens, came to his e-mail screen.

A small information bar at the bottom of the screen blinked:

YOU HAVE NEW MAIL.

Trent clicked on the “Open” icon.

A list appeared immediately on the screen:

ALL-STATES LIBRARY DATABASE

SEARCH BY KEYWORD

SEARCH STRING USED:LATITUDE -66.5°

LONGITUDE 115° 20' 12"

NO. OF ENTRIES FOUND: 6

TITLE

AUTHOR

LOCATION

YEAR

DOCTORAL THESIS

LLEWELLYN, D. K.

STAMFORD, CT

1998

DOCTORAL THESIS

AUSTIN, B.K.

STAMFORD, CT

1997

POSTDOCTORAL
THESIS

HENSLEIGH, S. T.

USC, CA

1997

FELLOWSHIP GRANT RESEARCH
PAPER

HENSLEIGH, B. M.

HARVARD, MA

1996

THE ICE CRUSADE: REFLECTIONS ON
A YEAR SPENT IN ANTARCTICA

HENSLEIGH, B. M.

HARVARD, MA

1995 AVAIL: AML

PRELIMINARY
SURVEY

WAITZKIN, C.
M.

LIBCONG

1978

It was the list Alison had got from the All States Database. The list
of every work that referred to latitude-66.5° and longitude
115° 20'12".

“All right,” Pete said.

“What are you going to do with it?” Alison's voice said
over the speakerphone.

“We're gonna use this list to find their addresses,”
Trent said, typing quickly at the keyboard. “The e-mail addresses
of the academics down in Antarctica, so we can send a message to
Schofield.”

“We figure that most university professors have e-mail,”
Pete said, “and we're hoping that Wilkes Ice Station is
patched in to a satellite phone so that the message can get
through.”