“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Sam said. “Why else would someone go to such extreme lengths to get your attention?”
“But that’s crazy. We’re talking about research that will take a lifetime to move from pure theoretical physics to practical uses. The particle I’m talking about is so unstable it will be decades before we can even consider handling it for research.”
“Even so, you must admit the coincidence that some physicists have gone missing the same week an entire passenger list that includes you, the head of CERN, also disappears is too unlikely for mere chance. And now we find out the only connection is a man who was once set to be the next leading quantum physicist.”
“No one knew what we were doing,” Alexis said. “It’s impossible to think the whole thing’s connected.”
“But you sent a team down here to build a new particle accelerator!”
“No. I sent a team down here to investigate the feasibility of such a project. It would take years to get approval to build such a thing and all the countries who share Antarctica would have to agree. Then it would need to be built. We’re talking at least a decade if we were lucky before we had a working particle accelerator.”
“How many people know about your project?”
“Not many and of those, most think I was purely considering it for future development projects. Almost nobody knows why I really wanted to build such a large collider.”
“All the same, the coincidence seems uncanny. Telling even a small handful of people a project is 'super-secret' is enough to ensure a leak.”
“Do you have the GPS coordinates of the real Pegasus station?”
“Of course.” She looked up the details on her smartphone and showed him.
Sam typed the GPS into his laptop. “The entire area is covered with cloud cover. It’s been there about five days by the look of it.”
“We need to get to them.”
“I agree, but how long would it take?” Sam asked.
“If your ship could put us in at McMurdo Bay it’s under two hundred miles inland over relatively flat surfaces. What snow craft do you have?”
“I have a two person hovercraft. It will do the return trip in under three days.”
“Good. When can we leave?”
“Now — and you’re coming with me.”
Chapter Twenty
Sam stepped aboard the Maria Helena with Tom, Elise and Alexis. He introduced Alexis to Matthew and Genevieve and filled them in on their plan to check out the real location of the science station, Pegasus. Genevieve brought out a warm lunch — roasted lamb with rosemary and vegetables.
Elise switched on her second laptop while they ate. She quickly established contact with the satellites overhead and appropriated their functions to search the surrounding areas. Her laptop hummed as it confirmed a secure connection. “Okay, I’m in — Alexis, what’s the coordinates of the real Pegasus?”
Alexis opened her smartphone and clicked on an App titled secure documents. Inside she quickly swiped left with her thumb until she found what she was looking for — a document titled Pegasus. She clicked to open it and then handed her phone to Elise. “Here.”
“Thanks.” Elise looked at it for a second and then handed the phone back to Alexis. She then typed the exact latitude and longitude into her computer down to their sixth decimal place and pressed enter.
The view on her computer screen showed a blurred image of Antarctica. East and West Antarctica is divided by the Trans Antarctic Ridge; the west being smaller and full of undulating ice and rock mountains, while the east was larger and almost entirely flat with deep ice. A moment later the image increased in size until it displayed only west Antarctica. By the time the process had magnified for the fifth time the entire screen went gray.
“What happened?” Sam asked.
“Sorry, Sam.” Elise clicked the negative button on her keyboard once, zooming out again. “Looks like there’s one hell of a storm cloud over Alexis’s science station.”
“Any chance we can get a view from yesterday?” Sam asked.
“Sure. These satellites take a digital image every twenty-four hours.”
“Good. Do it.”
Elise brought the image up again. “Same storm yesterday. I’m going to keep going back until I find you a clean image of Pegasus.”
“Thanks,” Sam said. “Is it just me or does it seem like everywhere we want to look gets covered by a storm cloud? The same thing happened when we first tried to find the Pegasus after their original call for help.”
“So now our dead physicist has the power to change the weather!” Alexis griped.
Elise stopped at day fifteen. “Here we go. This was the image taken on the day someone from the Pegasus station made a call for help. Looks like you might be right, Alexis — someone has intentionally blocked our view of this station.”
“People generally only like to obscure one’s view of things they want to keep hidden. I think it’s time we make a visit to the real Pegasus station.”
“Do you want me to come?” Tom asked.
“Yes, but I need you on board the Antarctic Solace. It will need to be moved out of the Waddell Sea if we don’t want it to become frozen in the ice.”
“What about you?” Tom asked.
“I’m still hoping the scientists are trapped by the strange weather formation, intentional or not. We should be able to get in there undetected using the hovercraft. We can be in and out in under a day.”
“There’s one more thing you’re both forgetting to consider,” Elise said.
“What’s that?” Sam and Tom said in unison.
Elise grinned. “Are you going to open the armory?”
Chapter Twenty One
Alexis watched as Matthew, the Maria Helena’s skipper, unlocked the door to the armory. She followed him and the rest of the gang through the steel door. Inside were more than a dozen rows of stainless steel storage cabinets on wheels. The sort you have to slide to access the rows behind. Sam pressed a button on the wall and five separate storage cabinets automatically slid to the middle of the room — revealing a cache of military grade weapons ranging from assault rifles to large machineguns that needed to be mounted to fire and rocket launchers.
“Holy shit!” Alexis swore. “I thought you were a civilian vessel? What are you planning on doing, overthrowing Antarctica?”
“You’d be surprised by the kind of people we sometimes meet,” Sam said. “And I don’t want my team taking any chances.”
Who are these people I’ve been rescued by?
Elise stepped forward and picked up an Israeli 9mm open-bolt Uzi submachinegun from a foam cradle. She held it up to her shoulder and looked through its sight. It was dead straight. She retracted the bolt and checked the firing mechanism. Satisfied the weapon would fire if needed she picked up a box of 32 round magazines and grinned. “Can’t go past an Uzi — durable, reliable and effective. Okay, I’m ready to get back to work.”
Alexis took a deep breath as Elise removed the last vestiges of doubt in her mind that she was anything but a computer geek.
Tom moved the next three stainless steel shelves until a new weapons tray opened up. This one held seven types of shotguns. He ran his hand along the handles of three of them before picking up a twelve gauge Remington 1100 Tactical Shotgun. Lined it up to his shoulder and looked through its sight. Satisfied, he opened and checked the firing mechanism was intact. He then picked up two boxes of magazines loaded with eight rounds of 2 ¾ inch ammo. “Suit yourself, but I’ll take this one.”