Aqua Eden

Dedicated to

my Aunt Irma

and Brother Stuart

whose kindness

helped me greatly.

Table of Contents

RUSSKAYA

A CHANGE OF PLANS

A NEW UNDERSTANDING

SEARCH FOR TREASURE

THE MERPEOPLE

A STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL

A SURPRISING CONNECTION

Back to the Surface

AQUA EDEN, REVISITED

THE BEGINNING OF TRUST

THE LAST LEG

THE WELCOMED RETURN

TRUST BROKEN

KEITH’S ORDEAL

BACK BENEATH THE ICE

AT LAST ON EQUAL TERMS

A LAST CHANCE

BONDS STRENGTHENED BY TRIAL

EBTINE

RETURN TO ANTARCTICA

A CRYSTAL OF GREAT PRICE

FLIGHT DAY

THE CHALLENGE

A RACE WITH

THE DEVILS

WATER QUEST

ANCIENT HISTORY, UNRAVELED

Copyright

RUSSKAYA

John Fetterly and his wife Brenda were only two weeks away from returning home from their first tour of the U.S.A. weather station Byrd in the Antarctic, when they received an invitation to visit Russkaya, the Soviet Union weather station which was about sixty miles away. An invitation from the Soviet Union was a hard thing to say no to, and that was exactly what they were about to do. However, when the name of the sender appeared at the end of the teletype, and when Boris Yashin, the chief weather man, sweetened the invite by saying that Keith Allaire was already there and waiting with a bottle of Crown Royal, John was hooked. The smile that spread over his face told Brenda all she needed to know, and she headed for their room to pack their suitcase.

To finally meet the man who had been beating him almost every night at chess was one thing he could put off until next year, but to see his good friend Keith Allaire once more after three long years was a chance he could not pass up! When he checked with the weatherman, John learned that no storms were on the horizon, and that a window of five days was assured to him. So, he wired back that he and his wife would be leaving at five-thirty in the morning and that they expected to arrive at the base at about six o’clock that night. When he got confirmation that they had received his message, he hurried to his room to pack.

The next morning, he and his wife headed out across the tundra at exactly five-thirty in a snow cruiser. They had been assured that there would be no freak snow storms within the next five days, but if the land cruiser broke down and they were stuck out on the tundra when the first of the winter storms hit, the vehicle would offer little protection. A snow cruiser meant they would be warm and cozy at sixty below zero Fahrenheit for two weeks or more. John was six feet two inches tall with light brown hair and deep blue eyes. His wife barely stood five feet tall, with light brown hair and soft blue eyes. They both held degrees in Botany. They had spent the summer looking for any kind of flower, shrub, or new piece of greenery that dared to push itself up and out of the ground. Now all they had to do was take it all back to the Smithsonian where they would spend the next few months cataloguing all their finds and with the summer now over and the long winter about to set in, they were eager to get back home. Since their plane was not due to arrive for another week, they felt they had lots of time to visit an old friend and put a face to an old adversary.

They arrived at their destination on time. As predicted, they were welcomed by Boris and Keith with open arms and big smiles. Boris, the senior weatherman and commander of the weather station of Russkaya, was a giant of a man who weighed in at over 250 pounds, which he carried on a five feet ten-inch frame. He had thinning red hair, blue eyes, and a thunderous and infectious laugh. John thought him to be about fifty years old. Keith, on the other hand, was five feet seven inches tall, with light brown hair, soft brown eyes and weighed not an ounce over 157 pounds. He, like John, had gone to Harvard, but he got to go only because he had won a scholarship in gymnastics. At Harvard, they met and became good friends. Although they finished school fifteen years ago, they always kept in touch. Keith was a pilot by profession and was bringing in Canadian supplies to the base for a joint venture between Canada and the Soviet Union next spring.

Over the next two days, John and Keith kept the others laughing with dumb school stories about each other, and at night they played cards or chess before turning in. On the third evening, Brenda began packing. John consulted the weatherman to see what kind of weather they could expect to have on the way back. Assured that the conditions would be favorable, they retired early, leaving Boris and Keith to finish a game of chess that would probably take them into the wee hours of the morning.

At six o’clock in the morning, John heard a light tap on their bedroom door. Boris’s cheerful smile was absent as he greeted John and Brenda.

Keith left this morning around five and hasn’t been heard from since. He was to drop off some supplies at our field camp and be back here before you left. He should have been at our field camp half an hour ago, but they haven’t seen him yet. To make matters worse, by late tonight a storm front will be upon us.

