Walter Greatshell - Apocalypse blues

There was nothing. Nothing moving. Nothing to render scale. The deep ice and deeper snow gave no intimation of water beneath, any more than sand dunes in the Sahara give hints of a hidden aquifer. And this did look like fine sand, a vast rippled plain of it. More oppressive still was the fact that I was not towering above the way I usually did, but was only about eight feet high-that was how much of the sail protruded from the ice. I could have easily jumped from the bridge down onto that buckled white heap. The great blocks pushed up by the dive planes actually rose higher than my head. Ironically, all this ice was the product of global warming-the vast Greenland ice cap sloughing off into the ocean.

Mr. Robles came up and rigged the spotlight, flashing a Morse-code signal out across the nothingness. Snowflakes caught in the beam were as brilliant as welding sparks.

"Can't we just call them on the phone?" I asked. I had learned to leave no flesh exposed, but the cold still penetrated. The thermometer read minus thirty-four.

"And reveal our position?"

"Isn't that exactly what you're doing?"

"Reveal our position to someone other than that guy, I mean."

Slow on the uptake, I hesitated before following his line of sight. "Oh," I said. "Wow!" Far away in the murk there were answering flashes. A live human being! Thrilled, I babbled into the mike, "Contact! We've established contact! What's he saying?"

Robles said, "He's just acknowledging us. Wait. Repeat after me: 'Welcome USS No-Name… official escort en route… ETA five minutes.'"

I duly reported every word. Then Robles checked my safety line and boosted me over into a little rumble seat behind the main cockpit to make room for the exiting shore party. A folding ladder was passed up the hatch; Robles planted it on the ice, then swung himself over the edge and climbed down, testing the upheaved surface for stability. It was utterly dry and solid.

As he did this, men began emerging from the hatch. The first was Phil Tran from the navigation center, then there were three seldom-seen officers from the propulsion spaces aft-one of them was the bland Reactor Control Operator, Mr. Fisk, who the boys hated because he was always torturing them with tutorials on nuclear physics and thermodynamics and all kinds of specialized engineering and chemistry. They just wanted to know which buttons to push. The fifth man out I wouldn't have recognized if he hadn't spoken, but he was gruffly complaining about his stiff leg and had to be helped off the sail.

"Mr. Sandoval?" I called, amazed. "You're Mr. Sandoval, right?"

He was facing me, starting down the ladder. "Oh. You," he said.

"Is Mr. Cowper out, too?" I asked, heart beating wildly.

He hesitated, then brusquely continued down to the ice. I didn't know what to think.

The last man out was Commander Coombs. When I saw him I threw caution to the wind, saying, "Captain! I just saw Mr. Sandoval! Does that mean you've let them out? Please, if I could just see him-"

Coombs had a look of grim urgency. Shaking his head no, he turned off my microphone, and said, "Lulu, shut up and listen. This is very important-probably the most important thing you'll ever hear. Don't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you. I know you can be entrusted with a secret, and this is a doozy.

"I don't know what's going to happen here, or who is in charge, but I am not going to just turn this submarine over to the Air Force. If they give me sealed orders from CINCLANT, or I can talk to some Navy brass, fine. That's how it should be. But in the event that there's no Navy presence and no direct line of communication to some pertinent senior authority, I have no intention of relinquishing control of this vessel. She's too important to waste as a backup generator to light Air Force barracks. In that case I deliver the SPAM and head to Norfolk. But the base commander may think differently. That's where you come in.

"I've watched you for weeks now, and you're a very smart girl. I haven't given you any guidance, yet you have taken a fictitious job title and the most cursory instructions, and created an efficient program for managing the other kids on this boat. You have never come to me with an excuse, or failed to execute an assignment. You've never even asked me for clarification, yet your solutions exceed my expectations at every turn. You know when to keep your mouth shut, and when to dole out a few crumbs of information to keep your peers' trust. You're not mindlessly loyal, but you also don't bear a grudge-you home in on what works, because you like it that way.

"When we put Fred Cowper under lock and key, he told me about you. I thought he just wanted me to look out for you, and half the reason I gave you that Youth Liaison title was so I could keep tabs. But you've been very dependable… much more so than some people I've counted on."

Disturbed by his praise, which I thought made me sound like a rat, I said, "What did Mr. Cowper say about me?"

"He called you a tough cookie. He doesn't think you should suffer for his crimes, and I agree."

"Oh…"

"And he has committed serious crimes, crimes against the future of this nation. That's not just right-wing ranting, Lulu-for all we know, the information and technology that he wantonly ordered destroyed could be the difference between America rising to prominence again or being swept into the dustbin of history."

Trying to defend Cowper, I said, "But, sir… I don't quite understand what 'America' means now. I mean, what's left of it?"

"There's no way of knowing. But that's why protecting what we still have is so desperately important."

"But that includes us, doesn't it? Don't people have to be preserved, ultimately?"

"Yes, but not individually. Not at the cost of national security."

"Security for whom, then?"

"'For ourselves and our posterity,' to quote a document that for all I know was made into a paper airplane and tossed overboard by one of the beneficiaries of Cowper's humanitarian zeal! Now that's enough; we don't have time for this. All you need to know is that a few officers and I are going to go ashore. In case somebody other than me should try to take command"-he leaned across and pressed a fat silver key into my oven mitt-"you know what to do."

I watched him climb down and join the others. They were a strange, anachronistic sight in their bulky arctic gear-all they needed was sled dogs and a flag. I put the key in my pocket, shuddering involuntarily. You know what to do. The men began laying down a row of chemical glow wands in the snow.

I heard a far-off whine and saw headlights following the contours of an unseen hill. "Vehicles approaching," I said with chattering teeth. Then I remembered to switch the mike back on and repeated more clearly, "Vehicles approaching."

As the lights neared, wreathed in swirling powder, the sound of turbines became so loud it turned the ice into a vibrating drum. These were not ordinary vehicles. They were gigantic saucers gliding on fat rubber bumpers, their topsides bristling with antennae and weapons.

"Hovercraft," I said in disbelief. "Three of them, coming in fast. Big ones."

Coombs and the others were waving flashlights as if directing taxiing aircraft. The imposing vehicles stopped well short, pulling up side by side in a howling blizzard of their own making, then powered down the rotors. Their blinding headlights turned ridges of upthrust ice translucent blue, brighter than the glow wands, and when they lowered their boarding ramps, it was like an alien visitation.

"There are ten or twelve men coming out," I said. "They are approaching our group."

Barely audible under the idling engines, I could hear the lead stranger shout, "Colonel Brad Lowenthal, Commander Twelfth Space Warning Squadron! Welcome to Thule!"