“I took an oath of secrecy,” Von Seeckt said to Turcotte. “I am only violating that oath to prevent disaster.”
“It’s a little damn late for that now,” Turcotte said. “And we’re helping you. I took a few oaths of my own, and I violated one of those when I saved your life and the lives of that couple up in Nebraska. You’ve crossed a line and you can’t go back. Understand that. We’re in this now. All three of us. Whether you like it or not, and personally I can tell you I ain’t too fucking thrilled, but I’m here and I accept what that means.”
Von Seeckt pondered that for a few moments. “I know I crossed a line. I suppose much of what I feel is just habit. I have been so used to being quiet and not speaking. I have never talked to anyone outside of the program in all my life since being recruited in 1942. It is quite strange to speak openly about this.
“There are nine atmospheric bouncers. We know they are linked to the mothership because of their technology and the material they are constructed of and because there were two buried with the mothership — Bouncer One and Bouncer Two, as they are so elegantly called.
“We also know the others are related to the mothership because it is through material discovered in the mothership hangar that we were able to track down the other seven bouncers. When they found the mothership in 1942 they also not only found the first two bouncers, but several of the tablets we have already talked about. Although the people in the program could not decipher the symbols on the tablets, there were drawings and maps that could be understood.”
“Wait a second,” Kelly said. “You’re telling me that the best minds the government could gather together couldn’t decipher these high runes? We’ve got computers that can break codes in seconds.”
“First,” Von Seeckt said, “you must remember that it is extremely difficult to decipher a language or system of writing with so little material to look upon. That rules out effective use of computers — not enough data. Second, we did not necessarily have the ‘best’ minds, as you put it, working on this. We had those who could be recruited and pass a security check and also sign an oath of secrecy. In reality that left many of the best minds out of the field. And because of the secrecy of the program, those minds never got access to the data. Third, those who did work on the problem of deciphering the runes were limited by the conventions of their discipline. They did not understand that these runes found near the mothership could be related to runes elsewhere. Fourth, because of security requirements, the information they were working with was highly compartmentalized. They didn’t have access to all the data that was available.”
“Where else were these runes found?” Turcotte asked.
“I will go into that at another time,” Von Seeckt said. “When Professor Nabinger is with us tomorrow.”
Turcotte gripped the wheel tighter until the whites of his knuckles showed. Kelly noticed that and quickly tried to keep the flow of information going. “But even though they couldn’t decipher the runes,” Kelly said, “they were able to find other bouncers?”
“Yes,” Von Seeckt replied. “As I said, there were drawings and maps. There seemed to be no doubt that much attention was being paid to Antarctica, although the specific location was not given. Just a general vicinity on the continent. We eventually broke it down to an eight-hundred-square-kilometer area.
“Unfortunately, the few expeditions that were mounted during the war years to Antarctica could not be fully equipped, due to other, more pressing requirements for the men and ships required for such an operation — such as defeating Germany and Japan.
“In 1946, as soon as the material and men were available, the United States government mounted what was called Operation High Jump. You can look the mission up. It was well documented. However, what no one seemed to wonder was why the government was so interested in Antarctica in 1946. And why did they dispatch dozens of ships and airplanes to the southernmost continent so quickly after the end of the war?
“It was a very extensive operation. The largest launched in the history of mankind up to that point. High Jump took so many pictures of Antarctica that they haven’t all even been looked at yet, fifty years later! The expedition surveyed over sixty percent of the coastline and looked at over half a million square miles of land that had never before been seen by man.
“But the real success of High Jump occurred when they picked up signs of metal buried under the ice in that eight-hundred-square-mile box that special attention was paid to, which is what they were secretly after in the first place.”
Von Seeckt leaned forward. “Do you know how thick the ice is down there? At some places it is three miles deep! The current altitude of the land underneath the ice is actually below sea level, but that is only because the weight of the ice on top depresses the continent. If the ice were removed, the land would rise up miles and miles! Even with all the expeditions — High Jump included — only about one percent of the surface area of Antarctica has been traversed by man.
“Antarctica contains ninety percent of the world’s ice and snow and it is a most formidable foe, as those men who were operating secretly under the cover of Operation High Jump found out. A plane with skis landed at the site where their instruments had picked up the metal signal — which, despite the aid of the drawings on the tablets, was found only after five months of searching by thousands and thousands of men.
“But the weather down there is unpredictable and brutal at best. A storm moved in and the plane was destroyed, the crew frozen to death before they could be rescued. A second mission was mounted to the site. It was determined that the reflected signal was coming from over a mile and a half down in the ice. We did not have the technology at the time to do either of the two things required to explore further: to survive on the ice at that point long enough, and to drill down far enough.
“So, for nine years we bided our time and prepared. Besides, we had the two bouncers in Nevada to work on. We weren’t sure what was down there in Antarctica, but from the symbols on the tablets it looked like there would be more bouncers, so the priority of the recovery effort was not as high as it might have been otherwise.”
“You mean there were other sites and other symbols and other priority levels?” Kelly asked.
Von Seeckt looked at her. “Very astute, young lady, but let us stay with the subject at hand. In 1955 the Navy launched Operation Deep Freeze, under the leadership of Admiral Byrd, the foremost expert on Antarctica. The operation established five stations along the coast and three in the interior. At least that is what was announced to the press and recorded in the history books.
“A ninth, secret station was also established. One that has never been listed on any map. In 1956 I flew there in the beginning of what passes for summer in the Antarctic. Scorpion Station, as it was called, was over eight hundred miles in from the coast in the middle of — Von Seeckt searched for the words, then shrugged—“in the middle of nowhere, actually. Just ice for miles and miles, which is why the spot was so hard to find in the first place. I was shown the location on the map, but what does it matter? The ice sheet was two and a half miles thick at that point.
“They had taken the entire summer of 1955 to simply move in the equipment they needed. They began drilling in 1956. It took four months to get down the mile and a half to the target. They finally punched through to a cavity in the ice, which was very fortunate. We had been afraid that perhaps the bouncers — if that was what was down there — had been covered over with ice and were frozen into the ice cap. If that had been the case we would have had no hope of recovery. But no, the drill bit broke through to open air. They sent down cameras and looked around. Yes, there were more bouncers in the cavity.