The Thing: Zero Day Read online

INDEX

  Copyright

  Dedications

  Part 1 - From Another World

  Part 2 - Strangers

  Part 3 – Identify Yourself

  Part 4 – The Thing

  First published in Great Britain by Speartip

  The text and story contained within is Copyright © 2014, Lee McGeorge.

  STRICTLY NOT FOR SALE

  This release is not for profit, fan-fiction.

  Copyright of the source material exists with the respective rights-holders

  https://www.Lee-McGeorge.co.uk

  Cover artwork by Miguel E. Santillán

  https://santillanstudio.deviantart.com

  ISBN 978-0-9546953-5-4

  Speartip Publishing

  Islington, London, N4

  For

  Logan, Kaden and Kobi

  Special Thanks

  Darth Howell, Lady Islington

  THE THING ZERO DAY

  By

  Lee McGeorge

  Inspired by John Carpenter’s film, ‘The Thing’

  and

  John W. Campbell’s story, ‘Who Goes There?’

  Part 1

  From Another World

  ANTARCTICA, 1982

  The First Day of Winter

  The sound rumbled in like a distant thunder, growing with intensity until the men could feel it penetrating their bones. “What the heck is that?” the cook quizzed.

  The men in the mess hall stopped eating and became quiet to listen. Hans rested his cigarette on the side of the ashtray to watch the vibration in the rising smoke as it faded in and out. “Is that an earthquake?” he quizzed. “Ice melt?”

  Bjorn, the camp doctor appeared at the doorway, out of breath, running. “You gotta see this. Quick. Now, come now.”

  All men were up and following, grabbing outdoor jackets from the exit. The sun was going down and there was little daylight left other than an orange rim across the frozen Antarctic horizon. “Over there, look,” Bjorn pointed to the wheel in the sky as it grew closer and closer.

  “What in the hell is that?”

  All twelve men stood captivated as the disc in the sky bore down on them. It wobbled awkwardly, like a spinning top with the spike out of kilter, the craft rocking around an off-centre point and throwing off a grinding magnetic hum with each revolution.

  “It’s getting closer… It’s coming straight at us.”

  The disc began to take on definition. It was illuminated on the underside. The lighting cast against tubes and ridges of the structure. Along its edge was a faint blue lip of light and three orange glowing circles on the underside.

  Norstad held his hand to shield the object from his eyes and picked out the almost imperceptible mirage of three invisible legs splayed out below the disc. Invisible legs that picked up the snow and spun it in three spiralling vortexes.

  The craft passed slowly overhead with a growl, bringing the snowy whirlwinds rushing through the camp then away on the other side as it departed, the noise intensifying to the roar of a jet engine, then dropping as they were taken through the eye of the storm.

  “What in God’s name?” Bjorn yelled. It was passing, moving away, wobbling unsteadily and making a sound like it was winding down as it receded from view. “Norstad, you ever see a flying machine like that?”

  The pilot shook his head. “Never.”

  The disc was merging into the orange line of the horizon. It was coming down. Whether it was landing or crashing was up for debate, but it was coming down and it didn’t sound or look like a controlled descent.

  A bearing, they would need a bearing. Norstad ran to the stationary chopper and climbed into the cockpit. He would use the compass to see its direction... except… it was wrong. They were on the magnetic South Pole. The compass should point straight down into the Earth. It didn’t. It pointed north east and it swayed left to right by twenty degrees every few seconds. “What the?” Norstad looked about him. Skis and ski poles behind the seat. He grabbed them and climbed out of the helicopter. He rammed a ski pole into the snow, took a few paces back and closed one eye that he could align himself with the vanishing disc, then rammed another pole into the ground along the line of sight.

  The doctor approached him. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I think that thing is landing or crashing.”

  “Yo, man, it was a spaceship,” the cook said. “It was from the stars, man.”

  Norstad and Bjorn held their gaze for a few seconds, both men silenced by the thoughts of alien technology. “There could be people on board,” Norstad said pushing away the idea of exotic spacecraft; but it did look like how a child would draw a flying saucer.

  Then from far into the distance came something spectacular. For more than thirty seconds a terrific lightning storm erupted, with seemingly every bolt hitting the ground in the same vicinity. It looked as though the heavens were throwing forked arrows of light, but by some crazy quirk of nature, the volts zigged and zagged to hit the ground at a central point.

  Norstad looked along the line of sight made by his ski poles. It aligned to the source of the lightning.

  “That was a spaceship,” the cook said again, hunching his shoulders and pulling up the fur hood to the coat. He swayed a little, moving to keep the cold out of his muscles. “Don’t pretend like I’m crazy. You all saw it. Tell me you saw it too.”

