Dark Winter

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The top of the barrier that sealed off the fuel arch had been crafted enough to keep out intruders but not to keep out air. There were cracks to see through and enough of a stench of petroleum to announce the explosive danger. The surviving winter-overs had spilled down the entry ramp to the archways and were bunched at the makeshift fuel arch wall, puddles leaking ominously from its base and the barrier groaning at the weight of the rising fuel behind it. The group boosted Lewis up to a crevice so he could shine a light into the gloom beyond. He reeled from the fumes, shouting down to the others to break out the fire masks. Then he took a fresh breath, held it, and aimed his light inside.

The sight was sickening. The fuel arch had become a black combustible lake, the tanks emptying to fill the Quonset-shaped structure a third of the way up its walls. Partway down the tunnel he saw a slumped figure tied to some of the tank plumbing, the fuel lapping at her chest. Abby!

Something was bobbing in the fuel beside her. He played his light across it and recognized a half-inflated weather balloon. What the hell? Wires went every which way into the fuel and above it, and just as lines of longitude converged at the Pole, the wires converged upon some small implement hung above the rising lake. He shone his light on that, trying to figure out what it was.

With recognition came fear. The flare gun! Lewis dimly recalled Norse asking it be brought to him.

What fools they'd been.

As the fuel level rose, the balloon was rising with it. One of the wires leading into the ooze was slack but as the balloon floated upward…

Norse had turned the entire station into a time bomb.

Lewis pulled his head back, dizzy from the fumes, thinking desperately. Then he told the others to let him down.

"Did you see her?" Molotov asked.

Lewis was coughing, nauseous from the poisonous fog. One step ahead, Norse had claimed. "She's there, and I can't tell if she's still alive. The whole arch has become a lake of fuel with gases above it. Norse wasn't lying; he opened some valves. The fuel's rising and I don't see how we could find the valves in that goop to shut the flood off."

"Jesus," Geller said.

"Listen, that's not the worst of it. The bastard has rigged some kind of trigger, I think. I'm not quite sure how it works, but one of Jerry's weather balloons is floating on the fuel and as it rises a wire is tightening on the trigger of the flare gun."

"What?" Dana cried.

"When the fuel level gets high enough, I think, the flare goes off."

"Oh my God," Linda gasped. "It's some kind of trap!"

"A simple one," guessed Gage Perlin, their plumber. "Like the way a float in a toilet tank rises high enough to trigger a valve to shut off the refilling water." He was thinking. "A wire from the trigger goes to a pulley at the bottom and up to the balloon…"

"However he rigged it, Norse has been thinking about this for a long time," Lewis said. "He wants us to abandon Abby. He wants us to abandon the dome." He looked at the others. "He wants us to give up."

"What else can we do?" asked Hiro with resignation.

"I don't think we have a choice, Jed," Mendoza added.

"Yes, we do," spoke up Molotov. The Russian looked grimly resolute, glancing up the wall in speculation. "There is always a choice. I made a choice when I wrongly accused Lewis here. I made a choice when I helped create this mess. Now I make another choice. You Americans go back. I will break inside and swim to her!" It was the growl of a bear angry at his own mistakes. The decision of a man eager to either make up for the past or be annihilated by it.

"Wait," said Lewis, thinking furiously. "Isn't that what he's counting on us to do? Treading fuel when the gun goes off? What we need is to keep the toilet tank from filling. If we can spring a leak in the arch, the fuel will start draining out as fast or faster than it's pouring in from the tanks. Right? It stabilizes, drops, and then we go get Abby."

"Jed," objected Longfellow, their electrician, "a single spark…"

"It's risky as hell. Even if we get Abby we may lose the fuel, unless we can somehow pump some of it back in. But if we don't…"

"We lose the dome," Geller said.

They hesitated.

"We lose more than that," Dana said.

"You mean we lose another person," said Lena. "That is what I am thinking. That I am tired of losing people."

"No, that's crazy," protested Linda. "I know it's terrible but we'll lose everyone if we stay here."

"Damn right," Calhoun warned. "We go up in flames. I'd rather freeze."

"Would you, Steve?" asked Dana. "Norse said that's worse."

"Well, we go to the emergency camp, then. At least it's a chance. We lose us all staying here."

"I think if we don't try here, we lose our soul," Dana said. "I agree with Alexi. I was wrong, too. I want to save what's left."

Calhoun groaned but didn't reply. They could hear the sound of swirling fuel.

Lewis looked at the others, their hesitation, their despair. Half determined, half panicked. "The archway is buried in snow," he reminded. "The only real exit for the fuel is right here, where we're standing. I'm proposing releasing it in here, letting it dam up against the generator wall and the outside ramp, and building a temporary dike to keep it out of the dome proper. Then I go in after Abby."

