Oasis

When the world was full of unexplored land, storytellers had it easy. Who could be certain that there were no such things as unicorns, rocs, two-headed men, hippogriffs, basilisks, amazons? The only sizeable blank spot left on the globe--the interior of Antarctica--has been written off by most romancers as hopelessly, unromantically cold.

But geologists with Rear Admiral Richard Byrd, who feels responsible for Antarctica, are more imaginative. Somewhere in Antarctica's forbidding interior, they speculated, there may be a hidden valley heated to tropical balminess by volcanic energy. There--just possibly--unknown fauna may be nibbling at unknown flora.

Last week a Navy Mariner flying boat, cruising over Wilkes Land, found something that vaguely resembled the geologists' speculations. Well back from the permanently frozen coast, the crew saw a series of pea-green, open-water lakes. Pictures were taken and the news was rushed back to the mother ship. A few days later, another Mariner landed on one of the lakes. The crew took samples of the water, declared it was "definitely warmer" than most water in the Antarctic region.

There was no vegetation around the lakes, but there was plenty of ice-free rock which looked to non-geological Navy eyes as if it might be ore-bearing. There was no steam or other evidence of volcanic activity.

The lakes may be an accumulation of thaw water at the end of the Antarctic summer. But there was at least a chance that they are heated from below. (The geyser region of Yellowstone is slightly heated in this way, and many parts of the world have warm springs which tend to keep lakes from freezing.) The romantics and the tale-spinners could take it from there.

One fictioneer almost beat Byrd to the icecaps. A gaudy pseudo-scientific yarn called The President of the United States, Detective, by H. R. Heard (who, as Gerald Heard, is also a Southern California cult-leader), last week won first ($3,000) prize in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine annual story contest. Heard's plot: What would happen if the icecaps completely melted? The year is 1977, and an expanded U.S.S.R. has fallen under the domination of a vicious Oriental named Yang, who plots to destroy the U.S.A. by geological warfare. Yang's plan is to melt the earth's icecaps with atomic energy. The water released will raise the level of the sea, flooding most of the earth except the Central Asian plateau, Yang's stronghold.

The hellish scheme is penetrated by a humble tide-gauge watcher, who alerts U.S. President Place. Fortunately, Place knows a little more geology than Supreme Commissar Yang. Quickly he sends planes to atom-blast Greenland's icecap. Relieved of its ice burden, Greenland rises. (It probably would, too, in a few million years.) Author Heard's fine, cheerful finish: by migrating to the cool, temperate Greenland plateau, Americans, and other men of good will, survive.

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