At the Outpost of Fate

CHAPTER 16 — HARBINGER

More than four hundred feet below the entrance to the Outpost, the metal column had long passed the boiling temperature of water. At first, it had merely penetrated straight down, like a nail driven into a piece of wood. But even before the column had completely sunk into the ice, the unstable area around the pillar expanded outward and despite the fact that it was perfectly balanced, the metal shaft tilted and fell against the side of the spreading pool, increasing the area of contact. In a matter of minutes, the entire length of the pillar had dipped below the surface of the newly formed oblong hole in the floor of the domed chamber. And once it reached two-hundred-and-twelve degrees Fahrenheit, the water in that hole instantly boiled away to steam.

A massive fog cloud formed in the domed chamber and immediately began condensing into droplets that ran down the underside of the dome or simply fell like rain onto the floor. A wave of superheated steam raced up the spiraling tunnel that had earlier opened for Jocasta, melting everything it touched. For a few seconds, the pillar was dry and lay inert on the smooth ice, demonstrating an example of the phenomenon Newcombe had earlier described — the Leidenfrost Effect. In reality, the column was resting on a layer of water that was being cooled by the ice underneath even as the metal above raised it to the boiling point. Like an ice cube thrown onto a hot griddle, it was a condition that could not be indefinitely sustained, but for those few moments, an eerie calm settled over the domed chamber. Had there been anyone present, they would have recognized it as the calm before the storm.

High above the fallen pillar, the constant melting both on the underside of the dome and in the spiral tunnel, reached a critical threshold. Once begun, the total collapse took only a few seconds. The roof of ice tumbled down in an avalanche that completely buried the metal pillar and shook the ice for miles in every direction. In an instant, the intricate honeycomb network of tunnels that comprised the Outpost and which had withstood the natural forces of glacial hydraulics for untold millennia, were completely shattered.

But the worst was yet to come.

Dodge found himself face down on the heaving ice. His first impulse was to remain where he was, hugging the ground until the quake subsided. Then his legs suddenly dropped away into a spreading crevasse and he was found himself scrabbling just to stay alive. His fingers clawed at the ice, but he could find no purchase and as the ice crumbled beneath him, he felt himself slipping.

Then, miraculously, someone came to his rescue. Hands clamped around his wrists, arresting his slide. He looked up and saw Newcombe, his bespectacled face contorted with the strain of holding Dodge at the brink. Dodge gave him a nod of encouragement and then felt the strain on his arms increase as Newcombe began pulling him up. While he may not have possessed the strength of a Hurricane Hurley, he more than made up for it with sheer determination.

The quake had abated, but the pandemonium continued to unfold in the ruins of the enormous shelter tent. Several of the support poles had either collapsed or disappeared into the numerous fissures and the remaining supports and tension lines were creaking under the constant assault of the wind outside. Many of the lights illuminating the interior were scattered on the ice and now cast weird shadows on the undulating fabric overhead. It took Dodge a few minutes to discover just how much damage the quake had caused.

Six of Vaughn's soldiers were gone, fallen into the four enormous cracks that had fractured the ice floor beneath them. A few of the remaining troops had, like Dodge, almost been lost and were now being rescued by their comrades. Others of their number were searching the crevasses for some indication that the missing men were still alive, but even if there were survivors, a recovery was beyond their capacity; the depths to which the men had fallen were beyond the reach of both their lights and their ropes.

Vaughn's loud bellow cut through the din. "Fall in! Give me a formation over here!"

Almost in unison, the soldiers looked up from their efforts, disbelief evident in their faces and then with visible reluctance, they made their way across the shattered ice to assemble in two ranks in front of their superior. It was only then that Dodge saw what else had happened in the quake.

The fissure that had almost claimed Dodge, continued to the far end of the tent and half-swallowed one Ford Trimotor aircraft; the same one on which Jocasta had concealed herself. The plane's tail section and the starboard landing gear strut had dropped into the crevasse, which had caused the starboard wing to collapse down onto the ice. Dodge realized that Jocasta was still there, hanging onto the endangered plane for dear life.

