He caught his breath as much as he could in the thick mixture. Could this be Gilly's blood?
The brown stain didn't match the ichor he'd seen from the other creatures down here, but on closer examination it wasn't quite the same as dried blood. It was a darker red.
Glancing around, he saw a few more splotches, leading off toward the center of the chamber. Ignoring his previous plan, he followed the trail. The floor here seemed cast in a single pour, cold like a single sheet of pure obsidian. The closer he got to the pillar, the more difficult it became to move. Each step was an effort, fighting against both the gas and his increasing weight.
The surface was level, but the there was a gravity gradient of at least fifty percent. Doc stumbled at the halfway point, but caught himself before his doubled weight drove him into the floor. By the time he reached the inner ring, his weight had tripled, and the gas mixture fought his passage like a wall of water.
Three more steps and it was all he could do to keep his head up, but at least he was past the stasis tubes.
“Doc?” A raspy voice rose from behind the nearest tube. “Is that you?”
“Gilly?” Doc looked down to see a crumpled figure hugging the edge of the tube.
“I used to be.” Gilly met Doc's gaze with alien eyes. His new face shared its same basic shape with the original, but instead of a beard and mustache he was growing fine black tentacles around his mouth.
“Let's get you out of here,” Doc said. “We can worry about changing you back later.”
Gilly writhed at his feet, showing the tentacles that now sprouted from his elbows and knees. “How are you going to do that? I can't walk; I can barely crawl.”
“Let me worry about that.”
Doc centered himself and then squatted down beside the half-man half-creature. Gilly had been a big man, well over six feet and two hundred fifty pounds, and he didn't seem to have lost any weight in the transformation. Keeping his back straight, Doc slid his arms under Gilly's torso, and heaved upwards.
His teeth slammed together as he took up Gilly's weight. The man must have weighed close to half a ton in the increased gravity field, and it was all Doc could do to keep his spine straight as he fought his way back to his feet. Every muscle burned with exertion, but he made it upright.
Breathe, step; breathe, step. He turned back the way he came, barely shuffling his feet. Two steps and his vertebrae popped; three more and the gravity gradient started working for him, not against him. It was down to two and a half gees now, and every step was taking pounds off the load.
“Doc!” Kehla called from across the chamber.
“Stay back,” He yelled. “Don't go into the middle. You can't take the weight.”
She frowned uncomprehendingly, but nodded and then started working her way around the circle. It took her a few minutes, but she was there by the time Doc reached the edge of the outer ring.
Laying Gilly down for a moment, he leaned against the closest tube to catch his breath. “Stay away from the pillar; it must be five gees at the center if not more.”
“Five gees?” Kehla gasped.
Doc nodded soberly, then turned his attention back to Gilly, who had struggled up on one elbow, his face tentacles wriggling in the currents. “How bad is it?”
“It's bad, Doc, like my arms end at the elbows and I can't feel my face.” Gilly's face twitched like he was trying to smile. “The parts of me that are changing, it's like they belong to someone else; no they belong to something else.
“I get visions, too. Nightmares of some kind of otherworldly hells.” He shook all over. “Tell me straight, Doc. I'm not going to make it, am I?”
“Don't say that!” Kehla wrung her hands. “I'm sure Doc can find a way to save you.”
Doc met the older man's gaze. “I won't promise anything, but I will say there's more reason to hope than you might think.”
Gilly nodded, and then dropped back, his chest heaving.
“But Doc!” Kehla interjected, “what about...”
“Not now,” He interrupted, shaking his head fiercely.
“So, what's up, Doc?” Gilly asked, as if they hadn't said anything. “Where are the others?”
“Up topside, looking after things.” Doc took what passed for a deep breath down here. “Why did you do it, Gilly? Why did you strand us at Hansen's camp?”
Gilly turned away, rolling over and facing the nearest tube. “I, I don't know.”