  “I saw something,” the doctor replied. “I saw the damndest thing… And you’re right. We all saw it.”

  ----- X -----

  Norstad, Bjorn and Finn had settled into the corner booth for the night. “What’s this one?” Finn asked the doctor.

  Bjorn shrugged, looking at the script of the bottle. “Russian farm girl goodness. It’s got a picture of a young woman carrying reeds.”

  Three glasses, three drinks. “It’s probably piss water in Russia,” Norstad said raising his glass. “Skol.”

  “Skol,” the men replied. They tasted their drinks then grinned to one another. Russian vodka was good vodka. In Norway, the government controlled all alcohol production except beers which meant decent booze in country was scarce. It took a trip to the Antarctic and some free trade with Russian sailors at Bellingshausen to get the good stuff. They were going to be here for four months and were allocated official rations of twenty crates of beer. Four hundred and eighty bottles to last twelve men four months. Thank God for the Russians. They’d sold them a season’s worth of hard liquor for pennies.

  Strand, the base commander, put on some music. Sam Cooke, setting the mood for an evening wind down. “Does anyone want to do an envelope?” he called to the room. The men shrugged, they blew cigarette smoke. They drank.

  “We can open one,” said Kleppa. “Decide if it’s worth doing.” The biologist, Asgeir Kleppa, was a short little man with a bald head and wire framed glasses. Strand held out a handful of sealed envelopes for him to choose from.

  “What you got?” Finn called.

  Kleppa pulled out a slip of paper. “Campmates. Your challenge today is to build a ten pin bowling alley and organise a tournament, the winner takes two bottles of beer.”

  All of the men laughed at the prize and raised their glasses. “Skol!” came the universal response.

  “Does anybody want to do it?” Strand asked?

  The climate scientists embroiled in a card game lifted their heads out of a cloud of marijuana smoke and said. “Yeah, we’re in,” sounding as though they didn’t know what they were committing to.

  “Those guys are in,” Kleppa said. “And I’ll do it.”

  “Me too,” Strand said.

  Norstad leaned in close to Bjorn and Finn. “The commander is in too,” he said with a smile and a wink. They were all thi
nking the same thing. Camp Commander Strand was tasked with keeping morale high for the four months they would live on this ice cube. He took his job seriously but he wasn’t a natural fit for the social work of his contract. Ex-Navy, he was the book keeper, the man who made the trains run on time, but he wasn’t the man to get drunk, kick back and be the life and soul of the party.

  “Do you guys want to come bowling?” he asked.

  Finn shook his head side to side, blowing cigarette smoke, answering for all three. “I don’t want to play skittles,” he said to the table. “I wanna go find the flying saucer.”

  “Oh, boy… If it’s not out there tomorrow I’m going to cry,” Norstad said. “I promise I’ll cry like a baby. Nothing happens on this whole damn continent, then suddenly it turns into Space Invaders.”

  “I’m sure it was something Earthly,” the doctor said. The voice of reason, Bjorn, with his trimmed blond hair and constantly shaven face had a professional demeanour at all times; even when a flying saucer had skimmed overhead. “I’m curious as to what it could be. It moved with the speed of a helicopter or blimp. Perhaps it was some kind of experimental craft. My concern is it was large enough to carry people and if it crashed out there they may not survive until morning. We need to prepare ourselves for the eventuality that if we do find something, it will be of this Earth… and it may be unpleasant.”

  Norstad raised his vodka as though proposing a toast. “We’ll know soon enough. I’m keen to head out at first light.”

  “I’d like to come with you,” Bjorn said. “But not if you’re flying with a hangover. If you want to go at first light could I ask you stop drinking now?”

  Norstad nodded. “Too true, doc.” He finished his drink and placed the glass upside down on the table. “I’m going to bed… I wanna be fresh… and I need a little company.” He left the table with a slight sway to him. A slight smile. He found most of the men had joined in the ten pin bowling and a lane had been created in the corridor from the galley towards their rooms. MacCloud, the frizzy haired cook, bowled a tennis ball towards the empty beer bottles. It knocked two over and bounced wide. They needed a heavier ball.

  Norstad stepped amongst the bottle pins and passed through the game to his berth, a tiny room less than three metres by two with a tiny window. It had a single bed with drab olive blankets and little else other than a blow up sex doll sitting in the corner wearing black lingerie. A collection of hard core porn magazines were on the bedside table. It was often mused whether any other Antarctic station had as much porn as they did. With each crew that visited a whole new stash was added to the collection. None had been taken away and with three crews a year since 1967 they’d accumulated enough filth to open their own sex shop.