Vaughn paid no heed to Dodge or any of his companions, but instead directed his men to begin moving the surviving Trimotor out of the tent. "I want to be in the air in five minutes," he shouted. "Get moving!"

Dodge and Newcombe meanwhile rushed to help Jocasta. "Well, Findlay, you certainly called that one right," she observed as she slid down from her precarious perch on the fuselage.

"Actually, I expected something much bigger," Newcombe replied, his eyes getting that distant look. "I wonder…"

"I wonder how many people that plane will hold."

The general must have heard Dodge's remark, for he turned on his heel and stalked toward them. "I'm afraid there's only enough room for my troops and Dr. Newcombe. You and your girlfriend are going to have to stay here for now, but don't worry. We'll be back for you in a couple days."

Dodge bit back a caustic reply.

Jocasta did not appear to be the least bit concerned, but offered a wry smile. "Chivalry is dead, I see."

Newcombe on the other hand made no effort to hide his outrage. "You can't just leave them here."

"It's going to be a push to make it back to Little America as it is. Every extra pound reduces our chances of survival. And I'm not going to risk the life of my men for a couple of criminals."

"Then I'll stay behind. Give my seat to Jocasta."

"Findlay!" gasped Jocasta. For just a moment, the she seemed truly awestruck. Then she regained her composure and looked down her nose at the general. "Thanks for the offer, Findlay Dear, but I only travel first class."

"Well if they're staying, I'm staying." Newcombe put his hands on his hips and faced Vaughn defiantly.

A gust of bitterly cold wind rushed into the tent as the soldiers pulled apart the flaps and the general glanced over his shoulder as his men began dragging the remaining functional Trimotor out into the open. As soon as it was the wings were clear, the starter fired with the sound of a gunshot. As the roar of the Wright R-975 radial engine filled the tent, Vaughn turned back to Newcombe and shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Newcombe gaped as the general hustled toward the waiting aircraft. "Why that rotten… You rotten coward!"

Jocasta placed a restraining hand on his arm.

The scientist spat an obscenity better suited to a truck driver, then turned to Dodge. "He could have taken us all. The rotten coward."

"I know, Doc."

There was another crack as a second Coffman charge fired on the Trimotor and then another. With all three engines turning, the plane began rolling forward and was soon swallowed up in the perpetual winter darkness.

"How long do you suppose before he comes back for us?" asked Newcombe, his rage now merely simmering.

Jocasta laughed derisively. "He's not coming back. Not until he's sure we've frozen to death."

Dodge nodded. "I wouldn't bet against you on that. But it doesn't matter."

"Why not?"

"Because we won't be here." He glanced around the tent and his gaze finally settled on the entrance to the Outpost or rather the jumble of ice that now occupied the space where it had once been. “Doc, that quake…it wasn't quite the big bang you expected, was it?"

"No. If I had to guess, I'd say that was simply the ice collapsing under its own weight. Like a sinkhole. If anything, it's going to make matters worse. The ice will seal over, creating a pressure chamber."

"And how long before that happens?"

"It could happen at any moment."

"What do you mean, 'we won't be here'?" Jocasta inquired.

Dodge gestured at the disabled Trimotor. "We've got a perfectly good airplane right here."

"In case you hadn't noticed, it seems to have fallen into a hole."

"But other than that, it looks airworthy."

Newcombe shook his head. "Dodge, that plane probably weighs four of five tons. I doubt all of the soldiers working together would have been able to lift it free. You'd need a crane."

"I'm betting on brains being more powerful than brawn," said Dodge. He gripped Newcombe's shoulder in a gesture of encouragement. "I've got an idea."

As he outlined his plan, Dodge was glad that it was Newcombe listening. Hurricane, Molly and the Padre—well, maybe not the Padre—would either have regarded him with a wide-eyed "that's crazy" expression or else simply placed blind trust in his ability to take charge. But the scientist listened intently, providing exactly the right information to turn what would otherwise have been an impossible crazy hare-brained idea into… well, a maybe possible crazy hare-brained idea.

