“With all due respect, there’s no way in hell I’m climbing into a cryogenic pod so that some souped-up computer can pour goo over me and turn me into a human Popsicle—not for a month or a year, or one day, for that matter!”

General Schall grimaced. “In that case, you leave us no choice. Mr. Vice President, I formally recommend we proceed with Omega. We’ll just have to hope, for the sake of those twelve astronauts and the rest of the world that the computer is functioning fine and the members of its crew are sound of mind and have not been coerced by the fossil fuel industry. It’s risky, but then Andria Saxon and the rest of her team knew that when they accepted GOLEM’s invitation to join the mission.”

I felt the blood rush from my face. “Andria’s one of the Omega astronauts? My Andria?”

“She didn’t tell you? Oh, that’s right, this was all kept top secret. Sorry, son. Best to enjoy your time together now, seeing as how she won’t be returning to Earth for another six years.”

Chapter 7

7

I believe that Europa is the most promising place in the solar system for astrobiological potential.

—ROBERT PAPPALARDO, study scientist for the Europa mission at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, August 28, 2009

EAST ANTARCTICA
SEPTEMBER 25, 2028

Antarctica: coldest region on Earth—5.5 million square miles of ice that doubled in size each winter as the surface of its surrounding oceans freeze six feet thick. With an ice cap that averaged over a mile deep, the continent held 70 percent of the world’s freshwater. If this ice were ever to melt, sea levels would rise two hundred feet.

Larger than both Australia and the United States, Antarctica was also the highest continent on the planet, its landmass unevenly divided into eastern and western sections by the hundred-million-year-old Transantarctic mountain chain.

West Antarctica, located below the tip of South America, was the smaller of the two regions, encompassing two major ice shelves and Mount Erebus, an active volcano. Global warming was a far greater threat in West Antarctica, as much of its ice sheet lay below sea level.

East Antarctica, located on the Indian Ocean side of the mountain range, occupied two-thirds of the continent. A mountainous desert of ice, it was the coldest, driest, and most desolate location on the planet.

Antarctica was not always a frozen wasteland; its landmass was once a temperate zone, part of the supercontinent, Gondwana. Two hundred and fifty million years ago Gondwana broke apart, an event that caused Antarctica to separate and drift over the equatorial seas. Coniferous forests dominated the landmass during the Cretaceous period, a green habitat that supported Antarctica’s dinosaur population.