BENEATH - A Novel (4 page)

Robert Samuels sat alone in the massive room, relaxing with his feet up on a desk as he soldered a small chip to the innards of a tiny cube-shaped device with two metallic connectors on either side. He bent in so close, gazing through his thick glasses, that he didn't notice his scruffy beard was beginning to singe. The rancid smell of smoldering hair hit his nose and he immediately sat back and began to pat the smoking beard out. He attempted to regain his casual composure as the hatch to the living quarters swung open.

Willard entered first with Connelly at his heels. "All I'm saying is that I'm sure, if I were a scientist, which I'm not, thank goodness, I might understand why melting through miles of ice to find some microorganisms is worth risking my life."
  

Robert turned to Willard and Connelly with a smile on his face. He'd heard this conversation before. "Funny... You say it's not worth risking your life, but alas...here you are."

Willard sat down across from Robert while Kathy put on a fresh pot of coffee. "Yeah, well, someone's got to keep you two alive." His nose crinkled. "What's that smell?"

Robert shrugged and did his best to look innocent. "I don't smell anything."

Willard glanced at the soldering iron still in Robert's hand. "You burned your beard again, didn't you?"

Robert furrowed his eyebrows. "I was concentrating."

Connelly returned from the coffee pot, which was beginning to gurgle to life and playfully rubbed Robert's already messy head of hair. "Don't start, boys." She sat down next to Robert and rolled her neck. "How's it coming?"

Robert held the small cube aloft like it was a prize recovered from a treasure chest. "We now have full BUD capabilities."

"What's BUD?" Willard asked. "Your dog?"

Robert grinned and pushed his glasses higher on his nose, pleased at the opportunity to explain. "BUD was originally a military project for tracking submarines around the globe. It was so sensitive that, when placed underwater, it could hear a dolphin fart a thousand miles away."

Willard smiled. "Dolphins fart?"

Robert ignored the question and continued. "The equipment picked up so much noise that software had to be written that would filter out organic sounds. Even after they removed all the whale calls, struggling fish and barking seals, they had to filter out man-made noises like recreational vehicles and underwater construction. When they were done, they could hear every sub under the water and track them to within a few yards."

"I don't think there are any submarines in
Lake
Vostok
," Willard said.

"Quite true," Robert said. "I've removed all the software."

"Leaving us with one of the most sensitive microphones in the world," Connelly said as she stood and walked back to the coffee maker.

"Right," Willard said, "but how does that help you? You're looking for microorganisms."

"The point is, if there is anything, anything at all, making noise down there, we're going to hear it. Geothermal vents, shifting ice, even the microorganisms themselves. If there is any noise at all, we're going to hear it loud and clear."

"A microscopic symphony," Willard said.

"You got it," Connelly said as she returned with three piping hot mugs of coffee, which she placed on the table.

"OK," Willard said, "that's cool. But I still don't understand the significance of finding anything below the ice or even how you expect something to be alive down there. Like I said before, I'm no scientist—"

"That goes without saying," Robert said with a smile as he raised his steaming mug to his lips.

Willard continued, "—but the pressure must be intense. Not to mention the lack of sunlight and food."

"Ahh," Robert said as he finished taking a sip of the rich Columbian coffee. "Perhaps there's hope for the boy yet. That was actually an intelligent statement." Robert looked at Connelly. "You want to field this one, Kath?"

Connelly nodded, crossed her legs, and after taking a long sip from her mug, she looked at Willard. "Lake
Vostok
is buried beneath 4,000 meters of ice."

Willard opened his mouth to say something, but Connelly seemed to read his mind. "Roughly 13,000 feet," she said.

Willard closed his mouth and Connelly continued. "This means that any life we find down there has been cut off from the modern world for a million years. This life would most likely be in the form of microbes we call extremophiles.

"Like me," Willard said.

Robert chuckled. "Your penchant for extreme sports is a choice, Mr. Willard. These creatures have no option but to survive, sometimes thrive, in the most inhospitable environments on Earth."

"And the discovery of which," Connelly said, "would give us hints as to the planet's climate going back millions of years. Not only that, but the discovery of new organisms helps us to understand the world and quite often lends to major breakthroughs in other scientific fields."

"Like medicine?" Willard offered.

"Exactly," Connelly said.

"Though even I'll admit that the chance of a new drug being derived from a million year old microbe is unlikely," Robert said.

Willard smelled the aromatic coffee. "This lake...isn't it a closed ecosystem? I've seen enough conservation specials to know that bringing in foreign germs or animals usually wreaks havoc on the ecosystems without defenses. Your million year old microbes might catch the modern flu and be wiped out."

"That's two intelligent statements. Watch out, Ethan, you might just change my opinion of you. Though you're correct. That's why TES will be sterilized before melting through the ice."

Connelly chimed in. "And the exterior surface of the TES sphere, and even the TES cable are so hot that any microbes or viruses that the sphere comes in contact with on the way down will be vaporized."

"Huh," Willard said as he sipped from his coffee. "Sounds like you have all your bases covered."

"That's why we're the scientists," Robert said, "and you're the bodyguard."

"Safety specialist."

"Same thing."

"Hey," said Willard, "you two would have died like twenty times already without me here. If there's one thing I've learned about you science types, you've got all the brains in the world and no common sense. Not only do you walk into door frames and microwave metal containers—"

Robert looked over his steaming mug. "That only happened once."

"But you also believe that microbes could survive beneath this ice. You still haven't explained that to me. Your microorganisms are going to have to be beyond extreme to pull that off."

