“If you didn’t try to kill me on the mountain before, and it wasn’t your father, then who did?”
“The man’s name was Carl.”
“Yes, but why? I mean, what did he expect to achieve out of killing me?”
“That, I don’t know. Can you believe me that I had nothing to do with it?”
She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“I have no idea what to believe right now,” Sam told her, and then smiled at her reassuringly. “How about we first destroy this damned virus, and then start over again with a clean slate?”
“Okay, so now I know why you’re here, and you know a bit more about my family history. I hate to point this out, but all of it is going to be academic if we don’t find a way out of here in the next few days.”
She watched as Sam whistled to himself while staring at the Magdalena, as though, having now found what he’d been searching for, escaping to the surface was the last thing on his mind.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“What?” He feigned a small show of surprise. “I’m sorry, what did you want to know?”
“I said, ‘we’re going to die down here, if we don’t figure out how to reach the surface in the next few days.”’
He didn’t look worried at all, and just continued admiring the bulk of the airship’s hull.
“You’re as crazy as my father, Sam! You’re completely obsessed and seem unable to focus on what’s most important!” She stared at him and noticed that his countenance hadn’t changed a bit. The entire time they’d been talking, he hadn’t taken his eyes off the outer hull of the Magdalena. Irritated, she asked, “What the hell are you looking at?”
“The Magdalena, of course.”
“And what are you thinking?”
“She’s in remarkably good condition, don’t you think?”
His insouciance was starting to really piss her off.
“Yes, and I’m sure she’d look lovely in a museum one day, our bones inside, if you don’t stop staring at her and start to consider how we might escape!”
“I’m not trying to figure out how we can escape, Aliana.”
“You’re not? Then what are you trying to do?”
“I’m wondering if we were to re-gas her canopy, and repair her engines, if we could fly her out of here.”
“You can’t possibly be serious?”
“Oh, but I am, completely.”
“But we don’t even know how to get out of here, let alone the Magdalena,” she protested.
“No, that I worked out before we went to sleep last night.”
Sam waded into the deeper section of the lake, where the mouth of the cave was most likely situated. He knew that he didn’t have much time.
The water was cold, lethally cold.
He’d just finished explaining to Aliana his theory on how the Magdalena came to be trapped inside the mountain, and it was now time to put that theory into practice. He was confident there was no other conceivable way that she might possibly have ended up stranded here.
When he and Tom had compared historical photos of Lake Solitude against current satellite photos, and current pictures taken from the western side of the lake, it was clear that the water level was now a good twenty feet deeper than it had been back in 1939, and how a distinct section of the rocky mountain above it seemed to be missing.
“If I’m right,” he said, before entering the frigid water, “the Magdalena clipped the top of that mountain, and then, losing altitude, her pilot, Peter Greenstein, looked for a place to land. Seeing that he was surrounded by steep, rocky mountaintops and 100 foot tall pine trees, the frozen surface of the lake in winter would have appeared to be a snow-covered field. In his predicament, the view would have been a godsend. There he brought down his wounded airship, only to discover that the ice beneath the snow was pretty thin. Then, the gondola must have crashed through the ice, and with the water temperature at well below freezing, everyone aboard must have died within seconds.”
Sam had waited for Aliana to grasp what he had imagined, before continuing with his theory, “The Second World War continued on, and during the next summer, the lake would most likely have thawed and the Magdalena could have drifted into the large grotto, where she became stuck in the build-up of silt and limestone. Sometime during the war, this section of the mountain must have been destroyed, sending millions of tons of rock into the lake, artificially raising the water level as much as twenty feet and forever concealing the wreck of the Magdalena — until now.”
“That’s a nice theory, but then, why didn’t your search of Lake Solitude discover anything?”
“Because we weren’t looking in the right spot.”
“What do you mean? You said you dived the lake, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but we were looking for signs of the lost airship on the lake bottom, we weren’t looking for a tunnel close to the surface.
“What if you’re wrong?”
“Then I’m about to go for a very cold swim for nothing,” Sam said, his white teeth showing his comfort, despite the cold.
That said, he dived his head under the frigid water and disappeared.
The combination of the frigid water and Sam’s lack of a diving mask combined to make for very poor visibility. In the distance, he could just make out a faint glow, which, he decided, must be the outside world, but he had no way to judge the distance.
Sam held his breath for just over a minute.
The glow didn’t seem to change at all.
How far had he gone? Could he make it to the end?
The glow at the end of the tunnel could be as much as several hundred feet away. He might make it, but he probably wouldn’t, and if he failed, what would happen to Aliana?
No, he decided, he’d better go back and rethink their escape.
Years of diving had taught him not to be careless.
His lungs burned as they fought the instinctive desire to take another deep breath, and his muscles ached both from the effects of the icy water and his lack of oxygen.
It was a dangerous combination.
As he surfaced, he tried to plant his feet on the silt, but struggled to hold himself upright. He drew upon his remaining strength, and dragged his body to the shoreline.
Aliana ran to him instantly.
“Are you okay?”
He wanted to answer “Yes,” but the effects of hypothermia made speaking too difficult.
“My god you’re freezing!”
He felt her wrap her arms around him. It didn’t feel warm; if anything, it stung him wherever she touched.
Still, he didn’t have the strength to tell her to stop.
“Sam, you’re going to freeze to death if I don’t do something soon.”
Freezing cold, soaking wet and with no means of warming himself, Sam watched, helplessly, as Aliana stripped naked in front of him. Her intention was obvious — to share her body heat with him. As near to death as he was, he couldn’t help but find himself amazed by her beauty. Her body exceeded the many fantasies that he’d had of her.
All woman, Aliana’s skin was so soft! She smelled feminine and divine. Sam reminded himself that she wasn’t doing this for his pleasure, but in order to save his life.
Even in the cold and so near to death, his body still became mightily aroused. To his embarrassment, he felt himself stiffen.
He squirmed, trying to hide his erection from her.
She nevertheless wrapped herself tightly around him and clung to him even harder.
They lay there together, for what might have been minutes or hours — Sam didn’t know. Half in a fevered dream state, he fluctuated in and out of consciousness, unsure of just how much was fantasy and how much was reality.