by Greg Cox
Slipping outside, she zipped up her parka as far as it would go, then crept down toward the excavation site. Nobody in their right mind was outdoors after dark, so she managed to get a good look at the meltdown generator, which resembled a large steel top hanging from a chain. Hot water circulated through copper lines wrapped around the tip of the machine, which was melting the ice below at a slow but steady rate.
Pumps cleared the melted ice water from the borehole. Lois recalled that a similar gadget had been used to uncover a long-buried WWII fighter plane in Greenland several years earlier. She was hoping for an even bigger discovery here.
Twenty thousand years?
Fishing a digital camera from her pocket, she snapped a few shots of the excavation site. She was looking around for something else worth photographing when she spotted a lone figure moving across a snowy ridge outside the camp. She zoomed in on the figure, using the camera’s telephoto lens, and was surprised to see Joe the baggage handler disappearing into the Arctic wastes.
“Where the hell are you going?” she whispered to herself. Intrigued, she took off after him, following his tracks through the snow. It was a daunting trek, through one of the most inhospitable environments she could have imagined. But it never once crossed her mind to turn back. Her reporter’s instinct told her there was a story to be had, and she wasn’t going home without it.
Hopefully it would be worth a touch of frostbite.
* * *
She trudged across a huge shelf of floating ice, hugging herself to keep warm. Ellesmere Island, her research told her, had the largest ice shelves in the world, some of them extending for more than a hundred square miles. She assumed Joe wasn’t planning that long a hike, since nobody human could stay out in this cold too long. But where did he think he was going?
The aurora barely provided enough light to see by. She lost sight of her quarry amid the rolling hills and depressions, but his tracks led her on. Rounding a stony outcropping, she spied an enormous glacier looming ahead. A bright ruby light, not unlike a laser beam, glowed at the base. Clouds of steam obscured her view.
What have we here? she wondered. Another excavation site?
Her face seemed frozen and she couldn’t feel her toes anymore, but she made her way to the base of the glacier. A crystalline white cliff, glistening darkly in the night, towered above her where the glacier wall met the ice shelf beneath her feet.
A tunnel entrance, which looked as though it had been newly carved, stood before her. Rivulets of fresh water dripped from the ceiling and ran down the slick walls, continuing the length of the tunnel. Her boots splashed through puddles of slush.
The sloping tunnel appeared to lead deep beneath the glacier. Despite her professional curiosity, Lois hesitated before entering. She didn’t feel like getting buried in the ice for another twenty millennia or so, like some long-dead Siberian mammoth.
But she had come too far to turn back now. She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and started down the tunnel.
All right, Joe, she thought. Let’s find out just what you’re up to.
C H A P T E R T W E L V E
Clark’s eyes glowed like twin red suns. Scalding clouds of steam billowed around him as his fiery gaze melted away the thick sheets of ice. The tunnel he had drilled had brought him to a huge cavern far beneath the ancient glacier. Now only a final layer stood between him and what had he had come so far to find.
His eyes dimmed and the steam cleared, revealing...
An immense alien spacecraft, many times larger than the one in which his parents had found him. The size of a cruise ship, the vessel was distinctly organic in appearance, resembling the fossilized shell of some gargantuan horseshoe crab. Icy water tricked down its flowing contours. Although longer and more streamlined, it was unmistakably akin to the capsule hidden beneath the old barn.
Clark stared in wonder at the ship, which had been buried under the ice for millennia. Alien glyphs were etched into its smooth, ceramic hull. The exotic characters were unfamiliar to him, except for one that resembled a capital “S.” Excitement surged through his veins as he fished out the strange black key his father had given him, so many years ago. He compared the symbol on the head of the key to the mark on the spaceship’s hull.
It was a match.
He couldn’t believe it. Might this forgotten starship actually hold the answers he’d been searching for all his life? Was he finally about to discover the truth about his past—where he came from? You have another father, his dad had told him. Another name. At long last, the truth seemed within reach.
Clark didn’t know whether to be thrilled or terrified.
Maybe a little bit of both.
Working up his nerve, he stepped forward and touched the hull of the sleeping vessel, then jumped back in surprise as polished ceramic plates slid open before him. He peered inside the silent ship, then gulped and stepped inside.
The interior had the same oddly organic appearance as the craft that had brought him to Smallville. Walking through its ribbed corridors was like exploring the fossilized remains of some gigantic mollusk, or crustacean. Curved arteries, disdaining right angles, branched off in unexpected directions, including up and down. The further he went, the more convinced he became that this ship had originated somewhere light-years away. The unearthly architecture was strange, unsettling, and alien.
Just like me?
He’d assumed that he had the empty ship to himself, but suddenly he heard servomotors whirring behind him. He spun around in time to watch a robot drop from a valve in the ceiling. The metallic creature wasn’t humanoid in appearance—it resembled a large rectangular lantern, and had an illuminated three-dimensional display screen at the center of its chest. Glowing tendrils sprouted from its base.
Some sort of automated sentry?