“You left us in the middle of an Antarctic winter and you don't know?” Kehla screeched, waving her arms like she was going to hit something. “That's the best you can do? You don't know? We could have died!”
Doc thrust out an arm trying to block her, though he knew that she could brush him aside in moments if she wanted. “Hold on, Kehla, this isn't getting us anywhere.”
“Humph,” she grunted, but at least she put her hands on her hips. “He still needs a better explanation than, 'I don't know.'“
He sighed, and turned back towards Gilly. “All right, you don't know why you left us, what do you know?”
Gilly shrugged. “Not all that much.”
“But that's got to be more than nothing!” Kehla thrust her face in between the two men.
Doc held his tongue, and Gilly nodded slowly. It was clear Kehla wasn't going to let it go, no matter how little Gilly remembered.
Gilly turned back to face them, his tentacles writhing around his mouth like angry snakes. “It started with that first picture. Something about it caught my attention and I couldn't get it out of my mind.
“I even dreamed about it on the flight down; it was like one of those songs you hear on the radio and can't stop thinking about. I didn't think any more of it until I saw that model on the table. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to come here. Everything went blank, and the next thing I knew I was trapped in a tube. I saw a crack in the glass and smashed my way out.
“You know the rest.”
“You're right,” Doc said. “That's not much to go on.”
“And it still doesn't explain why you were the only one who was affected,” Kehla added. She cracked her knuckles. “It doesn't make sense.”
“I don't know.” Gilly spread his arms wide, his tentacles waving where his hands should have been. “Maybe it was bad luck, maybe I'm just more susceptible than the rest of you.”
Doc shrugged. “We'll have to see. In the meantime, we still have Hansen to deal with.”
“You found Hansen?” Gilly struggled upwards. “What happened to his expedition?”
“We found our destiny.” Hansen's voice filled the chamber.
#
Vic leaned against the wall to catch her breath. Despite the bite of the ice, the support was a welcome relief. “How far have we come?”
“I'm not sure,” Ming replied from her perch on Gus's shoulders. She had struggled doggedly for the first few turns, but had eventually given up and let Gus carry her to Vic's vast relief. The ice ramps were a good ten feet wide, but with the cane Ming had been slipping and sliding so much that her every step had brought Vic's heart to her mouth.
“I think we've come down maybe a mile, but the ramp's not a constant slope so it's really hard to tell.” Ming shrugged. “All we can do is keep going until we find the bottom.”
“Just remember, it that train's not there when we reach bottom, you're carrying me back up Missy,” Gus rumbled.
“Don't worry, it's there,” Ming assured him. “But don't expect me to carry you back up; that's what Vic's for.”
Vic snorted, then took another breath. “Funny funny you two, but we're wasting time and that barricade won't hold forever.” She pushed herself upright. “Time to go.”
“Yes, slave driver,” Ming replied. “Come on Gus, her ladyship awaits.”
Gus reached up with his good arm and settled Ming more firmly onto his shoulders. “Once more unto the breach.”
Putting one gloved hand on the wall, Vic started off. Even rough as it was the ice offere
d poor footing, made worse by the slope. Every second or third step, Vic felt like her foot was going to slip out from under her. Normally, she would have relished the challenge and tried to run down the ramp, but now her heart raced every time she slipped.
“Get a grip,” she muttered. This should be fun, descending into the icecap with the unknown in front of her, a mile's drop beside her, and Nazis chasing them from behind.
“You okay up there?” Ming's soft voice floated over her shoulder.
“Yeah, I'm fine.” Vic nodded, and then forced her attention back to the ice. It was not going to beat her, not today, not ever. One more deep breath.
For all the danger, once she got over the slipping, the trip was actually quite boring. She was leading the way down the longest staircase in the world, just with ramps instead of stairs. After a few dozen turns she found herself drifting off into a world where nothing existed but the icy slope and small pool of light from their flashlights. One step in front of the next, round and round they went. Even the prospect of finding more of the creatures they had found at Hansen's camp lost its allure. The world was this hole in the ice, and this hole was the world.