  It wasn’t like this at other Norwegian stations. Tor and Troll stations were run by the Norwegian Polar Institute and whoever was in charge of that outfit filled their bases with young female researches and saunas. This station, Fafnir, was run by the Norwegian Institute of Air Research; and the NIAR thought a man like Strand could organise their happiness for four months armed with nothing more than thirty six bottles of beer per man.

  Norstad talked to the blow up doll as he undressed. “How are you tonight, Astrid? Are things good? We saw a flying saucer today and we’re going to go and look for it tomorrow.”

  ----- X -----

  Finn had the blowtorch aimed directly into the helicopter exhaust, blowing a meter long blue flame into the engine cowling to preheat the mechanics. The Bell Jetranger was a reliable workhorse, even in Antarctic conditions, but getting airborne at these temperatures took time. Norstad pumped the pressure on the antifreeze bottle and aimed the hose at the mechanics. “Spraying,” he called. Finn stepped aside and shut off the torch whilst the rotor mast got a soaking in ethylene glycol.

  Twenty minutes later, Norstad and Bjorn were in the air. They circled the camp once. Fafnir station felt substantial when you were stood amongst the buildings, but from the air it was a few wooden huts and connection corridors half buried in snow amongst an endless wilderness of white.

  On the ground, the three climatologists, Hans, Pederson and Rolland, waved to the chopper with wide swings of their arms. The guys were laid-back, tree-hugging hippie types. They were like a trio of brothers all sporting long, wavy blonde hair and full beards. Always together as a tight sub-unit of the crew, they saw themselves as defenders of the Earth. The reality was they smoked too much weed. They were the typical, politically active, educated, stoner Norwegians out to save the planet. Today, saving the planet would involve balloon launches to the high atmosphere which would then detach and parachute their equipment to ground. In a few days they’d have Norstad fly around the wilderness following radio trackers to pick them up. The balloon man, Moller, gave them a two handed wave as they headed out.

  “You got your bearing?” Bjorn asked into his headset mic.

  Norstad nodded. “North east. We need to go generally parallel to the mountain ridge. A couple of clicks inside.”

  “I counted,” the doctor said. “Yesterday, when the lightning began. Like a child counting to measure if the thunder is getting closer. I counted twenty two.”

  “Twenty two,” Norstad acknowledged. “Twenty two seconds. Three hundred and forty meters per second… that’s got to be about seven or eight kilometres… That’s as good as any Doc, let’s go out eight, two in from the ridge and start circling at a hundred meters. See what we can see.” Norstad brought his airspeed to 50 knots and clicked the stopwatch. Wilderness navigation was a mysterious art. There were no guides, no landmarks and no compass headings. Fafnir station put out a radio beacon any time they were airborne which helped to find their way back, but finding your way to a grid reference on a fourteen million square kilometre continent was mostly potluck and instinct. He had the general direction. He would fly for five and a half minutes. He would cross his fingers.

  “Who won the bowling?” Norstad asked.

  “The game came from one of Strand’s envelopes,” the doctor replied. “There’s no winning at those games … only degrees of losing… When I went to bed, do you know what they were using as a bowling ball?”

  “I saw a tennis ball.”

  “They were using a cabbage. They said it was the only thing heavy enough… Some days I wonder how I ended up here. Trapped in isolation with a bunch of drunkards, having a bowling contest with a cabbage.”

  Norstad laughed. “MacCloud let them bowl with food?”

  “Yeah… and he said it’s cabbage soup for dinner tonight… I suppose that’s a good thing... No more bowling.”

  ----- X -----

  At five and a half minutes in, Norstad slowed the chopper and began rolling in a wide, snake like pattern, zig-zagging in and out from the mountain ridge at a hundred meters altitude.

  “That looks like a lake,” the doctor said. “It looks like water.”

  Norstad saw it too. On an endless white plain, there was a long streak of what looked like fresh water reflecting the sunlight. He banked the helicopter towards it and lowered the altitude. It was long. Maybe two and half thousand meters in length and a hundred meters wide. “It’s iced, Doc. It’s like someone has melted a runway and it’s iced over.”

  “What could do that?”

  “Heat. A lot of heat. An ice lake that size would take more heat than you could imagine.”

  Norstad slowed the helicopter to ten knots and glided across the frozen surface. The compacted top snow had transformed into a glassy, reflective surface. It was almost a mirror.

  “What the… Norstad, look.”

  “I see it,” the pilot said. Although he wasn’t sure of what exactly he was seeing. Deep in the ice, melted and refrozen, was some kind of structure or mechanism. It looked like a huge disc had fallen into a sinkhole, the surface was iced and the craft was covered, but it was still visible.