"We should check the plane for tools… a knife… anything that will make this easier."

"I've got some tools that might help," Jocasta supplied, removing a cloth wrapped bundle from the depths of her winter parka. She unrolled it to reveal an array of rods, wrenches and blades — the tools of her trade. Dodge found himself perversely taking mental note of the unique tools; perhaps they would one day play a role in a Captain Falcon story. That's wishful thinking, he thought mordantly.

Because of his scientific expertise and his adeptness at fine calculations, Newcombe took the lead, directing them where to place the long tent poles so as to maximize the amount of leverage. That of course was the easy part. Measuring, cutting and tying the ropes from the tent tie-downs, without accidentally removing a crucial anchor and allowing their only shelter to fly away in the constant, raging katabatic wind, was the real challenge. Dodge and Jocasta did everything he said, with implicit trust that he would not lead them astray and that confidence translated into a surety of action. It took only about five minutes for them to complete the preparations.

"Now for the tricky part," declared Newcombe, unnecessarily. The execution of the plan had always been the area of greatest uncertainty, for it would demand split-second timing and worse, require them all to be virtually in two places at once. The solution to the latter problem presented itself when Jocasta revealed that she still had the Mark II fragmentation grenade. The charge in the grenade itself was too big for their purposes, but the triggering charge in the fuse mechanism was perfect, provided of course that they moved fast enough.

There was no time for a rehearsal. They each moved to a different corner of the tent and waited for the signal. Because she was the only one of the three with experience using explosives, Jocasta would provide that signal.

Dodge held his blade to the anchor rope and watched as Jocasta knelt down and placed the explosive charge on the rope on her side. "When you see me start running," she had told him, "count to five and then cut."

Newcombe, on the same side as Dodge, but at the far end, would not see Jocasta start running, but he would see her when she reached the remaining rope opposite him. Nevertheless, when she pulled the safety pin and let the trigger spoon pop free, Dodge started shouting.

"Five…four…" Jocasta disappeared behind the Trimotor's fuselage, but he kept up the verbal count. "Three…two…one…cut!"

It was difficult to say whether the actions were perfectly synchronized. Dodge did not look up from his labors until the taut rope parted with a noise like a whip cracking. The entire side of the tent flew up instantaneously, but Dodge paid no attention to whether the same thing was happening at the other corners; he had already spun around and was sprinting for the plane.

He got about halfway before something struck him in the back and sent him sprawling forward. He knew what it was and knew that it had been one of those things that they should have accounted for when drawing up their hasty plan. By some miracle, he kept his footing and reached the tent pole that he had earlier jammed under the tail end of the Trimotor, where it had dropped into the crevasse. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Newcombe reaching his position near the sunken front wheel, but then a blast of ice particles borne on the wind snatched his vision away. He could barely see the pole in his hands, but as it turned out, he didn't need to. Newcombe had said they would need a crane to lift the Trimotor out of the crevasse. Dodge had suggested something with almost as much power: the wind. They had turned the tent canopy into a makeshift parachute, which was tied securely around the tail and wings of the plane and once the anchor ropes were cut away, the Antarctic wind had filled it up like the sails on a clipper ship.

The tent poles were not so much for leverage as to guide the plane out of the fissure without causing more damage. Dodge could feet the change in resistance on the pole and knew the plane was moving. Somewhere in the whiteout above, the chute was pulling the plane forward. Dodge jammed down on the pole and then abruptly found himself face down on the ice.

So powerful was the wind that the Tin Goose was airborne for a few seconds before it slammed down onto the ice, well clear of the fissure. With the chute still full of air, the plane began rolling away.

Hugging his winter coat close, Dodge moved along the edge of the fissure until he found an elated Newcombe, still gripping his lever pole. "It worked!" the scientist cried, his voice barely audible.

"Of course it did! You're a genius! Now let's go catch it before it leaves without us!"

The plane was over a hundred yards away and still picking up speed when the rope connecting it to the tail section separated. The end of the makeshift kite flipped over and whipped out ahead of the plane. The wind drag continued to pull, but it wasn't enough to overcome the plane's inertia. And then, even before the aircraft came to a halt, the remaining line came apart and the tent canopy was whisked away to oblivion.

