“How recent do you mean?” Doc asked.
“At most within the last Moon, preferably no more than half that time.”
“That doesn't leave us much time.” Doc stretched and looked around at his companions. “Let's be about it.”
#
Vic shivered, even with her cold weather gear, the Nazi base was freezing. Glaring, she punched the nearest wall, daring Gus to say anything while she shook the pain out. It was her fault the Nazis had been able to take the airship. If she had only searched them more carefully, she would have found the knife, and then that gorilla wouldn't have been able to break the lock.
“Don't,” Gus rumbled from beside her.
“Don't what?” she snapped back.
“Don't beat yourself up over what happened.”
“So what do you expect me to do?” She waved the MP18 she'd taken from the German arms locker. “Smile and nod because I let those Nazi prisoners take the airship from us?”
“No, you should stop whining and start working.” Ming hobbled around the corner, leaning on an ornate silver-headed cane. “Even though we were outnumbered, you made sure they couldn't follow us or lift off.”
Vic forced a smile. “Yes, dear. I suppose you're right.”
“You suppose I'm right? You know I'm right.” Ming banged the cane on the floor. “So what are we going to do now? Other than secure that arms locker.”
“Secure it?” Vic laughed. “We emptied it. Let them dig around for guns if they ever make it out of the airship. They'll just freeze faster.”
“Now we go find Kehla,” Gus said, “and Doc.”
“Then it's a good thing I did more than hit the wall,” Ming said with a pointed glance at Vic, “while you two were raiding the arms locker.”
Vic had the grace to look abashed, letting Ming continue.
“Whatever this is, it's a lot bigger and older than any simple Nazi base. It's huge and it’s been here a very long time.”
“How long?” Gus leaned forward, his weight on his good arm.
Ming shook her head. “I don't know; I can't read German that well. What I do know is that this base is just the tip of the iceberg, and whoever built the main complex must have had a bigger workforce than the Son of Heaven who built the Great Wall.”
Vic looked around the room. “This doesn't look that impressive, sure it's bigger and off the coast, but you'd expect Hitler to have more resources than Hansen.”
“Enough to drive a fifty-mile railroad tunnel under two miles of ice?” Ming gestured with the cane. “I don't think so. This was laid down long before the Nazis came to power.”
“Fifty-mile railroad tunnel?” Gus and Vic said simultaneously.
Ming nodded. “And if I read this right, it's still working.” She shrugged. “Nobody has been able to figure out how, or even how old it is, but it still works.”
Vic smiled. “So the plan is to take a fifty-mile ride into darkness in the hope we can find Doc and Kehla? I like it.”
If she didn't have the gun, she would have rubbed her hands together.
“And I don't have to walk fifty miles.” Ming met Vic's eyes. “That has to count for something.”
“We could have just left you in charge here,” Gus suggested. “You could fort up in the office until we came back.”
“Not going to happen.” Ming straightened, one hand on her hip. “I am not letting you two run wild. Bad things happen when I let Vic out of my sight for too long. We're all going, or none of us are going.”
“Yes ma'am.” Vic snapped a mock salute. “Whatever you say, ma'am.”
“Exactly,” Ming replied sternly, though the twinkle in her eye gave her true feelings away. “I'm in charge.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Vic saw Gus was slowly shuffling backwards. She tried to hide her grin, it was definitely the better part of valor on his part. As if reading her mind, he picked up speed.
That was enough to catch Ming's attention. “Don't you sneak off, Mister. Somebody's got to look after you until I can turn you back over to your wife.”
Gus shook his head, but kept his mouth shut.
“Right,” Ming said imperiously. “Let's try and grab some supplies and get started. The one thing I didn't find was an elevator, and it's a long way down.”
#
Despite Shard's protestations, Doc still wasn't comfortable without the diving suit. Unfortunately, the plans Shard had placed in his mind made it clear that there was no way he could get through some of the passages without removing it. She had said the gas bubbles would travel with them anywhere in the complex, but it wasn't something he enjoyed putting to the test.
He gave a brief mirthless laugh. There wasn't enough air left in the suits to matter, so why bother worrying.
Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs, Doc smacked his head on the low ceiling. This passage was barely five feet tall, with the now ubiquitous lines of green flame running along both sides of the stone. Behind him, Kehla was having no problems, knuckle-walking along comfortably. Doc was more than a foot taller than Kehla when she stood upright, so this passage was murder on him.
If Shard was right, this passage would take them directly into the area where Hansen and his subordinates were holed up. According to Shard this had once been a power conduit, feeding alien energies down a column of stressed space. There were more than a dozen such main conduits radiating out from the base of the main tower where they had docked the submarine. Strange shapes decorated the walls, carvings that tricked the eye into thinking they were four-dimensional. The stone itself seemed to move out of the corner of his eye, as if reaching for the stresses that had once filled the void they were traveling.
This particular conduit fed a giant crystal brain that had once controlled this subglacial city, managing everything from the temperature to the semi-liquid mixture that had served its original inhabitants as both atmosphere and food supply.
Though the brain itself was in some state between dead and turned off, Not-It had chosen the place for Hansen's headquarters. It was also where the transformations occurred, and where Shard expected Not-It to have taken Gilly.
