“You’re the boss,” Dick said. He gave his friend a jab on the shoulder. “My lips are sealed forever. Now chill out and relax.” He swung himself into the Jeep. “But let’s just buzz out there straight-away and check out this discovery.”
“You don’t want to see where I live first?” Ron asked.
“I have a feeling I’ll be seeing that more than I care to,” he said with a laugh.
“I suppose it’s not a bad time while everybody is preoccupied with the Anchorage flight and screwing around with the tourists.” He reached forward and started the engine.
They drove out of the airport and headed northeast on the only road. It was gravel. To talk they had to shout over the sound of the engine.
“It’s about eight miles to Prudhoe Bay,” Ron said, “but we’ll be turning off to the west in another mile or so. Remember, if anybody stops us, I’m just taking you to the new oilfield.”
Dick nodded. He couldn’t believe his friend was so uptight about this thing. Looking around at the flat, marshy monotonous tundra and the overcast gunmetal gray sky, he wondered if the place was getting to Ron. He guessed life was not easy on the alluvial plain of Alaska’s north slope. To lighten the mood he said: “Weather’s not bad. What’s the temperature?”
“You’re lucky,” Ron said. “There was some sun earlier, so it’s in the low fifties. This is as warm as it gets up here. Enjoy it while it lasts. It’ll probably flurry later today. It usually does. The perpetual joke is whether it’s the last snow of last winter or the first snow of next winter.”
Dick smiled and nodded but couldn’t help but think that if the people up there considered that funny, they were in sad shape.
A few minutes later Ron turned left onto a smaller, newer road, heading northwest.
“How did you happen to find this abandoned igloo?” Dick asked.
“It wasn’t an igloo,” Ron said. “It was a house made out of peat blocks reinforced with whalebone. Igloos were only made as temporary shelters, like when people went out hunting on the ice. The Inupiat Eskimos lived in peat huts.”
“I stand corrected,” Dick said. “So how’d you come across it?”
“Totally by accident,” Ron said. “We found it when we were bulldozing for this road. We broke through the entrance tunnel.”
“Is everything still in it?” Dick asked. “I worried about that flying up here. I mean, I don’t want this to be a wasted trip.”
“Have no fear,” Ron said. “Nothing’s been touched. That I can assure you.”
“Maybe there are more dwellings in the general area,” Dick suggested. “Who knows? It could be a village.”
Ron shrugged. “Maybe so. But no one wants to find out. If anybody from the state got wind of this they’d stop construction on our feeder pipeline to the new field. That would be one huge disaster, because we have to have the feeder line functional before winter, and winter starts in August around here.”
Ron began to slow down as he scanned the side of the road. Eventually he pulled to a stop abreast of a small cairn. Putting a hand on Dick’s arm to keep him in his scat, he turned to look back down the road. When he was convinced that no one was coming, he climbed from the Jeep and motioned for Dick to do the same.
Reaching back into the Jeep, he pulled out two old and soiled and work gloves. He handed a set to Dick. “You’ll need these,” he explained. “We’ll be down below the permafrost.” Then he reached back into the Jeep for a heavy-duty flashlight.
“All right,” Ron added nervously. “We can’t be here long. I don’t want anybody coming along the road and wondering what the hell is going on.”
Dick followed Ron as he headed north away from the road. A cloud of mosquitoes mystically materialized and attacked them mercilessly. Looking ahead, Dick could see a fog bank about a half mile away and guessed it marked the coast of the Arctic Ocean. In all other directions there was no relief from the monotony of the fiat, windswept, featureless tundra that extended to the horizon. Overhead seabirds circled and cried raucously.