Sam flicked switches next to him in an attempt to restart the engine. “Power’s not coming back.”
Tom glanced at the altimeter. It read: 700 feet. “Copy. I’ve commenced autorotation.”
Sam pointed at a suitable landing position. There were holes in the ice, giant caverns large enough to swallow the Sikorksy whole. A long cavern divided two main sheets of ice. A long flat section was visible on the western side of it. There wasn’t a lot of room, but it would have to do. “Aim for there.”
“I see it!” His eyes glanced at the RPM counter for the main rotor blades. The speed increased as the air started to flow up through the rotor system. He was still a long way off the speed required to land the helicopter. He turned gently to the left in order to set up for a landing into the wind and on to his final approach.
Sam read out his altitude and airspeed: “Sixty knots. Forty feet.”
Tom nodded and pulled back on the cyclic stick to commence flaring. The nose of the Sikorsky lifted and their descent rate slowed from two thousand feet per minute to one thousand in an instant. At the same time forward movement reduced to zero. The helicopter stabilized to a level attitude approximately seven feet off the ground. Tom gently raised the collective pitch, causing the main rotor blades to decrease RPM speed but increase lift. A moment later the landing skids sunk into the snow.
“Nice landing, Tom.” Sam patted him on the shoulder. He climbed out of the helicopter, slid a backpack over his shoulders and picked up his Uzi. Sam pointed to the opening in the distance. “The entrance should be a few hundred feet in that direction.”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Sam followed the edge of the chasm towards the entrance of the massive cavern. The hardened ice was easier than snow to walk on because his feet didn’t sink into it, but the downside was the hiking boots he wore were slippery and made him feel like he was going to fall off the edge at any moment.
Just before they reached the opening to a large tunnel Sam spotted something yellow. It had been pushed into a hollowed alcove in the ice. He recognized it instantly.
“That’s the same type of yellow de-Havilland Tiger Moth which attacked Alexis and me!”
Tom grinned. “That’s good news. It means we’re at the right place. The downside of course is that now we know we have company.”
Sam aimed the Uzi towards the airplane and searched for the pilot. “Yeah, let’s just hope they weren’t expecting visitors.”
Confident the pilot wasn’t still there, Sam quickly approached the small airplane. Recent snowfall had already built over the cockpit. Sam ran his hands over the engine manifold. It was still warm to touch. The pilot had only recently landed. Sam glanced past it, where a parallel set of footprints formed tracks entering the massive ice cavern.
“Shall we play follow the leader?” Sam asked.
“Sure. You're it.”
Sam entered the cavern. A narrow parallel row of indentations in the ice showed the place had been well driven on with a small snow machine such as a snow scooter to form a road about four feet wide. There was nothing large enough to indicate anything like a snow caterpillar or tractor had ever entered. The footpath sized road crept along the ice-wall deep inside the cavern. The road could have gone for miles. On one side a wall of ice stretched to the surface. And four feet to the other side an abys like crevice reached deeper than their eyes could see.
They were running out of time. Sam picked up speed and began jogging. A mile in and the entire path came to an opening that descended deep into the earth, forming a dead end. A steel structure reached out of the ice like a jagged claw. He followed the structure to the end of the platform where an elevator cable dropped into the darkness below.
“So much for the theory it would have taken thousands of trips with convoys of snow trucks to build this place,” Tom said, staring out into the vacuous ice cavern. “It looks like they carried everything in by hand and then used this elevator to where they need it.”
Sam shook his head. “Something like this needed hundreds of tons worth of materials. There must have been another entrance.”
“Or, someone else built it — before them?”
“You think they weren’t the first to find the Massive Hadron Collider?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem possible they built it all without anyone finding out about it. One thing’s for certain, they didn’t use this elevator to bring everything inside.”
Sam opened his backpack and removed a LIDAR range detector, small hand held device resembling the type of gun law enforcement used to measure speed vehicles using a laser. On one side were three round openings like a three-barreled gun, while the other side had a six inch digital display screen. Handheld light detection and ranging known as LIDAR provided an in-depth 3D image of areas up to ten miles away.
Sam switched it on and pointed it directly into the open cavern. “Let’s see exactly what we’re dealing with.”
The cavern was massive. He slowly moved it around until he developed a clear picture of both its manmade and naturally forming structures. It showed the road continued only a few feet ahead, but looked as though it had been destroyed by a landslide years earlier. Had they been able to continue along the road, it zigzagged for a total of fifteen miles and would have taken them hours to reach the bottom.
Finally, Sam pointed the LIDAR gun below the elevator. The cable descended until it intersected with the road three miles below.
“I guess we’re taking the elevator,” Sam said.
“Oh great, we’re taking a lift into the abyss. Talk about your journey to the center of the earth.”
“You got a better plan?”
“No.”
Sam stepped on to the elevator. “Then I suggest we get going. Three miles is a long way down.”
Chapter Seventy
Alexis watched as Robert Cassidy entered the room again. He brought breakfast with him — Bacon and Eggs Benedict with a large glass of orange juice. He seemed cheerful and sure of himself. He never tried to hurt her, or threaten her. The old man seemed to have the confidence of someone who knew that they had the winning card, despite it being obvious to everyone else in the room that he’d already lost — that was what made him so frightening.
“Good morning, Alexis,” he said in his gentle and deep voice.
“Morning Robert,” she replied, surprised how easily common civilities could be spoken between captor and captive.
“Now, I’m afraid we’ve arrived and it’s time you helped.”
She laughed. It felt insane, but came naturally to her. “Why would I willingly help you build a high energy yielding device so you can destroy the world?”
“Destroy the world?” He looked shocked, and angry. “Is that what you think this is all about? You think I’m crazy and I want to destroy the world?”
“That’s pretty much what you said earlier. You want to cease all electrical activity on the planet — you want to return the human race to the Dark Ages!”
Cassidy shook his head vehemently. “On this island we once built weapons for your so called civilizations. Weapons so destructive I eventually had to accept the simple truth that mankind cannot demonstrate the responsibility required to maintain its role as the top of the food chain. I’m doing this because if I don’t the inevitable outcome will see to it that mankind no longer has a place — Dark Ages or not — on this planet!”