“Oh, that’s just great!” Ruger exclaimed. “Now we find something and really tick them off. Listen to me! You’ve got me starting to believe it.” Ruger was almost beginning to laugh at the absurd possibility.
Abbott was silent.
“They ever get hostile?” Ruger asked. “I’m sure they do. No problem. They’ll just wipe us out.”
“It won’t come to that.”
“The hell it won’t! How do you know?”
“Because it won’t,” Abbott replied calmly. “It won’t because I’ll know when the time comes to pull us out of here. Close up camp. I won’t let it happen.”
“And just how in the hell are you going to determine that?” Ruger demanded to know. “How do you know when we’ve crossed the line?”
“I’ve dealt with these entities before, Mike,” Abbott responded. “You’ll have to trust me on this.”
Ruger could see that the group was watching them arguing. In his mind, Ruger was dumfounded. He couldn’t believe that Abbott was telling him, Don’t worry. They’re friendly and I’ll be able to tell when they aren’t anymore. “You know, Marsh,” he said. “You’re as crazy as that Prall character.”
Abbott smiled. “No I’m not, Mike. That’s why I’m in charge.”
“I’m not going back down there, Marsh,” Ruger said, pointing at the crevasse area where everyone was now watching the two of them.
“Yes. You are, Mike,” Abbott quickly responded. “You don’t have a choice. You’re as compelled as I am to go down there and find out what’s so important to them that they don’t want us to know about.”
Ruger looked at him.
Abbott smiled again. “And besides,” he said, “you don’t really believe any of this alien shit anyway. Do you, Mike?” Abbott turned away and walked toward the ridge.
“All ready to lower away, boss,” Lisk said as Abbott approached.
“I’ll go first,” Abbott said, taking the harness buckle and hooking himself up to the cable. “Ruger next. When everybody is down safely, the supplies are last. Any questions?”
Nobody responded. Abbott looked directly at Ruger, who had just approached. “Any further instructions, Mike?”
Inside, Ruger was fuming. Abbott had played a trump card and won. At the moment, there wasn’t much he could do. Abbott knew he wasn’t about to compromise the conversation they had just had. “No,” he replied. “No further instructions.”
“Good,” Abbott responded. “Donnie, you take the winch first.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Show our friend, Mr. Lightfoot, how to use it.”
“This wasn’t our agreement, Mr. Abbott,” Lightfoot protested.
“We have no agreement, Mr. Lightfoot,” Abbott responded, looking over the edge, prepared to descend.
“You want me to take pictures. I can’t take pictures up here,” Lightfoot implored.
“We’ll let you know,” Abbott replied, hopping toward the edge and dropping over. The winch motor nosily came to life when Monroe switched on the button, drowning out the sound of the generator.
“And what if I tell you all to go to hell?” Lightfoot called down after him.
“You’ll be shot,” came the response from Abbott, out of sight.
“He’s kidding, right?” Lightfoot implored his colleagues. Nobody paid him any attention.
While Abbott was descending, Allison Bryson was beside herself with both apprehension and anger. Angry that Abbott was ordering her to go down into the crevasse without even consulting with her, afraid like hell at the thought of being attached to a hundred and fifty foot cable and being lowered into an ice crevasse. Ruger was still trying to calm her fears when he finally heard Abbott’s radio transmission telling Lisk he had reached the bottom. The winch slowed, then stopped on Abbott’s command. In a moment, the winch reversed and Monroe wound in the cable.
By the time it was Ruger’s turn to drop over the edge, he felt he still hadn’t accomplished much to belay Allison’s fears, despite the support and encouragement from everyone else, including, surprisingly, Prall and Monroe. Even Lightfoot, who the day before had been in the same predicament, pitched in his support.