“Craaack!” A bullet ricocheted off the ice in front of her, as a gunshot echoed through the ice.
“Gus, run!” Throwing caution to the winds, Vic plunged forwards taking long steps letting gravity do the work. Her right foot slipped, and she pushed harder with her left, bouncing off the wall without stopping her headlong flight.
Another gunshot filled the hole, though not close enough for Vic to have any idea where the bullet had landed. Dammit, those Nazis weren't supposed to have any guns. Then again, there was only so well they could search the base in what little time they had. She grinned, maybe the next shot would bring some ice down too. That would make things interesting.
She had no time to worry, though. It was all she could do to keep moving and hope that Gus could keep up. The ramp had smoothed out, so she was hearing fewer yelps from Ming because Gus wasn't stumbling as much. Vic had heard two more shots in quick succession, with even less apparent effect than the first, but after that the gunfire had gone quiet.
Moments later she came around a corner and off the ice. Her boots gripped the stone so hard Vic had to windmill her arms to keep her balance, and ended up caroming into a stone wall.
“Ufff,” she grunted as the impact knocked the wind out of her, and her flashlight went flying. The light danced across green stone walls before coming to a skidding halt with the beam shining back up the passageway, just in time for Gus to come off the ramp.
“Did you have to shine it right in my eyes?” Gus thumped to a stop, his good arm over his face.
“If I'd known I was going to hit the wall I might have held on.” Vic shook herself before limping over to pick up the flashlight. “Better?”
“Better,” Gus grumbled, “maybe we shouldn't have made the damn thing that bright.”
“You can stop any time,” Ming said from her perch on the gorilla's shoulders. “We still have a train to catch.”
“As if there's a blackshirt down here to make them run on time.” Vic played her light around the chamber, looking for an exit.
“Forget blackshirts, worry about the brownshirts behind us.” Ming waved an arm forward. “If you're not going to let me walk, the least you can do is keep moving.”
“Yes, dear.” Vic grinned. “Do you have any idea where this train is? Or just down here somewhere?”
Ming pointed. “If I read that log correctly, it's a couple of hundred yards on our right.”
Vic shrugged her pack into a more comfortable position and started forward. The ground, or maybe floor would be a better description, was smooth and hard beneath her boots, but not so smooth as to make her lose her footing. Rather than bricks or pavers, the floor down here was made from polished slabs about seven feet square that fitted together so closely that a razor blade wouldn't fit between them.
She made it about a dozen yards before the lights came on. Green fire raced up channels in the walls, throwing weird shadows across the chamber. Vic gasped, the chamber was huge, like Grand Central Station back in New York with arches of fire more than a hundred feet above her head. Giant buttresses leaped across the space, dividing the vault into sections. What really caught her eye though, were the murals.
Bas-relief figures covered the walls, almost dancing in the flickering light from the flame channels. At first, Vic hadn't noticed them, the alien shapes so unfamiliar that they didn't register with her eyes. After a few moments, though, the shapes coalesced into something solid, showing a world full of wildlife like the creatures they had found on the surface.
She was so engrossed in the sights, that she almost walked past her destination. It was only Ming's voice that brought her back to reality.
“Go right.”
Vic shook her head, then turned up a broad stairway that she'd completely missed earlier. The long wide steps felt weird, with short risers leading to a broad platform running parallel to the vaulted ceiling. But it wasn't the stairs that caught her attention, it was what lay at the far side of the platform:
“That's not a train.” Vic came to a stop as she took in the object floating before her.
“They said it was a train,” Ming said from behind her.
“I've never seen a train quite like that,” Gus added.