“If your friend has not been fully transformed as yet, he will be in a regeneration cocoon near the brain. If he has, he could be anywhere,” she had said. Some of the ideas were difficult to get across but if he understood her meaning, the cocoons were used for both medical and life-extension purposes.
As they got closer, the conduit started pulsing like a giant heartbeat. At first barely noticeable, just a shiver in the walls, it grew stronger with each passing yard. After another dozen yards, Doc had to throw out an arm to steady himself.
“I thought this was a tunnel, not a boat,” Kehla muttered from behind him.
Doc shrugged. “The stone is interesting; it shouldn't be able to move like this without shattering.”
“I want to throw up and all you can think about is how interesting the stone is?”
“I grew up in variable gravity.” Doc laid a palm on the stone, feeling the warmth. “This is like one of my teenage exercise routines.”
“Whatever you say, Doc.” Kehla looked like she was about to say more, but swallowed hard instead.
Doc held up one arm before she said anything else. “I think it's in use. The stone isn't moving, the space around it is.”
“What?”
“Unless I miss my guess, we're crawling through about four million horsepower worth of stressed space.”
“I thought Shard said it wasn't in use.”
Doc dropped prone. “We'll have to crawl the rest of the way. Keep your head down and you should miss the worst of the energies.”
“Should, what kind of word is should?” Kehla glared but followed his example. “And what about Shard lying to us?”
“She may not have known,” Doc replied mildly. “Besides, we don't really have any other choice.”
Once on the floor, things got easier. The stone didn't feel like it was moving as much.
Doc gritted his teeth and started crawling. The next forty yards went easily enough, only a couple of minutes at an elbow crawl. Unfortunately, while the stone was stable, the interior of the conduit was anything but. At first it was just the equivalent of a light breeze, but the further they got, the stronger it became.
The gas was so thick it felt more like a current than a wind, plastering the shirt against his back as he crawled. He tried to raise his head to look back at Kehla, but the forces running down the conduit grabbed his inner ear like a vise. Clenching his teeth, he swallowed back bile and pushed on. This time he kept his head down as much as he could, and his inner ear away from the forces.
Doc made it another dozen yards or so before the forces flashed behind his eyes. He screwed his eyes shut, but the flashes continued, directly stimulating his retinas. Despite the strain, he kept going, one step at a time with his eyes firmly fixed on stone below him.
Behind him, Kehla was breathing heavily, her breath whistling through the conduit. Doc wasn't having as much trouble breathing, but even he felt the weight of the gas pressing on his lungs.
He inched forward a few more feet before a sound caught his attention. At first he wasn't sure he heard anything, but then he heard it again. Just a low moan, barely audible because it was so much lower than the sound of Kehla's breathing. Doc put up one hand for her to stop and listened again. It was too faint for him to map where it was coming from, and he didn't have the time to try, but there was definitely something familiar about it.
“Do you hear that?” he whispered over his shoulder to Kehla.
“Hear what?”
“There's something up ahead; sounds like it might be a moan.”
Kehla cocked her head and listened for a moment, scrunching up her face in concentration. After a bit, she shook her head. “I don't hear anything.”
Doc shrugged. “Alright, just keep your ears open.”
They had made it about ten more feet when the floor fell out from under Doc's elbows. Throwing his arms out to try and catch the walls, he bit back a cry of surprise. Any attempt at silence was ruined when his hands slapped the walls on either side. The impact stung, and smooth stone scorched his palms as he fought to keep from falling. Gritting his teeth, he took what passed for a deep breath while he tried to examine the situation.
He was about twenty feet up, looking down into a large chamber. Directly below him was the source of the moaning sound he had heard earlier, an eight-foot-long tube with a single inhuman figure writhing within.
They were too late!
#
Vic looked up to see Ming glaring at her. “What? I'm just taking a rest.”
“We don't have time for rests.” Ming tapped her good foot on the floor. “You have your toys, now let's get the rest of our gear together and get going.”
Vic sighed, but she levered herself to her feet anyway. “Okay, I'm moving.”
“Good.” Ming leaned forward to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Now let's check on Gus.”
The gorilla was looking at a pile of goods stacked neatly beside three backpacks, one much larger than the others. “About time you got here, I was having a hell of a time figuring out how to put a pack on with only one good arm.”
“Here, let me have a look at that.” Ming stumped over and took the gorilla's arm out of its sling. With a gentleness that belied her expression she ran her fingers along his splinted forearm, muttering to herself.
About a minute later, Ming stepped back and surveyed the results.
“If you're careful, you shouldn't need the sling any more. Your arm is knitting a lot faster than I expected, even for a nightstick fracture. At least this way you shouldn't have to worry about the sling getting in the way.”
She paused, then wagged a finger in Gus' face. “But if it starts hurting, back in the sling it goes. Understand me?”
“Yes ma'am.” He grinned, his teeth white in his large dark face. “You're the doctor.”
“And don't you forget it.” Ming's own smile took the sting off her words. “None of us are in good shape.”
“Yours looks pretty good to me,” Vic muttered softly.
