"One point eight degrees centigrade. Comfortably above freezing. Peculiar, no?"
"Is it?"
"The ocean outside the crater is below the freshwater freezing point; only salt and pressure prevent it from turning solid. But in here the water is warmer. There's no ice and the crater slopes have little snow: this is a warm place, yes?"
"It's a volcano, Greta."
She nodded. "Exactly. Alive with heat and energy." She looked across the water, studying the cave. "I remember you spent part of your childhood spelunking. Correct?"
He grinned uncertainly. "The best years of my life."
"Owen, I want a cure."
"A what?"
"An antidote to whatever killed the Norwegians. Do you think it could lie inside that cave?"
"That's what I came to ask you. Last night, I mean. I… I'm sorry I listened."
"You should be sorry." She smiled sadly. "Do you know why I don't always like you, Owen?"
He didn't answer.
"Because you always seem to know a little too much about me. Just like Jürgen."
He didn't know how to respond.
"Well, I have reproduced a microbe, and now I want a way to kill it. As a safety valve. As a way to retain control over whatever you crazy men try to do next. And I'm intrigued by this cave. Will you take me there?"
"Me? I thought you were angry."
"I am angry. But I'm also calm. I can't afford the luxury of my anger."
"So is this for Jürgen? Or for Germany?"
"You won't help me?"
"I didn't say that."
She bit her lip. "It's for science."
"Ah. Like this voyage."
"And for me."
He bowed his head in acknowledgment. "Then I'll do it."
"And for us."
"Which us?"
She didn't reply.
"You want to go now?"
She shook her head. "Tonight. When Jürgen can't see. He'd never let me go with you."
"We'll be looking for a cure?"
"We'll be looking for something to make all this madness worthwhile."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"It looks dark."
"It's a cave, Greta."
They were standing by the spring. The brief night of late Antarctic summer was ending and the dome of brilliant stars above the crater rim was fading into a ceiling of faint blue. Across the dark caldera the lights of the Schwabenland illuminated its embrace with the crippled Bergen.
Up to this point, Greta had been bold and assertive: collecting exploration gear from hanging lockers, commandeering a row ashore from the night watch on the vague pretext of inspecting the ashes of the pyre, and shouldering a pack for the hike along the beach. She'd said little, determined to get away from the ship while the other officers were still asleep. Now that she and Owen were facing the mouth of the lava tube with its scent of sulfur, he could hear a note of hesitation in her voice. Going underground did that to people. Hell was imagined deep within the earth.
"Thousands of years ago people used caves for shelter," Hart said, trying to be reassuring. "And we'll have plenty of light." He snapped on a flashlight and led the way to where he and Fritz had unearthed the diary. Then a gas lantern was pumped and lit. They blinked in the glow, reassured by its steady hiss. "We'll go slowly. You pick the direction and I'll try to find the way." He gestured to the lengths of bright cloth hanging from his belt. "We'll tie a survey ribbon at every turn and junction. Like Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs."
She smiled at that memory. "All right." He knew that despite her natural uneasiness she'd made up her mind to go in. Just like Drexler, he admitted. Another German who doesn't back off.
Unlike a limestone cavern there was nothing colorful about this volcanic one. The tube was like entering the encrusted circulatory system of a smoldering heart. The basalt was a dull black-red and there were no stalactites. In a few places water dripped.
For the first hundred yards the entry tunnel was fairly level and broad. A few openings branched out to tempt a detour but Hart's flashlight revealed that they ended quickly in collapses of rock. Slabs of basalt had also fallen off the ceiling of the central tunnel, periodically forcing the pair to squeeze around them. The pilot didn't reveal his uneasiness at the possibility of a cave-in but wondered how often eruptions or earthquakes occurred. Giving some reassurance was the occasional boot print. The Norwegians had come this way and nothing had disturbed their mark in the year since.
The tube dead-ended at a chimney, or at least that's what it seemed like to Hart. A large vertical tunnel hundreds of feet high and deep led upward and down into the mountain. He shined his light to where the beam was lost in the gloom, the fissure giving him a slight sense of vertigo.
"Here we are at the elevator shaft," Greta murmured, studying the cleft. "Where's a button to push?"
"This must have been a major lava corridor when the volcano was erupting." When Hart pointed the light downward it illuminated some boulders choking the shaft, dark openings indicating a way around them. There was a welter of boot prints on the shelf. "The Norwegians were as uncertain as we are, Fräulein Biologist. Which way should we go?"
She glanced around, thinking. Greta still had a remote, distracted air of cool professionalism. It was the first time Hart had spent this much time alone with her and yet she wasn't focused on him at all. He accepted this philosophically. He realized that for the moment he was a means to an end, a way to reassert her independence from Jürgen Drexler. Still, he was here and Drexler wasn't. He smiled at the thought of the German's reaction in the morning when the night watch reported the pair had gone ashore together and not come back.
Greta knelt, peering over the edge. "Down, I think. If you can get us back up."
He nodded. "We'll leave one of the lines tied here. I don't know how far these tubes go but most shouldn't be this steep. I hope."
"I want to go down because the waters from that hot spring must ultimately come from deeper in the mountain where the source of heat is. Life needs energy and heat, yes? So I think we should descend."
"Maybe the antidote, if there is one, isn't biological," Hart reasoned. "Could it be something chemical? Minerals in the water?"
"I don't think so. If the bacteria are indigenous to this island they should have adapted over the eons to the local chemistry. Yet who knows? Maybe these two sailors simply missed the initial infection, or had a natural immunity, or didn't develop symptoms until they escaped by boat. This may be a hopeless quest. But what I'm looking for are two forms of life in uneasy coexistence: the disease bacteria, and something toxic to it, evolved in self-defense. A biological stalemate, if you will. Something that can keep that terrible plague in check."
"You're the scientist. Down it is."
He tied a line on an outcropping of rock and let it uncoil into the darkness. Another line, doubled, lowered their packs. "I'm not really a climber, or even much of an amateur cave rat, but I know enough to go slow," he advised. "Move only one hand, or one foot, at a time. And don't hug the rock, it makes your foot want to slip off its hold. Lean out a bit so your body is vertical." He tipped his hand to show her.
"All right." She looked uncertain but determined. "After you."
He went first, guiding her progress with the flashlight. In truth, Hart admitted, she was as good at the descent as he was: not as strong, perhaps, but balanced, lithe. If she was afraid she didn't show it. They climbed down a hundred feet to a point where a boulder had jammed in the tube. She arrived breathless but elated. "Goodness!" She laughed. "I know I can go down, but can I get back up?"
"The way you're going, you'll be carrying me." He led the way down again.