Atlantis Found

"A pity the U-boats that served our venture so efficiently all these years will be lost," said Elsie wistfully.

"Perhaps they will survive," Blondi consoled her.

Hugo smiled. "When the time comes, I will personally return to Valhalla to see how they fared. They deserve to be enshrined for their service to the Fourth Empire."

The old tu

In the begi

The engineering center of the Destiny Enterprises sea-mining facility was a great domed structure whose interior looked similar to the vast control room at the NASA space center. Electronic consoles were ma

Karl Wolf entered the expansive room and stopped in front of a spacious electronic board that hung from the center of the domed ceiling. In the center, a large map of the Ross Ice Shelf was displayed. Around the edges, a series of neonlike tubing distinguished the ice from the surrounding land. The tubing, which stretched from the mining company around the ice shelf and ended three hundred miles from the opposite end, was green. The section from where the green ended was continued in red to the edge of the sea.

"The area in red is yet to be programmed?" Karl asked the chief engineer, Jurgen Holtz, who walked up to the Wolf party and gave a sharp nod of his head in greeting.

"Yes, that is correct." Holtz raised a hand and gestured at the board. "We are in the process of setting the molecular triggering devices. We have about another four hundred miles to program to the end of the tu

Karl studied the constantly changing red letters and numbers on the digital displays spaced around the map. "When is the critical moment?"

"The final process for splitting off the ice shelf is timed for six hours…" Holtz paused to stare up at a series of numbers showing the time left until doomsday. "Twenty-two minutes and forty seconds from now."

"Any problems that might cause a delay?"

"None we're aware of All computerized procedures and their backup systems have been inspected and scrutinized dozens of times. We have yet to find the slightest hint of a possible malfunction."

"An amazing feat of engineering," Karl said quietly, while gazing at the colored tubing surrounding the ice shelf. "A pity the world will never know of its existence."

"An amazing feat indeed," echoed Holtz, "boring a ten-foot-diameter tu

"The credit goes to you and your engineers who designed and built the molecular tu

"Perhaps after the ice melts, we'll have an opportunity to use the tu

"You think the ice will melt away?" asked Elsie, puzzled.

"If our calculations are ninety-five percent correct, this section of the Antarctic will end up eighteen hundred miles north of here two months after the cataclysm."

"I've never quite understood how all this is going to break off the entire ice shelf and send it out to sea" said Elsie.

Karl smiled. "I'd forgotten that you were the family intelligence collector in Washington for the past three years and were not provided with details of the Valhalla Project."

Holtz held up one hand and pointed to the giant display board. "As simply as I can explain it, Miss Wolf, our nanocomputerized machine constructed a vast number of molecular replicating assemblers, which in turn constructed over many millions of tiny molecular ice-dissolving machines."

Elsie looked pensive. "In other words, the replicated assemblers, through molecular engineering, can create machines that can produce almost anything."

"That's the beauty of nanotechnology," replied Holtz. "The replicating assembler can copy itself in a few minutes. In less than twenty-four hours, tons of replicated machines, moving trillions of atoms around, drilled holes into the ice every six inches above and below the tu

"How long will that take?" asked Elsie.

"Less than two hours," answered Holtz.

"Then ten hours after the final break," Karl explained, "the displaced weight of the Ross Ice Shelf will have moved far enough away from the Antarctic continent to throw off Earth's delicately balanced rotation just enough to cause a polar shift in unison with a crust displacement, sending the world into a devastating upheaval."

"A world which we then can reshape into our image," said Elsie vaingloriously.

A man in the black uniform of a security guard came rushing out of an office and approached the group. "Sir," he said to Karl, handing him a sheet of paper.

Karl's face darkened for a brief instant, before turning reflective.

"What is it?" Elsie asked.

"A report from Hugo," Karl answered slowly. "It seems an unidentified aircraft is approaching from across the Amundsen Sea, and refuses to answer our signals."

"Probably the supply plane for the ice station at Little America," said Holtz. "Nothing to be concerned about. It flies in and out every ten days."