  Norstad put the helicopter into a wide turn.

  It was a disc of some kind… a machine of some kind.<
br />
  “Holy cow. This could be… It must have landed way back there and skidded forward, melting the snow,” Bjorn said. “It’s melted everything.”

  “Yeah, but look where it is now. It’s deep. Nothing could have melted itself that deep without a huge amount of power. It’s underneath the ice, Doc. It’s either skidded under, or melted the surface and sunk below the meltwater. We’re not going to get to it without thermite and decanite charges and…” Norstad suddenly banked the helicopter away.

  “What’s wrong? Where are you going?” Bjorn quizzed.

  “Grab a beacon, will you. Activate it and throw it out. That thing would need a lot of juice to melt itself under the ice. It could be nuclear… and what we’re doing might be like flying over Three Mile Island… Safety first my friend.”

  Bjorn didn’t respond, but got to work unwrapping a radio beacon. It was bright orange, the shape and size of a beer can. He twisted the end cap fully until the small white light blinked. “I’m going to drop it by the ice lake, fly us along the edge.”

  Norstad headed back towards Fafnir as the beacon was dropped through the window. He adjusted the cockpit equipment to check they could find the disc again. The beacon signal was strong.

  ----- X -----

  Asgeir Kleppa took a break from his microscope and walked through to the rec room. His eyes were tired. The work required concentration and could only be done in short bursts, but the continued strain of microscope work wasn’t helping his poor eyesight. He wasn’t the young, fit and healthy type like the others. He was the short, fat, bald and boring microscope nerd.

  “Hey, Kleppa,” MacCloud said as he passed the galley. “There’s coffee in the pot.”

  “Great, thank you.” He took a cup and sat in the rec room to stare through the window. Outside he could see the climatology boys fixing their experiment to one of Moller’s balloons whilst Ingvar and Oyvind exercised the dogs by having sled races through the camp.

  There was little to do here other than work on his science project and that required no more than three or four hours a day. It was his theory and a theory of others, that micro-organisms lived in the deep ice. There was even some evidence that more complex bacteria lived there too. Not frozen, but living and moving, producing proteins that acted as antifreeze. It was an interesting concept, that a bacteria in a block of ice could melt its surroundings, effectively giving it an ocean to swim through. The problem was he could find the trace evidence and the complex organic proteins that melted the ice, but he couldn’t find the micro-organism that produced it.

  “Do you think they’ll find anything?” MacCloud asked. “Bjorn and Norstad, I mean. Do you think they’ll find what we saw last night?”

  Kleppa shrugged his shoulders. “It would be fun if they found something.”

  Almost on cue the sound of the helicopter faded into his ears. “That was quick,” the cook said. “They can’t have been gone an hour.”

  They watched as the big pontoons of the helicopter skis touched down. The men got out. They began talking with the climatologists. They waved to the guys running the dogs. Strand was there too. They were discussing something. Something so important they didn’t wait to bring it inside.

  “Hey!” MacCloud exclaimed. “We’re missing out.”

  Kleppa was already out of his seat. MacCloud took a half minute to shut down the gas in the galley and followed him, grabbing coats at the exit.

  Everybody was congregated by the chopper.

  “It looks like a giant disc that has skidded in and melted the surface layer,” Norstad was saying. He explained the scene, his fears of radiation, the need for thermite and decanite charges. “But let me tell you straight, guys. This could be the real deal. The thing that’s out there looks like it’s from another world.”

  ----- X -----

  “Norstad wants the Geiger counter,” Oyvind shouted to Kleppa.

  The biologist opened the wooden storage box and checked the battery. The instrument was old, a hefty metal enclosure with a hand held cathode. It was his ticket to the spaceship. Everybody wanted to go, but the helicopter could only carry four and the tractor could only take four before it got cramped. It was decided not to use the dogs. Normally he would have been excluded from anything exciting, but today he was needed. He was the one who could make a decision on safety.

  Oyvind was preparing several crates of explosives. Thermite charges and decanite.

  “How much are you bringing?” Kleppa asked with concern.

  Oyvind stroked his beard and grinned. “A lot. If it’s as big as Bjorn says it is… I don’t wanna get out there and find we have to come back for more.”

  Kleppa trudged outside, his short legs struggling with the deep snow more than the other men. Norstad waved him to the chopper. “You ride with us, you can check the area from the air.”

  The tractor rumbled to life with the deepest growling engine and a puff of black diesel smoke. The Tucker Sno-Cat was the bright orange workhorse that had built Fafnir Station back in ‘67 and she still ran like a champion. With four independent caterpillar tracks and a top speed of only thirty kilometres an hour she wasn’t fast, but she was just about unstoppable over any terrain.

