Free The Omega Project by Steve Alten

its pair of tandem rotating blades to elevate the 24,000 pound helicopter and its crew into the crisp Antarctic air. Powered by a combination of hydrogen fuel cells and a coveted supply of jet fuel held at the Casey Station outpost, the converted military transport had just enough range to deliver its crew and my cursed uncle and me to our destination on Ross Island.
    I pressed my forehead against the cargo bay’s frosted window, gazing out at the seemingly endless white landscape. My eyes followed the chopper’s shadow as it crossed Wilkes Land, ABE instantaneously feeding my mind information:
    WILKES LAND. LOCATION: EAST ANTARCTICA.
    A FROZEN DESERT OF ICE, THREE MILES THICK. CONCEALED BENEATH THE ICE SHEET IS THE LARGEST METEOR IMPACT CRATER ON EARTH. DISCOVERED BY NASA’S GRACE SATELLITE TEAM, THE CRATER IS THREE HUNDRED MILES WIDE AND WAS CREATED BY THE CELESTIAL IMPACT OF AN OBJECT THIRTY MILES IN DIAMETER. THE IMPACT OCCURRED APPROXIMATELY 250 MILLION YEARS AGO, RESULTING IN THE PERMIAN-TRIASSIC EXTINCTION, THE LARGEST EXTINCTION EVENT IN HISTORY. THE IMPACT WIPED OUT 99 PERCENT OF ALL LIFE-FORMS ON THE PLANET—AN EVOLUTIONARY PREREQUISITE THAT LED TO THE RISE OF THE DINOSAURS. THE IMPACT IS NOW CREDITED WITH INITIATING THE TECTONIC RIFT THAT CAUSED THE BREAKUP AND SEPARATION OF THE GONDWANA SUPERCONTINENT, LEADING TO THE FORMATION AND PRESENT-DAY RELOCATION OF THE SEVEN MAJOR CONTINENTS.
    I blinked away the information overload, preferring to obsess over the thoughts that had dominated my every waking moment over the last twenty-four hours.
    It had begun with a call to Andria—a conversation that quickly degenerated into a shouting match. How could she have accepted a six-year mission to Europa without telling me? Did she expect me to wait for her? How would she react if our roles were reversed?
    In the heat of battle I decided not to mention anything about my trip to the Pentagon or that I’d be joining her aboard Oceanus for the Omega practice run. By the time I phoned her back three hours later, Andie and her fellow crewmen were already en route to the South Pole, all means of communicating with the outside world silenced.
    A harsh katabatic wind buffeted the chopper, separating me from my thoughts. Three days earlier, the sun had peaked above the Antarctic horizon, bringing an end to six months of wintery darkness. Despite the returning daylight, spring would not arrive until mid-November, the sea ice finally thawing in January.
    “Robbie, you okay?”
    I turned to my uncle, who was seated next to me. The two of us were dressed in thermal long johns, ski pants, and boots, and were seated on our goose-down parkas, the hard bench seats no picnic on our bouncing buttocks. “I was just thinking about Andria.”
    “Your problem is that you think too much. You’ll be seeing her in about six hours. Which reminds me, it’s time for your next shot.”
    “I told you, I’m committed to the Omega trial but I’m not being frozen.”
    “And I told you, GOLEM will never allow you on board Oceanus without blood work. The Omega astronauts have already received a month’s worth of shots. You’ll need to double up on your protocol over the next two weeks, right up until the moment the crew is frozen. At that time, you can inform the computer that you’ve determined the suspected crewman is fine to stay with the mission, and that instead of being held in cryogenic stasis you’ll be using your designated sleep time to catch up on your reading. That’ll give you another four weeks to observe GOLEM.”
    My response was silenced by another wave of turbulence, the violent wind gusts peppering the Chinook with ice particles as the airship soared west over the Transantarctic mountain range, heading for the Ross Ice Shelf.
    Formed and fed by eight mammoth glaciers, the Ross Ice Shelf was a six-hundred-mile-long, five-hundred-mile-wide sheet of ice, a half-mile thick. Floating atop Antarctica’s Southern Ocean, this sheer