Chapter-1 Arctic, 79°58’39.25″S 81°57’32.21″W Pandora Research Laboratory

Cathy stared at the screen in front of her. The line shot to 3 degrees Celsius. Her face turned white. This is extreme!

The tough-faced woman hastily reached for a satellite phone on her table.

"Sato san! It's terrible! The temperature deviation jumped to 3 degrees Celsius!" Cathy hurriedly explained to Sato Hidoyuki, the head researcher of International Climate Change on the Voyager.

"Dear God! One more degree and the second layer of ice will break or melt!" Sato san also sounded panicky.

"I know! One more degree and the sea level will rise at least 2 meters," Cathy replied in despair. Her mind's eye saw imageries of cities around the world slowly sinking.

The conversation was interrupted with each imagining the looming disaster. Sato san stared at the iceberg in front of him with a frown. The 200-meter mountain would collapse if the second layer of ice melted. Same thing would happen with the icebergs along the south and north poles. The head researcher shook his head.

The Voyager was anchoring deep in the maze of Arctic icebergs. They were sampling microorganisms and organisms that could be found to prove a theory that some organisms could be preserved in some of the polar ice caps.

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The polar ice sheet with an average thickness of 1.9 km consisted of several layers representing the age of the ice. The first layer was a 200-meter-thick surface which had now been greatly reduced by climate change since the global warming occurred significantly starting in the 20th century.

The second layer with 500-meter thick was a safeguard for the third layer, which was the most important layer to ensure the land in the world did not sink. This third layer had a thickness of 1 km. The last layer was the fourth which was extremely dense ice with a thickness of 200 meters. Because of the density of this last ice sheet, its hardness exceeded that of a diamond, which was the world's densest mineral ever found.

This second layer supported the balance of sea level. In addition, it was in this second layer that the cryo-genetic theory occurred. Ancient animals and plants were trapped in the second layer and became fossil. Voyager was focusing its research on that second layer.

The news from Pandora's ground laboratory was good news for the Voyagers because they didn't have to bother drilling the ice sheet to find the object they were looking for. But Sato san understood that a blessing for them would be a humanitarian disaster for the rest of the world. The chunk of land that would be lost due to the rising sea levels around the world would be massive. Although there wouldn't be powerful tsunami waves hurdling into cities, at least there would be millions of people needed to be evacuated from coastal areas to higher ground all around the world.

A large-scale evacuation process would be chaotic in its wake. Sato san took a deep breath.

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The large whaling ship named Hantaa 01 swerved to avoid the ice sheets floating on the sea surface. For days they had been pursuing a swarm of minke whales hunting krill in the Arctic waters.

The Captain, a middle-aged man with all-white hair named Shinji Akira sat in the wheelhouse. His eyes were on high alert for large ice sheets that could possibly damage the bow of the ship or break the propellers.

Shinji Akira dreaded the situation silently. These waters were risky to navigate. Numerous large and thick slabs of ice choked the ship's speed. Under such low speed, the distance between them and the fast-swimming prey was growing further by the hour.

It's been more than a month since Hantaa 01 set sail. But it had not catch one single whale. Whereas in the past, a decade ago, within 1 month of operation, Hantaa 01 would have at least 5 whales in its hold.

The pulse of the monitor on the navigation screen grabbed Shinji Akira's attention away from the steering wheel for a moment. There was a large red dot flashing constantly on the screen. The highly experienced captain frowned. The dot was approaching ship's hull rapidly. What's this?

Before the captain could think further, there was a loud sound of metal creaking, and the ship shook violently. Several crew members on the bridge were thrown to the floor. Even the two crews who were standing on top of the ship's hold were smashed to the railing and thrown overboard. The ship tilted to the left for almost 35 degrees. One more hit and Hantaa 01 would flip.

There was chaos on board of the whaling ship. People shouted warnings to each other, haphazardly tied safety lines on nearby poles and hastily threw ropes at their comrades who fell into the frigid sea.

Shinji Akira's face turned white. That was a hard slab of ice floating below sea level. And the slab hit the underside of the ship hard. It appeared that the subsurface currents were so strong that the plates were drifting quite fast.

Captain Shinji Akira could only hope that the hull survived the impact and was not torn. The collision shook a ship of this size quite violently.

After things settled down and the crews who were thrown overboard rescued, Captain Shinji ordered his men to do a visual damage assessment. Even though the screen only showed an indication of small leak in the hull.

The bridge intercom barked.

"Captain, the hull is torn substantially! Small leak caused by the sharp tip of the ice penetrating into the hull prevents a bigger leak."

"Abazure! What was that?!" there was a harsh curse that made Captain Shinji bend his brows.

The captain pressed the intercom button.

"What's the diameter of the iceberg penetrating the ship's hull?"

There was silence for a moment. Then came a startling answer.

"The diameter of the sharp tip of the shard penetrating the hull is 2 meters, captain! And there is something in it!" The answer sounded a bit frantic.

Captain Shinji signaled the helmsman to take his place. The captain rushed down from the bridge to the hull space at the bottom.

Captain Shinji saw several crew members swarming around the chunks of ice that seemed perfectly planted on the hull wall.

Everyone stepped aside with respect when they saw Captain Shinji approaching.

Captain Shinji observed the condition of the ship's hull. Realizing that the situation would be disastrous for the ship if the chunk of ice filling the hole melted quickly.

To determine the melting time, Captain Shinji touched the surface of the ice. Trying to feel its denseness.

This highly experienced captain jolted in surprise.

As he rubbed the surface of the ice, he felt a small vibration and electric shock. In any case, this ice was exceptionally dense!

Out of curiosity, after putting on rubber gloves, Captain Shinji again touched the surface of the ice and tried to rub it several times to see what looked like a black silhouette inside.

Again, Captain Shinji jumped back in surprise. This time his body even retreated backwards showing a sheer shock.

The black silhouette inside the iceberg appeared to be humanoid!