The Nexus Colony

by G. F. Schreader

  The foul odor inside was still horrible, but by all indications on the meter that Lisk was intently monitoring, there weren’t any toxic gases present. As far as any bacteria…well, that was another matter. There was no test for that. It was too late anyway, and Abbott dismissed concern at this point. They were at the hands of fate on that matter.

  Abbott’s mouth was dry like cotton, and for the first time in his life he felt out of control, even more than the dread he had experienced back on the surface where he conjectured the fate of John Lightfoot. Trying to quell the rising of his emotions, he fought desperately to maintain command, not let any of the others see the fear he knew must be evident on his face. His gut feeling was telling him to leave this place, and he knew that over the years it was his gut feeling that had kept him alive thus far. The mission is over. The source is found. Whether this place spelled their doom or not, it was not meant for human intrusion even though, at the moment, the residents didn’t appear to be at home. At least not in the outer corridor.

  Abbott! He heard his name being called from somewhere behind. The inflection of the voice was very clear and the whispering projection reverberated through the corridor. It jolted him back into the reality—and the overwhelming magnitude—of the situation.

  “Here,” he responded in a low voice which should have been barely audible, but reverberated clearly. “We’re right here.”

  Ruger called again from the ice opening. “What’s in there? What did you find?”

  Abbott, Lisk, Prall…they all passed their lights again over the foreboding honey-combed facade of the inner structure. They could see now that it was a series of grates, the separating seams barely discernible in the low light. Abbott tried to draw some moisture into his mouth, but it was still difficult to swallow. He replied, “It’s…not human…I suppose.”

  His words resounded very clearly to those listening at the ice opening. Ruger and Grimes and Almshouse all looked at each other. The words not human stuck in their minds.

  Ruger moved forward to peer through the opening. They took their masks off, he thought. “We’re coming in,” Ruger called assertively to them inside. He sensed the danger, the awful feeling of dread, but he forced himself to move forward.

  Ruger shone the light into the pitch blackness to the left in the direction where he had just heard Abbott’s voice. The lamps of the three men were a short distance ahead. The floor was ice-covered on the other side where some of the ice debris had fallen through the opening, but the floor turned smooth a few feet farther in. Ruger shone the light down at his feet, where he saw that the flooring was like a series of interlocking tiles configured in a strange asymmetrical pattern. Grimes and Almshouse followed silently behind.

  “Abbott,” Ruger called, cautiously. “I’m coming at you.”

  “Right,” Abbott replied, almost indifferently.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Grimes suddenly exclaimed. “Will you look at that!”

  His light was shining on the inner facade of the honey-combed wall. As Grimes moved the light beam up along the curving surface, he said, “It doesn’t reflect hardly any light. Almost like it absorbs it.”

  Ruger shone his light to the left where the familiar pattern of the artifact panels came into view.

  “It’s a structure inside another structure,” Grimes commented.

  “Oh, God!” Almshouse suddenly blurted out. “I think I’m going to throw up. That smell is awful…” He began to gag.

  “Breath through your mouth,” Ruger advised.

  Unexpectedly, one of the lights up ahead shone directly at them. Abbott’s voice was louder. “I thought I told you to wait.”

  “You did,” Ruger responded. “We waited. Now we’re here.”

  “I want somebody to remain behind at the opening,” Abbott said.

  “For what?” Ruger replied.

  “In case something goes down,” Abbott responded. “That’s why.”

  “If something goes down, Marsh,” Ruger replied, “I don’t think it’s going to matter one way or the other who’s located where.” The words reverberated through the corridor along with the subtle creeping footsteps of the three men. Abbott did not reply.

  When Ruger reached Abbott’s location, they saw Lisk closely scrutinizing the honey-combed grates of the inner facade, Prall standing guard over him in the blackness.

  “What have you found?” Ruger asked.

  “Nothing,” Lisk replied. “These grates seem to be identical everywhere.”

  “We need more light,” Abbott said. “Can somebody go out there and get the Coleman lanterns?”