  The chopper lifted into the air and Norstad set his instruments to home in on the radio beacon. They were on the scene and gliding over the lake within minutes.

  Kleppa pulled open the helicopter window and pointed the cathode wand outside. The Geiger counter clicked, the needle swung.

  Bjorn was sitting in the rear seat, looking over Kleppa’s shoulder at the equipment in his lap. “It looks like you were right to be cautious,” Bjorn said to the pilot. “This thing is clicking like crazy.”

  “It’s only alpha particles,” Kleppa said. “It’s background and it’s on the surface of the ice. It’s not dangerous.” He tried other settings on the counter. “I’m not detecting anything else. No beta, no gamma. We’ll be safe so long as nobody eats the snow.”

  Norstad pointed to the end of the frozen lake and the pit.

  Kleppa pushed the wand outside of the window and aimed it at the disc. He lost interest in the reading as soon as he saw the spacecraft. It was incredible.

  “That’s safe too,” Bjorn said looking at the counter. “We can land, Norstad. It’s safe.”

  ----- X -----

  “Tell me about safety, why is there a cliff of ice around this thing?” Strand asked to nobody in particular.

  “It’s backscatter and sub-glacial pressure.” Hans answered. “Under the crust, there is water movement and glaciers moving below the surface. It’s pushing up ice from deep down. The ice at the bottom of the cliff could be as old as one hundred thousand years.”

  “But is it safe to climb into?”

  Hans nodded nonchalantly. “This is a sinkhole. It’s a gap between two sub-surface glaciers. The hole could give way, but there’s no way to tell whether it will go in a few weeks or a thousand years. Not without doing a deep survey. We need to go down and check it out.”

  Strand collected flags from the tractor and began distributing them to the men. “Finn, could you bring the deep bore… and Kleppa, you should work the video camera. We need to document this. Oyvind, if you back up the tractor, we should be able to drop the rope ladder to the surface. I’ll go first to check the ice integrity and if it looks safe I’ll wave you down.”

  The work began in earnest, but even with the speed and enthusiasm it was an hour before the whole crew made it into the sinkhole. The disc was shallow enough to be seen but the detail was obscured. It wasn’t deep. In some places it was only fifty or sixty centimetres and there were bubbles under the ice that showed the craft was sitting in liquid water. The men spread out with their flags to encircle it showing that the disc was approximately forty meters in diameter, a lot smaller than the sinkhole. Kleppa filmed the scene with the video camera, feeling his heart beating faster and faster with anticipation. This was really happening. They’d found a mystery under the ice an
d they had the tools to dig it up.

  “Bore here,” Oyvind said as he sprayed an X onto the snow with red paint. Beside it he wrote 2m to indicate depth. Finn got to work with the drilling using a small petrol generator in a backpack to power the ice bore. In all he needed to cut twenty holes, but being shallow the work was fast. Oyvind used a chainsaw to fracture areas between the boreholes on the far side of the disc. “I’m going to burn a channel along this edge,” he said as he began working with thermite grenades. “I need everyone to get back.”

  The men moved away as he unscrewed the grenade triggers and dismantled the can of thermite that he could pour the silvery dust directly onto the ice and into the channel he’d cut. “Fire in the hole,” he called as he ignited the mixture. The iron oxide compound burned with an impossible brightness as it melted through the ice and blew great geysers of illuminated steam into the air as it sunk into his channel.

  “I think we’re ready,” Oyvind called to Strand. “It looks like the surface ice is floating on liquid water. I’m going to set decanite charges on this side. It should roll a shockwave across the top of the structure to the channel on the far side. It’s gonna blow chunks high and away, but I still want everybody at least a hundred meters back. We’re talking a thousand cubic meters of ice so this is gonna be dangerous.”

  “Alright, you heard the man,” Strand called as though commanding the action, but the others were already retreating.

  The decanite came in foil cans with ring-pull triggers that packed the same punch as a hand grenade but without the fragments. They were loud and had a lot of force but no compression. It was only when packed in ice that they had any real effect. Oyvind carefully unscrewed the ring-pulls and disconnected the triggers from the blasting caps. To each he connected yellow detonating cord. Then he set his grenades into the boreholes and retreated.

  Kleppa got his video camera ready. “Filming.”

  Oyvind popped the detonating cord, the yellow cable exploding a shockwave towards the decanite at seven thousand meters per second. The grenades threw up a mountain of ice along with a blast wave that knocked the air from the lungs. The explosion was spectacular to watch and the men gave a few whistles, cheers and claps. It was always the same cheery reaction. Men loved blowing stuff up.