Clark backed away cautiously as the levitating mechanoid scanned him with a beam that shone from its central monitor. He raised his hands, showing empty palms, in what he hoped would be seen as a universal signal of peaceful intentions.
It didn’t work.
The robot zipped toward him aggressively, lashing out with its white-hot tentacles. Clark moved to defend himself, and a tendril whipped around his upper arm, burning right through his winterwear to sear the pink flesh underneath.
He cried out as he experienced something almost entirely new to him.
Pain.
A welt formed across his arm. He panicked and stumbled backward, glancing about frantically for a way he might protect himself. His desperate gaze fell upon a small diamond-shaped port in the wall above his head. It was shaped like the S-shield on the head of his key.
Still the hostile robot advanced toward him.
Acting on instinct, Clark jumped up and plugged the key into the slot. It slid in effortlessly, fitting perfectly. The port pulsed in response—and the robot froze in midair, halting its attack.
Clark gasped in relief, thanking his lucky stars that he had held onto the key all this time. He clutched his arm, which was still stinging like blazes. Was this what ordinary people felt, whenever they were hurt? His heart went out to them. He had never quite realized what it felt like to be... vulnerable.
Dropping back down, he circled the immobile sentry warily. He kept his guard up, but apparently the ship’s long-dormant security system had recognized the key, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was somehow connected to the vessel.
Now what? he wondered. Where do I look first?
A flicker of movement appeared in the corner of his eye.
Another robot?
Turning quickly, he glimpsed a tall, bearded man, standing at the end of the corridor. He wore a textured robe over what looked like a blue, skintight wetsuit. Clark started toward him, but the figure ducked silently around the corner, vanishing from sight. He shifted his vision to peer through the walls and find him, but the alien substance resisted him along the entire spectrum, from infrared to ultraviolet. Further evidence that it was no
t of this world.
“Hello?” he called. Clark chased after the man, his mind awhirl with questions. This ship had been buried for twenty thousand years. How could anybody still be alive aboard?
He raced down a long curved artery and into a large vaulted chamber. In front of him stood a clear barrier, behind which lay a chamber filled with a translucent fluid of some sort. Feathery branches, like giant ferns, drifted slowly within the liquid. Empty globules budded along the branches. A phosphorescent green radiance permeated the water.
With his enhanced sense of smell, he detected a distinct saline odor.
Moving slowly now, he was taken aback by the chamber’s bizarre contents. He had no idea what he was looking at. A hydroponic garden?
Or something far more alien?
* * *
Words failed her.
Lois was a journalist. Prose was her profession, and over the course of her lifetime—first as an Army brat, then as a reporter—she thought she’d seen it all. That nothing could surprise her.
But at that moment she gaped in shock at what appeared to be an honest-to-goodness alien spaceship, hidden away in an underground ice grotto. It had to have been there since caveman days, at least.
This was more than just a scoop. This was the biggest story in human history.
An open airlock called out to her. She wasn’t sure how the ship had been thawed out, or what had happened to the guy named Joe, but no way was she going to pass up an opportunity like this.
So she stepped inside the buried UFO, hoping that somebody had turned on the heater.
Her footsteps echoed in the empty corridors. The flash from her camera lit up curved walls that were made of a smooth, pearly material she couldn’t begin to identify. She found herself wishing that Dr. Hamilton was around to give her a guided tour. Maybe he could make sense of all of this. Lois Lane was definitely out of her element.
Motors whirred behind her. Her brow furrowed.
Joe?
She turned around to see where the mechanical noise was coming from.
It wasn’t Joe.
* * *
An elevated platform overlooked the liquid-filled chamber. Cylinder-shaped consoles rose like coral from the floor of the deck, which looked as if it might be the bridge of the nameless ship. Cracked tiles and screens showed signs of damage. Clark inspected the controls, hesitant to touch anything. The robot sentry had proved that at least some of the ship’s systems were still active.
Four heavily padded couches were arranged in the center of the bridge. Clark guessed that the seats were intended to protect the crew from heavy gravitational forces or a crash landing. Three of the couches were occupied by humanoid skeletons wearing full-body suits of some unknown material. The fourth was empty.
Had there been a survivor?
The bearded stranger appeared again, beneath the arch of a doorway. He lingered just long enough for Clark to spot him before darting around a corner once again. It was as though he was deliberately leading him on.
Clark scowled. He wasn’t here to play games.
Once again he chased after the mystery man, this time into an armory of sorts. Sturdy hard-shell space suits, clearly meant to withstand hostile environments, were mounted in closet-sized niches. Further on he found form-fitting bodysuits of different sizes and hues. His fascinated gaze was drawn to one suit in particular—it was a deep steel-blue, and bore a familiar “S” emblem embossed upon the chest.
The “S” was rendered in red against a yellow shield. A matching red cape was attached to the collar. The emblem was identical to the one on his key.
He reached out to touch it.
Blaring alarms echoed throughout the ship. For a second, he was afraid that he had set them off somehow.
Then he heard Lois Lane screaming.
* * *
She ran madly through the alien ship, pursued by a freaking robot, of all things. Ear-piercing sirens let her know that she was trespassing. She raced for an open doorway, only to have it slam shut in front of her. She changed course, heading the other way, but a second door cut off her escape.