There were no further delays getting everyone into the crevasse. Allison’s descent was uneventful albeit spectacular, and Ruger was waiting for her at the bottom with open arms. For the first few moments that she stood in the icy abyss, she could find no words to express her emotions. It was fear, all right, but a different level of fear. The kind one only imagines when stepping into a totally alien world. It was a haunting feeling, and she had never before in her life felt such abandonment despite being surrounded by other people.
“You all right?” she heard Ruger’s voice ask. It was a low, resonating sound, very mystical.
She stared for a moment at his shadowy face, perplexed by the eerie images of the humans behind him moving in near darkness. “Yeah,” she replied. “Just a little afraid, I guess.”
“Your eyes will adjust a little more in a minute,” Ruger assured her.
“Okay.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Ruger assured, detaching her from the cable, getting her out of the harness. “Just stay close and don’t wander off. The other crevasse I talked about last night is over that way.” Ruger flicked on the carbide light, and the powerful beam penetrated far into the narrow blackness before it was swallowed up, disappearing into nothingness.
Allison’s heart still pounded wildly, and in the aftermath of the exhilarating descent down the ice wall, she suddenly realized that her legs were weak as she struggled to support herself on Ruger. “Just a little woozy,” she said, embarrassed more than anything, trying desperately to laugh it off in the face of her fear.
Ruger laughed along with her, trying to put her at ease. “It’s all right, baby. It’ll pass in a few minutes. Your leg muscles have to recover themselves.”
“Whew!” she responded. “I gotta sit down.”
“Yeah. Sit here for a few while I get the supplies.”
While Ruger and Abbott awaited the drop of the first supply sack, Allison tried to calm herself. Nearby, she could see the ghostly images of the other three men as they moved about in the massive ice cavern. The beams of light criss-crossed each other all along the walls, revealing the eerie sculptured patterns of the glacial fracture. And then she caught a momentary glimpse of the structural beam as one of the men passed his light along its length.
Ruger’s lamp was sitting at her side. A moment later, she found herself walking along the floor of the cavern, shining the light upward at the ceiling where the strange, metallic structure was exactly as the men had described it. Fused to the ceiling of the vaulted ice cavern. Fascination took control of her senses. The fear, that only moments before had engulfed her, was replaced by a new emotional surge of trepidation. There was no longer a doubt left in her mind. This thing was purely alien. Humans did not put this structural beam here. Humans, in all probability, were not going to move it, either.
While Ruger and Abbott hurried the process of sorting out the equipment after the arrival of the first bundle, Allison listened intently to the conversation of the other three men.
“Here,” Almshouse said, pointing with his light. “I think the fracture indicates a closure.”
Grimes examined the ice configuration closely. “ I agree.”
“It must have closed up after the beam traveled up through the split,” Almshouse replied.
“Question is,” Lisk said, “how long a period of time?”
“This whole ice sheet could have shifted itself hundreds of yards away from the beam’s source,” Almshouse speculated.
“Or miles,” Grimes added.
“We may never find the source,” Almshouse said.
“That’s true,” Grimes replied, moving his hand along the fracture lines. “Then again, we could just as well find it in a few minutes.”
“Well,” Almshouse said, “There’s only one way to find ou
t.” It meant a lot of digging into solid ice that was as damn near hard as the rocks.
“What are you going to do?” Allison asked, and they all turned around, unaware that she had been there.
“Didn’t see you there, Allison.” Almshouse said. “Know anything about glaciation?”
“Not much,” she responded. “Only what Hilly has taught me.”
Lisk moved back away from the ice wall and positioned himself directly under the beam. Trying to reconstruct in his mind the breakage from the base, he passed the light along its length until the light arrived in the general location where everyone was squatting.
“It twisted and broke off to the right,” Lisk said, speculatively. “Then it pulled straight up. Or rather, the ice pulled it straight up.”
“How do you figure that?” Grimes asked, moving next to Lisk.
Lisk was silent for a moment longer. Still reconstructing the event in his mind, it suddenly became quite clear. It had to be. To everyone’s surprise, he announced in a tone of voice as if he’d known all along, “The whole structure is directly behind the wall over there.” He pointed to a location just off to the left of where they had been studying the fracture lines.
