As you talk and get some refreshments, a group of men begin talking about the Mistakonic Univeristy's Expedition of 1930-31. You stop to listen as the men recount it's exploits and fate.
The expedition landed at Ross Island in the Ross Sea. After several tests of the drilling gear and trips to Mt. Erebus and other local sights., the land party, consisting of 20 men and 55 dogs plus gear, assemble a semi-permanent camp on the barrier no far away and readied their five big Dornier aircraft for flight.
Using four of the aircraft, the fifth held in reserve at the barrier camp, the party established a second base camp on the Polar Plateau beyond the top of the Beardmore Glacier and did a lot more drilling and blasting in that vicinity. Many fascinating fossil finds where made using the drilling rig.
On January 6, 1931, Lake, Dyer, Pabodie, Daniels, and ten other men flew directly over the South Pole in two aircraft, being forced down once for several hours by high winds. The published plan for the expedition at this point was to move the entire operation eastward another 500 miles in mid-January, for the purposes of establishing once and for all whether Antarctica was one continent or two. The public also recieved word during this period that Lake, the biologist, campaigned strongly for an expedition to the northwest before moving the base camp. Therefore, instead of flying west on the 10th of January as planned, the party remained where it was while Lake, Pabodie, and five others set out via sled to prode overland into unknown lands. This expedition lasted from January 11th through the 18th, and was scientificly successful and marred only by the loss of two dogs in an accident while crossing a pressure ridge.
The expedition's planned agenda was changed once again when it was decided to send a very large party northeastward under Lake's command. The party left Beardmore by aircraft on January 22nd, and radioed frequent reports directly to the Arkham for rebroadcast to the world. The party consisted of 4 planes, 12 men, and 36 dogs, and the drilling and blasting equipment. Later that same day the expedition landed about 300 miles east and drilled and blasted up a new set of samples, containing some very exciting Cambrian fossils.
Late that same day, about 10 p.m. Lake's party annouced the sighting of a new mountain range far higher than any heretofore seen in Antarctica. It was described as a very broad range with suspicions of volcanism present. One of the planes was forced down in the foothills and damaged on landing. Two other craft landed there as well and set up camp. Lake and Carroll, in the fourth plane, flew along the new range for a short while up close. Very strange angular formations, columns, and spiracles were reported on the highest peaks. Lake estimated the range peaks may top 35, 000 feet. Dyer called back to the ships and ordered the crew to ready large amounts of supplies for shipment to the new base which would have to be set up in the foothills of the new range.
January 23rd - Lake commented on the likelihood of vicious gales in the region, and announced that that they were beginning a drilling probe near the new camp. It was agreed that one plane would fly back to the Beardmore camp to pick up the remaining men and all the fuel it could carry. Dyer told Lake that he and his men would be ready in another 24 hours.
The rest of that same day was filled with fantastic, exciting news that rocked the scientific world. A borehole had drilled through into a cave, and blasting had opened up the hole wide enough to enter. The interior of the limestone cave was a treasure trove of wonderful fossil finds in unprecedented quantity. After this discovery, the messages no longer came from Lake but where dictated from notes that Lake wrote while at the digsite and sent to the transmitter by runner.
Into the afternoon the reports poured in. Amazing amounts of material were found itn the hole, some as old as the Silurian and Ordovician ages, some as recent as the Oligocene period. Nothing was found more recent than 300 million years ago. Fowler dicovered trianglar stipple-prints in a Comanchian fossil stratum that were close cousins to ones discoverd by Lake himself elsewhere on the continent.
Later that evening - Orrendorf and Watkins discovered a huge barrel shaped fossil of wholly unknown nature. Mineral salts apparently perserved the specimen with minimal calcification for a unknown period of time. Unusual flexibility remained in the tissues, though they were extremely tough. The creature was over six feet in length an seems to have possessed membraneous fins or wings.
Close to Midnight - Lake broadcast to the world that the new barrelbodied animals where the same creatures that had left the triangular prints in the fossil strata form the Archaean to the Comanchian eras. Mills, Boudreau, and Fowler found a cluster of thirteen more of the specimens about forty feet from the entrance, in asociation with a number of small oddly shaped soapstone carvings. Several of the new specimens were more intact than the first, including a intact head and feet samples that convinced Lake that the creatures were the track makers. Lake intended to dissect one, then get some rest and see Dyer and the others in a day or two.
January 24th, 3 a.m. - Lake reported that the fourteen specimens had been brought back by sled from the dig site to the main camp and laid out in the snow. The fossils were extremely heavy and also very tough. He jokingly named the creatures the "elder ones".
Last report, about 4 am. - Strong winds rising, all hands at Lake's camp were set to building hurried snow barricades for the dogs and the vehicles. As a probable storm was on the way, air flight was out of the question for the moment. Lake went to bed exhausted.
No further word was received from Lake's camp. Huge storms that morning threatened to bury even Dyer's camp. At first it was assumed that Lake's radio was out, but continued silence form all four transmitter sets was worrisome. Dyer called up the spare plane from McMurdo to join him at Beardmore once the storm had subsided.
January 25th - Dyer's rescue expedition left Beardmore with 10 men, 7 dogs, a sled, and a lot of hope, piloted by McTighe. They took off at 7:15 a.m. and were at Lake's camp by noon. Several upper-air currents make the journyey difficult.
4 p.m. the same day - A radio annoucement was sent to the world that Lake's entire party had been killed, and the camp was all but obliterated by incredibly fierce winds the night before. Gedney's body wa missing, presumed carried off by the wind; the remained of the team were dead and so grievously torn and mangled that transportation of the remains was out of the question. Lake's dogs were also dead; Dyer's own dogs were extremely uneasy around the camp and the few remains of Lake's specimens. It was decided that an expedition in a lightened plane would fly into the higher peaks fo the range before everyone returned home.
January 26th - Early morning report by Dyer talked about his trip with Danforth into the mountains. He described the increadible difficulty in gaining the altitude necessary to reach even the lowest of the passes at 24,000 feet; he confirmed Lake's opinion that the higher peaks were of very primal strata unchanged since at least Comanchiam times. He discussed the large cubiod formations on the mountainsides, and mentioned that approaches to these passes seemed quite navigable by ground parties but that the rarefied air make breathing at those heights a very real problem. Dyer described the land beyond the mountain pass as a "lofty and immense super-plateau as ancient and unchanging as the mountains themselves - twenty thousand feet in elevation, with grotesque rock formations protruding through a thin glacial layer and with low gradual foothills between the general plateau surface and the sheer precipices of the highest peaks. The Dyer group spent the rest of the day burying the bodies and collecting books, notes, etc., for the trip home.
January 27th - Dyer's party returned to Beardmore and then the expedition packed and left soon after that.
The whole room is quiet as the story is finished. The long pause is broken by a cough and everyone starts to move again and low converstaions begin again in the large room.
