“And the bottom of this crevasse is open all the way down to the sea?” Timoshenko asked.
“I don’t know, but now I suspect it is. As near as I’m able to calculate, it must lie directly above the hole you’ve found on the underside. Even if the lava spout didn’t punch through the entire hundred feet of ice above the water line, the heat needed to bore upward through all that underwater mass would at least have cracked the ice above the surface. And those cracks are sure to lead all the way down to the open water that your Fathometer operator detected.”
“If the hole is at the bottom of the crevasse—I suppose we should call it a shaft or tunnel, rather than a hole—would you be willing to try to reach it by climbing down into the crevasse? Timoshenko inquired.
The question seemed bizarre to Harry. He could not see the point of going down into that chasm where his snowmobile had vanished. “If we had to do it, I suppose we could improvise some climbing equipment. But what would be the point? I don’t understand where you’re going with this.”
“That’s how we’re going to try to take you off the ice. Through the tunnel and out from underneath the berg.”
In the cave behind Harry, the seven others responded to that suggestion with noisy disbelief.
He gestured at them to be quiet. To the Russian radioman, he said, “Down through this hole, this tunnel, and somehow into the submarine? But how?”
Timoshenko said, “In diving gear.”
“We haven’t any.”
“Yes, but we have.” Timoshenko explained how the gear would be gotten to them.
Harry was more impressed than ever with the Russian’s ingenuity but still doubtful. “I’ve done some diving in the past. I’m not an expert at it, but I know a man can’t dive that deep unless he’s trained and has special equipment.”
“We’ve got the special equipment,” Timoshenko said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to do without the special training.” He spent the next five minutes outline Captain Gorov’s plan in some detail.
The scheme was brilliant, imaginative, daring, and well thought out. Harry wanted to meet this Captain Nikita Gorov, to see what kind of man could come up with such a stunningly clever idea. “It might work, but it’s risky. And there’s no guarantee that the tunnel from your end actually opens into the bottom of the crevasse at our end. Maybe we won’t be able to find it.”
“Perhaps,” Timoshenko agreed. “But it’s you best chance. In fact, it’s your only chance. There’s just an hour and a half until those explosives detonate. We can’t get rafts across to the iceberg, climb up there, and bring you down as we’d planned. Not in ninety minutes. The wind is coming from the stern of the iceberg now, blowing hard along both flanks. We’d have to land the rafts at the bow, and that’s impossible with the whole mountain of ice rushing down on us at nine knots.”
Harry knew that was true. He had said as much to Pete just half an hour ago. “Lieutenant Timoshenko, I need to discuss this with my colleagues. Give me a minute, please.” Still hunkering before the radio, he turned slightly to face the others and said, “Well?”
Rita would have to control her phobia as never before, because she would have to go down inside the ice, be entirely surrounded by it. Yet she was the first to speak in favor of the plan: “Let’s not waste time. Of course we’ll do it. We can’t just sit here and wait to die.”
Claude Jobert nodded. “We haven’t much choice.”
“We’ve got one chance in ten thousand of getting through alive,” Franz estimated. “But it’s not altogether hopeless.”
“Teutonic gloom,” Rita said, grinning.
In spite of himself, Fischer managed a smile. “That’s what you said when I was worried that an earthquake might strike before we got back to base camp.”
“Count me in,” Brian said.
Roger Breskin nodded, “And me.”
Pete Johnson said, “I joined up for the adventure. Now I’m sure as hell getting more of it than I bargained for. If we ever get out of this mess, I swear I’ll be content to spend my evenings at home with a good book.”