by Jesse Wilson
Chapter Three
“You know, you’re going to need a new car. You can’t keep stitching this thing together,” Bob said to her, holding an envelope in his hands.
“Yeah, but until I get my big break, this old beater is going to have to do,” Heather replied to him, never taking her eyes off the problem. Bob had always liked her personality; she could do all the useful things that he had no interest in, like fixing cars. The machines he was interested in were far less common. He wasn’t quite sure how it all worked out the way it did, but he tried not to think about it.
“Speaking of breaks, I got the mail, so you should open it,” he said with a smile. “More bills. Just put them with the rest of the bills; we can go over them later,” she said in a half grunt as she twisted the wrench. Pulling herself out from under the hood of the ten-year-old SUV, she sighed and just shook her head at the old thing.
“It’s from the committee,” he said to her and she smiled immediately.
“You’re kidding…you’re not kidding.” She dropped the wrench and it fell into the engine compartment as she bolted forward and took the large brown envelope from him so fast that it almost tore in half had he not let go. She ripped open the envelope, unfolded the letter, and started to read.
“Oh my God, Robert, they found something under the ice. Something that’s at least, according to this, thirty-three million years old,” she said, half-excited, half in disbelief. “And according to the scans, it’s made out of metal,” she finished and was beginning to show her emotions and forgot to read the rest.
“Yeah and what else?” Bob asked her, trying to get more information. She shook her head and looked at the paper.
“And they want us to go help with studying it,” she finished, barely able to contain her excitement.
“See? You got your big break. We can finally get a new car,” he said with a smile, and she walked forward and playfully hit him in the chest.
“Get your mind of this car, we’re going to Antarctica. I’ve always wanted to go there anyway,” she said and walked passed him.
“Yeah, frozen wasteland is my dream vacation, too,” he said and tried to be excited. He always hoped that their first adventure would be somewhere a little nicer. He decided to go watch some television.
Robert only knew two important things about Antarctica really. The first was that it was always cold, and the second was the horror story that everyone who was anyone interested in the place knew. Back in 1930, there was an expedition there funded by a university to explore a supposed mountain range and none of them were ever seen again. Of course, it could have been an urban legend too. It was just a story that scientists and professors talked about around Halloween, just to scare the new blood students and other new staff for a good time. No one really believed in the story, but Bob knew that all stories had a grain of truth to them somewhere, and the longer the story lasted, the bigger that grain tended to be.
Heather didn’t believe that the old horror stories ever took place, but she believed in all the actual, documented disasters. None of that mattered to her. All she could think about was wondering what to bring with her as she went through her clothes.
“Hey, what do you think I should wear?” she screamed from the bedroom. Robert was watching a documentary on the very thing he shouldn’t have been.
“You look good in everything, bring whatever you want, but I’m thinking something, you know, warmish,” he yelled back. He couldn’t believe she was worried about clothes at a time like this. It was Antarctica, not some tropical island. He knew better than to say something like that, though.
“You’re no help at all, Captain Obvious,” she yelled back, but Bob only half-heard her as he was watching the last few minutes of a documentary he’d seen many times before.
“Despite Dyer’s warnings, the follow-up expedition found no evidence of anything like he described, or any of the people that went with him. Some say Dyer was a victim of what is commonly called ice madness; others think he just wanted his fifteen minutes of fame. Either way, the mysterious events continue to remain unsolved to this day, and all the official records of the expedition he was on have vanished. So, is this a government cover up, or just the overactive imagination of a man gone mad? We may never truly know the truth but—” the narrator said through the speakers, and Bob shut the TV off, cutting off the ending of the show.
“Yeah, that’s what I need to be thinking of right now,” he said and quietly laughed to himself as he stood up to find something to eat.
Heather was almost as concerned with clothes as she was at whatever it was they had found under the ice. Reality had become very strange after the letter was opened. All of the sudden, her mundane life of teaching classes of archeology at Brown University had been wiped out. Her real dream was going to finally be realized at long last. In less than two days, they would be going to inspect something that, if proved to be real, would change everything: A metal object found under the ice. What was it, who put it there, and why? The basic questions repeated through her mind like a CD that had decided it was going to skip on a long road trip.
“You hungry?” a voice snapped her back to reality and made her jump.
“No, I’m good. But, seriously, what do you think I should wear?” she asked him again.
“Well, you totally need a hat, like that old professor you had used to wear. What was it? A fedora I think, maybe? You always look good with a hat,” Bob said as he leaned in the doorway.
“I don’t even own one, but you’re right. I do look good with a hat,” she replied and turned around. “Two days and we are out of here,” she said with a smile.
“I know, but in the meantime, I am making food; join me or not, it’s up to you,” he replied with a smile and walked away. Neither Bob nor Heather were what you’d consider small people. She was six foot four and taller than him by two inches. Clothes for her were kind of a big deal; everything was either too small or made her look ten years older than she really was. This blonde-haired, grey-eyed Amazonian beauty was always under the restraint of modern conventions. With everything to think about, clothes seemed like the easiest thing to decide and wonder about right now.