"There is one likely source of energy," Connelly said. "Given the shape of the lake, which is roughly the size of
Lake
Ontario
, but far deeper, it's possible that there are geothermal vents heating the water and providing reduced metals and chemical nutrients. On top of that, the ice above is constantly moving, about four meters—thirteen feet—every year, providing nutrients and perhaps even ancient biological matter to the water. It is the most extreme environment on Earth, to be sure, but anything's possible."

"OK, fine," Willard said. "But why Vostok? Aren't there any other frozen lakes in the world? We're in the middle of nowhere with nothing else to do but freeze our butts off and play solitaire."

"There are seventy lakes under the ice in
Antarctica
, but most are much smaller than Vostok and probably have frozen solid within the past few thousand years. Vostok's size and depth make it the ideal hunting ground for microorganisms."

Willard placed his mug on the table. "So you're saying there is no other place like this on Earth?"

Connelly thought about the question and then nodded. "Yup, there really is no other place like this on Earth."

"Well, that's cool," Willard said. "But I still think this may be a big waste of time."

Connelly stood and headed toward the coffee maker with an empty mug in her hand. "If we get down there and find nothing, you might just be right."

Willard laughed lightly. "Then what?"

"Then," Connelly said, looking back at Willard as she poured some more coffee, "we're all out of work. Hey, what's this?" Connelly picked up a piece of paper sitting in the tray of the fax machine sitting next to the toaster.

"Sorry," Robert said. "Came in earlier. Haven't got a chance to read it yet."

As Connelly looked over the page, her face fell flat. Robert noticed right away. "What is it?" he asked.

After crumpling the piece of paper and rejoining the men at the table, Connelly said, "The Global Exploration Corporation strikes again."

"Those guys are a pain in the ass," Willard said, shaking his head in frustration at just hearing the name.

"What do they want this time?" Robert asked.

"Seriously," Willard said, "would you have even taken their money if you knew how many strings were attached? They want you to fly out there again?"

Connelly looked Willard in the eyes, her expression dull, as though she were living in a surreal world where what she had just read made no sense at all. "Not just me," she said. "They want all three of us... Tomorrow."

Michael Peterson found the lower hallways of the Global Exploration Corporation to be sterile. They had made an effort to soften their image on the floors above. The tourists, visiting on a daily basis, always 'oohed' and 'aahed' at the elaborate murals of Mars' surface, the ocean floor and the view from Mount Everest. But those floors contained gallery displays of the functional labs hidden below. The corporate offices were on the top floors. They were bright and full of green plants and seascapes.

Peterson chuckled to himself. Here he was, about to embark on an amazing adventure and he couldn't get his mind off the lower level decorations, or lack thereof. The floors were squeaky clean linoleum and the walls were white concrete. The only color came in the form of arrows pointing towards various departments; geology, astronomy, oceanography, biology—experts on almost every kind of "ology" could be found within the confines of these barren walls. The GEC made up for its lack of decor by housing some of the most colorful minds on Earth. Peterson was often proud that he belonged to such an astounding group, but felt even more pride at the fact that his past discovery and potential future discoveries were on the top of the GEC's to-do list.

Stepping into the cavernous elevator, Peterson sighed with relief for the privacy and the fact that he would soon be out of the windowless lab area and striding through the upper halls of the corporate offices. He hit the button for the tenth floor and then leaned against the back wall of the elevator. He closed his eyes and smiled as he imagined what the future might hold. Then the elevator stopped.

Peterson opened his eyes and looked at the control panel. He was stopped at the eighth floor. He'd reached the corporate levels, but not quite high enough. He leaned forward to push the buttons for the tenth floor again when the doors slid open. Standing on the other side of the opening doors stood a woman who looked like a strict school teacher, but her kind smile offset her bunned red hair, steel gray-blue eyes and tight-fitting power suit. She was easily fifty, pushing fifty-five but she held herself like a thirty year old. She looked at her watch and said, "Ahh, Dr. Peterson. Right on time, as usual."

Peterson smiled. "Miss Heintz. I thought we were meeting in your office...We are meeting in your office, right?"

"Call me Nancy, Dr. Peterson."

Peterson relaxed at the offer of using casual names. It was generally considered a compliment if the higher-ups referred to you by your first name, but even more so if they allowed you to use theirs. "Only if you call me Michael," he said.

"Very well, Michael. I was thinking about a different location for our meeting today."
Nancy
stepped into the elevator and took out a key card. She waved it in front of a small scanner mounted above the floor buttons. A small green light above the scanner blinked on while the metal beneath the floor buttons slid away, revealing a new button marked with the number eleven. She hit the button. The doors closed and Peterson felt his stomach sink slightly as the elevator began to rise.

"I didn't know there was an eleventh floor," Peterson said.

Nancy
smiled. "There's not."

The doors opened to the tenth floor and both waited patiently for the doors to close. Peterson shifted nervously. The doors soon closed and they were pulled upward once again. He watched as the number changed from 10 to 11. He was beginning to feel curious about what he was being invited to see.
 
When the doors opened, it was more than he could have imagined.

Peterson's mouth dropped open as he stepped into the forty-foot tall, football-field sized green house. A large number of well-labeled plant species thrived in the massive space. At the other end of the greenhouse he could see full-sized trees, growing tall. Some bore fruit. Peterson took a deep breath and smelled the sweet and spicy air.
Like an old fashioned apple pie
, he thought. The bright green of the room in contrast with the dark blue, northern
California
sky was enough to take his breath away. He turned to
Nancy
. His stunned expression made her laugh. "What
is
this place?" he asked. "You can't see this from the road or parking lot."