  “Yeah. Sure,” Almshouse replied.

  For the next minute they all stood quiet. The absolute silence was overwhelming. Beneath a sea of ice…Almshouse returned rather quickly with the lighted lanterns, and the honey-combed surface cast an even more ghostly effect all around, making the structure even more alien than imagined.

  “Here. Come here, Hilly,” Almshouse said, breaking the eerie silence. “Help me out.”

  Almshouse picked up the lanterns and placed each one against the outer edge of the wall about twenty feet apart. He then positioned Grimes near to the inner wall at one end, himself against the inner wall at the opposite end. “Mark your spot,” he said to Grimes, making a mental mark of his own.

  Grimes knew exactly what he was doing. Marching off the distance along the tangent line, Grimes and Almshouse quickly calculated the approximate circumference of the inner shell.

  “Assuming, of course, it’s got a circular base,” Almshouse inferred. “I’d say it’s about three hundred fifty feet in circumference, which makes it about a hundred, hundred ten feet in diameter.”

  “How high?” Abbott asked.

  They all shone their carbide lights up into the blackness.

  “Can’t really tell,” Almshouse replied. “At least fifty, sixty feet, that’s for sure.”

  “Is this thing hollow?” Grimes said, tapping against the outer shell and placing his head near it. They did not hear any reverberation which was odd since their voices were carrying even close to a whisper.

  It was only a subtle change, but Ruger was the first to notice it. He’d been out on The Ice a long time and was surprised he hadn’t picked up on it earlier. Ruger reached and peeled back the hood of his parka, though no one noticed. Holding the light close to his face, he checked to see if he was right. Unhooking one of his gloves, he took it off. He still felt the coldness, but it wasn’t frigid and penetrating as it should have been.

  “Marsh,” he said softly. “Come here a minute.”

  Abbott sensed the change in his voice inflection. “What? What’s wrong?”

  Ruger shone the light across Abbott’s face. “Notice anything?”

  Abbott looked through the beam, then off to where it was aiming at the wall. “No. Should I?”

  “Yes. You should,” Almshouse replied, who had been watching and now knew exactly what Ruger was noticing. “I see what you mean, Mike. You can hardly see his breath.”

  “You know, you’re right,” Abbott suddenly realized.

  “Did somebody turn the heat on? It’s gotten warmer,” Ruger said. “Relatively speaking, that is. The temperature feels higher than it did a few minutes ago.”

  Lisk said, “A heat source maybe?”

  “Could be,” Abbott replied. “Anybody got their thermometer handy?”

  “It’s about…thirty,” Grimes responded, squinting at the small thermometer he kept attached by Velcro inside the flap of his pocket.

  “That’s got to be forty, forty-five degrees warmer than even out there in the crevasse.”

  “The lanterns couldn’t be creating that much heat,” Almshouse said.

  “No,” Ruger responded, searching the walls of the corridor with the beam of light. “But it’s definitely getting warmer inside here. Funny. I don’t feel any air movement.”

  “It’s got to be radiating from somewhere,” Abbott suggested. “Hilly, I want you to
keep a close eye on the temperature. See if you can figure a rate of increase.”

  “I wonder if this thing does go all the way around…” Grimes said.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Prall suggested, making a head gesture to move ahead into the dark corridor. “Want me to check it out?” he asked Abbott.

  Abbott contemplated their next move, but before he could answer, Almshouse interjected. “No. There’s a better way.”

  “What?” Abbott asked.

  “Everybody has a light, right? Let’s everybody position ourselves in a chain and follow along the corridor. We’ll drop a man off about…every fifty feet or so. Just to where the sight distance ends. That way we’ll be able to talk to each other and see each other’s light. That should spread us out about three hundred feet. If this thing is circular, and our calculations are close, the sixth man should be able to see or hear the first man when the circle is completed.”

  “It’s a good idea, Marsh,” Ruger responded.

