Trout clambered down and signaled to the engineer in charge of the first blue research center to be towed.
Siem, who had been working with Dr. Bundy securing the laboratory, stopped suddenly.
“Do you feel that?” he muttered to the scientist.
“What?”
“In your stomach,” Siem said. “Pressure. Waves of pressure.”
Bundy hesitated, then replied, “A little. It’s just nerves.”
“Just nerves… doing what?” Siem asked earnestly.
Bundy looked at him strangely and didn’t reply.
Several men worked with shovels around the ski tip of one strut of the blue unit until it began rising. Siem joined them, trying to give himself something to focus on besides his uneasiness. When the leg had completely retracted, they began to pack snow a meter deep beneath it. Repeating this process with the other three supports would create a new, sturdy foundation for the structure to rise on its hydraulics, allowing for its hitch frame to be attached. Then the team would attach it to a bulldozer and a truck for its long trip across the ice.
As they worked on the snow beneath each leg, Siem noticed that his discomfort increased when the jacking stopped and the team was working in silence. He also noticed that he wasn’t the only one feeling it. Several of the people paused to adjust their waistbands or rest their hands on their ribs.
Even Bundy noticed and glanced around, his goggled eyes coming to rest in Siem’s direction.
Suddenly Ivor griped, “What in the great white hell is goin’ on? I feel like I’m at a bloody rock show!”
With little wind to scatter sound, his words rang clearly over the work site. There was a chorus of agreement.
“That’s exactly it,” someone said. “I feel like I have a big sound speaker on my stomach.”
“Not a speaker,” Ivor said. “A subwoofer.”
“Yes,” Siem said. There seemed to be a very low-pitched, sub-audible frequency, something none of them had ever experienced.
The team was silent a moment, looking toward the horizons. But their world was still empty save for the modules and vehicles… and shadows that looked out of sync.
Everyone jumped when the last hydraulic leg started jacking up.
“That’s all we need,” muttered Bundy. “Mass hysteria.”
“What about the PALAOA recording?” Siem asked. “Could that be the problem?”
The Perennial Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean was a German effort located northeast of the Troll station, under the ice and underwater. A year or so ago they had picked up a remarkably loud, very deep buzz that sounded like a droning airplane engine. “A bit like the world’s largest didgeridoo,” as one of the Australians had described it. And the Germans had confirmed that there were no ships anywhere within a thousand miles of the receiver, so to date the source was another of Antarctica’s multitude of mysteries.
“We’d actually hear it if that were it,” said Bundy.
“And we’re not underwater anyway,” Ivor said, wandering over.
“Maybe we’d better call the Norweg—” Trout started, then looked back at the dark power module. “Oh. Damn.”
“You think it could be seismic?” Siem asked.
Trout shook his head. “If it was an earthquake, we wouldn’t feel it in our guts but nowhere bloody else.”
The hydraulic leg stopped when it had fully retracted. The silence was as empty as the vista surrounding them. Everyone set their shovels to the snow. Because the air was still and crystal particles of ice did not stir, no one saw a blank space of air pucker about a hundred feet from the module. Slowly, the void sucked itself into the invisible shape of a circle. Then it blew itself out.
The team didn’t see it but they felt it in their bellies. Nearly everyone cursed and swung their hands to grip their torsos, dropping their shovels.
The air puckered again in a different spot, in the shadow of a module, collapsing on itself like a vertical sinkhole. The shadow shrank, then expanded, so this time half the team saw it and cried out. A moment later the air snapped back to normal. Amid the shouting, Bundy, the nearest, ran to the spot and stood in it, waving his arms around.
“I don’t feel a damn thing!” he called.
Then there was a horribly recognizable sound—metal, wrenching. They spun and watched as the facing wall of the nearest blue module pinched inward, as though grabbed from the inside. It continued to implode with a crunching noise until it formed the shape of a circle. Then the metal flew outward with a metallic shriek. The surrounding joints held, the wall did not detach, but it warped as it expanded, leaving it bulbous and grotesque.
Almost instantly, the air behind Siem sucked back, his shoulders with it. Trout grabbed his sleeve and pulled hard. Siem opened his mouth but couldn’t scream. Trout jerked him free just as the air blew convex, knocking Siem to his knees, then facedown. In shock, he quickly raised his head and shook the snow from his face as Trout bent protectively over him.
There was another metallic squeal. This time it was a leg of the module they’d been working on. As the air pulled back, the leg bent with it, and suddenly there was a flash of light like sustained lightning, brilliant and unyielding. As the first painful shock of the magnesium-white flare subsided, the glow seemed to possess a shape.
“Do you see that?!” Ivor shouted.
“Yes!” everyone called out.
They were staring at the mostly featureless mask of a human face. As it continued to form it began to burn. Strangely, the high, all-consuming fires did not throw off any heat.
What appeared to be a mouth opened wide.
“Ul… !” it cried in a voice that sounded like a monstrous Antarctic gale.
Almost at once another metal leg bent the other way. Unsteady now, the huge module began to list to one side. The team shouted and ran from under it. Fingers struggling beneath his thick gloves, Trout dragged the still-prone Siem by the shoulders, as the big blue beast leaned until its side crashed to the snow.
The team was openly scared now, looking in all directions for the next anomaly, unconsciously clumping together for protection. Trout urged Siem back on his feet.
There was another suck of air about seven or eight feet above them—and the face beneath the fire took on greater substance, now with more rough detaiclass="underline" its mouth open, eyes wide.
“Ul…vor…ul…vor!”
Two men fell to their knees, clutching their sides.
“What is it?” Trout said in a trembling voice as he retreated from the group
“This is insane!” Bundy shouted back, looking from Trout to the circle.
“I see… eyes… the mouth!” Siem whispered.
Bundy didn’t answer. He was looking up at the face of fire, its dark eyes scanning the group as though they were searching. The manifestation seemed to be struggling, repeatedly trying to stabilize and failing.
“Ulvor!” it cried again. “Ulvor o Glogharas!” This time it was clearly a human-sounding voice, intensely magnified, the words echoing across the ice like a sonic boom.
The face gained sharpness, clarity, even as the flames licked at it. The eyes were pearls of black amid the bronzed silhouette.
Parts of a body became visible now too. There was a bare shoulder and hands that were engulfed in tongues of flame moving in slow, sinuous gestures.
The air was pulsing more violently now. A full figure formed, all of it ablaze, hovering in the air, looking, looking…
“Vol!” it screamed. “Enzo pato Vol!”