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"Cousin Karl, cousin Elsie, you do us an honor by coming."
"Cousin Horst," Karl greeted him. "I felt it my duty to observe the doomsday system in its final stages."
"An hour that is near at hand," Elsie added proudly.
"How goes the evacuation?" asked Karl.
"Cargo and passengers are scheduled to arrive on the Ulrich Wolf ten hours before the cataclysm,"
Horst assured him.
Then their brother, Hugo, and sister, Blondi, stepped forward to greet them. They took turns embracing.
"Welcome back to Valhalla," Blondi greeted Karl.
"Other business has kept me away too long," said Karl.
Hugo, who was the chief of the family security force, gestured toward a small electric automobile, one of a fleet of utility and heavy equipment vehicles that ran on batteries, to prevent a buildup of carbon monoxide inside the caverns. "We'll take you to the control center, where you can see for yourself how we begin the end of the old world."
"After I inspect your guards," said Karl. Trailed by Elsie, he walked down the line of security guards in their black uniforms, who stood ramrod straight, with their P-10 automatics strapped to their hips and Bushmaster M17S rifles slung over their shoulders. He stopped occasionally and asked a guard his nationality and military history. When he reached the end of the line, he nodded in satisfaction.
"An intrepid company of men. You've done well, Hugo. They look like they can handle any intrusion."
"Their orders are to shoot to kill any unidentified intruder that enters our perimeter."
"I hope they perform with greater efficiency than Erich's men at the shipyard."
"There will be no failure at this end," Hugo said firmly. "I promise you, brother."
"Any sign of encroachment?"
"None," answered Blondi. "Our detection-control unit has seen no activity within a hundred and fifty miles of the facility."
Elsie looked at her. "One hundred and fifty miles does not seem far."
"It's the distance to Little America Number Six, the Yankee Antarctic research station. Since the station was built, they've shown no interest in our operations. Our aerial surveillance has yet to detect any attempt to trespass onto our mining facility."
"All is quiet with the Americans," added Hugo. "They'll give us no problems."
"I'm not so sure," said Karl. "Keep a tight eye on any activity. I fear their intelligence may be on the verge of discovering our secret."
"Any attempt to stop us," Hugo said confidently, "will come too late. The Fourth Empire is inevitable."
"I sincerely pray that will be the case," said Karl, as he entered the auto ahead of the women. Usually gallant around the ladies, Karl came from the old German school where men never yielded to women.
The driver of the electric car left the aircraft hangar area and entered a tunnel. After a quarter of a mile, they entered a vast ice cavern that enclosed a small harbor with long floating docks that rose and fell with the tide from the Ross Sea. The high-roofed channel that ran from the inner harbor to the sea curved gently, allowing large ships to navigate the passage while the ice cliffs blocked all view from the outside.
Light throughout the complex came from overhead fixtures containing dozens of halogen bulbs. Four submarines and a small cargo ship were moored beside the docks. The entire harbor complex was deserted. The cargo cranes stood abandoned, along with a small fleet of trucks and equipment. There wasn't a soul to be seen on the docks or the vessels. It was as if their crews had walked off and never returned.
"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 tunnel that ran nine miles through the ice between the hidden dock terminal, the aircraft hangar, and then to the sea-mining extraction facility had also been excavated by slaves from the old Soviet Union, their preserved bodies now frozen in a mass grave on the ice shelf. Since 1985, the tunnel had been expanded and constantly realigned because of the shifting ice.
In the beginning, the efforts to extract valuable minerals from the sea had proved a dismal failure, but with the nanotechnology revolution pioneered by Eric Drexle
