A wave of absence crashed into his mind as Not-It sought for dominance.
Doc counterattacked immediately, but Not-It slid away from his every stroke. He thought he had fixed it in place but his attack found nothing. It was like falling into the blackness of night on the dark side of the Moon. Doc felt his mind drifting down into the void, spreading out into the calm peace of nothingness. Everything was calm; everything and nothing.
He jerked himself back to consciousness with an effort of will. Pulling his mind back from the Abyss he suddenly realized the nature of what he faced. Not-It wasn't simply alien life like Shard; Not-It was the absence of such. Alien anti-life, something that both couldn't and didn't exist. Doc's opponent was the boundary, the surface layer that separated the Abyss from existence. He couldn't fight it, there was nothing there to fight.
There wasn't anything to it, that's why Shard had been so adamant in calling it Not-It. Doc had no opponent; there was nothing to defeat, just a boundary layer to disrupt. Not-It was an illusion.
It took less than a second for Doc to realize the mental fight was pointless. He pushed his attention back to the physical world and the body that had once been Hansen.
“Pull him off!” Gus yelled from somewhere beneath his feet.
Doc blinked. He and Hansen were twenty feet above the chamber floor, locked together and floating towards the pillar. Gus and a gorilla Doc didn't recognize had cleared most of the chamber while Vic stood against the far wall, defending a fallen Ming from a combined force of humans, creatures, and shoQ’hoth tentacles.
He had to trust the others to do their jobs. Giving Hansen his full attention, Doc rocked the half-human half-machine with a right cross. Hansen's head rocked back, and a mocking smile crawled over his face.
“Is that the best you can do James?”
Now that he knew what lay behind the voice, Doc could hear its emptiness. He had often thought that he was separated from the rest of humanity, but now he knew what that really meant. The man he had once respected was nothing more than a hollow shell for an alien force of destruction. Not-It had no other intentions; it was unable to conceive of anything but destruction.
Doc smiled slowly, and then methodically started to take Hansen apart one punch at a time. There was no square circle up here, but Doc put all he knew into every punch. Hansen struggled at first, but neither man nor void had any defense against Doc's scientific boxing.
Hansen tried a feeble blow, but Doc blocked it easily. Doc's response sent Hansen's eyes rolling backwards in his head.
Doc bent his legs and then wrapped his arms around Hansen's limp torso. Bracing himself against the top of the egg, he took as deep a breath as the gas would allow and pushed as hard as he could with both legs. Hansen's eyes snapped open and he howled through misshapen teeth. Doc held him tight and kept pushing while Hansen went into convulsions.
With one final effort, Doc pulled Hansen's body loose from the egg.
Everything went silent for a moment, then Hansen's body shriveled away like a deflated balloon. A black sphere maybe a foot in diameter floated upwards from the egg. Doc balanced himself carefully and then reached out with one finger and touched the sphere. Cool to the touch, it felt like nothing so much as a very thick soap bubble. Doc straightened his finger and dragged the nail across the sphere, breaking its surface tension. It hung there for a moment, and then collapsed in on itself in a peal of thunder as the heavy atmosphere crashed into the vacuum it left behind.
The thunderclap marked the end of the fight. All the creatures and the shoQ’hoth collapsed like unstrung puppets the moment Doc's fingernail pierced the sphere. Three men Doc had never seen before lay dead in front of Vic and Ming.
After one last look around, Doc leaped to the floor letting the thick atmosphere cushion his fall.
“Where's Kehla?” asked an ichor-spattered Gus, “and what about Gilly?”
Doc looked at the pillar. “Do you have my friends in your cocoons?”
Two of the cocoons popped open as a voice slipped into his brain. “There they are. I have restored them to their original forms.”
As Kehla rose from the nearer cocoon, Gus took off at a run.
Just then, Vic came up half-carrying Ming. “Come on Doc, let's get Gilly.”
#
Vic slid Antipodes' lift key home; it had been a long trip and she was ready to go home. They were coming back with two extra passengers, neither of them human. Vic didn't know why Trott and his men had betrayed them at the end, but it wasn't worth worrying about. As for the ex-Nazi gorilla, he had nothing holding him to either Antarctica or Germany. She closed the cover on the lift key and turned her attention back to the others. “There we are; we can lift when ready.”
Gilly grinned. “Good, I'm more than ready to go home. Forty-Seventh Street Diner, here I come.”
“Just don't look at any radiofacsimiles first,” Vic told him.
“I don't think we have to worry about that anymore,” Doc said. “Not-It is less than a memory.”
Vic settled into her pilot's seat and swiveled it around to face Doc. “I still don't quite understand how we could have come down here to fight something that didn't really exist in the first place.”
“I just wish we could have studied it further,” Gus put in from his seat. He had his arm around Kehla and neither one looked like they were going to let the other out of reach at least until they got home to New York City. “The idea that the interface between reality and nothingness could act like an intelligent being even though it completely lacked objective existence is fascinating. Think of the philosophical questions.”
“You think of the philosophical questions,” Ming interjected. “I'd rather think about getting home safely before any of you hurt yourselves again.”
At least none of them had any lingering injuries; thanks almost entirely to Shard. She and the brain had run all of them through the regeneration cocoons, returning everyone to perfect health. Shard had even gone into the cocoon herself, emerging as something closer to human though still not entirely so.
For now, Shard was going to move into the Republic State Building, though nobody had made any promises of how long she would be there. Vic glanced at the subtly alien woman and then looked away.
Shard had come to her, communicating while Vic was still in the healing cocoon. There hadn't been any trouble restoring her to health, Shard had explained, but there was one anomaly: “You're not human.”
