Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

The meteorite was loaded on board the Rolvaag without undue difficulties, according to Lloyd, when their activities were discovered by the captain of a Chilean destroyer, the Almirante Ramirez . The destroyer chased the Rolvaag into international waters, fired on the tanker, and crippled it near the Ice Limit, the line demarcating where the Antarctic ice pack begins. The Almirante Ramirez subsequently sank in a strong storm that was battering the region. The Rolvaag , according to Lloyd, had been so badly damaged by the Chilean warship that the order was given to abandon ship. Many hands were lost launching the lifeboats in the violent seas, and the Rolvaag sank less than fifteen minutes after being abandoned, carrying its 25,000 ton cargo to the bottom. The captain of the Rolvaag , Master Sally Britton, went down with the ship. Lloyd stated that the sinking of the Rolvaag took place in precisely the place identified by seismologists as the epicenter of the recent earthquakes.

Maritime records back up Lloyd's assertions of where the Rolvaag sank, but the rest of his story could not be independently confirmed. The Chilean consulate in New York issued a strong denial that any of its naval ships had been involved in a confrontation with the Rolvaag or any other vessel. A naval expert with Jane's Defense Weekly did, however, confirm the existence of a destroyer in the Chilean fleet named the Almirante Ramirez , captained by a Comandante Emiliano Vallenar.

Lloyd also backed up Dr. McFarlane's theory that the meteorite was a giant seed that they had inadvertently planted at the bottom of the ocean. He ended his interview with a strong plea to the international community to unite and do whatever possible, as he put it, to "kill whatever it is that's growing down there, before it rips the planet apart." He said he was shutting down the Lloyd Museum and placing his entire fortune, estimated at $33 billion, at the disposal of "anyone with a good idea of how to exterminate" what he called a "very dangerous life form."

Mr. Lloyd's appearance was immediately greeted with a chorus of derision from the scientific community, which continued to assert the CD-ROM was a fake, and that Lloyd was, as one put it, "pulling a stunt that would shame even P. T. Barnum."

[ New York Times - front page, 3-column banner story.]

Freakish Tidal Waves Rake South Atlantic Coast

By Sarah Twombley

BUENOS AIRES, august 26—Immense tidal waves reaching up to 200 feet high struck the coastlines of Antarctica, Tierra del Fuego, and the southern coastline of Chile at around 11:00 GMT. The waves even reached as far as the southwestern coastline of Africa. Tidal waves also raked the islands of South Georgia, South Shetland, South Orkney, and the Falkland island groups. Preliminary reports indicate heavy damage in Punta Arenas and the Falklands, with loss of life mounting into the hundreds, as well as devastating damage to the British Scientific Station on South Georgia Island. A general evacuation of low-lying coastal areas in the southern regions of South America has been ordered by Chile, Argentina, and Great Britain. The government of South Africa has issued a coastal advisory covering its west coast ports and cargo carriers using the international shipping route that rounds the Cape of Good Hope.

Scientists believe the tidal waves are connected with the intense seismic activity which gripped the Scotia Ridge area of the South Atlantic last month, but severe storms have prevented observation of the area since the research vessel, H.M.S. Marylebone , disappeared there on August 21. Seismic stations around the globe continue to record powerful earthquakes in the area, some registering as high as 9.3 Mw on the Richter scale, making them some of the highest-magnitude earthquakes recorded since the scale was invented in 1935. The earthquakes have already leveled the towns of Ushuaia and Puerto Williams and caused extensive landslides in the southern Cordillera of Chile. They have also caused severe damage in Punta Arenas, Stanley, and Rio Gallegos, and have been felt as far as Durban, South Africa.

Scientists initially believed the seaquakes were caused by an underwater volcanic eruption, but the increasing size of the quakes have made that theory less likely. "This is like nothing I've ever seen as a geologist," said Elwyn Pandolfi of Harvard University. "Some utterly new and previously unobserved geological process is taking place. I would guess it's related to plate tectonics in some way. It's certainly not a seed, as some absurd reports have suggested."

[ Washington Post - page A14, World News, 4-column boxed story, above the fold]

Lloyd Announces Expedition to Destroy "Alien Plant"

Claims Future of Planet at Risk

By Tanisha Hundt Washington Post Staff Writer

NEW YORK, August 27—Palmer Lloyd, who stunned the world last week with the announcement that the earthquakes and tidal waves in the South Atlantic were being caused by a germinating seed from outer space, said today that he was forming an emergency expedition to the South Atlantic to "exterminate the life form" that he says he is responsible for "planting." The expedition will be led by Dr. Samuel McFarlane, the former meteorite hunter and planetary geologist who, Lloyd claims, led the original expedition to Chile to recover the meteorite.

The announcement was, as usual, greeted with ridicule from the scientific community. "This is cynicism at a breathtaking level," said Elwyn Pandolfi of Harvard University. "It may be true that the Rolvaag sank with a great meteorite on board, but to turn that tragedy into this kind of promotional circus is unforgivable." Other scientists echoed Dr. Pandolfi's views and severely criticized the news media, particularly the Today Show , for giving the assertions any credence.

On the Today Show earlier in the week, Lloyd sent out a plea for scientists from around the world to band together in an effort to destroy "whatever it is that's growing down there." According to Lloyd spokesperson Cindi Jenkins, the response has been spectacular. "We will have our choice of the very best," she said. "The pay is excellent and while the danger is high, the stakes are higher. Our very survival as a species is threatened."

Later, cameramen photographed a slim man in a wheelchair, wearing a brown suit and dark glasses, his face, hands, and feet heavily bandaged, leaving the Lloyd Holdings headquarters on Park Avenue. The man was said to be an engineer who had survived the wreck of the Rolvaag , and who had been attempting to volunteer his services to design a weapon that would kill the "alien plant" Lloyd claims is growing in the South Atlantic. Later, in response to a press conference question, Lloyd stated he had rejected the man's offer of help. He refused to make the man's name available to the press, but stated that he had been the chief engineer on the original expedition to Chile, and had been on board the Rolvaag when it went down. Later, the Post was able to confirm the man's identity as Eli Glinn, president of an obscure New York City firm known as Effective Engineering Solutions. The Post was unable to obtain a telephone number or an address for the firm.According to Lloyd, if all goes as planned, the heavily armed expedition will leave New York Harbor on September 15, bound for the Ice Limit.