  “All right,” Abbott agreed. “Hilly, we’ll leave you here to hold down the fort. Colonel Prall will lead the way all the way around. You watch for him down that way. Let’s move.”

  Tentatively and quietly, the men moved forward. At each fifty foot interval, one man positioned himself near to the outer wall to gain the maximum angle along the tangent. Abbott was the last to drop off. That only left Prall. When Prall reached the point where Abbott was dropping out of sight, he stopped.

  “Can you see Grimes?” Abbott asked.

  Prall flicked his lamp on and off. “Grimes? Can you hear me?”

  In the distance, they heard Grimes’ voice answering. “I could hear you the whole time. I could see the light, too. Quite a distance back.” His voice reverberated through the corridor. They all heard it.

  Prall turned back to Abbott. “I can see his light up ahead. Looks like Almshouse was right on.”

  “All right,” Abbott replied. “I want you to walk up on ahead to Grimes, verify it’s all clear, then come back here. If it’s clear, tell Grimes to go on to the next man, and so on until we close up the circle.”

  “Got it,” Prall responded.

  It took several minutes to complete the simple maneuver. In the interim before all six of them were rendezvoused at Abbott’s position, he took advantage of the brief hiatus to study the honey-combed pattern of the inner wall panels. The grates were the same everywhere. A perfect symmetrical pattern, fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle but the pieces were the same. They had all observed the same thing. The group stood silent several moments longer.

  “We need to inspect it closer,” Abbott finally said. “If it’s housing something inside, there’s got to be an entry way. We need more light.”

  The realization came over Ruger like a brick hitting him on the head. “Wait here a minute,” he said, suddenly leaving the group and heading back toward the ice opening.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Abbott asked.

  “Be right back,” he responded. Ruger picked up the two Coleman lanterns, took them with him out through the opening, and then came back in, lighting his way with the carbide lamp. In a moment, he was back with the group.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Abbott demanded.

  “Turn off your lamps,” Ruger said.

  “What for?” Abbott responded.

  “Humor me. Turn off your lamps.”

  The lamps extinguished one by one. An awesome silence engulfed the men. Then the incredible occurred. From out of somewhere, the blackness was suddenly bathed in a murky, flamingo-reddish light. A deep, evil foreboding arose inside each man. They stared at each other’s eerie image in the midst of a blackness now turned to visible red light.

  “Holy shit!” someone whispered in disbelief.

  “It’s like…”

  “It’s almost like infrared light,” Lisk said, astonishment in his voice.

  “Don’t anybody move,” Abbott ordered.

  They stood in silence for what seemed like a very long time. As their eyes became adjusted, the features of the inner corridor became more conspicuous. Soon, they were all able to get a detailed visual of the entire internal structure.

  “It’s like looking through night vision binoculars.”

  “Ruger?” Abbott asked. “How did you figure this one out?”

  “Just a hunch,” he replied. “When we first punched the hole, I thought I saw a red light. Or something like that. I don’t really know. Thought I just imagined it.”

  “Nice work,” Abbott replied, staring in awe at what lay before them.

  “Next question is,” Almshouse said. “Where’s the source?”

  “Better yet, what’s the source?” Grimes added.

  They all searched silently again, looking for the source of the light. Finally, Grimes surmised, “I don’t think there is a source. At least one that we can relate to. I think the whole thing is radiating in some part of the spectrum. Close to infrared.”

  “I agree,” Lisk responded. “It’s almost like this place is programmed to emit light as needed. Somewhere along the light spectrum when it’s dark and someone enters.”

  “But why this color?” Ruger replied. “Doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Doesn’t make sense to our eyes,” Abbott said. The suggestion hit home to everyone.

  “Shit!” Almshouse suddenly exclaimed. “Did anybody think to check a radiation badge?”

  Prall, cursing under his breath, quickly reached into the gear pouch and retrieved one of the badges that they had all forgotten about. In the strange lighting, it was difficult to see if the indicator had changed any color, detecting lethal radiation.