“What makes you think that?” Almshouse asked, joining them.
“It makes perfect sense,” Lisk continued. “We talked about this scenario before. Back in the States. “I know what’s happened here.”
“What? for God’s sake,” Grimes asked, evidently not seeing things as clearly as Lisk seemed to be seeing.
“There’s a domed structure…building, or something…it’s behind the wall.”
“How do you figure it’s a dome?” Allison asked.
“The curvature of the structural beam. Look.” They all shone their lights upward. Lisk continued, “Besides, the other artifacts suggest they were panels attached to a curved surface. Just like the beam. That thing has a symmetrical curve. It wasn’t bent from the ice pressure. It was constructed that way.”
“Certainly makes sense,” Almshouse replied, trying to visualize a massive, domed structure.
Lisk added, “The ice has gotten inside the dome and pushed outward. Just like a bottle of milk when it freezes sitting outside on the doorstep. Over the years, the ice literally twisted the beam off its base. Maybe it didn’t even do any further damage to the rest of the structure.”
“Years?” Almshouse said. “Think in terms of millennia.”
“He’s right,” Grimes replied, suddenly seeing very clearly what Lisk had been visualizing all along. “For this thing to have been moved here, assuming the dome theory is correct, it must have taken thousands of years.”
“But that’s impossible,” Allison interjected.
“Improbable, maybe,” Almshouse replied. “Impossible…that’s another thing altogether.”
Grimes, whose head was now spinning wildly with imaginative thoughts, said, “But if ice got inside this dome, the whole thing must have broken apart. The remains could have scattered all over the glacier. There could be a million pieces suspended in the ice covering hundreds of square miles.”
“Half of the continent for that matter,” Almshouse added.
“He’s right,” Allison said. “We may never find the source. Maybe it doesn’t even exist anymore.”
“On the other hand,” Grimes said, “the dome could have been ripped open with no further damage. It could have simply been encased in ice and who knows? You guys yourselves said how strong the material was. Maybe it wasn’t crushed after all. Maybe Al is right. Maybe the dome is still intact behind this wall.”
They were silent for a few moments, pondering the sobering thought.
Ruger and Abbott approached them in the near darkness. When no one offered any conversation, Ruger asked, “You find something?”
“Yes,” Grimes replied. “There’s a building behind this wall.” Then added, “We think.”
Abbott was visibly excited. “We didn’t seem to think so last night.”
“Al seems to think so now,” Almshouse replied.
“Sure. Why not?” Lisk responded, then explained his theory to Abbott, concluding with, “It’s as good a place to start looking as any, Marsh.”
There was only a minute of further discussion as Abbott and Ruger both tried to visualize a domed structure on the other side of the ice wall. In the quiet darkness of the abyss, they all were feeling the absolute power of ice. A creaking groan from somewhere deep within the internal crevasse did little to quell the constant awareness that they were at the mercy of mother nature who could at any moment swallow them up into oblivion.
Abbott shook off the feeling, and breaking their silence, said, “There’s only one way to find out. Let’s start digging.”
The excavation gear was removed from the gear bags, and while Ruger deftly lit the two Coleman lanterns to maximize the amount of light in the cavern to conserve the carbide lamps, the others plotted the digging locations. The only point of argument was whether to dig straight inward, or angle downward . The solution came easy. They would do both at a distance of about ten yards apart.
Fifteen minutes later, the group had established the digging routine. The picks and shovel bars Ruger had brought along were more than sufficient to gouge away at the ice. It was hard and solid, but with a little extra effort, they managed to fracture the ice in some places, enabling then to take away huge chunks of the wall.
