“Thank you, Nicolai.”
The man pursed his lips, a hurt expression that looked rather blithe on his face.
“Anytime,” he said finally and slinked away.
Olivia listened to the men as they snored. She wished for that. To fall into a deep, dreamless slumber.
But when she closed her eyes and sleep came, it did with a nightmare.
Minutes later when she awoke gasping for breath and sweating, Nicolai was there with his flask again.
“You need a drink?”
Olivia snatched the flask from the Russian. She gulped half of it and collapsed back into sleep.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the facility.
The soldiers have slipped into the barrack routine. Four played cards on the floor of the rocket room. It was a tag form of card game. A tag consisted of two persons. Two of the soldiers were leading the other two.
Of all the convenient places in the broad room that any human could lounge, the major had gone to stretch himself on the skeleton of the rocket. It wasn’t quite a risky thing to do. The rocket wasn’t armed.
Somehow, though, the sight of the major lying prone on the rocket seemed to have some weird effect on one of the soldiers.
His protestations began with the sudden gesture of scratching the back of his neck where a red patch had materialized earlier in the evening. The patch had the same appearance as common eczema. It was an inflammation, however, that had nothing in common with the other skin disease.
The soldier's name was Luigi, his rank being an equivalent of a cadet in the US military. He was about the tallest of the soldiers in detail. And the most intelligent, his score in IQ tests reveal.
He scratched his itching neck, propped his gun against the wall with his other hand and walked around the four who were engrossed in their game. Then he walked past another group who had fallen asleep on the floor all around the base of the platform.
He jumped onto the platform with one bound and was instantly beside the major happily sleeping on the rocket. He was dimly aware of his increased strength. And of his better vision too. Objects appeared longer, the room, like a tunnel. And the rocket looked like it was moving.
He needed to warn the major. Wake him up.
Only problem was, even the major now looked like a serpent.
Luigi grabbed the major on the neck about the same moment he started foaming from the side of his mouth.
It was Peter who heard the noise first. He reached down from his bed and tapped the metal. Frank Miller jumped to his elbows. “Oh Christ, what the hell!”
Peter told him to listen. “Something’s not right.”
Miller listened. The others were rousing too. Cooper sat up and so did Nicolai, who hadn’t really been sleeping deep. He had heard the noise and chalked it up to soldiers been stupid. He hit the light switch.
“Soldiers are stupid people, you know,” he said drunkenly.
The crew ignored him. Peter quickly checked Olivia where she lay. Her chest rose and fell gently.
The noise stopped presently.
Miller said, “Maybe it’s nothing.”
He checked his watch. It was three in the morning. In about three more hours their expedition would continue.
“Go back to sleep,” Miller said. “We’ll know what happened in the morning.”
Anabia Nassif made it clear that on no account should they go back in the laboratory where the puddle from the test tube had by then dried into crystal flakes.
“It is too risky,” he affirmed. “We do not have the equipment to test it.”
So they told the soldiers they’d like to move to another lab. The soldiers agreed. The soldier with the itch was back in detail. His actions attributed to isolation and low temperature, his condition to allergies. And the allergies in turn were thought to have been caused by the molds in the airtight facility. His comrades administered aspirin. He slept and when he woke up most of his symptoms had disappeared.
Except for the red patch that was steadily spreading on the back of his neck. And itching him so badly.
Their perambulation brought the crew to a circular chamber with stone walls and spiral steps that wound down into the darkness below. There was only one florescent here. The temperature there was lower than the rest of the facility. In fact, the coolness seemed to reach up the steps at them.
Expedition expert Victor Borodin stepped forward. He breathed the air.
“Water,” he said. “There is water down there, or very close.”
Itay Friedman joined him close to the landing on the step. He looked at Miller and nodded. “I agree.”
“Then let’s get down and see. For all we know we just might find a ship or a boat,” Ted chirped, being in good spirits.
Olivia noted this fact in her notes, along with other Ted irregularities. She stood back. Peter noticed and asked her, “A phobia for water?”
“No, for heights,” she said. “I can’t go down there if it’s dark.”
“You must fear the dark too,” Nicolai pointed out.
Victor Borodin took the lead. As he went down he found another switch on the wall. He turned it on and the chamber became awash with bright light, all the way down to the bottom where they could see stone floors and nothing more.
“You think it’s safe?” Olivia asked, still uncertain.
Peter gave her his hand. “Come on, take my hand.”
Slowly they went, round and round, until they hit the bottom. The draught became stronger.
It was a subterranean cavern hewn out of the ground. Olivia looked up from where they descended and estimated that it should be at least fifty meters into the ground. Stonework covered both the walls and ceiling of the place.
There was a chasm in the middle; the sides fell down into black water. Metal railings stopped anyone from falling over. The crew gathered around it and wondered at the sight of what looked like a ship below. It was suspended from props and bars over the black water under it.
“Is that a submarine?” asked Olivia.
“It’s a U-boat,” Borodin explained. “The German version of the regular submarine.”
Liam Murphy queried, “What’s the difference?”
Miller said submarines are designed to travel underwater but U-boats are designed to travel on the surface. “Yet they have the capability to travel underwater,” he said.
“They had great success in the early parts of the First World War. And in World War Two, they almost turned the direction of the war too, until the US joined. These things bled the English navy. This is smaller, being an earlier version, compared to certain versions, though,” Miller said.
Olivia took photos of the boat.
The boat was shaped like a regular ship in the hull. Top side, it looked like a camo with a cab on it. Olivia made sketches of it. She showed it to Peter, who made some adjustments in the hull.
Frank Miller went round. He found a small gate with a step at the end of it. The step went down onto the pier by the boat. Here the air was fresher.
“Hey, you can’t go down there!” called one of the soldiers.
He came running towards Miller, his gun raised up. Another one joined him. He glared at Miller and prodded him with the muzzle of his gun.
“What, your major said we could explore everywhere except the rocket room!”
“No, go back!”
“I’m gonna have a word with your superior, this is unacceptable,” Miller fumed.
The crew grumbled all the way back up, amusing the soldiers who enjoyed their little vacation outside their base. Miller requested that they let his crew get some air outside the facility.