On the far side of the room, a thin distinguished man with salt-and-pepper hair stepped from a draped alcove between two bookcases. Though he looked to be in his late sixties, he strode briskly toward them. He wore gray pants held up with suspenders, polished shoes, and a starched white shirt. He paused only long enough to pull on a jacket that hung from a chair behind a broad desk that held a steaming tea service on top. He donned the coat quickly and stepped to greet them.
“Commander Pierce, thank you for coming.”
Gray recognized Professor Alex Harrington from the mission dossier. He shook the man’s hand, finding it bony but still with plenty of strength. He suspected this professor spent more time out in the field than in a classroom.
“Stella told me about your troubles over at Halley,” Harrington said. “I imagine our problems are one in the same. Namely Major Dylan Wright, a former X Squadron leader.”
Gray remembered the burly man who had commanded the assault team on DARPA, with his steely eyes and cropped white-blond hair. Back at Sigma command, Kat had identified the leader as Dylan Wright.
“How do you know him?” Gray asked.
“Wright and his handpicked team were assigned as security detail for the base in the early days. Then somebody got to him, or maybe he was a plant all along. I’m guessing the latter because he was always a major arse, came from some aristocratic family that had fallen on hard times, even carried around an antique English hunting pistol. Either way, we started to run into issues here, evidence of sabotage, along with missing files, even stolen samples. About a year and a half ago, he was caught on-camera but eventually escaped with his team, killing three other soldiers in the process, all good and loyal men.”
Gray pictured Director Raffee, executed in his own office.
“If he destroyed Halley,” Harrington continued, “I can’t imagine he’s not gunning for us here, especially picking such an opportune time when communications are down across the continent. And most worrisome, the man knows every detail about Hell’s Cape.”
“Why do you think he would be returning? What’s he after?”
“Maybe simply revenge. The man had always been vindictive. But I think he means to do far worse. Our work here — besides being sensitive and confidential — is very dangerous. He could wreak great havoc.”
“And what’s the nature of your research here?”
“Nature itself, actually.” Harrington sighed, his eyes tired and scared. “It’s best we start at the beginning.”
He stepped to his desk, waving them to crowd around him. He then pressed his palm upon the corner of a glass insert built into the desktop. A 40-inch LCD screen glowed to light, bringing the very modern into this Royal Society museum.
Harrington swiped and tapped its touchscreen surface. With a flick of his fingers, he scattered various photographs across the screen, as easily as if he were dealing physical cards on a game table.
Gray noted the file name that glowed near the top of the screen.
D.A.R.W.I.N.
He had seen it before, remembering the acronym stood for Develop and Revolutionize Without Injuring Nature. It was the core conservation philosophy shared by Harrington and Hess. But he stayed silent, letting the professor control the story.
“It all goes back to the voyage of the HMS Beagle and the journey of Charles Darwin through this region. And a fateful encounter with the Fuegian tribesmen of Tierra del Fuego. Here’s an old pencil sketch of that first meeting, near the Straits of Magellan.”
He tapped and enlarged a photo showing the old British sloop and a group of natives in boats.
“The Fuegians were skilled sailors and fishermen, hunting the seas around the tip of South America and beyond. According to a secret journal written by Darwin and kept under guard at the British Museum, the captain of the Beagle obtained an old map that showed a section of Antarctic coastline, along with a hint of a possible region that was free of ice. Seeking to claim it for the Crown, the Beagle sought this location — but what they discovered so scared them that it was forever stricken from the record of that voyage.”
Jason studied the picture. “What did they find?”
“Bear with me,” Harrington said. “You see, Darwin could not let that knowledge completely vanish, so he preserved the map along with his secret journal. Only a select few scientists were ever allowed access to it. Most considered his story too fanciful to be believed, especially as the site would never be found for another century.”
“Hell’s Cape,” Gray said. “This place.”
“For most of the past century, thick ice shelves hid the true coastline. It was only after the recent decades of thawing that we were able to rediscover it again. Even still, we had to use bombs to break loose the remaining ice to reach this place and set up our base. It was only afterward that we came to realize we weren’t the first ones to come since Darwin’s fateful visit. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”
Harrington brought up more maps. Gray recognized the one drawn by the Turkish explorer Piri Reis, along with the chart by Oronteus Finaeus. “These old maps suggest that sometime in the ancient past, some six thousand years ago, much of the coastline may have been free of ice. The Turkish admiral who drew this first map claimed he compiled it based on charts of great age, some dating back as far as the fourth century b.c.”
“That long ago?” Jason asked.
The professor nodded. “During that time, the Minoans and the Phoenicians were astounding sailors, building giant oared warships that plowed far and wide. So it’s possible they had reached this southernmost continent and recorded what they discovered. Admiral Piri Reis compiled his chart from maps secured at a library in Constantinople, but even he suspected some of his most ancient source material might have come from the famed Library of Alexandria before it was destroyed.”
“Why did he think that?”
“He mentions that some of the maps he reviewed in Constantinople had notations that suggested an Egyptian origin. And according to archaeologists, the ancient Egyptians were plying the seas as far back as 3500 B.C.”
“So close to six thousand years ago,” Gray said. “When the coasts may have been free of ice. But what do these charts have to do with Darwin?”
“After returning to England, Darwin grew obsessed with discovering more about what he had encountered at the place he named Hell’s Cape. He collated ancient maps and searched records of great antiquity, looking for any other mention of this place. He also tried to understand its unique geology.”
“What’s unique about it?” Kowalski asked. “Looks like a big cave.”
“It’s much bigger than you can imagine. All of it warmed by geothermal activity. In fact, when Darwin found the mouth of this cavern, it was stained bloodred with iron oxides that steamed forth out of the opening, rising from a boiling sea of iron-rich salt water found deep below. On the other side of the continent you can find a similar geological formation — called Blood Falls — in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, near your American base.”
Gray could only imagine what that ominous sight must have looked like to those Victorian-era men aboard the Beagle.
“Darwin’s obsession overtook his life, so much so that it delayed the publication of his famous treatise on evolution, On the Origin of Species. Did you know it took him almost twenty years after his voyage aboard the Beagle to publish his groundbreaking work? We know it wasn’t fear of controversy that delayed the publication. It was something else.”