“A-hem,” Ming continued, “none of us are in shape, regardless of certain uninformed opinions, and I don't want to see anyone getting any worse. So we all need to take care of ourselves.” She had been looking from one to the other as she spoke, but her eyes were clearly on Vic by the time she finished.
Vic had just enough grace to nod in acquiescence when all Hell broke loose.
A blast of cold air was the only warning she had before half a dozen men and two gorillas rushed screaming into the room, yelling cries of “Heil Hitler!”
Vic was first to react, dropping to one knee and squeezing the trigger of her submachine gun
“Get her out of here!” she yelled at Gus, as her opponents dove for cover behind overturned tables and chairs. One of the gorillas moved slightly, and she sent a short burst his way. All her shots missed, drilling holes in the far wall. The gunfire echoed in the confined space, and she shook her head to clear it.
That was enough for the closest gorilla, who threw a table at her and charged right behind it.
Vic rolled out of the way, taking the impact on her bad arm. Pain shot up to her shoulder, and she gritted her teeth trying not to let the gun slip from her fingers.
“Vic!” Ming's scream jerked her attention towards the far doorway, just in time to see Gus carry Ming towards the pit.
Pain blossomed in Vic's arm as the gorilla she was ignoring grabbed for her weapon.
“Drop it,” he growled in harshly accented English, his fingers digging into her arm. “Drop it or I break it.”
“Better apes have tried.”
Vic met his gaze, and then shoved the muzzle into his stomach and pulled the trigger. The great ape shuddered as a dozen rounds entered his body. Vic growled in satisfaction as the light went out in his brown eyes. The smell of blood filled her nostrils as she pushed herself away from the corpse.
Gus and Ming were already out of sight, so Vic fired another burst at the oncoming Nazis and then put her head down to run. “Should have played football.”
She hurdled the first table, and then kicked a chair aside as she ran for the doorway. “Cover me!”
Gus must have heard, because a moment later he filled the doorway and opened up with a long braaap of suppression fire. Vic ducked under the line of fire and dove towards his feet as Gus held the Nazis off.
The instant she was past his legs Vic rolled ready to add her fire to his. Gus dropped his gun and slammed the heavy door shut in their attacker's faces. Ming leaned in from the side and spun the locking wheel closed with a thunk.
“That should hold them for a couple of minutes.”
Vic crawled out of the way as Gus grabbed a couple of filing cabinets and dragged them in front of the door. “These should add a couple more.”
Vic nodded. “But it won't hold them forever, and who knows what we missed in the rest of the base.”
“It doesn't have to,” Ming said, “just long enough for us to get a head start down the pit.”
“What?” Vic met her lover's eyes. “Go down the pit?”
“Exactly, that's where the others are.” Ming grinned fiercely. “They're more important than a handful of Nazis trapped at the South Pole in winter.”
“Then let's get going.” Vic slung her submachine gun from one shoulder and extended an arm for Ming. “It's a long hobble down.”
#
Doc bent his knees to soak up the impact as he hit the floor beside the tube. He was in a huge chamber, at least fifty yards across with a vaulted ceiling supported by a transparent pillar. What he could only assume was the crystal brain floated in the middle of the pillar. Most of the brain was dull and grey, but occasional sparks danced across the bottom hemisphere. Power currents crackled through the gas mixture above his head, filling the chamber with a greenish glow that illuminated a ring of perhaps eighty tubes a
round the outer walls and another dozen around the base of the pillar.
Kehla thudded to the floor beside him, drawing his attention to the nearest tube. Now that he had a closer look, Doc saw that the figure inside wasn't Gilly. It had obviously been human once, but with Nordic features, either a Nazi or one of Hansen's expedition. As he watched, he saw that what he'd first seen as pain looked more like what happened when someone stuck an electrode in a dead frog to make it jump. There was no life there.
“It's not him.”
“Thank God,” Kehla sighed. “But if this isn't Gilly, where is he.”
“Probably in one of these tubes; you go left, I'll go right and meet on the other side if we don't find him.”
“You got it.” Kehla flipped him a mock salute and headed off in the indicated direction.
Doc shrugged, and then turned to start his own search. This was the first room he had been in that seemed to still be fulfilling its original function and Doc found it fascinating. Each tube had its own control panel at the foot. However, rather than the buttons, dials and levers he was used to, or the reconfigurable holoscreens of his youth, this was a plain pad with regions of changing textures.
Doc ran his fingers over the panel, then pulled away. Gilly was in here somewhere, and they had to find him.
The next few tubes were empty; the first few dozen were in perfect condition. Once he got about half-way around the rim, Doc found one that told a different story: crystal shards covered the floor around its base, leaving a jagged rim around a human-sized opening on top. From the debris pattern, it had been opened violently from the inside, spraying shards outwards.
Doc took a knee, and reached for one of the shards. The nearest one was roughly triangular, about eight inches long and two across at the base. At first glance, it looked like glass, but it was warm to the touch. He hefted it experimentally; if nothing else, it would do as a weapon. A dark stain along one edge drew his attention: blood.
He caught his breath as much as he could in the thick mixture. Could this be Gilly's blood?
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