Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire

“We’ll each carry our own,” Gabriel said, squeezing his parka into a compact bundle.

The other team members quickly stripped out of their freezer suits, but the polar fleece pullovers and pants beneath were still much too warm for the inexplicably balmy temperature inside the cave. Even stripped down to their last layer of high-tech, lightweight, moisturewicking thermals, they still felt sticky and overheated.

“Shh,” Velda said, pausing from trying to force the zipper shut on her now overstuffed pack and putting a finger to her lips. “Do you hear that?”

“What?” Mille asked, cocking his massive head.

“Sounds like…” Velda began.

Millie casually slapped at the back of his neck and Gabriel grabbed his thick wrist, eyes wide. Millie frowned quizzically as Gabriel turned the big man’s hand over to reveal a squashed mosquito and tiny splotch of bright blood.

“A mosquito!” Velda said, her voice incredulous.

“So what?” Millie shrugged. “This little squirt ain’t nothing compared to the blood-sucking bombers we got back home.”

“There are no mosquitoes of any size at the South Pole,” Nils said. “No insects at all, in fact.”

Millie looked down at the minuscule corpse in his hand.

“Should we try to preserve it or something?” Millie asked. “I feel kinda bad now for squashing the only living insect ever found at the South Pole.”

“Guys,” Rue called from the depth of the tunnel. “I really think you ought to see this.”

While the other four were marveling over the unfortunate mosquito, Rue had followed her curiosity down the tunnel. She had turned a sharp corner, so she could be heard but not seen.

Gabriel twisted sideways and entered the tunnel, motioning for the others to follow. Inside the tunnel it was not just warm, it was humid, as utterly the opposite of the bone-dry chill aboveground as could possibly be imagined. The air had an odor, a rich green loamy smell that told Gabriel that Dr. Silver had not been hallucinating in his final transmission. When he came to the dogleg bend in the tunnel, his eyes confirmed what his nose had already told him.

The tunnel widened to a broad triangular opening. Rue was standing in the opening, hands on her hips. The other four joined her and stood together in awed silence, regarding the valley below. It was green. Lushly, verdantly, impossibly green.

Chapter 14

From where the team stood, they could see the rippling, leafy canopy of what looked like thick, tangled jungle below them, surrounded on all sides by sheer granite cliffs. About ten feet down from the ledge on which they were gathered, the river spewed out of the cliff face as a misty, ethereal waterfall, spilling down into a clear green pool below. High above their heads was a vaulted ceiling of the curious red ice, giving the daylight filtering through it a ruddy, perpetual-sunset hue. In the distance, at the far end of the valley, there was a large, jagged crack in the rooflike ice dome, through which a bright slash of ordinary daylight spilled in. It was hard to judge its length from this distance, but the crack looked to Gabriel to be at least twenty feet wide and a hundred feet long. It also looked as if several massive plates of ice overlapped at that point, forming a kind of covered ramp leading up to the frozen world above. It could be a way out, but it was easily a half a mile above the ground. Even if they were able to scale one of the sheer cliff faces and reach the frozen ceiling, they would still need to somehow travel upside-down, gecko like, across the curved ice to make their way to the crack.

“You see?” Velda asked, breathless and husky with emotion as she took in the sight before them. “I knew it!”

“I see it,” Nils said, his faded blue eyes wide. “But I don’t believe it.”

“How can a place like this exist?” Gabriel asked. He reached down to grab a handful of crackling fallen leaves. He let the warm wind swirl them away. “How has it been able to escape satellite detection for so long?”

“Perhaps the red ice covering this valley has properties that allow it to deflect geothermal imaging?” Nils said. “I don’t know.”

“What we do know,” Velda said, “is that my father wasn’t crazy. Can you imagine how much a discovery like this might be worth?”

“It’s worth nothing if we don’t get out of here alive,” Rue said.

“What are you thinking, boss,” Millie said, “make our way over to that crack there?”

“One step at a time,” Gabriel said. “First let’s get ourselves down from here.”

Driving a piton to anchor their remaining rope, the team carefully rappelled down the cliff, following the edge of the waterfall to the jungle floor.

Once they were on the ground, Gabriel was able to take a closer look at the foliage surrounding the water. The majority of the tallest trees were a species of fragrant, silvery eucalyptus that Gabriel had never seen before. In the shorter scrub layer, he thought he recognized a variety of distinctly Tasmanian flora in addition to a couple more species he couldn’t place. Everywhere he looked, his eye fell on something new and impossible. Mysterious, unfamiliar songbirds with flashing orange and gold wings. Heavy, lumbering beetles like walking jewels. Curious lizards and tiny possumlike marsupials with wary red eyes. Velda was right—the sheer magnitude of a discovery like this was impossible to calculate, nearly overwhelming. But Rue was right, too. It would all be worth nothing if they didn’t find a way back to the surface.

“Look,” Velda said. “A trail!”

She pointed to what appeared to be a narrow, winding path on the left, leading off into the verdant bush alongside a rill flowing with runoff from the pool.

“I’ll take point,” Gabriel said. “Millie, you take the rear.”

Millie nodded, peeling the scraps of sleeping bag off his foot and pulling on his damp boot.

“Everybody stay close and keep your eyes open,” Gabriel said. He pointed at an animal skittering into the undergrowth. “Some of these look like smaller prey animals, and that means something bigger is probably eating them.”

“Great,” Rue said as they started down the trail. “I’m gonna be the first person in history to be eaten by a jaguar at the South Pole.”

“Come, come,” Nils said, squinting and wiping sweat from his eyes. “There cannot be any jaguars here. It’s just not possible.”

“This whole place is impossible,” Millie replied. “How much more impossible is a jaguar than a mosquito?”

They trekked in silence, sweating. Within ten minutes, they’d unzipped the sleeves off their thermal shirts. After twenty, the legs came off the thermal underwear. They packed away the stripped-off pieces, knowing they’d be sorry when they returned to the surface if they didn’t.

“Nils,” Velda said, watching the tall man as he limped along beside her. “Are you all right?”

He nodded, but it was clear that the heat was getting to him. It felt to Gabriel like the temperature was somewhere north of eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and after twenty minutes of marching, Nils was flushed and sweating profusely, his thinning blond hair plastered to his skull. Having spent the last fifteen years of his life at temperatures that rarely rose above zero, his ability to cope with the sudden shift to tropical weather was also barely above zero.

The team came to a bend in the path and Gabriel could see a deep ravine just off to one side. At the bottom of the ravine the small stream they’d been following flowed gracefully over mossy stones.

“Be careful,” Gabriel said. “Looks like a bit of a drop over here.”

“Should we refill our canteens?” Millie asked, looking down over the edge.