Michael Crichton - State Of Fear

Evans could see nothing differentit just looked like more ice field, glistening in the sunbut here there were red flags on both sides of the route. The flags were mounted on six-foot-high posts.

As they moved deeper into the field, he looked beyond the road to the openings of crevasses in the ice. They had a deep blue color, and seemed to glow.

"How deep are they?" Evans said.

"The deepest we've found is a kilometer," Bolden said, over the radio. "Some of them are a thousand feet. Most are a few hundred feet or less."

"They all have that color?"

"They do, yes. But you don't want a closer look."

Despite the dire warnings, they crossed the field in safety, leaving the flags behind. Now they saw to the left a sloping mountain, with white clouds.

"That's Erebus," Bolden said. "It's an active volcano. That's steam coming from the summit. Sometimes it lobs chunks of lava, but never this far out. Mount Terror is inactive. You see it ahead. That little slope."

Evans was disappointed. The name, Mount Terror, had suggested something fearsome to himnot this gentle hill with a rocky outcrop at the top. If the mountain hadn't been pointed out to him, he might not have noticed it at all.

"Why is it called Mount Terror?" he said. "It's not terrifying."

"Has nothing to do with that. The first Antarctic landmarks were named after the ships that discovered them," Bolden said. "Terror was apparently the name of a ship in the nineteenth century."

"Where's the Brewster camp?" Sarah said.

"Should be visible any minute now," Bolden said. "So, you people are some kind of inspectors?"

"We're from the IADG," Kenner said. "The international inspection agency. We're required to make sure that no US research project violates the international agreements on Antarctica."

"Uh-huh amp;"

"Dr. Brewster showed up so quickly," Kenner went on, "he never submitted his research grant proposal for IADG approval. So we'll check in the field. It's just routine."

They bounced and crunched onward for several minutes in silence. They still did not see a camp.

"Huh," Bolden said. "Maybe he moved it."

"What type of research is he doing?" Kenner said.

"I'm not sure," Bolden said, "but I heard he's studying the mechanics of ice calving. You know, how the ice flows to the edge, and then breaks off the shelf. Brewster's been planting GPS units in the ice to record how it moves toward the sea."

"Are we close to the sea?" Evans said.

"About ten or eleven miles away," Bolden said. "To the north."

Sarah said, "If he's studying iceberg formation, why is he working so far from the coast?"

"Actually, this isn't so far," Kenner said. "Two years ago an iceberg broke off the Ross Shelf that was four miles wide and forty miles long. It was as big as Rhode Island. One of the biggest ever seen."

"Not because of global warming, though," Evans said to Sarah, with a disgusted snort. "Global warming couldn't be responsible for that. Oh no."

"Actually, it wasn't responsible," Kenner said. "It was caused by local conditions."

Evans sighed. "Why am I not surprised?"

Kenner said, "There's nothing wrong with the idea of local conditions, Peter. This is a continent. It would be surprising if it didn't have its own distinctive weather patterns, irrespective of global trends that may or may not exist."

"And that's very true," Bolden said. "There are definitely local patterns here. Like the katabatic winds."

"The what?"

"Katabatic winds. They're gravitational winds. You've probably noticed that it's a lot windier here than in the interior. The interior of the continent is relatively calm."

"What's a gravitational wind?" Evans said.

"Antarctica's basically one big ice dome," Bolden said. "The interior is higher than the coast. And colder. Cold air flows downhill, and gathers speed as it goes. It can be blowing fifty, eighty miles an hour when it reaches the coast. Today is not a bad day, though."

"That's a relief," Evans said.

And then Bolden said, "See there, dead ahead. That's Professor Brewster's research camp."

It wasn't much to look at: a pair of orange domed tents, one small, one large, flapping in the wind. It looked like the large one was for equipment; they could see the edges of boxes pressing against the tent fabric. From the camp, Evans could see orange-flagged units stuck into the ice every few hundred yards, in a line stretching away into the distance.

"We'll stop now," Bolden said. "I'm afraid Dr. Brewster's not here at the moment; his snowtrack is gone."

"I'll just have a look," Kenner said.

They shut the engines and climbed out. Evans had thought it was chilly in the cab, but it was a shock to feel the cold air hit him as he stepped out onto the ice. He gasped and coughed. Kenner appeared to have no reaction; he went straight for the supply tent and disappeared inside.

Bolden pointed down the line of flags. "You see his vehicle tracks there, parallel to the sensor units? Dr. Brewster must have gone out to check his line. It runs almost a hundred miles to the west."

Sarah said, "A hundred miles?"

"That's right. He has installed GPS radio units all along that distance. They transmit back to him, and he records how they move with the ice."

"But there wouldn't be much movement amp;"

"Not in the course of a few days, no. But these sensors will remain in place for a year or more. Sending back the data by radio to Weddell."

"Dr. Brewster is staying that long?"

"Oh no, he'll go back, I'm sure. It's too expensive to keep him here. His grant allows an initial twenty-one-day stay only, and then monitoring visits of a week every few months. But we'll be forwarding his data to him. Actually, we just put it up on the Internet; he takes it wherever he happens to be."

"So you assign him a secure web page?"

"Exactly."

Evans stamped his feet in the cold. "So, is Brewster coming back, or what?"

"Should be coming back. But I couldn't tell you when."

From within the tent, Kenner shouted, "Evans!"

"I guess he wants me."

Evans went to the tent. Bolden said to Sarah, "Go ahead with him, if you want to." He pointed off to the south, where clouds were darkening. "We don't want to be staying here too long. Looks like weather coming up. We have two hours ahead of us, and it won't be any fun if it socks in. Visibility drops to ten feet or less. We'd have to stay put until it cleared. And that might be two or three days."

"I'll tell them," she said.

Evans pushed the tent flap aside. The interior glowed orange from the fabric. There were the remains of wooden crates, broken down and stacked on the ground. On top of them were dozens of cardboard boxes, all stenciled identically. They each had the University of Michigan logo, and then green lettering:

University of Michigan

Dept. of Environmental Science

Contents: Research Materials

Extremely Sensitive

HANDLE WITH CARE

This Side Up "Looks official," Evans was saying. "You sure this guy isn't an actual research scientist?"

"See for yourself," Kenner said, opening one cardboard carton. Within it, Evans saw a stack of plastic cones, roughly the size of highway cones. Except they were black, not orange. "You know what these are?"

"No." Evans shook his head.

Sarah came into the tent. "Bolden says bad weather coming, and we shouldn't stay here."

"Don't worry, we won't," Kenner said. "Sarah, I need you to go into the other tent. See if you can find a computer there. Any kind of computerlaptop, lab controller, PDAanything with a microprocessor in it. And see if you can find any radio equipment."

"You mean transmitters, or radios for listening?"