A day earlier than expected? asked John.

Boris nodded affirmatively, and then said, As he is a close personal friend of yours, I thought you might want to know.

You are right, and I thank you for your concern, but what is it you are not telling me? John asked sternly.

Am I that easy to read? Boris asked, stunned.

An honest man always is, replied John softly.

Brenda, who could hear their conversation through the partly opened door, called out to her husband. Honey, ask him if we can have Keith’s flight plan and we will start looking for him right away, while the sky is still clear!

Boris heard every word she spoke and smiled at John before saying, I will do better than that. I will take you over the exact path he should have taken on his way to our field camp. But, this will mean that you may not get back to your weather station until the storm is over, which could be a week or more from now.

That’s okay, said Brenda, opening the bedroom door, now fully clothed and ready for departure.

John looked at Boris and said, Let’s get going.

Boris nodded okay. He looked at Ivan, his second in command, sitting in front of the radio set and said, Stay by the radio. Any and all changes in the coming storm I want to know about instantly. You are in charge now.

He hurried for his packed bag, which was by the door.

First, I will let my base camp know what we are going to do, and then we will be right with you, Boris, John said as he headed for the telex. And, we will need extra food and fuel, in case we get caught in the storm and have to stay out there in it until it is over.

Just tell your base camp what you are going to do. The extra provisions and fuel have already been packed on board your snow cruiser, said Boris with a big smile.

John smiled and nodded gently at Boris as he began typing on the telex machine. An hour later they had covered almost one quarter of the way to the field camp, when their radio picked up a very weak mayday signal from Keith. Try as they might, they could not get Keith to reply when they called him back. He kept giving out his location over and over again.

He is hurt, whispered Brenda, as Boris scanned the map for his exact location.

Judging by the sound of his voice, I would say he is hurt badly, predicted John as he pushed the accelerator pedal down to the floor. At Boris’s suggestion, he pulled the cruiser in a more westerly direction.

How long before we get to him? asked John, not once taking his eyes off of the terrain in front of them.

About an hour, at this speed, replied Boris. He then added, If we get there!

A moment later, the cruiser began to slow down as John nodded a yes and slowly let up on the accelerator. It would not do any of them any good to risk smashing something against the cruiser on such a rocky terrain, and John knew it. Until he could drive quickly, he would have to drive safely, even if it meant being a few minutes late finding Keith. Boris never cracked a smile, but inwardly he was pleased when John slowed down on the rocky terrain. He immediately sent back word of Keith’s mayday and of his location and indicated that they were now heading for him.

A CHANGE OF PLANS

It was only a matter of a few minutes later when John began to find that the steering of the cruiser was being affected by the strong wind. As they got closer to Keith’s location, the wind intensified so much that John was using all of his strength to keep the cruiser going in a straight line. Every time he came out in the open, he was hit with severe gale force winds. Undaunted, he maintained the cruiser on course at a steady creep forward. An hour and a half later, he crept out into the open once again, and heard Boris announce that they had arrived.

Here? Brenda asked, stunned by what they saw before them. With the wind blowing at a minimum of sixty miles an hour all around them, it was as if they were in the center of a white-out.

And that is exactly why we are not moving one foot more until we see something to guide us forward! exclaimed John.

Together they sat and waited for the wind to let up enough to allow them to see something that could steer them towards Keith. After a little while, it became apparent to everyone that the wind’s forces were not going to weaken. Finding Keith would be like finding a tiny white feather in a blizzard!

Brenda was the first to voice her feelings as she said, We can’t just sit here when we are so close!

It’s that, or we run the risk of running one of our steel tracks over him in this snow storm, resolved John. If he is hurt, he hasn’t got much time left, and if he isn’t, then he probably has found shelter by now, if he could.

Too many ifs! interjected Boris. First, we look all around, and then we crawl forward a hundred feet or more and do the same thing again. Okay?

In unison, Brenda and John answered affirmatively. Every three or four minutes, the cruiser crawled ahead another hundred or more feet. Everyone strained their eyes to get a glimpse of the surrounding landscape. Time slowly crawled by, and their desperation became apparent. As John asked Brenda and Boris if they had seen anything, his usually confident and strong voice cracked. Brenda’s negative reply to John was followed immediately by a loud scream. As John and Boris turned their attention to Brenda, they heard a loud thump outside against the skin of the cruiser.