  The blast was precision. Oyvind’s knowledge of ice fracturing was masterful and, just as he’d said, the decanite had rolled a shockwave across the top of the disc and thrown the debris to the far side of the sinkhole. In fact, the ice clearing was almost too good to be true it was so accurate.

  As the men returned to the disc they all began to feel a warmth from craft. Finn took off his gloves and touched the hull. “Hey, this thing is warm.”

  Oyvind touched the hull also. “It melted the ice around it, that’s why it’s came off cleanly. It was sitting in water with a frozen crust.”

  Norstad strode boldly ahead of the others to stand on a small raised turret in the centre of the disc. Then he got on his knees and inspected further to lift a metal door away from the structure. “Hey,” he called. “It’s open.”

  The men jogged to him, all filled with anticipation and excitement. A sense of great discovery running between them all.

  “What have you got?” Strand asked.

  “A way in,” he said. “Once we drain it.”

  The door was the same size and design as a human hatch, the sort of thing to be found on a submarine, but having been submerged in meltwater, the entrance was flooded to the top. “What do you make of this, Bjorn… Bjorn?” Norstad looked between the men. “Hey where’s the Doc?”

  The men looked between them, then turned to search. “Is he back at the chopper?” Strand asked. “Anyone see him at the tractor?”

  Then Kleppa called, “There he is.”

  Almost on the horizon and out of the sinkhole, the doctor was on his hands and knees. He was almost invisible when obscured by the glare of the ice lake.

  “I’ll get him,” Norstad said as he began the walk to collect his friend. “What the hell are you doing up there, Doc?” The walk took several minutes and at times was like ice skating uphill. “Doc?” he called. “Hey, Bjorn… what are you doing? You’ve got to come down and see this.”

  The doctor turned his head but didn’t answer. He remained on his hands and knees and went back to staring at the ice.

  “Bjorn? Bjorn, answer me, man. What’s wrong, are you sick? We’ve found something amazing down there, you should come and see. It’s the most amazing thing you’re ever going to…”

  Norstad choked on his own words as he reached Bjorn. He’d thought the disc was amazing, but the doctor had discovered something even grander. It was frozen in the ice and it was looking back at them with three red eyes.

  ----- X -----

  The sun was going down as the helicopter landed at camp. Moller the balloon expert, MacCloud the cook and two of the climatology boys, Pederson and Rolland were the only crew to remain at Fafnir.

  “Did you see the spaceship?” MacCloud asked. “Look, man, you’ve gotta tell me everything.”

  “We’ve got more than a spaceship,” Norstad said with a grin. He pointed to the tractor, a small orange dot coming over the horizon. “Wait till you see what they’re bringing back.”

  MacCloud watched expectantly as the vehicle closed in. Norstad and Oyvind got to work pulling the tarp across the helicopter. Bjorn, the doctor, had travelled out in the helicopter but insisted on switching places with Oyvind so he could ride back with the tractor. He was like a child on Christmas morning and wouldn’t let the prize out of his sight.

  The tractor had its full beaming headlights shining from a rack above the front window. A light snowfall started, the flakes showing through the beams. It growled into camp dragging a block of ice that was laid across two sleds.

  “What in the heck is that?” MacCloud asked.

  Bjorn got out of the tractor and began barking instructions. “Inside, we need to get this inside. The best place is the tractor workshop.”

  “Well, where’s the tractor going to go?” Strand asked.

  “The tractor will be fine outside, but this is too valuable, we’ve got to get it under cover.” Bjorn moved to the back of the ice block. Ingvar, the dog handler, was already uncoupling the cargo. Finn took control of the tractor and moved the vehicle so that the ice block could be pushed into the workshop. Pederson and Rolland walked in with the ice block, trying to see through its surface. Hans came in with them and wiped the snow off with his arm.

  “Take a look,” Hans said to his colleagues. The three climatologists stared into the ice transfixed as Finn backed the tractor out of the workshop and shut down the engine.

  “Get the door closed,” Bjorn said. “And get some lamps in here, we need to warm the place up.”

  Norstad finished securing the helicopter with Oyvind and they crossed to the workshop. Finn watched them approach but before they arrived he closed the door in their face and locked them out. “What the hell... Hey, guys?” Norstad hit his hand against the door. “Too much excitement,” he said to Oyvind with barely contained anger.

  “They can’t abandon us now, they need to come back out,” Oyvind said. “We need to unpack the explosives. We can’t leave them in the tractor, it’s unsafe,”

  “I don’t think they care,” Norstad said. “They’ve become so excited by that thing in the ice, they’re behaving like jerks.”

