Under the Ice

Graham’s new job certainly started on an upscale beat as he was soon on a plane bound for balmy California. Though he never made it to Hollywood, his duty did take him to Beale Air Force base, north of the city of Sacramento. At this super secret installation he was to learn a whole new craft that would eventually take him from the land of surfers and bikinis to his current forsaken assignment in the frozen wastelands of the Canadian Arctic.

Totally sickened by the abrupt turn in his luck, Graham could only sigh heavily and shrug his broad shoulders. Like a wildcatter he had gambled his future on a single throw of the dice, and he had lost. It was as simple as that. And now he would have to pay the consequences.

Absently gazing out to the eastern horizon as the Arctic dawn continued to take shape, Graham mentally calculated that he had at least one hundred and eighty days left at this icebound outpost. After that time, command had promised he’d be transferred back to Esquimalt with a full rank’s promotion.

Though it didn’t seem like that long a time, six months was an eternity here at the distant early warning station known as Polestar. Making matters even worse was the fact that he was the only Canadian in a complement of fifty-five grubby Yanks. Why the only thing he had to look forward to were the weekly trips into Arctic Bay to pick up supplies and the mail. And even those trips were depressing, for the so-called town was little more than a collection of dilapidated Jamesway huts, holding an odd collection of squalid Eskimos.

If only his work was interesting, at least that portion of his stay would go quickly. But most of his duty time was spent perched before a radar screen, waiting for a Russian sneak attack that in all probability would never come to pass.

Polestar was the newest addition to the legendary DEW line, that was first built in the 1950’s to monitor the approach of Soviet prop-driven long-range bombers. Since that time, the character of the enemy’s strategic forces had drastically changed, and it was the threat of a surprise attack by the so-called Stealth aircraft that most concerned them.

To track these sophisticated planes from their takeoff phase onward, Polestar relied on a revolutionary new technology known as Over-the Horizon-Backscatter, or OTH-B for short. The system could cover airspace for a distance of over 2,000 miles. It did so by projecting a high-frequency signal off the ionosphere.

The reflected echo returned to the sending installation by a similar route, and was all but resistant to enemy jamming because the Soviets were still confused as to the exact frequencies that were being utilized.

Though Graham didn’t doubt the system’s effectiveness, what he did have misgivings about was the necessity of such an installation’s existence in the first place. Just as the strategic delivery systems had changed over the years, so had the statesmen that controlled them. Unlike in the 1950’s, today every responsible citizen of the planet understood the folly of nuclear war. Such a conflict would have no winners, for the resulting radioactivity would poison the atmosphere and create a living hell for any unlucky survivors.

A new generation of enlightened leaders was currently changing the character of enemy number one.

The Soviet Union was no longer the evil empire it had been rumored to be in the past. Socialism was gradually mutating, blending in capitalism and free enterprise to insure its future survival.

Currently leading the Soviets into the twenty-first century was an energetic, charismatic Premier by the name of Alexander Suratov. Graham liked the man from the very first time he saw him speaking on the evening news. He was young, dashing, and full of vigor.

Publicly admitting that the unparalleled arms race that had taken place during the last four decades was decimating the Soviet economy, Suratov was an exponent of total nuclear disarmament. To begin this long, difficult process, he advocated creating nuclear-free zones throughout the globe. One of the first regions he’d picked to ban such weapons was the Arctic. And to prove the seriousness of his intentions, he was about to embark on an unprecedented journey to Ottawa, where he was scheduled to meet with both the Canadian Prime Minister and the US President to sign an Arctic demilitarization treaty. This was a bold first step, and Graham prayed that the three leaders would reach an accord quickly.

Well aware that the plane carrying the Soviet Premier would soon be showing up on their radar screen, Ensign Graham Chapman turned to take in the installation that would be tracking this aircraft. Polestar was comprised of four massive OTH-B radar units.