It was something Vic hadn't even told Ming yet, let alone Doc.
She slid the controls over to maximum lift, and raised ship. It would be time to worry about it when it mattered, and right now it didn't matter.
Afterword
Lake Vostok is real; to the best of my knowledge Not-It and Shard are not. Every story has inspirations; this one grew out of a mixture of H.P. Lovecraft and E.E. “Doc” Smith. After reading the original Weird Tales publication of “At the Mountains of Madness,” I decided Doc’s world could do with its own take on a pre-human alien city in Antarctica. The “Doc” Smith inspiration came from his novel Skylark of Valeron, where the characters are rotated into the fourth dimension.
Smith described the fourth dimension as a truly alien place, and I wanted to bring a sense of that to Earth. The pulp fiction of the thirties was full of attempts to depict the effects of indescribably alien beings and environments on human characters and I couldn’t resist throwing my own hat into that ring. How well I succeeded is up to the reader to decide.
This book was unusual because I wasn’t introducing a major character as I had in both previous installments. It’s also the book where I first ran into one of the pitfalls of series fiction. While each adventure is complete in a single volume, the characters are growing and progressing from book to book. It’s great for those who have been following the series since the beginning, but it’s important to make sure there’s enough information that I don’t confuse new readers.
I should also note that while mu
ch of the book is set in and around Lake Vostok, I don’t actually use the name in the text because the lake itself wasn’t discovered for decades after the time period of the book.
One final point, I set this series in 1937 for a number of reasons, one of which was because I wanted to be able to use Nazis as recurring villains. After all, what makes better villains than a group everyone can agree is evil. Sadly, that moral clarity seems to have disappeared of late, with many people speaking out in support of Nazis. Despite that, I’m going to continue using Nazis as villains because they are.
Cast of Characters
Doc Vandal
Introduced in Against the Eldest Flame. James Clark Vandal, born January 1st, 1901 in a 43rd Archonate observation post on the near side of the Moon. Raised by alien AIs, he arrived on Earth on January 1st, 1919. In the eighteen years since then, he has become the foremost scientific adventurer in the world. His most famous invention is an artificial aerogel called lyftrium which has made safe lighter-than-air travel a worldwide phenomenon. He lives with the rest of the team on the 87th floor of the Republic State Building in New York.
Victoria “Vic” Frank
Introduced in Against the Eldest Flame. Countess Victoria Catherine Elizabeth Marie Frank, born March 23rd (March 10th according to the Julian calendar), 1909 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Vic was conceived aboard an airship flying over Siberia at the precise moment of the Tunguska Event. After her parents vanished during the Revolution she escaped to England with her grandmother. Taken in by Doc after her grandmother’s death, she’s a daredevil pilot. Vic is currently in a relationship with Li Ming, who she met in Air Pirates of Krakatoa. They also live on the 87th floor.
Augustus “Gus” Q. Ponchartrain
Introduced in Against the Eldest Flame. Gustar was on born October 1st, 1901 in Pongo City West Africa. He walked out of the rainforest after the War and made his way to the United States where he met Doc Vandal at Arkham College in 1921. A polymath, Gus has almost more doctorates than he can count and is an expert on hundreds of subjects. Gus is married to his childhood sweetheart Kehla, who was also introduced in Against the Eldest Flame.
Gilbert “Gilly” Chanter
Introduced in Against the Eldest Flame. Gilbert Chanter, born December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The son of a Baptist preacher, Gilly is Doc and the team’s driver, mechanic, and photographer. He’s also a huge fan of pulp magazines like the Shadow.
Kehla Ponchartrain
Introduced in Against the Eldest Flame. Kehla was born on June 22nd 1906 in Pongo City West Africa. Raised to be the First Hand of Vel, a sacrificial priestess of the Eldest Flame, she was also Gus’s childhood sweetheart. The two were reunited when Gus returned to Africa during the events of Against the Eldest Flame.
Li Ming
Introduced in Air Pirates of Krakatoa. Li Ming, M.D., born February 10th, 1910 in Semarang, Java, Dutch East Indies. The daughter of a revolutionary known only as “Tigress,” Ming graduated from Batavia’s GHS medical school in 1933, the first Chinese woman to do so. She fell in love with Vic during the events of the adventure and upon their return to New York moved into the 87th floor with the rest of the team.
About the Author
I’m Dave, and I write. I’m also a father, a reader, gamer, a comic fan, and a hockey fan.
The problem with those terms is that they don’t so much describe as label me; the map is not the territory. Calling me a father says nothing about how my daughter thinks I’m silly. It ignores the essence of the relationship for the convenience of simplicity. It’s the same with my love of books, comics, role-playing games, and hockey; labels miss all the good parts.
The best way to understand me is to read my works. Writing is like telepathy; it’s a window from one mind to another. The Doc Vandal series is my attempt to recreate what I like to describe as “Yesterday’s Tomorrow.” This is my homage to the pulps, from Doc Savage and the Shadow to Astounding Stories, Planet Stories and so much more. Expect to see giant robots, alien races, lost cities, and world-spanning conspiracies. I call it dieselpulp dialed to eleven, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
If you want a biography: I was born in the UK, grew up in Canada, and have spent time in the US. I’ve been freelancing for the last decade. As a freelancer, I’ve done everything from blog posts to novels. Before that, and in no particular order, I’ve managed a bookstore, worked in a pawnshop, been the guy you get transferred to when you ask a phone rep for a supervisor, and even cleaned carpets for a living.
Right now, I’m working on Doc Vandal and the team’s next adventure.
Attacked Beneath Antarctica Page 18