Shaking like a leaf in a strong autumn wind, Brenda blurted out, Someone just looked in my window!

John threw the gearshift into park and almost beat Boris out of the cruiser. Together they found Keith’s crumbled figure lying beside the snow cruiser iron right track and hurriedly brought him inside. With the heat of the cruiser now gone, they understood what Keith had been going through while he waited to be rescued. They first stripped him of his outer clothes, and then slid him into two down-filled sleeping bags. They managed to get three gulps of hot coffee into him before he passed out. Although Brenda had the medical kit out, she saw no reason to use it. His mitts had saved his fingers, and he had been able to protect his face with a scarf and prevent frostbite. The bump on his head was nasty looking. He seemed to know who they were, but they would have to wait until he regained conscious once again to find out the true extent of his injuries. Back at the Russkaya weather station a loud shout of joy rang out from Ivan and the others as Boris told them that they had found Keith alive and they were now coming back home.

They had barely turned the cruiser around, when the radio began to chatter at them in Russian. Even John and Brenda knew that the message was important. Boris smiled and then said something back into the microphone. The sender repeated the message in broken English:

Dhere is some ting wrong at our oter camp. Please, you look.

Neither Brenda nor John were smiling as they detected the urgency in the sender’s voice. John asked Boris for a new heading, got it, and then swung the cruiser around once more and headed for their field camp. More than two hours later, they pulled into what was left of the field camp. Before venturing outside the cruiser, Boris radioed a message about the disastrous effects the wind had caused. The small tin structure that usually protected the twelve-foot high derrick and drilling equipment from the elements during the winter months was now nowhere to be seen. Only one tin sheet from its west side was left. It sailed off up into the air and out of sight, just as Boris stepped out of the cruiser. For a moment he stood there looking all around. Then he walked slowly and cautiously towards the pile of drilling equipment which lay about fifty feet in front of him.

As he turned towards the north corner of the pile, two figures came up out of the debris and began fighting the wind to get over to him. He quickly steered them over to the snow cruiser. Even though they were over fifty feet away and fighting for their lives against an ever-increasing strong winter wind, John could see the joy in their faces as they first saw the snow cruiser.

When everyone was safely on board, John turned the overcrowded cruiser around and headed back in the direction he had just come. With only a homing beacon to guide them, for the next two hours they crawled steadily back towards their home base. Boris and Ivan kept an endless flow of chatter going as Ivan gave them course corrections every half hour.

Tanya and Nicholas were the two lucky scientists who were rescued only moments before their fate would have been decided by the storm. They were a brother and sister who shared a common interest in saving the earth by reversing man’s pollution problems. They had both majored in the study of water and its purification, which was not all that surprising, considering they were paternal twins. It was this very project that Canada and Russia had agreed to work on that had brought Keith to Antarctica. His job was to bring in supplies that would be needed by the scientists who would work with them in the spring. Together they would drill through five miles of ice to take water samples from a lake that was frozen over more than ten thousand years ago.

Tanya and Nick, as he preferred to be called, were slim in stature, with brown hair and eyes, stood about five feet two or three inches tall and weighed about 120 to130 pounds.

How long until we get back to our base camp? asked Tanya.

John observed that she spoke with very good English.

At this rate, maybe days! laughed Boris, as they crawled along.

Perhaps you are right, replied Tanya, but it sure beats walking, doesn’t it?

Boris broke into a belly laugh before saying, It sure does! It sure does.

John looked down at his gas gauge. Seeing that it was still over half full, he figured they had more than enough gas to get back, unless they had to make another detour. Just as they passed the eighteen-mile mark and Ivan had given them another course correction, the radio suddenly went dead.

Now what? John wondered aloud.

Boris worked on the radio while John made the course correction. After another twenty minutes of driving, Boris turned off the radio as he proposed that it was no use to keep trying because the radio was dead.

Nothing but static!

When John heard these words, he stopped the snow cruiser and turned around to face the others.

Decision time! he said, as he showed them a grim face. As I see it, we can keep going and hope we arrive at the base camp by morning, or we can sleep here and see if we can fix the radio and try again tomorrow morning. If we elect to keep driving and pass the base camp or run out of gas in this storm, well, things could get serious in a hurry.

Sleep here! Tanya and Nick said, in unison.