There was a long silence, an unspoken debate.

"That's just crazy," Linda moaned.

"Yes. Like running naked to the Pole."

The others glanced around, starting to make mental measurement of what they had to achieve. "Well, if we're going to do it, then let's do it!" Mendoza finally said, grimly determined. "Come on, amigos! Six of us with me to build the dike! The rest of you breach that wall!"

Most of them began to move. Calhoun and Linda still hesitated, watching the others.

"Ah, the hell with it," surrendered Calhoun. "At least it will be quick." He pointed up the wall. "All right, start with that beam there. That will give access to this panel."

"There's enough weight from the fuel that it will help pry 'er loose!" Geller added.

And at that Linda Brown blinked and acquiesced. "I know some crates we can drag to help build a dike," she said fatalistically.

"Then drag!" shouted Dana. "We don't know how taut that wire is!"

Masks and tools were passed out. Extra gloves were stuffed in to make a barrier between prying crowbars and bare metal, in hopes of minimizing sparks. The large rampway doors were dragged open, letting in the sharp outside cold but helping to dissipate the fumes.

The removal of Calhoun's beam started a small breach in their barrier. Fuel from the arch began spraying out in a ghastly plume, spattering the snowy floor of the archway intersection behind them. Pools of congealing petroleum began to form. The work stopped for a moment, the winter-overs uneasily eyeing this new fountain and its rich stink.

"Hurry up, dammit!" Geller roared. "We've got to move!"

They started again with new ferocity. Bolts were screwed out and a panel of plywood began to bulge, pulling its own nails, squealing as it bent. As it did so, the flow of fuel turned from fountain to pulsing flood, its weight pushing aside the barrier and pouring out onto the snowy floor in a dark river, swirling past BioMed and reaching the far generator wall, where it splashed as oily surf and began pooling into a new lake. An entire panel came off and the flood quickened, an artery of syrup. Their lake deepened, even as the rise of the one in the fuel arch began to reverse. They were wading in a petroleum sea, oily waves oscillating back and forth in their enclosure. The fuel lifted BioMed off its foundation and sent it floating, bouncing, and scuttling against one wall. The spreading fuel would have poured into the dome proper if the makeshift dike hadn't delayed it. Small rivulets broke through that thin barrier and ran toward the galley and the science building.

As the pool spread, Norse's triggering balloon bobbed in place a moment and then began to sink. Lewis played his light over Abby, wondering if she was still alive.

"How taut is the wire?" Geller yelled.

"We're still here, aren't we?" Calhoun grunted.

The fumes built, half poisoning them. Lewis was increasingly terrified there'd be a spark. "Okay, we've got a breach, that's enough!" he decided. "The rest of you retreat!" They didn't have to be told twice. The survivors threw down their tools and waded for the ramp, the fuel swirling around their thighs, a combustible fog roiling ahead of them up into the night. If it ignited, they'd be vaporized. They splashed up the slick ramp, falling and grunting, crawling up the oily beach into the dark and cold of the outdoors, soaked from fuel and coughing and woozy as they pulled off their masks. Their reddish black patina grew gummy in the cold and began to freeze.

"Smoking or nonsmoking?" a coughing Calhoun tried to crack.

Lewis watched them go, waiting for the tidal current swirling out from the fuel arches to subside as the two pools equalized. The flood became sluggish, its overall depth cut in half. More oil was breaking through their hasty dike, running into the dome, but that served to keep the fuel from deepening again as the tanks continued to drain.

Still no explosion.

It was time. Lewis waded to the breached wall. The fuel was thick and syrupy with cold, fogged and tarlike. It was a prehistoric swamp, viscous and evil. He pushed his past the break and shone his light around. The archway walls glistened with the sheen. "Christ, what a mess." With their tanks emptying he didn't know how they were going to survive the ice, but at least they'd so far evaded the fire. He could plainly see the trapped woman.

He pulled his mask aside for a moment. "Abby!"

There was no answer.

He waded into the fuel arch and felt his way to the catwalk, mounting its stairs and pulling himself along it where the fuel was now just ankle deep. He could see the high tide mark of the petroleum on the walls, the liquid dripping, the balloon like a distant buoy.

He counted the tanks off as he advanced, coming to the one where Cameron had been killed. It was here that Abby hung like a tired scarecrow. The balloon was sinking beside her, the wire to the trigger of the flare gun slacker now, but a board with another, tighter wire was floating beside it. The contraption looked more complex than it had to be.

He vaulted over the rail into stomach-deep fuel and waded toward the woman. She was limp as if dead, fuel having stained her to her chin, her body looking small and wilted. The flood had stopped an inch from her mouth.