  ----- X -----

  Norstad picked up a mug of coffee from the galley and wrapped his fingers around it. It was normal after any period of outside work for the crew to grab hot drinks and sit around tiredly. Working in snow, in heavy boots and thick clothing was exhausting. They’d been out dusk ‘til dawn without lunch and Norstad was so hungry that even bowling ball cabbage soup would taste good.

  Oyvind, Strand and Ingvar joined him, pouring their coffees and crashing heavily in the rec room. The last one in was Kleppa who picked up a cup of coffee whilst staring into space. Norstad
noticed that the little biologist looked unsteady on his feet but didn’t think anything of it until Kleppa dropped his mug, spilling the coffee and smashing the cup. “Whoa, butterfingers.” Oyvind called. “Sack the juggler, he’s rubbish.”

  “Are you alright?” Norstad called.

  Kleppa didn’t answer. He rooted to the spot and stared at the spilled coffee, then raised his hands to his temples and swayed unsteadily like he was about to topple over. Norstad leapt from his seat to wrap his arm around the biologist’s shoulders as he started to fall. “Take it easy big fella. Let’s get you sat down.”

  “Oh… I’m sorry.” Kleppa exhaled hard, puffing his cheeks. “I don’t know what happened. I’ve got a sudden headache and feeling dizzy.” He rocked backwards hard. If Norstad hadn’t held him upright he would have fallen. Ingvar came to help and the men guided Kleppa to a seat.

  MacCloud was emerging from the galley with an empty ice cream box to pick up the pieces of porcelain, his face softened when he saw the hunched shape of the biologist. “You alright, man?” Kleppa stared at the table and didn’t respond. To Norstad, “You want me to get the Doc?”

  Norstad looked up to MacCloud and made a nod sending the cook away to the tractor workshop.

  MacCloud ambled without speed along the main corridor from the rec room. “Hey, Doc…” he started to say as he entered the workshop, then forgot what he was talking about, or why he’d come. All of the men were surrounding the giant block of ice, staring at it as though hypnotised.

  Bjorn stood at the top like a high priest at his altar whilst the climatologists stood along one side and Finn and Ingvar stood on the other. MacCloud walked down the steps and made his way beside Finn who wiped at the surface of the ice, polishing it, making it easier to see.

  There was something in there. Dark, almost black but with a purple or bluish tinge. Perhaps the colouration came from the ice; but the one thing that stood out firmly were the three blood-red eyeballs, protruding from the mass as though on stalks. The creature was twisted, it’s body on its side, it’s head staring up and through the ice to the men looking in. It had powerful legs, bent backwards like a dog’s and long thin arms that ended in spindly fingers.

  The men stared at it.

  Transfixed.

  Hypnotised.

  ----- X -----

  “Where the hell is the Doc?” Norstad asked after ten minutes.

  Kleppa hadn’t improved, in fact he’d gotten worse. His skin had gone white and clammy. He was staring at the table and concentrating on his breathing. His eyes were open but he wasn’t communicating other than to mumble or make odd groans as though in the midst of an anxious nightmare.

  Strand knelt beside Kleppa to try and make eye contact. “Kleppa… Kleppa?” There was no response. “Asgeir Kleppa look at me!” he commanded with force to his voice. Kleppa remained locked in his dream world. “Norstad, go and find Bjorn, get the doctor back here.”

  Norstad left the rec room lamenting MacCloud. “Never send a cook to do something important,” he mumbled. “Bjorn!” he shouted in the corridor. “Hey, Bjorn, where are you?”

  Norstad stopped by the doorway to the laboratory feeling the quiet as an eerie presence that surrounded him. Nobody could be seen in either direction. He was only a ten second walk from the rec room and he knew there were men in the workshop, yet here, suddenly, he was alone and overwhelmed by a crushing fear of isolation. The feeling was profound, like he was the last man on Earth, but it was countered by a strange beckoning pull from the workshop.

  He was afraid. Genuine spine tingling fear rooted him to the spot, yet what caused that fear couldn’t be determined.

  He was going to the tractor workshop… but why? What was the reason for him to go?

  Kleppa… the doctor. Yes. Kleppa was acting weird.

  He called out again. “Bjorn… BJORN!”

  There was no response. “Oh, Jeepers, where are you Bjorn?” he whispered as he edged to the workshop. The door was closed. He pressed it with fingertips feeling a worry that he should return to the rec room and pretend he hadn’t even been here.

  The door crept open.

  He saw the men. Bjorn at the top of the ice block whilst three men stood either side. “Holy hell, Bjorn. Did you not hear me?”

  “Come in, close the door, we need to defrost this.”

