Steve Alten - Vostok

After ten blows the ice failed to crack open, forcing the Chinese to use their chainsaws to open a twenty-by-fifteen-foot hole to access the sea.

Ben expected our days inland at Vostok would be “dingle”—good weather, good visibility. “On a dingle day it’s time to play; wake up to a mank and the day will be dank.”

Worse than a mank was a “hooley”—an Antarctic blower, also known as a katabatic wind. Formed when cold air descends onto the ice cap, it spreads along the ground like a relentless snow-blowing storm and can last for days.

I wasn’t particularly excited about meeting a katabatic, but I rather enjoyed the Antarctic slang, which was far different from the Highlander vernacular, yet just as alien. Created by the OAE’s (Old Antarctic Explorers), the vocabulary attempted to simultaneously label and judge everything Antarctic, from the extreme conditions to the people who visited.

I learned quickly that rookies were chastised until they earned respect, and respect translated into time on the ice. Summer visitors earned far less respect than winterers, and as such, True and I were identified as “hordes”—less than welcome newbies.

Before he had gone to bed in his “pit-room,” True had stopped by the bar for his promised nightcap. The general rule at bases is that you only drink what you bring, but Kyle Trunk was treating. Exacting his revenge, the flag officer offered the big fella a vodka on the rocks, the rocks being natural Antarctic ice, a substance that dates back hundreds of thousands of years and contains captured bubbles of environmental gas that, when warmed with alcohol, pop. Hangovers induced from “poppies” were particularly onerous, and when True awoke he had a bear of a headache. Seeking caffeine, he found his way to the mess hall where another officer presented him with a mug of coffee known as a “grumble bucket.” It seemed like a nice gesture until True drained the cup to find a lurker at the bottom of the unwashed container.

Welcome to the ice, ye Summer Jolly Merchant!

Ben was classified a “fidlet,” a winterer entering his first summer. On our jeep ride out to the bay, he taught us two new words he had learned his second week on the ice.

A “slot” was a crevasse formed when a glacier, moving over the underlying bedrock, cracks open from the top down to form a pie-shaped wedge. Being “slotted” is what happened to Ben’s Australian guide when the man stepped onto a bridge of wind-blown snow that collapsed into a twenty-foot-wide crevasse.

“It happened so fast,” Ben said. “One minute he was walking back to the sled to grab a pair of binoculars, the next he was gone. I heard him scream a full thirty seconds before his body slammed into a tight wedge a mile and a half down — a nightmare known as “corking in.” Poor bastard died down there, all busted up in the darkness while we tried to reach him. Slots scare the hell out of me. Everyone’s got to be roped in on the open ice. And don’t think you’re safer in a vehicle either; jeeps get slotted, too.”

Standing out on the frozen waters of Prydz Bay eliminated the risk of being slotted, but not the risk of freezing to death. Ben informed us that Antarctic seawater averaged twenty-seven degrees, a sub-freezing temperature made possible due to the high salt content, which lowered its freezing point several degrees. “The human body can withstand about thirty seconds of exposure in water that cold before the muscles seize and cease to function. You’ll survive fifteen minutes if you are bobbing in a life vest. Either way, your blood feels like it’s turning to lead.”

It was into these sub-freezing waters that Ben and I would be taking the Barracuda on its maiden voyage. With all the ways one could die in Antarctica, we were about to toss the dice on another — an untested machine.

Even so, the moment the tarp was removed from the submersible I couldn’t wait to get started.

Ben was right; the Barracuda was nothing like the three-man sub I had drowned and nearly died in two years ago. Sleek and torpedo-shaped, the watercraft reminded me of something you’d find on the Bonneville Salt Flats, only with a windshield that extended all the way to its front bumper. Inside this four-inch-thick acrylic pod were three rotatable seats, placed in tandem with their own command centers. I was assigned the forward position, Ben the center, and Ming in back, allowing her to control the sub’s collection tubes and grabbers. The two Valkyrie units were mounted along either side of the vessel like missiles, the collector arms and storage bins located aft of her wings, folded out of the way by her keel. The bow was reinforced, narrow, and hydrodynamic, the outer chassis surrounding the cockpit painted dark neon blue, rendering her invisible in the deep blue sea.

Ben stood next to her like a proud papa. “Stone Aerospace designed her shape so that she’d slide through the lasered ice funnel like a greased dart. Once we enter the lake, the wings hyperextend away from the chassis to give us more stability. We lose a bit of protection going with an oval interior pod instead of a standard sphere, but she still withstood eight thousand psi during lab tests, which is forty percent more than Vostok’s surface pressure and twenty percent more than the lake’s maximum depth. The acrylic is composed of quartz Lexan.

“Forward and aft ports house our high-definition night-vision cameras and broad-spectrum floodlights, in addition to the sonar array and hydrophone mics. Body panels are composed of titanium and a composite material called Isofloat, developed by the Aussies to withstand water pressure in excess of fifteen thousand pounds per square inch. Behind the cockpit is an accessible storage area that holds eighteen lithium-ion batteries. The engine pumps out four hundred and fifty horsepower and runs on rechargeable batteries and hydrogen cells, and I can’t wait to see what she does when we let her run in open water.”

“Why’d they make her so narrow?”

“Had to. Ice penetration rate is inversely proportional to the square of the diameter of the vehicle. Every time you double the vehicle’s diameter, you increase the power requirements by four times. Once we’re in Lake Vostok, we’ll be running autonomously. Of course the beauty of the design is that we’ll still be able to suck power from the surface generators.”

“Unless the fiber-optic cable snaps.”

“Even if that happens, we’re still self-sustained for up to twenty hours at maximum cruising speed. Stop being such a naysayer. If you’re still scared after all these precautions, then maybe the real problem is that you need to grow a bigger pair of balls.”

True stepped between us, shoving Ben backward toward the hole in the ice. “Listen tae me, sub pilot . I witnessed our boy here descend intae Loch Ness to bait himself to a fanged beast forty feet long, wearing nothing but a Newtsuit — nearly got himself swallowed whole. When you pull a stunt like that ye can go ’round setting the standard for scrotes. Until then shut yer yap hole, or I’ll shut it for ye.”

Ben grinned nervously. “Personally, I have no intention of ever using a dive suit to perform an endoscopy on a fish.”

True continued advancing, backing Ben closer to the edge of the rectangular hole in the ice.

“Oh, sorry. I can tell by the empty gaze in your eyes that my endoscopy reference went completely over your thick head. See, True, an endoscopy shoots a probe down your esophagus. In your case, however, I’d recommend a colonoscopy… to see what crawled up your ass.”