Chapter Four
East Antarctica, Near Base 42.
A new, small American establishment, made to study the effects of global warming, had accidently discovered something. Dr. Ferrous stood there on the ice as the drill made its way down to the deep.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Dr. Mills to get here?” his assistant asked him.
“No. If she and the husband show up and we don’t have this thing out of the ice, it’ll only be longer that we have to put up with them,” he replied to him from behind the face mask. He didn’t mind putting up with them, but this was not their place; he didn’t want anyone else showing him up, especially if he knew them. The winds were picking up; soon, the winter months would be on them again, and he wanted to be out of here by then.
“Doctor, we’ve made it to the target level. We are going to begin extraction of the thing now,” Harry said to him. He wasn’t a scientist, but he was great at drilling large holes.
“Good man. Let’s get that thing out of the ice and get it inside so we can get a better look at it,” Ferrous replied to him, more than ready to get out of the cold. He would never admit it, but being out here like this always gave him the creeps; for whatever reason, he couldn’t help but feel as if he was being watched by something.
Harry operated the controls, turning the drill into a grappling claw with the touch of a few buttons.
“We got a good grip on this thing, I think. I’m going to pull it out nice and slow,” Harry said to him, mostly talking to himself to try and get himself in the zone so he didn’t screw up.
“It’s been in the ice for millions of years. I don’t imagine there is much you can do that’d hurt it at this point. Let’s load this thing up sooner rather than later, alright?” Ferrous said, growing impatient as the wind picked
up around them.
“Not to worry, Doc, I got this covered. You can trust me, or not, I guess it’s up to you,” he replied to him as the winch began to wind the cable back up. A few minutes went by slower due to the anticipation to see what it was, but soon, the ice-crusted metal container was above the surface. Seeing it like this, there wasn’t anything amazing about the thing. It looked as if it had rolled off some factory assembly line to be some random part for a bigger machine. Harry was closer, and he caught a glimpse of the small window of the container. Immediately, he backed off in fright from the controls and took a deep, painful breath of the cold air, which caused him to cough.
“What’s the matter with you, man? What did you see?” Ferrous asked him at once.
“Something’s in there, Doc. It looked like a big lizard,” Harry replied, trying to regain his senses. Ferrous walked closer to the artifact and looked into the window. “Well, yeah that sure looks like a frozen lizard man to me, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said quietly, not having a single clue as to what this was.
“Alien, Doc; we got ourselves and honest-to-goodness alien in there,” Harry said and couldn’t decide if he was excited or horrified right now.
“Well, it must be dead. Load it onto the tractor so we can get it back to the base,” Ferrous replied to him. He had so many phone calls he wanted to make, but at the same time, he was a big believer in government conspiracies. The minute he told anyone else about this, he was sure only bad things were going to follow it.
“Harry, we can’t tell anyone about this, not yet anyway. You understand?” Ferrous said to him.
“No one would believe this, so yeah, I get it,” he replied as the mini crane slowly moved over to the flatbed and gently set the capsule down on it.
“I’m going to secure it really quickly, and then we can get the hell out of here,” Harry said to him, but Ferrous was already getting back inside the transport truck to get warm. Harry didn’t want to spend too much time with it. He quickly strapped it down, covered it with the orange tarp they brought, and tried to think of it as any other load to keep his mind of off what he saw. It was a simple process; soon, he was done and climbed back into the transport.
“Doc, I’m no expert, but I’ve seen this movie before. Usually, when the alien is unthawed, it tends to want to kill everyone it sees. So if you don’t mind, I think we should leave this discovery outside for a bit,” Harry said to him.
“Fair point, we’ll leave it under a tarp until Heather and Bob get here,” Ferrous agreed with him; he, too, had never seen a movie where unthawing the alien turned out to be a good plan. Harry almost smiled at this, started the transport up, and began driving back to base. Neither one of them was worried about believing what they could see plain as day. Believe was just an easier word to process than see.
The drive to the base didn’t take very long, but neither of them talked the whole way back. Harry picked up the radio.
“Yeah, we’re coming in, but we’re going to leave the transport outside for now; we may have picked up something that’s radioactive,” Harry said and Ferrous glanced at him when he said that.
“Radioactivity in the ice? Weird, but alright. The winds are going to get bad tonight, so the transport may not start later if we need it; you sure you want to leave it outside?” the man on the other end asked them. Despite his better judgment, Ferrous rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“We better go inside. We just won’t open or uncover it,” he said to him, discouraged.
“Doc says it shouldn’t be that dangerous. We’re coming in, get the doors open,” Harry replied to the man.
“You got it,” he replied and signed out. In front of them, the massive metal doors began to slide open. They were painted with a very large number forty-two, one number on each side of the opening door.