  “Defrost?” Norstad asked not really registering what he’d heard. “No. Wait. Bjorn, you’re needed. Kleppa’s sick.” The doctor didn’t move. “Bjorn… what the hell is wrong with everybody? Kleppa is sick, we need you.”

  “This is more important,” Bjorn said.

  “Have you lost your mind? No, it isn’t. Kleppa is sick, you’re needed. Listen to me!” he said it with such force that all seven men were startled and broke eye contact with the ice to look at Norstad. “Bjorn! Kleppa is sick. Now. You’re needed.”

  The doctor rubbed his eyes as though he’d just woken up. “Where is he?”

  “Rec room, come on man, what is wrong with you? Are you daydreaming?”

  Bjorn rubbed his whole face with the palms of his hands. “Sorry, yes… Let’s go.”

  ----- X -----

  Norstad and the doctor returned to the rec room to find Kleppa slouching forward across the table. “There’s something wrong,” Strand said. “He’s not talking at all.”

  Bjorn knelt down and began asking Kleppa questions to which the biologist didn’t respond. Norstad hooked a finger to beckon Strand then whispered to him quietly. “There’s something real weird going on in the workshop. Come and check it out.”

  They left Kleppa with the doctor and walked the corridor. “Take a look at this,” Norstad said as he opened the door.

  The scene was as he’d left it, with three men on either side of the block of ice. “What are you guys doing?” Strand asked.

  Only Finn raised his head.

  “Guys… Look at me when I’m talking to you!” Strand shouted with the force of command he’d picked up in the Navy. It jolted the men and broke their gaze. “Come on, out of here. Kleppa is sick. I want everyone back to the rec room… Now.”

  Slowly, the six men began moving, shuffling towards the door, climbing the steps and filing past Norstad. Strand pulled a large bunch of keys from his pocket and locked the door. “Come with me,” he said to Norstad. They walked together back to the entrance and Strand handed him a coat.

  “We’re going outside?” Norstad asked. “It’s after dark.”

  “We’ll only be a few minutes. I’m going to make sure the tractor workshop is locked from outside too. “Grab a flare.”

  Norstad did as instructed and stepped out into a wind that was picking up strength. He triggered the flare which burned a red firework flame from his fist as they walked into the forming blizzard. Strand locked the tractor workshop. “These are the only keys,” he said. “I’ll keep them on me.”

  “What do you think is wrong?” Norstad asked.

  “I don’t know, but that isn’t normal… We dig something up from another world and people suddenly stop listening and one goes into dreamland. Safety first. We isolate it.”

  Norstad nodded, gave a thumbs up then headed back towards the entrance.

  ----- X -----

  Norstad and Strand were removing their coats when they heard a man cry out in pain. They looked to one another, then ran to the source. The rec room. It was Kleppa, falling forward out of his chair and rolling to his back in the grip of a seizure of some kind. His hands grabbed at his head, he foamed from the mouth, he twisted and writhed in pain whilst sucking in air and biting to hold his breath before bursting it out and sucking in again.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Strand asked.

  “Nothing serious,” Bjorn said as he stood up and moved back. “Epilepsy. Just let him have his seizure. All we need to do is make sure that he doesn’t hurt himself. It will be over in a few minutes.”

  Norstad knelt beside Kleppa and rested a hand on his shoulder.

 
“It’sssss nnnnnn,” Kleppa babbled.

  “It’s okay, Kleppa. Just be cool, ride it out.” Norstad said.

  The biologist shook his head and opened his eyes at Norstad, trying to speak, trying to say something.

  “Bjorn, you sure this is epilepsy? He’s looking at me.” Norstad asked.

  The doctor didn’t answer.

  Strand was about to ask again when he noticed a peculiarity to the crew. They had taken opposite sides of the rec room. Kleppa was on the floor suffering and in pain. Norstad was holding him and behind him stood himself and Oyvind.

  On the other side of the rec room stood Bjorn at the centre, flanked by the climatology boys, Hans, Pederson and Rolland on one side, and Finn, MacCloud, Ingvar and Moller on the other. They looked unmoved by the situation.

  “Are you going to help?” Strand asked Bjorn directly. “This is a medical emergency. Are you going to help?”

  “It’s an epileptic seizure,” Bjorn responded. “There isn’t anything to do. We let it pass, put him into bed so he can rest and that will be the end of it.”

  The way he said it, the impassive manner, not to mention the deadpan faces of the men flanking him told Strand that this would not be the end of it. Something was happening. Something strange. It wouldn’t end with an epileptic seizure. Strand could sense it.

  This would only be the beginning.

  Part 2

  Strangers