  Abbott waited for a response. Prall shook his head. Couldn’t make it out. “Shit!” Abbott cursed.

  “Go ahead and turn one of the lamps back on,” Ruger suggested. “We ought to do it anyway to check this thing out.”

  “Might as well, Marsh,” Almshouse agreed. “If we’ve been exposed, too late now to do anything about it anyway.”

  Abbott looked at Prall. “Turn them all on.”

  Almost the instant the six lamps were lighted, the blackness returned, and despite the relatively small amount of visible light that was returned, all of then had to shield their eyes for several minutes until they readjusted. Finally, they heard Prall’s voice say, “All clear. There’s no residual radiation.”

  Several minutes later, the group was again bathed in the murky reddish light. Ruger asked Abbott. “What do we do now?”

  Nobody answered. Ruger thought of John Lightfoot and the missing camera equipment. Now Ruger wished he’d had the presence of mind to bring along spare batteries for his own camera, which he had carelessly forgotten. He had no idea anyway if the film could be exposed down her under these conditions. Lightfoot would have known how to take a picture. Maybe he could make the camera work without batteries or rig something up to power it. Ruger decided to broach the subject.

  “Why don’t you get Lightfoot down here to photograph the place?” he asked. “Send him back to the camp to get my camera. Put some other battery power into it.”

  To Ruger’s surprise, Abbott responded indifferently. “He’s sick.”

  Ruger waited for further explanation, but none was offered.

  “Let’s start looking,” Abbott ordered.

  “For what?” Grimes asked.

  “The entrance,” Almshouse replied.

  “You’re going in there?” Ruger responded in disbelief. “You’re nuts!”

  “It’s our job, Mike,” Abbott replied. “That’s why we’re here. Thought you knew that by now.”

  Lisk and Almshouse were already closely inspecting the grates.

  “You’ve got to be out of your mind, Abbott,” Ruger said. “You have no idea what might be in there!”

  Lisk and Almshouse were moving along the perimeter of the structure. Abbott replied, “It’s probably a solid shell anyway. Or else we’d have seen a door by now.”

&
nbsp; “Don’t be too sure,” Lisk responded. He and Almshouse were now kneeling close to the floor.

  “What did you find?”

  “The doorbell,” Lisk responded.

  “Gee-eez! Will you look at that!” Grimes exclaimed.

  Everyone gathered around Lisk’s shoulder. Beneath his knees was a panel. But the most astonishing discovery was the series of symbols. Everyone recognized them as the same type figures etched on the box that Ruger and Grimes had found out on The Ice.

  “Is it the entrance?”

  “No. I don’t think so,” Lisk replied. “But I bet there’s got to be one here somewhere.”

  “Push the buttons,” Ruger suggested.

  “No,” Lisk responded. “Not just yet. Let me study this.”

  Ruger looked around. He had never felt this uneasy before in his entire life. Had never felt so uncertain about anything. And somewhat insignificant. “What is this place?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Almshouse responded. “But I think I can venture a guess.”

  “I don't really care,” Ruger replied. “I just want to get the hell out of it.”

  “I think we’re in the outside corridor of a more significant inner structure,” Almshouse continued to speculate. “A buffer zone, probably. Environmentally controlled. Most likely a place to make the transition from the outside environment to whatever lies inside there.”

  “Kind of like an air-lock,” Grimes suggested.

  “Exactly,” Lisk replied. “I think if we look along this wall long enough we’re going to find the entrance. I think if we look along the outer wall, we should be able to find where it enters from outside. Remember, we came in through a hole made by the ice.”

  “There’s breathable air inside the corridor only because the ice broke the outer protective shell and let in the outside atmosphere,” Almshouse said.

  Abbott said, “ Seems so obvious now. The ice got inside over a period of time, broke apart the shell, and exposed the interior corridor. It carried the artifact debris to the surface. It’s amazing the ice hasn’t done more damage.”

  “I think maybe it hasn’t had enough time yet,” Grimes speculated.