Despite the urgency of the situation, Dodge and Newcombe set a walking pace. In the low visibility conditions, at a dead run, they might easily miss the plane and spend the last few minutes of their lives wandering in the wintry wilderness. And as cautious as they were, they would have missed their destination if Jocasta had not been calling out to them from the relative shelter of the plane's rear hatch.

"Did you have to wait so long to cut the chute?" he complained, good-naturedly, once the hatch was shut behind them.

"You try monkeying about on the outside of a frozen metal plate in gale force winds," she countered.

Indeed, her role in the plan had been the most challenging. In addition to setting the grenade that had blown one of the anchor ropes and cutting another at exactly the same moment, she had also drawn the Herculean task of climbing onto the airframe and cutting the chute free before it dragged the plane all the way to the ocean or smashed it apart on the landscape.

All of them were chilled to the bone by their brief exposure to the elements and the cabin of the Trimotor, although heavily insulated for polar exploration, did little to warm them. But none of them needed to be reminded that the danger was far from past. Dodge remained in the rear cargo area only long enough to rub a little life back into his hands and arms, before moving up the center aisle to the cockpit.

The Tin Goose, like all of the vehicles that rolled of Henry Ford’s assembly lines, was strictly a no-frills affair. By comparison to the Catalina and some of the other airplanes that Dodge had become qualified to fly, it was quite simple to operate and yet there were some parts of it that were almost primitive. Most of the gauges were mounted on the engines, outside the aircraft and under normal circumstances would be visible through the side windows, windows that were presently obscured by a scrim of frost. Fortunately, there wasn’t much risk of the air-cooled engines overheating.

After a few minutes of familiarizing himself with the controls, he fired the starter on the main engine and the interior of the aircraft was filled with the throaty purr of a Wright radial engine. Dodge experimented with the levers and controls and when he felt a measure of confidence, fired the outboard engines. Only then did he realize that Newcombe and Jocasta were pressed up against the back of his chair, anxiously watching his every move.

“Better buckle up. I make no promises that we’ll still be alive in five minutes.”

Newcombe nodded and retreated to the passenger area, but Jocasta unexpectedly leaned closer. “What’s the fun of living if you don’t take a chance now and then?”

And then she kissed him.

He was so stunned that he didn’t think to push her away until it was already too late. The next thing he knew, she was sitting primly in the co-pilot's chair, fastening her safety belt. Her scent lingered on his lips. “Why did—?”

She smiled. “Just fly the plane, love.”

The Trimotor was still on the ice, picking up speed and perhaps fifteen seconds from lifting off, when the explosion Newcombe had been predicting finally occurred.

The interplay of heat from the source pillar and freezing conditions in the environment had created a sealed bubble. The pillar itself, now more than a thousand feet deep in solid ice and over three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, was now effectively sublimating everything it touched, transforming the ice directly into vapor. That vapor had risen up the sides of the cavity where it formed into ice crystals, but the process of deposition could not keep pace with the rapid evaporation. The natural processes were inadequate to the task of stabilizing the air pressure and there could be only one result: A steam explosion. The energy released in that instant was greater than any bomb ever devised; it rivaled a volcanic eruption for intensity.

A section of ice, much greater than the area that once defined the network of tunnels comprising the Outpost, was heaved skyward. The speeding Trimotor was hurled into the air, engulfed in a cloud of steam and ice shards. Then, like some kind of mythical creature struggling to be born from the fires of its own destruction, the plane emerged and winged away on its own power, outpacing the expanding nimbus of devastation.

Where the Outpost had once existed, there was now only a crater, a steaming caldera in the ice. The secrets of that ancient place — and indeed there were secrets that the very few humans to discover those tunnels had scarcely imagined, locked away in tunnels never found — were now gone forever, smashed into oblivion.

At the center of that ring of devastation, in a narrow vent that continued to hiss steam into the frigid air, the Source continued its downward journey. And the ever increasing cycle of destruction began its next evolution.