Read Online The Omega Project by Steve Alten - Free Book Online Page B

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.”

 
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    I believe that Europa is the most promising place in the solar system for astrobiological potential.
    — R OBERT P APPALARDO , 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.
    Twenty-three million years ago the Drake Passage opened below South America, further isolating the continent. Oceanic currents and tectonic plate movements combined to push Antarctica to its present location over the South Pole where colder temperatures attributed to a drop in planetary carbon-dioxide levels, decimating the forests while leaving in its place a permanent ice cap that has covered the entire landmass over the last six million years.
    As the Earth revolved around the sun, our planet was also rotating 23.4 degrees on its axis. From the spring equinox on March twentieth until the vernal equinox on September twenty-second, the South Pole was tilted away from the sun, casting Antarctica into six months of frigid darkness. The sun returns in late September, warming the continent through February.
    Despite its frigid temperatures, Antarctica was home to the most fertile oceanic feeding habitat on Earth, its surrounding seas forming a convergence zone where cold water meets warmer currents flowing down from the north. Nourishing plant and animal life, Antarctic seas attracted everything from giant schools of tiny krill to pods of blue whales, the largest creatures ever to inhabit our planet.
    *   *   *
    The Boeing CH-47 Chinook heaved and rattled, its twin 4,733 horsepower engines commanding