Robert Doherty - The Citadel

"Meet the new Curator," the High Counsel said as the man pulled a stainless steel table over next to the chair and opened his bag. He began laying out various implements on the table, the nature and implications of which caused Dyson to break out in a cold sweat.

"You can make it easy, or you can make it hard on yourself," the High Counsel said. "We don't really care."

Antarctica

"How could they have put a nuclear reactor down here?" Brothers asked. "I thought reactors were huge and had lots of safety devices and all that."

They were back in the first hallway, linking up with the rest of the team. Vaughn had given a brief summary to the other three members, who were still huddled in their sleeping bags.

"I say we go to the first set of living quarters you found and set up," he said. Then Vaughn threw his gear over his shoulder and headed off. The others quickly got up, gathered their gear and followed. They left the body outside in the corridor, covered with a blanket, letting the cold continue its task of preservation.

Entering the room, Vaughn switched on the ceiling heaters as the rest of the team settled in. Logan was still agitated by their most recent discovery-almost more than he had been over the discovery of the body. He now answered the question Brothers had raised in the corridor. "McMurdo had a nuclear reactor. The U.S. Navy set it up in '61 and got it on line in '62. They thought it would alleviate bringing in all the fuel oil every summer and be a cheap and effective way to keep McMurdo supplied with power."

"What happened?" Smithers was feeling better and seated on a chair, leaning back against the wall.

"The plant was closed in '72. They had a leakage of coolant water into the steam generator tank. The Navy shut the thing down, and it took them three years to remove it. When we get back to Earth First South Station, I can show you where the reactor was. They'd put it on Observatory Hill right near Erebus, which in and of itself wasn't too bright, as Erebus is still an active volcano.

"They shipped the reactor and 101 drums of radioactive earth back to the U.S. and buried it somewhere there. But even that didn't make the site clean enough. The Navy had to come back and dig out quite a bit more earth and ship it back. The site was only finally opened up for what the military termed 'unrestricted use' in 1979."

"There's no way they could have left a reactor down here unattended since the fifties," Vaughn said. "I don't know much about them, but I do know they require constant attention."

Logan nodded. "You're right. This one must be off line, and the rods aren't here. The plan must have been that whenever they were going to reoccupy this place, they'd bring the rods with them and use the oil generators until they could bring the reactor on line. But even so, the fact that the U.S. government put a nuclear reactor-even one without the nuclear fuel-down here and abandoned it is unbelievable."

Burke was more concerned with immediate matters. "What now? We have to wait the storm out, but what do you want to do in the meantime?"

Vaughn stood in front of the group. "We need to explore this place. Now that the lights are on, we should be able to figure out what this place was built for and maybe who built it." He looked at Smithers. "Can you help?"

Smithers nodded. "The bleeding has stopped. As long as I don't hit my head again I should be all right."

Logan grabbed his flashlight and headed for the door. "I'm going down to the power plant to see if I can't find out where the actual reactor is and take a look. They had to have offset it from this base a ways, and maybe I can find the location."

Logan, Burke, and Smithers left the room rapidly, leaving Tai, Vaughn, and Brothers. The pilot walked over to one of the beds and flopped down on it. "I'm going to catch me some shut-eye so I'll be ready to fly when this storm does break." With that, he pulled the pillow over his head.

"Let's take a walk," Vaughn suggested to Tai.

They left the rapidly warming room and returned to the first building they'd entered, the communications center. Vaughn turned on the heaters, then checked the gear lining the wall. "They've got a lot of redundant commo equipment here." He pointed. "That's an HF-high frequency-radio. A pair of them. Several FM, shorter range stuff." He fiddled with the knobs. A dull hiss was all that came out of the speakers.

Tai pointed to one corner of the room, where a bunch of wires disappeared into the ceiling. "There are the leads that go to the antennas."

"Which probably blew away on the surface a long time ago," Vaughn said as he turned the radio off.

A transmitter on the other side of the room caught Vaughn's attention. Several large boxes containing long-lasting batteries surrounded it. A placard on the front read: CITADEL TRANSPONDER. FREQUENCY 45.83.

"What's that?" Tai asked.

"That's how the builders of the base planned to find it once it was covered over. The transponder-if the batteries were still working-is initiated by an incoming plane's radio. The pilot dials up the proper frequency-45.83-on the radio and presses his transmit button. That turns on the transponder. The pilot then homes in on the radio beacon.

"It's the same system set up at small airfields. It allows pilots to turn on the runway lights when they approach at night and there's no one in the tower. The antenna for this transponder is probably built into the roof of the access shaft."

Vaughn checked the transponder, but as he suspected, the batteries were long dead. However, one gauge indicated they were slowly recharging now that the power to the base was on.

"Let's move on," he said. They exited, and Vaughn paused. "Let's get oriented. Let's call the row of units closest to the entry shaft Row A. The next will be Row B, and so on. The long column to the left is One, the middle Two, and the one on the right Three. Thus we have just left Unit A2, which appeared to be a communications setup.

"This tunnel, designated the north tunnel on the power supply board, is blocked heading to Unit A1. We might be able to get to that unit by going up the west tunnel, but we will hold off on that until we work our way over there.

"Unit B3 is living quarters, where we have temporarily left our equipment and our pilot is catching some sleep." He opened the door directly across. "We are now entering Unit B2."

The first thing that caught his eye as he went through the door was Burke at the electric stove. Burke waved a ladle at them and then went back to stirring a large pot on top of the electric stove. "Dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes."

Vaughn led the way through the kitchen and dining area. "This appears to be the central area for meals, and probably was designed to double as the meeting area for the community that was to live here."

Tai followed him as they went to the next unit in line. This one was another set of living quarters except more lavish than the one they had set up in. There were two bedrooms and a small living room. Tai moved into the smaller bedroom and immediately noticed a large blue binder conspicuously placed on top of the bed. An envelope was taped to the binder.

She picked up the binder and stuck it in her backpack, then rejoined Vaughn in the other room. They went through the door and into C2, which turned out to be another set of living quarters. Then they crossed over to C3, which contained the strange metal tanks and light fixtures they had discovered earlier with Logan. Then on to D3, checking out the control panel for the nuclear reactor. Vaughn noticed just to the left of the panel that the grating was off and a dark tunnel beckoned. A small sign above it was labeled: POWER ACCESS TUNNEL.

"That must be where Logan has gone," Vaughn said. He led the way to the next unit, D2, which turned out to be an extremely well-stocked library. Not only were there numerous books on the shelves, but several file cabinets full of microfiche and three microfiche readers were set up on tables.