Steve Alten - Vostok

Minutes became hours, the glow from the battery-powered alarm clock advancing steadily until I freed myself from my goose-down cocoon at 3:42 a.m., my frustration getting the better of me. Even if I were to fall asleep now, I’d barely get four hours of rest.

Finding my boots, I tugged them over my wool socks, unzipped the tent, and emerged into the light, making my way through an alley of tents to the first-aid station.

I found the physician asleep on his exam table, his security tag identifying him as Zeb Gnehm.

“Excuse me? Yo, Doc. Some help, please?”

The physician sat up, bleary-eyed.

“Sorry to wake you, but I can’t sleep and I need to be able to function in four hours. Could I get a sleeping pill or something?”

Dr. Gnehm responded with a contagious yawn. “Are you allergic to anything?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Ambien works well, but you shouldn’t take it if you’ll only get half a night’s sleep. Same with Lunesta. Best to go with either Rozerem or Sonata, both of which stay active in the body for only a limited amount of time.”

“What’s he on?” I pointed to Ben, who was passed out on a cot, headphones over his ears.

“Hintzmann? He’s on a prescription for Desyrel. It’s an anti-depressant used for anxiety. How about a Valium?”

I popped the pill and returned to my tent. I zippered myself inside my sleeping bag and grew more irritated as my bladder reminded me I should have visited the port-a-potty while I was up.

Looking around the tent, I spotted a half-empty container of Gatorade. Two long swigs drained the wide-mouth bottle, which accommodated me just fine as I refilled the plastic jug with urine.

Relieved, I crawled back inside my goose-down womb, the digital clock winking 4:12 at me as the Valium pulled me under.…

“Zachary, you’re not thinking, son. Wake up .”

I opened my eyes to find my mentor seated in a canvas folding chair. Joe Tkalec’s brown hair was long and Albert Einstein wild, his matching goatee showing a touch of gray. His kind yet inquisitive brown eyes were magnified behind the same pair of rectangular glasses he had worn every day while teaching middle school science .

Transferring to a new school is never easy, especially when coming from another country in the middle of the academic year. I arrived in America with a Highland accent as baggage and a ninety-five-pound physique. It was deer hunting season — and I was Bambi .

Mr. Tkalec shielded me from the abuse. He helped me to overcome my accent while encouraging my love of marine biology by allowing me to borrow books and research papers from his personal library. His roommate, Troy — a retired semi-pro football player — introduced me to weight training and conditioning drills when I was thirteen. His coaching tips helped me to earn the starting halfback position on our high school football team .

Joe remained my mentor throughout my teen years and helped me get into Princeton. It had been three years since we had last talked .

What was he doing in East Antarctica?

“Listen to that katabatic wind, Zachary. It sounds like an earthquake, like machine-gun fire pelting the outside of the dome .”

“Why are you here, Joe? Did you travel all this way to wish me luck? You know, if it wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t be here .”

The kind eyes vanished. “Now that’s a helluva thing to say. I trained you to think like a scientist, not a reality show buffoon. First, that nonsense back at Loch Ness— and now this? You disappoint me, Zachary .”

I sat up, my heart racing. “But I resolved the identity of the Loch Ness Monster. I thought you’d be proud .”

“Proud: Derived from the word pride, as in self-pride, the abuse of which amounts to ego. Yes, son, you resolved the mystery of a large biologic inhabiting an ocean-access lake and then identified the species and the circumstances which led to its extraordinary adaptations. Only you weren’t satisfied, were you? You went after the creature by using yourself as bait. Do you think I would have been filled with pride at your funeral? Is that why I encouraged you to become a marine biologist, so that one day I could brag to your wife and child at your gravesite how I had mentored you back in school?

“And Vostok — where’s the scientific method in this mission? You should be launching a thousand drones into the lake, shooting video, and taking water samples to analyze every square mile of its Miocene elements. There’d be enough data to study for the next twenty years. Instead, you fell for the lure of stardom, choosing to risk your life in a manned submersible just so you could say you were the first. That’s what I’ll say at your eulogy: ‘Zachary Wallace, best student I ever had, and the first schmuck in history to die exploring a subglacial lake.’

“There’s no science in committing suicide, son. At the end of the day, it’s a selfish act that leaves behind only sorrow. You need to wake up, Zachary. Wake up ….”

“Zachary, wake-up!”

I was dead to the world, my brain encased in wet cement; yet through the inebriated fog, I felt a smooth velvet tingling of delight working its way around my groin, and through its arousal I awoke from my drug-induced stupor.

Then I realized the hand rubbing the inside of my thigh didn’t belong to my wife, and my eyes flashed open in sudden panic.

True stood over me, a shit-eating grin plastered over his face. “Ken that would wake ye. So who was ye dreamin’ aboot? Ming or my sister?”

“No one, you big douchebag. What time is it?”

“Time tae get dressed. Ye launch within the hour. That yer Gatorade?”

“Yeah, but don’t put your lips to it. I can only imagine where they were last night.”

“If yer referring to one Ms. Susan McWhite, she prefers her men scrawny and smart. Here’s tae ye.” He unscrewed the lid and took a big gulp, his eyes bugging out as he gagged on my urine.

I smiled. “If you’re hungry, lad , I can shit you a turd sandwich to go with it.”

The subject of bowel movements always comes up for astronauts and submersible pilots. Occupying a cramped cockpit over an extended period of time requires proper preparation. It was one thing for Ben and me to use a urine bottle and pop a few pills to temporarily shut down our bowels while we dove in Prydz Bay; Vostok was an entirely different mission. Each dive would average between fourteen and thirty hours.

Upon arriving at the dome, our submersible techs had swapped the Barracuda ’s leather bucket seats for advanced models with built-in waste-collection systems. A suction hose disposed of urine into a cache beneath our seat. Bowel movements required the removal of a section of the seat, exposing a wastehole a third the size of a normal toilet. A privacy curtain separated Ming’s cockpit from ours. I won’t provide the rest of the gory details other than to say the three of us ingested plenty of large intestine suppressants in the hope of rendering the matter moot.

To utilize the waste-collection system required wearing a specially designed jumpsuit with easy access panels. Thus was born the ECU: Extreme Conditions Uniform. Lightweight and flexible, the ECU had panels in all the right places and contained built-in sensors to monitor our vital signs, an internal heating unit with a scalp-tight hood with ear holes for our headphones, and circulation cuffs fitted around the biceps, thighs, and calves, which inflated and deflated periodically to prevent cramps and blood clots.

Having consumed our pre-launch meal and used the toilet one last time, Ben and I emerged from our tents in our black ECUs like two modern-day Ninja.