Cornered, she turned to face the robot, which zipped toward her. Glowing tentacles writhed beneath its mainframe. The circular monitor on its chest scanned her face, producing a three-dimensional replica on its display panel, like some kind of futuristic mug shot.
Lois decided that turnabout was fair play. She raised her camera and caught the hovering robot in the viewfinder. The flash went off.
Good, she thought. Now at least I have a record of what’s happening to me.
But apparently the robot didn’t like having its picture taken. One of its luminous tentacles lashed out, knocking her backward into a bulkhead. Agony burned across her ribs—it was like being whipped by liquid fire. She sagged against the wall, clutching her wounded side.
The robot approached menacingly, ready to finish her off. Its white-hot tentacles flicked through the air.
This is it, she realized. Perry had damn well better give me a good obit.
She was mentally composing her own eulogy when, all of a sudden, Joe came rushing in from nowhere. She started to call out a warning, but the husky baggage handler was already punching the robot. His bare knuckles slammed into the thing’s central display panel.
Sparks flared and the injured robot squawked electronically, but Joe kept right on pounding it. Holding onto it with one hand, he smashed it to pieces with his fist.
How strong is he?
But even that thought couldn’t distract her from the pain. She slid down the wall, holding her side. Blood seeped through her parka where the tentacle had sliced through it.
Joe tossed aside the pulped remains of the robot and turned toward her. She flinched at his approach, not quite sure whose side he was on, or how he’d managed to trash the alien robot with his bare hands.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I just want to help.”
She stared at him in confusion.
“Who are you?”
Kneeling beside her, he peeled back her scorched parka for a better look. His eyes narrowed in concentration, almost as though he was seeing past her skin to examine her from the inside out. Concern showed behind his scruffy beard.
“You’re hemorrhaging internally,” he said. “If I don’t cauterize the bleed, you’ll die.”
She didn’t understand. “How—?”
“I can do things other people can’t,” he said simply. His fingers found hers, squeezing gently. “Hold my hand. This is going to hurt.”
His eyes glowed like burning coals. Ruby beams shot from his pupils to penetrate her ribcage just above her liver. Lois cried out in pain. Her mysterious benefactor was right about one thing.
It did hurt... a lot.
The procedure was over in a second, though. His eyes dimmed back to normal. Shock caught up, though, and she felt herself passing out. The last thing she saw, before everything went dark, was him smiling down at her, like she was going to be okay.
She guessed his name wasn’t really “Joe.”
* * *
Staff Sergeant Sekowsky yawned and rubbed his eyes. Seated before his bank of monitors, he wondered what he’d done wrong in order to pull a double shift. Multiple screens provided thermal views of the generator and the mystery object that was embedded in the glacier. He’d been watching them for so long that he barely saw them anymore. He groped for his coffee cup, only to find it empty.
Figures, he thought.
All at once, the needle on the seismograph danced, signaling ground motion nearby. An alarm went off and he snapped alert. No longer needing caffeine, he stared in surprise at the thermal imaging monitors, which were suddenly registering massive amounts of activity. The entire glacier was cracking, venting record amounts of steam into the atmosphere. The meltdown generator began to topple as the ice around it broke apart. It swung into the side of the collapsing borehole.
Sekowsky heard shouts outside, and sirens. Heedless of
the cold, he bolted from the science station and ran outdoors, where he found the rest of the base’s personnel watching the event with their own eyes. Tremors rocked the sprawling Arctic outpost as the ice above the pit fractured, and then vaporized. Startled scientists and soldiers were driven back by the steam.
A glow emanated from deep beneath the ice, so bright that Sekowsky had to avert his eyes.
Colonel Hardy and Dr. Hamilton came running from the VIP quarters. Shielding their eyes from the heat and light, they gaped along with Sekowsky as a huge object broke free from the glacier and took to the sky.
It only took a few moments for the truth to register. It was a ship—and it wasn’t from planet Earth. Shedding tons of ice water, the immense UFO ascended toward the Northern Lights. Globular thrusters, mounted to the underside of the object, glowed brightly
The ship roared past the base, vanishing over the horizon.
* * *
Daylight—and the barking of seals—woke Lois.
She found herself sprawled upon a rocky shoreline somewhere on the island. Jagged ice floes washed against the beach. An Army helicopter hovered above her, and was in the process of lowering down a rescue officer on a winch. Her side throbbed, but she guessed she was going to live.
Sitting up, she looked around, but “Joe” was nowhere to be seen. The rising sun suggested that she had been out for hours.
She wondered what she’d missed.
C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N
“What various military experts surmised to be a Soviet-era submarine was actually something much more exotic. An isotope analysis of the surrounding ice bores suggests that the object had been trapped within the glacier for over 18,000 years.
“As for my rescuer? He disappeared during the object’s departure. He was working with one of the private contractors assisting in the operation, but a subsequent background check revealed that his work history and identity had been falsified. Representatives from the Department of Defense declined to comment, other than to say ‘an investigation into the matter is currently on-going.’