"Abby?"

No response. He slapped her.

She jerked into crude consciousness and began coughing. He unstrapped one arm, then another, and she fell into his arms. Lewis had never seen anything so implacably heartless as this insane execution. He dragged her to the catwalk, pushing her up onto it and leaning her against the railing. She doubled over and vomited. When she came up gasping, he put an extra oxygen mask over her face. Abby sucked in air, reeling, tears streaming down her face.

"Where did he turn the valve? Where's the valve? We need to save what fuel we can!"

She shook her head.

"Where? Which pipe?"

She pulled away the oxygen mask, gasping to speak. "The wire! The flare!"

"I know! We got the fuel level to go down! We beat his clock!"

She shook her head vigorously. "No! Two wires! One if too high. A board if too low! It drops, pulls wire…"

Lewis saw what she was pointing at. Norse had anticipated them again. A second wire on the trigger was tightening as the fuel level fell and its board sank with it.

Good God. He'd brought nothing to cut it with.

"Run!"

She put on her mask and he pushed her frantically down the catwalk. The grating was slippery but the fuel had drained below it now. Gripping the slick rail, they ran as best they could, banging into the sides of the arch, looking back at the poised and hanging flare through a stinking fog of petroleum fumes, the slack wire growing tauter as the board pulled down.

Then they descended the catwalk stairs and went through the breach, wading across the petroleum pond to the ramp leading outside. It was molasses, clinging to them, beseeching them to stay. Behind them fuel was running across the hard-packed snow toward the modules, its fumes curling upward to the roof of the dome. It was a gray haze in the dome lights, the generator still chugging obediently behind the other wall.

The pair crawled up the slippery ramp, both slick with stinking fuel, the wetness beginning to freeze on their clothes.

"Go, go, go!" Lewis shouted to the others. "Get as far away as you can!"

Someone screamed. They were running.

Then a reflected flash as the flare gun went off, releasing red light like a glimpse of hell. With a gassy roar, the fuel arch blew up.

The shock wave of the blast kicked Abby and Lewis the last few feet up the ramp and knocked the scattering group as flat as a strike of bowling pins. The violence hit an instant before the sound did, and then for another instant everything at the Pole was noise. The pulse of superheated air that was now beyond the flattened winter-overs kicked up a wall of loose snow that expanded outward across the station like the penumbra of a star, an expanding blizzard, rushing a half mile in all directions before puffing out.

The snow over the fuel arch erupted like napalm, its wall of flame shooting skyward in an upside down curtain. BioMed disintegrated instantly, its fragments spewing into the entryway. The opposite wall guarding the generators blew inward into kindling and a gout of flame and plasma gases seared into the generator room like the exhaust of a rocket, melting the electrical connections and setting the gym ablaze. In an instant, power to the dome was snuffed out.

Fire leaped over the crude dike and flashed through the dome itself, the gases igniting and the resulting energy punching vents in the dome as if it were made of foil. Smoke and heat shot up through the ventilation hole at the top of the structure in a volcanic plume, spattering the complex with a rain of debris. Thousands of icicles broke off and rained down on the arena below like breaking glass, a maniacal tinkle against the thunder.

The fireball knocked the habitation modules askew from their foundations. Pipes were torn off, electrical cables snipped, and each metal box was seared with flame, roasting from orange to black in seconds. Crates flared into torches, banked ice cream flashed into steam. For a minute, the entire dome was an inferno.

Yet the explosion was a mere spark in a universe of implacable cold. Antarctica, for a brief moment punched aside, imploded back inward once the shock wave passed. The ice was determined to reclaim its dominance. Snow turned to steam and slush. The most volatile gases had vaporized and what was left began to burn more sluggishly as the heat consumed itself by turning a tinder-dry environment into a melting one. The blast had created a stinking lake. Fuel leaked down into the ice cap and spread into the surrounding snow. Flames roared, smoked, melted, and sputtered out. The ruptured tanks burned fiercely, sending a column of smoke boiling a mile high into the sky, but the blaze retreated to its heart almost as swiftly as it had expanded. With it went the stored energy that was to have kept them alive for the rest of the winter. There'd been a flash of oily violence, and now a grim guttering.

Their lifeblood had been consumed.

Shakily, the survivors stood. Miraculously, none had been seriously hurt and none had caught on fire. The searing heat was already a dim memory, replaced once more by relentless cold. They shivered.

Their spaceship had been destroyed.

Wordlessly, Geller handed over to Lewis some papers he'd snatched from Norse's dying hand.

There was some kind of scribbled account of a mountain climb, Lewis saw as he leafed through them. And a cover sheet with a scrawled message:

Thus Samson killed many more when he died than when he lived.