“If you will allow me to explain—”
“Explain what? How LSD made it to a military base in Antarctica? How some wise-ass wannabe sci-fi writer put his wet dreams down in a report for a lark? I’m less than a year from retirement, Colonel. I don’t have time for games.” He threw the report at Bloch, who caught it. “Get out.”
“They found a second one, sir.”
Wu paused. “A second what?”
“Spaceship. In Antarctica. In the ice.” Col. Bloch stepped forward and held out a manilla folder. “The details are in here. I wanted you to see the original report first, to prepare you for this one.”
The general snorted, but accepted the new folder. Could it be real? Bloch had never struck him as the least bit imaginative. And his secretary, Kirby, didn’t have the balls to prank him.
Wu adjusted his glasses, opened the folder, and studied the satellite photograph on top. Antarctica, clearly. It had a geological map overlay, and an area two hundred miles east of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station had been circled in red. He flipped forward. More photographs. A dark shape deep in the ice, estimated—according to notations in the corner—at 148 feet long and 51 feet at its widest. Sonar imaging showed a featureless oval. Thermal imaging showed nothing—the object was as cold as the surrounding glacier. Then came charts with technical calculations that he couldn’t follow. A report on a core sample of the ice around the vessel finished up, dating it back almost 19 million years.
“If this is some kind of joke—” Wu began.
“No, sir. Never.” Bloch actually sounded offended.
General Wu took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. A year from retirement, and this had to fall into his lap. For now, he had to assume the report was true. And if it wasn’t, God help Bloch, Kirby, and everyone else involved.
“How many people have seen this new report?” he asked.
“Eight, sir. Three on my staff, four on the survey team. I am the eighth. You make nine.”
Eight. Too many to keep a secret for long.
“Has anything leaked out?”
“Not yet, sir. The survey team first reported it as a meteorite. Now they’re not so sure. They are requesting confirmation from CalTech and NASA.”
“A meteorite,” Wu said. That sounded plausible. “Get NASA to confirm it. Just a freak of nature.”
“Yes, sir.”
The general held out his hand. “Give me that 1938 report again.”
Bloch returned it to him, and Wu stuck it in the manilla folder with the new report. He’d go through them both again after lunch.
“Why haven’t I seen that 1938 report before?” he asked. It should have been in the officers’ “funny file,” which got passed around at meetings and parties.
“It was…misfiled, sir. Only came to light six months ago, during a records sweep under the Freedom of Information Act. It was a week short of being released…” His voice trailed off.
The general snorted. It figured. Damned reporters were all trying to release everything under the Freedom of Information Act. Good thing it hadn’t gotten out. What a field day UFO nuts would have had. For once, luck was on their side.
“How long does it take to get to Antarctica from here?” he mused.
“I’m…not sure, sir. Three or four days, I would imagine. It’s high summer in Antarctica, so conditions are optimal for travel.”
“Find out.” Wu studied his fingernails. “Arrange whatever transportation we need. I want to see this thing for myself. You will join me, along with every member of your staff who knows about it. This must be contained. And lock down that survey team. Get them on our payroll. I don’t want them communicating with anyone other than you and me…as a matter of national security. There should be enough money left in the discretionary expense fund to cover whatever it takes to buy their services.”
“Sir.” Bloch saluted and hurried out.
Antarctica.… Wu sighed and picked up the 1938 report. His wife would not be happy.
But if it’s real…
CHAPTER ONE
Army Corps of Engineers
Special Operations Base, Antarctica
“I didn’t sign up for this,” groaned Pete Garvin, throwing down his pickaxe and twisting first left, then right to stretch out his back and shoulder muscles. “Three months of digging, and all I’ve got are pains where I didn’t know I had muscles.”
“You and me both, brother,” said Clay Washington. A burly African-American, he had been—until three months ago—head of the Antarctic Geo-survey Team, as well as Garvin’s boss. They had both signed on with General Wu’s team, helping to dig down through the glacier toward their discovery—whatever it turned out to be. A meteor? A spaceship? A frozen dinosaur whale (one of the wilder theories)? One guess was as good as another at this point.
He turned and gazed up the ice tunnel. Fifteen feet wide, ten feet high, with steel brace beams every six feet, it seemed to stretch to infinity, though he knew it only ran six-hundred feet to a switchback. The tunnel turned there, ran almost seven hundred more feet, and switchbacked again, before you finally reached the surface, with its semi-permanent buildings surrounding the tunnel mouth.
Arc lights and space heaters set every thirty feet ran the entire length. Between the lights, heaters, and the heavy digging equipment a hundred feet farther down, the tunnel temperature sometimes soared to a toasty 30°, though mostly it lingered at 28°. A series of wall-mounted fans hummed like a swarm of killer bees, circulating the air but doing little to relieve the months-old stench of human sweat and motor oil and exhaust fumes.
Pete sat on an outcropping of ice, sucking in huge gulps of air. For a minute he paused to watch men with jackhammers attacking the wall of ice at the end of the tunnel. Ice-dust and ice-chips flew. He and Clay had what the others called “easy work”—smoothing out the roughest parts of the walls so the mini-bulldozers and the golf carts could pass each other in the tunnel with comfortable safety.
The glacial ice grew harder the deeper they penetrated. We’re measuring progress by the foot, he told himself. Even so, progress was steady.
A string of curses erupted behind him. He glanced over his shoulder at the team of Army engineers, struggling to reinforce a set of steel girders that had begun to buckle. No one wanted the tunnel to collapse before they reached their goal.
The clatter of the jackhammers abruptly ceased. Pete turned his attention back to the men who had been working on the wall. The mini-bulldozer roared to life, zipped over, and began scooping up debris. It would ferry everything up to the surface and dump it a hundred feet from camp.
We must be getting close, Pete thought. He squinted at the rough wall of ice at the end of the tunnel. How much farther? The Army Corps of Engineers had designed a gently sloping down-ramp, and the team had turned the final corner two weeks ago. It should be smooth sailing the rest of the way.
Excited shouts rose from the men by the bulldozer. The driver cut its motor and climbed down from the cab. Everyone gathered in a circle.
Clay craned his neck. “I think they found something.”
“Come on, let’s take a look.” Without waiting for a reply, Pete rose and trotted down the grade to where men now gathered in front of the bulldozer’s shovel. Finally something to break the monotony of digging.
Clay fell in step beside him.
“—better call the General,” Corporal Menendez was saying, as they joined the circle corps workers. She was in charge of this work shift. “He’s going to want to see it.”