Steve Alten - Vostok

“A hundred dollars against your thousand says we bed together at least once before the mission is through.”

“Done!” Ben shook True’s hand. “I’ll say this for you Highlanders — you aren’t afraid to go down swinging.”

“And I say him that’s born to be hanged will never be drowned.”

Having degombled, we entered the dome.

The temperature inside was a balmy thirty degrees, the air warmed by portable blowers, the ice covered by plywood sheets. Mobile lights pointed up at the domed ceiling, cabled to power generators that lined the periphery.

Ming had organized the facility into quadrants. Accommodations for her crew and the dozens of participating scientists were relegated to Tent City, an assortment of colorful nylon tents clustered by nationality. The smallest were single crawl-ins; the largest were six-person walk-ins with extended porches and multiple storage areas.

A mess station was set up next to the living areas. Crates held frozen microwavable meals, and coffee and hot beverages were available around-the-clock, provided one supplied his own mug and utensils. Folding tables and chairs accommodated diners and poker players. A row of port-a-potties lined the dome wall next to a supply trailer and first-aid tent.

The last two areas were devoted to science. Mission Control consisted of two long rows of folding tables that held three computer stations, a rack of video monitors, and a half-dozen crates on skis supporting the generators that supplied power to the Valkyrie units. An Army tent erected behind the command post doubled as a meeting area and Ming’s sleeping quarters.

The last quadrant was almost completely occupied by a portable lab contained in an inflatable Level-3 containment bubble.

These four sections, each of which occupied about half an acre, surrounded a much larger central work area of exposed ice cordoned off by neon-orange fencing. Towering two stories above this site stood a gantry designed to hold our submersible.

Ben pointed to the chaos of twisted steel. “The Barracuda will be suspended nose-down for our launch. About a mile into our descent they’ll begin pumping water into the hole to re-seal it behind us. We can’t enter the lake until the hole is frozen over, otherwise the pressure will blast us back into the dome like Old Faithful.”

I turned to see Ming exit the Army tent. She was wearing an orange fur-lined parka, jeans, and white “bunny boots” insulated with wool felt. Seeing us, she waved, a smile stretching across her tanned face as she approached.

Ben and I received bear hugs, True a nod. “Isn’t this exciting? There’s a briefing scheduled in my tent in one hour. Are you hungry? Let me call my assistant. She’ll show you to your tents, and you can get something to eat before the meeting.”

Using her walkie-talkie, she summoned a brown-eyed, blonde-haired American woman in her mid-twenties, sporting a track star’s physique and a sorority girl smile. And just like that, True’s attitude changed. “Gentlemen, this is my research assistant, Susan McWhite. Susan, this is Dr. Zachary Wallace, Captain Ben Hintzmann, and … ”

“Finlay MacDonald. But the ladies all call me True because the rumors, well, they’re all true.”

Susan blushed as True kissed the back of her glove. “You’re a feisty one.”

“And a man who loves a good wager,” added Ben.

“Susan, please show our guests to their tents. Make sure Dr. Wallace and Captain Hintzmann get something to eat before they join the briefing; we could be a while.”

“Yes, Zachary. You and Captain Hintzmann go on without me.” True winked. “Dr. Liao and I have a lot of catching up tae do.”

“Mr. MacDonald, every person on this base has two jobs, yet you don’t seem to have any. Susan, would you assign Mr. MacDonald to a task that fits his particular skill set?”

“Yes, ma’am. Let’s see, sheepherding is out … ”

True grinned. “This one’s a pistol. I may have tae marry ye. But no worries, Ming, darlin’, ours will be an open marriage.”

Susan led us to three double-occupancy nylon tents set up in the English-speaking section of Tent City. “These three are yours. Inside you’ll find sleeping bags, pillows, extra blankets, coffee mugs, and eating utensils. We’re under strict water rations, so safeguard your silverware. Anything else you need,” she glared at True, “any supplies , just see me.”

We stowed our gear, then followed Susan to the dining area.

She hung back to speak with me. “Ming didn’t mention it, but I’m a marine biologist specializing in cetaceans. I know you invented an acoustic lure for a giant squid. Did you ever think about creating something similar for humpback and gray whales?”

“Actually, I’m more interested in intra-species communication, especially among orca. Last week while we were training, Ben and I witnessed a pod of orca attack and kill two minke whales. The coordination of the hunt was incredibly efficient.

“But now let me ask you something, Susan. As a cetacean expert, do you accept Darwin’s theory that whales used to be land mammals? I believe in the first edition of his Origin of Species he claims the ancestors of whales were a race of bears, though the accepted natural-selection species is now a wolf-like carnivore called a Mesonyx .”

“Honestly, Dr. Wallace, I’ve always disagreed with Darwin on this one. The first whales appeared about fifty million years ago. By most accounts there would have been tens of thousands if not millions of whales in the sea. That adds up to a mass exodus of a land species to a radically different environment. What would have caused it? And how do Darwin’s theories regarding natural selection account for the incredible adaptations and mutations needed to change a relatively small land animal into a fifty- to one-hundred-ton leviathan able to swim deep in the ocean? The skeletal and physiological changes alone are collectively beyond reason, and yet we’re expected to believe these evolutionary changes happened in only five to ten million years? Ridiculous.”

“For the record, Susan, I agree. But I’d still like to hear your explanation.”

“It’s simple really. The ancestors of modern whales were prehistoric fish. Take Leedsichthys . Here was an eighty-foot prehistoric gill-breather with massive pectoral fins. Subtract the gills and add lungs and a blowhole and you have a humpback whale. Whale sharks siphon krill in a similar manner to baleen whales; orcas possess jaws similar to most sharks. Other than the manner in which the species breathe, the differences are subtle. Yes, the tail movements are different, but the horizontal movements of a fluke are an adaptation conducive to breathing above the surface. Which is easier to accept: that a Leeds fish could lose its gills and evolve a blowhole and lungs or that a four-legged wolf-like creature could shed its fur, alter its entire physiology, and increase its size a hundred fold to become a whale?”

“Point taken. But why would a fish become an air-breather in the first place?”

“Adaptations are necessitated by changes in diet and environment. I just think it’s easier to accept an aquatic animal evolving an alternative means of processing oxygen and carbon dioxide than a wolf or bear entering the sea, losing its fur, limbs, and pelvis and growing a fluke.”

“Want tae ken whit I think?” True interrupted, not waiting for a reply. “I think deid is deid. A million years from now, no one’s gonna care if I breathed out of my mouth or my arse, or if Susan’s eyes were slanted different than Ming’s. What matters is love and who ye share yer sleeping bag with tae keep ye warm.”