Blazing Ice Read Online Free PDF Page B

astronomers, who’d spent a summer at Pole looking for those subatomic particles from outer space, saw to that.
    Our crews exchanged tours one Sunday: Bob’s telescope for our tunnel. Bob rotated back to McMurdo, debriefed his science project, and spread the word that the tunnel was the best tour going at South Pole. When U.S. representatives and distinguished visitors stepped off the LC-130 Hercules at Pole, they all wanted to see the tunnel. Never mind the new station going up on stilts, standing boldly against the skyline. The tunnel below them, that thing they could not see, was what they wanted to see the most. The chief operatingofficer (COO) for the new support contractor was no different. Station manager Katy Jensen told me so.
    Katy was sharp. At thirty-three, the new contractor identified her as a “star” for future career interest. And she was well liked by everyone at South Pole. With her swimmer’s broad shoulders, and long, straight dark hair, she was attractive. Folks vied to win smiles from Katy. She freely gave them. Her laugh had the quality of a baritone bell, clear, from somewhere deep inside her, a sound that turned your head. She’d accompany the COO.
    I looked forward to showing off the nearly completed tunnel. This was the last year of the four-year tunnel project, and the second year for the new contractor: 2001–2002. The COO was young, clean-cut, and energetic, keenly interested in everything it took to make the Antarctic program work. He’d worked a shift with the shovel gang in McMurdo. You could see gears whizzing behind his bright blue eyes when he engaged you.
    I had to check on the night shift anyway. “Tell him it’s cold. You know, parka, gloves, bunny-boots.”
    The main tunnel was long enough to be impressive. We walked on and on in the darkness, dimly lit by my wandering cap-lamp and a string of light bulbs lining the left side of the tunnel. For the sameness of it all in the numbing cold, it seemed like we got nowhere. But we stopped at the perfect hole-through.
    â€œLook behind us as far as you can see.” My cap-lamp beam swept sideways over the COO’s head. “Now turn and look the way we’re headed.” Either direction, points of light receded like an infinity of opposing mirrors.
    â€œThink of starting your tunnel way out there, beyond the last light you can see. Think of another one starting behind you. Now imagine the two tunnels approaching each other in the dark. They have to meet squarely, face-to-face …” My mittened fists demonstrated, meeting knuckle-to-knuckle. “… on line and on grade. If they don’t meet like that, well, imagine the consequences: you’ve driven your tunnels too far, past where you were supposed to meet. You haven’t found the other tunnel. So where do you look for it? Do you look up? Down? Sideways?”
    The tunnel would carry sewer and water pipes connecting the unique water wells bored into South Pole’s ice. The pipes had better align. Katy smiled. She knew what was coming next.
    My hand and cap-lamp pointed above our heads, lighting a two-foot-long block of unmined snow. That was our hole-through monument. My mittengrazed the tunnel walls, pointing down to the floor. “And this is where the two tunnels met.”
    I looked at him sideways like a miner, keeping my light out of his eyes. “You won’t find more than one-eighth of an inch off line. You won’t find that much on the bottom grade.”
    â€œHow do you do that?” he asked, properly awed.
    â€œMiners know how to do that,” I said proudly. “The cost of failure is too high.” That knowledge had been passed on from one miner to the next since humans came out of the Stone Age and dug in the ground for metal. In some places we’d used techniques as old as Babylonian times.
    The COO soaked in the constant -55 degree Celsius tunnel temperature. “Shall we