“Alright, home sweet home at last,” Harry said, honestly glad to be back home again.
“You said it, man; let’s just keep the alien thing to ourselves. If anyone asks, it’s just an old Soviet Cold War satellite that crashed,” Ferrous said to him, coming up with the story pretty fast.
“You got it, Doc, sounds good to me,” Harry said as he pulled into the base and came to a stop. The two of them got out as other crewmembers came to meet them. Everyone wanted to know what this might be, but the rumor of radiation already made them keep their distance.
“It looks likes like an old Soviet satellite from the Cold War that crashed and this is all that’s left of it,” Ferrous said and the others looked at it. Nothing about the outline of the thing under the tarp remotely looked like a satellite, but there was no way to see if it was Russian.
“If you say so, Alex, but once that thing warms up, I’m taking a look at it,” Dr. Yalta said to him. Yalta was the hard case of the base, an everything-by-the-book type if there ever was one. He was a scientist from Chicago, but looked like he was born in India.
“You may want to hold off until we speak privately,” Ferrous said to him in a tone that was unusual for him to use: he was worried.
“Alright, people, we still have work to do, let’s get it done,” Harry said finally to disperse the crew back to their stations.
“Good luck, Doctors,” Harry said to them and walked passed them, leaving their find to the experts.
“Mehar, you’re not going to believe this, but there is something inside of that thing, and I think it’s an alien lifeform,” Ferrous said to him in the calmest voice he could manage. Mehar burst out laughing. He couldn’t believe this at all.
“It has a window on the other side; look for yourself.” Ferrous didn’t change his tone; he was deadly serious. Mehar walked around Alex and climbed the flatbed. He walked around the capsule and lifted the tarp to find the window. Immediately, he gasped and nearly fell off the other side of the trailer. He was no longer in a laughing mood.
“By the time the ice around it melts fully, the Mills will be here, and the four of us will be among the greatest all of human history. We found an extraterrestrial,” Mehar said to Alex as he too walked closer.
“We are on the dawn of a new era in our history, but let’s keep this a secret until we can confirm it with one hundred percent accuracy it is what we think it is,” Alex said, trying to contain his excitement too as best as he could.
“Good plan. It’s going to be a long two days,” Mehar replied to him and couldn’t help but smile. Alex, on the other hand, still couldn’t shake the bad feelings he was getting, and he blamed Hollywood for every single one of them.
Chapter Five
Robert and Heather were on a plane. It turned out that two days didn’t take that long to pass after all. It was very noisy in the cargo plane, and there weren’t any windows for the long trip. Heather was going a bit stir crazy.
“Do you think we are there yet?” she asked him over the noise.
“I’m sure we’re getting close now; you need to relax,” he replied to her as he continued to play some generic match the shape game on his phone.
“You can relax at a time like this? You’ve seriously got ice in your veins, don’t you,” she replied to him, still pacing.
“You know, if we hit any more turbulence, you’re going to get hurt. Sit down and relax. It can’t be too much longer,” Bob replied to her, still not taking his eyes off of his game, still not ready to accept where they were going. She sat down in a huff and crossed her arms.
“You take all the fun out of life,” she said to him, annoyed.
“Yeah, well, I just want to keep you alive so you can keep having fun later. You can’t blame me for that,” he replied to her quickly. Then their signal light turned from green to red; it was time to begin landing. “See, what did I tell you? When I’m right, I’m right,” he said with a smile and put his phone in his pocket.
The plane landed on the ice runway and came to a smooth stop. Heather was the first one waiting as the hatch opened up. Dressed in her arctic gear, she rushed passed the various bo
xes and ran right out into the icy air. Immediately, despite all the layers she had on, she felt frozen, and all of the excitement drained out of her with the warmth. Bob was right behind her and saw how cold she was all of a sudden. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close.
“Let’s get inside before we freeze out here, yeah?” he said to her and she couldn’t help but smile.
“Bob, Heather, is that you?” a voice asked them from the left side and they turned around.
“Alex. Long time no see,” Bob replied and waved to him as he approached.
“You said it. Time loses its meaning down here in the icebox. Follow me inside so we don’t get in the crew’s way unloading the supplies,” Alex said to them and waved them in his direction. The pair followed him towards the base, doing their best not to slip and fall on what appeared to be a solid sheet of white ice to them.
As soon as they got inside the base, the temperature difference was noticeable. Bob unzipped his outer layer as he walked. The star attraction hadn’t moved since they brought it here; it was still on the back of the transport, but someone had removed the tarp.
“So, this is it,” Heather said, clearly unimpressed with the dark silver metal cylinder before them.
“No, what’s impressive is inside,” Mahar said as he entered the room to meet them at about the same time.
“Hey, Mahar. What’s it been, two years?” Heather asked as she unzipped her gear and Mahar winced internally, but he covered it with a smile. He’s always had a thing for her but never said anything; that wasn’t going to change today.