Vic hadn't either, and she wasn't sure where the Germans had got the idea it was one. She would have called it a boat, but it was floating a good six inches above the water. A silver dome covered the deck, glistening in the flickering green light. A series of fins grew out of the rear deck, writhing like they were alive. As she approached the platform, a hatch irised open in the side, extending a ramp that rotated a full 360 degrees before coming to rest on the platform. No sooner had it touched the stone than a silver rail hissed to life on the ceiling, and a set of purple strobes began to flash, directing them towards the hatch.
Vic grinned. “Okay then, I think that's our cue.”
“Are you sure?” Ming paled.
“Nope, but it's this or the Nazis.” Vic glanced back through the main chamber. “I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather see where this takes us than get caught up in a gun fight.”
“We can ambush them,” Gus protested.
A fusillade of shots rang out across the chamber.
“Not when they're already here!” Vic leaped for the ramp. “Isn't finding your wife more important than fighting Nazis?”
Gus didn't say anything, but the sound of his feet told her that he'd listened.
The ramp gave under her feet as she ran, but Vic didn't have time to worry about it. Once through the hatch she dodged sideways to let the others in. Now that she was inside, she took a moment to examine her surroundings. The cabin was about six feet high, with curving walls that made it feel like a cocoon. Purple lights covered the ceiling, and there was a starfish-shaped big purple patch pulsing in time to the strobes on the bulkhead.
A second later, Gus thundered through the hatchway, Ming slung in his good arm. The moment they cleared the opening, Vic slammed her palm on the patch, throwing her whole weight behind it. A couple of gunshots ricocheted off the hatch, and then it irised closed like a guillotine.
Vic sank to the floor, surprised at how soft it was. A handful of shots rattled off the hull, but it seemed proof against small arms, so she levered herself upright and turned her attention to Ming. “We found your train, now what?”
Ming smiled and slipped to her feet; she winced but started forward. Vic dropped her pack and followed her towards the bow.
“Need help?”
“I can make it.” Ming shook her head and kept hobbling along. “I'm not that much of an invalid.”
“You're the doctor.”
“Yes, dear.”
The front of the boat, Vic couldn't think of it as a train car, had a curved shelf at about knee level right where she would expect a control panel to be. The
problem was that there weren't any controls, just a tangle of colored lines as if someone had dumped a basket of yarn on a shelf.
“What is that?” Vic paused in front of the shelf, looking around for anything resembling a switch or lever.
“You're the pilot; I'm just the doctor.”
“Maybe we need a cook,” Gus said from behind them. “That looks like a plate of spaghetti.”
Vic shook her head. There was something familiar about it, and it wasn't a plate of spaghetti, not even if she cooked it. It reminded her of her childhood, growing up in London. Unthinking, she reached out as if to trace one of the lines.
“Marylebone to Paddington...,” she muttered and then jerked her fingers back. “It's a map. Just like the London Underground!”
“New York has a subway, too,” Gus chided.
“And I grew up in London.”
“And I grew up in Batavia,” Ming snapped, “none of which matters. We just have to figure out how this works.”
“Well, if this was a subway map, can you find a route to where Kehla and Doc are?” Gus asked, cracking his knuckles.
Ming pursed her lips, and then reached out to trace one finger along the lines -- keeping it safely above the surface. “I think,” her voice wavered at first, “there.”
She stabbed her finger down hard at a point where several lines came together in a knot.
Nothing happened at first; except a couple more fusillades bounced off the hull making Vic grit her teeth in frustration. “Just do something already.”
As if the boat, car, whatever it was, had heard her it shook softly before starting to glide forwards. At that moment, the entire top hull went clear giving them a complete three hundred and sixty degree view of the tunnel. The first thing to catch her attention was the rear deck, where the fins had sped up their writhing to the point where all she could see was a blur. Unlike a conventional boat the ride was deceptively smooth, with no need to tense her legs for balance. It was fast, too; once again reminding her of Ming's characterization of it as a train.
For a moment, she let herself luxuriate in the sensation of motion before a glint in the tunnel behind drew her eyes.
Attacked Beneath Antarctica (Doc Vandal Adventures Book 3) Page 14
