The Project 02 - The Lance

Mountains would provide a good field test. No one had ever found much in the Antarctic ice, only a little iron and some copper. None of it promised commercial development. Besides, the Antarctic treaties prevented any kind of serious mining operations.
    The big Sno-Cat closed on the mountains and Hans turned parallel to the front of the range , looking for anything unusual in the melting ice and snow. After ten minutes the mineral seeking device began to beep.
    " Something ahead," Otto said. "According to this, no more than three of four hundred meters." He consulted a chart. "High density iron, copper, the readings are going crazy."
    " Look there!" Hans pointed through the windshield.
    He slowed and brought the Tucker to a halt. On the side of one of the jagged peaks, ice and snow had broken loose in the spring thaw. A gray, regular outline was visible against the dark rock.
    " What the hell is that?" Hans let the engine idle.
    " I don't know. It looks man made. That's where the readings come from."
    " I don't remember anything about a station or camp here."
    S tations were often abandoned in the Antarctic. Both men were familiar with the history of the region. Neither had ever heard of anything in this area.
    They climbed down from the cab and walked to the mountain wall. Two wide doors of rusting steel, each twelve feet high, were set into the rock. Ice and snow blocked the lower part of the doors.
    Excitement filled both men.
    "What do you think?" Otto said. "Can we get in?"
    " Maybe we can push the debris aside."
    " Let's try it."
    The Sno-Cat was equipped with a heavy blade used to groom the station runway for supply planes. Otto and Hans climbed back into the cab. Hans engaged the four speed transmission and brought the Tucker around to the doors. He lowered the blade and began working. In twenty minutes, the way was clear.
    The two men stood before the doors. There was a large, U-shaped handle on each one.
    "They have to open in." Hans rubbed his glove across his face. "No one would have doors that opened out. They'd get blocked by snow."
    " I wonder if they're locked?"
    " Against what? Penguins? Let's push and see."
    They pushed against one of the doors. Grunting, they pushed harder. With a rusted squeal, the steel door opened. They pushed at the other door and swung it inward. The interior lay in darkness.
    Hans went back to the idling cat, backed it around and pointed it straight at the open entrance. He switched on the six halogen headlamps and hit high beam. The interior lit up with brilliant white light. He took two hand held torches from the cab and joined Otto.
    A high roofed tunnel ran straight as an arrow into the mountain. Bare electric light bulbs, long dark, were spaced down the center of the ceiling.
    " Whoever built this bored right into the mountain."
    " What could it have been for?" Otto said. "This is huge. It would take a lot of equipment. I never heard of anything like this down here."
    A little way in, Hans paused at a room on the right.
    " This could have been a guardroom." He pointed at a frost covered stove in the corner. "That looks like something from sixty or seventy years ago."
    " A military base? For what? Who built it?"
    On the other side of the corridor was a kitchen and eating area, big enough for a hundred men. They passed two barracks rooms with gray wooden lockers still in place at the ends of the bunks. Hans opened one. Empty.
    They walked down the corridor, past what might have been officer's quarters with two bunks to a room. They came upon a radio room. A microphone and telegraph key still sat on top of a metal desk, next to a large transmitter console tied with snaking cables to a tall rack of receivers and test equipment. Next to the transmitter was a wooden box. Otto opened the box. Inside was something like a typewriter, with a complex keyboard arrangement of letters and buttons.
    Everything was covered by a thick layer of white frost. Otto wiped off the face plate of the silent transmitter. The switches were marked in German. Both men saw the swastika at the same time.
    " Holy shit! This must be Doenitz's secret base!"
    Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, head of Nazi Germany's naval forces, had once referred to "an invincible fortress in the Antarctic", but no one had ever found evidence of its existence. Now Otto and Hans were standing in it.
    Hans picked up a logbook lying on the desk. He thumbed through it without absorbing the words, set it down again.
    " This short