Atlantis Found (Dirk Pitt 15)

Pitt and Giordino exchanged glances and then both looked at the station chief, their faces set in grave expressions. "Yes," Pitt said severely, "it's life and death to more people than you can possibly conceive."

"Can you tell me what this is all about?"

"Can't," Giordino answered simply. "Besides, you wouldn't want to know. It might ruin your entire day."

Cash poured a cup of coffee and contemplated the dark liquid for a few moments. Then he said,

"There is one other possibility, but it's highly improbable."

Pitt stared at him. "We're listening."

"Admiral Byrd's Snow Cruiser," Cash announced, as if he was launching a lecture, which indeed he was. "A jumbo four-wheel-drive, larger than any vehicle built in her day."

"When was that?" Giordino queried.

"Nineteen thirty-nine." There was a pause. "It was the inspiration of Thomas Poulter, a polar explorer, who designed and built a monstrous machine he hoped could carry five men and his pet dog to the South Pole and back. I guess you might call it the world's first really big recreational vehicle. The tires alone were over three feet wide and more than ten feet in diameter. From front to back, it measured fifty-six feet long by twenty feet wide and weighed thirty-seven tons fully loaded. Believe you me, she's some vehicle."

"She sounds overly elaborate," said Pitt, "for a vehicle designed to travel to the South Pole."

"She was that. Besides a grand control cabin raised on the front, it had its own machine shop, living quarters for the crew, and a galley that also performed double duty as a photographer's darkroom. The rear end housed storage space for a year's supply of food, spare tires, and enough fuel for five thousand miles of travel. Not only that, she was supposed to have carried a Beechcraft airplane with skis on her roof."

"What did such a monster use for power?"

"Two one-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower diesel engines linked to four seventy-five-horsepower electric traction motors, which could feed power to all or any one of the wheels individually. The wheels could all be turned for a crabbing movement and sharp turns, and even retract when crossing a crevasse.

Each wheel alone weighed six thousand pounds. The tires were twelve-ply and made by Goodyear."

"Are you saying this gargantuan machine not only still exists, but is available?" asked Pitt incredulously.

"Oh, she exists, but I can't say she's available or that she could travel across sixty miles of the ice shelf.

Sixty miles may not seem like much distance, but after the Snow Cruiser was completed, shipped to the Antarctic, and unloaded at Little America Three, not far from this station, her designer's best-laid plans went down the sewer. The engines had the power, but Poulter had miscalculated the gear ratios. The behemoth would do thirty miles an hour on a level road, but couldn't pull her mass through ice and snow, especially up a grade. Given up as a white elephant, she was abandoned. In later years, she was covered over by the ice, lost, and forgotten. It was always thought that as the ice shelf moved toward the sea, the Snow

Cruiser would eventually be carried away and dropped in the deep when the ice floe melted."

"Where is she now, still buried under the ice?" Pitt inquired.

Cash shook his head and smiled. "The Snow Cruiser is about two miles from here, dangerously close to the edge of the ice shelf. A rich old mining engineer got it into his head to find and rescue the vehicle, then transport it back to the States for display in a museum. He and his crew discovered it thirty feet deep in the ice and spent three weeks digging it out. They built an ice tent around it, and the last I heard actually got it running."

"I wonder if they'd let us borrow it?"

"Never hurts to ask," said Cash. "But I think you'd do better selling a basset hound on eating broccoli."

"We've got to try," Pitt said firmly.

"You got Arctic clothing?"

"In the plane."

"Better get it on. We'll have to hike to where the Snow Cruiser sits." Then Cash looked as though he'd suddenly thought of something. "Before I forget, I'll have a couple of our maintenance men throw a cover over your plane and set up an auxiliary heater to keep your engines, fuel, and hydraulic systems warm and the ice off the fuselage and wings. Leave a plane set for a week and she'll start to disappear under a buildup of ice."

"Good idea," Giordino acknowledged. "We may have to use it in a hurry if all else fails."

"I'll meet you back here in half an hour and I'll lead you to the vehicle."

"Who is the old guy who's heading up the salvage operation?" asked Pitt.

Cash looked lost for a moment. "I don't really know. He's an eccentric cuss. His crew usually calls him