As Brenda and Boris nodded their heads in agreement, John nodded his head in agreement also. He twisted around in his seat and began to make the cruiser crawl. As he did this, he encouraged the others to look for a high rise of boulders or a snow drift they could park beside and use as a wind break. Seconds dragged into minutes. After eight long minutes, Nick tapped John on the shoulder and pointed out his driver’s side window to a snow drift that was about twenty feet away. It was only about half the size of what John was hoping for, but he decided that this would have to do. He maneuvered the vehicle close to the drift and took the vehicle out of gear. Boris and Nick quickly slipped out of the cruiser and piled more snow up and around the bottom half of the vehicle to deflect the wind and prevent it from sucking out the heat from the interior of the snow cruiser. When they got back in, Brenda handed each of them a cup of hot coffee and watched as each hurriedly drank it down.

That was mighty good, and I don’t even like coffee! Boris confessed. Everyone chuckled at his remark, and then turned in for the night.

This storm was only wind and loose surface snow, but by tomorrow afternoon they would be in the middle of the first real snow storm of the year. If they were not at the base when that storm hit, they might be stranded out on the tundra for the next two or three weeks in subzero weather. When they first arrived at their present location, they were parked in a level position. Now three hours later, the back of the snow cruiser was clearly lower than the front.

We must be parked on some soft snow, John said, as he watched Brenda struggling to sit upright to check on Keith.

He seems okay, Brenda whispered to John.

I am, Keith moaned, but I am awful cold.

Try and get some sleep. We will talk in the morning, John assured him.

Keith’s eyelids flickered and closed. John threw a kiss to Brenda and then turned around in his seat and fell off to sleep. The strong wind howled as it danced around the outside of the snow cruiser. Now and then, it even grabbed hold and shook the snow cruiser lightly. Even so, everyone inside the vehicle was warm and cozy in their sleeping bags.

It was just after a gentle shaking that John awoke. He knew right away that something was wrong. He not only felt the cruiser gently rock from side to side, but he was sure he felt the back end of the cruiser slide deeper into the snow. When he reached for the steering wheel in front of him, the gravity of their situation became instantly apparent. His steering wheel was no longer in front of him; it was now above him! Before he could wake any of the others, he heard a low cracking sound coming from beneath them. It seemed to be running in every direction at the same time. A loud sound like a shotgun blast rang out and woke everyone just as the snow cruiser disappeared from the Antarctic’s surface. It came to rest on the top of a slippery ice slope, pointing downwards. Like a skier poised at the top of a ski slope awaiting his turn to go, so, too, were all of them as they teetered slowly back and forth and held their breath in the darkness. John moved his arm out slowly to pull on the headlights. He saw the little bits of snow and ice silently slide into the headlights, then sparkle for a second as they disappeared out of sight. They had rounded the corner into total darkness! John tried to restart the cruiser. The fall had knocked out the engine. The motor gave no response to his efforts.

Everyone, get to the back of the cruiser! John shouted, and then yelled, Never mind! Buckle up instead! just as the cruiser began sliding slowly forward.

Where are we? Brenda asked John, alarm filling her voice.

I don’t know, but wherever this ice tunnel leads to is where we are going to be in a few minutes from now! I suggest that we all hold on tight because we could be in for a bumpy ride.

Tie down anything that is loose and try to protect the first aid kit at all cost! yelled Boris.

Keith, who was now half way out of his sleeping bag and looking for his seat belt, muttered just as they rounded the first turn, It looks like we are in for one hell of a ride.

A moment later, they were sliding out of control and gaining speed with every new foot they covered. The cruiser’s steel treads offered no resistance as they plummeted down the twenty-foot wide ice chute. Turning the front wheels one way or the other completely failed as a steering strategy, so John grabbed Keith’s double sleeping bag and stuffed it between him and the steering wheel for protection. Boris did the same with his sleeping bag. When they turned the fourth corner, the cruiser flipped over onto the passenger’s side. They were glad for those sleeping bags!

At the next corner, the cruiser flipped onto its roof. Another corner forced them into a powerful spin that made them each ill. Flying through the next corner, they flipped back onto the passenger’s side once more and were pointed in the opposite direction. About half way down the shaft, they hit a patch of ten-foot high frozen stalagmites that were sticking up at random from the floor in the center of the chute. The first hit broke every window and piece of glass in the cruiser, including the headlights.

From there, they bounced off three more stalagmites. The impacts left untold bruises on everyone, broke Boris’s right wrist and broke Tanya’s left ankle. By the time they struck the sixth one, all were unconscious, barely clinging to life! No one saw the final one-foot thick wall of ice that the cruiser had to penetrate before it entered