Ruger had just finished his five minute digging interval, and was now resting while Almshouse resumed digging in the spot. Looking upward at the structural beam, which was cast in an eerie glow from the lantern light, he was suddenly overcome with the enormity of the situation. What if we do find a dome behind the wall? he asked himself. The complications for the Antarctic continent would change the face of the last real frontier on Earth. If there was a dome, or a vessel as Abbott had suggested, it would mean that somebody—maybe not even human somebodies—had been in this land before. And if Almshouse and Grimes were right, it could have been thousands and thousands of years ago.
Here are some real sobering thoughts for the ages, Ruger mused. It might even change the perception of civilized history. But that was for the intellectuals. For people like me, Ruger thought, it means the end of an era. The Antarctica continent will go the way of all human settlements. The cycle from natural bliss to ruination. They were standing on the threshold of what might turn out to be a wondrous discovery, but instead, Mike Ruger found himself selfishly wishing that they find nothing and the crevasse closes itself up, sealing forever the deep, dark secret that The Ice has held since the beginning of its time.
But when Lisk tapped him on the shoulder, signaling it was his turn again to dig, Ruger took the pick and hesitated only a moment before resuming. With a powerful thrust, the pick gouged into the ice, and a huge piece of the wall fractured and fell at their feet. Despite his reluctance to destroy Antarctica, Ruger knew that Abbott had been right about one thing he told had him up on the ridge. You don’t have a choice. You are compelled to find out just like me.
* * * * *
On the surface where the other three men stood in the midst of a frigid quietude, only the low drone of the idling generator broke the silence. The occasional wind heralded the subtle change that was taking place outside the realm of human perception. But that was the way The Visitors wanted it. It was the way they existed inter-dimensionally.
Where before there had been an adversarial relationship between the two military men and their civilian charge, it was now as if no remembrance of past events existed. In human terms, it was nothing more than a cordial request and a cursory response when Lightfoot announced, “I’m going back down to the camp for a little while.”
To which Colonel Prall responded with a smile, “Sure. Don’t be long now.”
“Be careful driving that snowmobile,” Donnie Monroe said. “Those things can get away from you if you’re not careful with them.”
“Thanks,” Lightfoot responded. “Th
anks a lot.” He felt good about having two such good companions to pass the time with out here in the cold.
Prall and Monroe turned away from the winch to wave good-by as Lightfoot mounted the machine. Lightfoot waved back. “Hey,” he called out. “Would you guys like for me to bring some hot coffee?”
“That’s a good idea,” Prall responded. “I’d like that. How about it, Donnie?”
“Sounds great!”
“Well, I’ll do it!” Lightfoot responded, then started the machine and moved off slowly down the slope toward the camp.
The air was charged with an incredible amount of static electricity, and underneath the layers of their garments, all three men could feel their hairs standing on end as the static discharged and sent tingles all over their bodies. It was an eerie sensation, nothing that would harm them, but enough to cause nervous laughter, though neither of the two men left standing on the ridge mentioned it to each other.
In the minds of Gerald Prall and Donnie Monroe, their visual perception was interpreting their colleague driving slowly away down the slope toward the camp. The sky was blue and the sun cast its normal orangish glow across the glacial field, and the ice crystals sparkled in the distance like dancing fairies across the gray sastrugi. In the mind’s eye, a spectacular panorama of Antarctic desolation.
The buzzing of the bees began in John Lightfoot’s ears about halfway down the slope. Funny that bees should be out here on The Ice, he thought. But it didn’t disturb him that they were. What’s that smell? It smells like the air after a summer thunderstorm. It’s ozone.
As Lightfoot reached the rim of the camp, the buzzing got much louder in his head, and he wished it would go away. He liked the wonderful feeling he was experiencing at this moment, otherwise the bees would have been very annoying.
Lightfoot slowed the machine and drove it directly to the exact spot where his friend, Mike Ruger, had instructed him to park it. Mike was a nice man, and he wanted to do everything just right for Mike, so Mike wouldn’t get mad at him again. Boy, he sure was mad at me yesterday, Lightfoot thought. I’m glad we’re friends again.
The Nexus Colony Page 22
