Frozen Hell

What follows is a preview of the next work to feature the Thing (or, in this case, Things). It’s a novel-length book with a tentative working title of The Things from Another World (assuming we can get the rights to use it!) which is, of course, a nod to the Howard Hawks film, The Thing from Another World. It is an attempt to build upon John W. Campbell’s world and creations, while remaining 100% true to the source material—in this case, both the novella “Who Goes There?” and Frozen Hell.

I hope you enjoy the beginning of the story and will return when the full work is finished.

—John Gregory Betancourt

Author of the sequel

PROLOGUE

The Pentagon

Arlington, Virginia

General Artemis Wu bellowed for his secretary. But instead of Lieutenant Kirby, Colonel Bloch entered his office, shut the door, and quietly approached his desk. Bloch, with his beak of a nose and watery brown eyes that seemed to look through rather than at you, had never impressed the general as anything more than a pencil-pusher, the tiniest of cogs in the U.S. military machine. He was the sort of bland little career officer who rose slowly but steadily through the ranks, competent at every level but no more than that.

“Sir,” Bloch said. His face remained stony.

“I assume from your presence here,” said Wu, gazing at him over the black frames of his glasses, “that you are responsible for this?” He thumped a stack of papers with a blunt index finger.

Typed on thin, age-yellowed paper, with a rusting staple in one corner, the report—dated October 29, 1938, and bearing the faded rubber-stamp marks of a dozen government agencies, plus a bright red CLASSIFIED across the top—clearly had been written by someone either crazy, on drugs, or both. A UFO buried in the ice in Antarctica…conveniently blown up, so no evidence remained? A telepathic monster that could absorb—and assume the shape of—any creature it encountered…also conveniently destroyed? Ridiculous.

“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.”

“He flew to the South Pole station this morning,” someone said.

“Radio him. Hammond, take care of it.”

“Yes, Corporal.” Hammond trotted over to a golf cart, got in, and zipped up the tunnel.

Pete stared down at a broken-off blade of metal jutting from a chunk of ice as big as a man’s torso. Under the bright arc lights, the blade gleamed silver. One side curved at a mathematically precise angle. Part of something round?

“That looks machined,” he said.

“Yeah,” Menendez said. “Definitely machined.”

Pete tried to visualize it whole. It might have been eight or ten feet across.

“Give me your pick, Smitty,” Menendez said.

Pete held his breath as Menendez knelt, accepted a hand-pick from one of the other engineers, and struck the block of ice as hard as she could—once, twice, a third time. Chips flew. Finally, with a sound like cracking knuckles, the block split in half.

Menendez dug gloved fingers into the gap and flipped the two halves apart, revealing more of the blade. The curved section extended another foot, then ended in jagged, twisted metal. Using the pointed end of the hand-pick, she pried it loose.

Standing, Menendez turned the blade over, examining it carefully,

“Well?” Pete finally demanded.

“I’ve seen damage like this in war zones. There must have been an explosion—a big one.” She looked up. “There’s probably wreckage all through the ice. But the weird thing…” She paused, swallowed hard. “The weird thing is, it feels like it doesn’t weigh anything at all. Look!”

She dropped it—but instead of thudding to the ground, the metal settled slowly, like a feather drifting to earth. She picked it up and passed it to the next man, who repeated the experiment.

So it went around the circle. Pete got it last, after Clay—and just like Menendez had said, it felt like it weighed nothing at all in his hands. But it was strong and hard and cold. He couldn’t bend it.

He returned it to Menendez, who hefted it, then used the blade of her hand-pick to try to scratch it. Other than a blood-chilling scree-ee-ee, her efforts had no effect.

“Not even a scratch,” she murmured.

Silence fell. Everyone stared—at the corporal, at the broken blade of metal, at each other.

Pete asked, feeling his heart skip a beat, “Is it man-made?”

“Not…man,” said Menendez slowly. “This is nothing I’ve ever seen before. Like nothing on our planet.”

Pete barely contained a whoop of triumph. Not a meteorite. Not a frozen giant whale. It had to be a spaceship!

He slapped Clay on the back. “It’s real, man! We found aliens! We’re gonna be famous!”

Then suddenly everyone was talking at once—babbling about aliens, spaceships, the piece of metal.

“Quiet down, quiet down!” Menendez yelled. Silence fell like a switch had been thrown. “We don’t know anything at this point. It’s just a piece of metal—nothing else. Don’t get ahead of yourselves.”

“Are there more pieces?” Pete asked.

“There have to be,” Menendez said. “It must be part of a debris field.” She gestured at the wall. “Everyone—spread out and look.”

Her men began unclipping flashlights from their belts. Pete remembered that he had one, too, and fumbled it out. The engineers pressed the lenses against the wall, playing the beams through the ice, casting weird shadows that bounced from fracture mark to fracture mark.

“I’ve got something!” one man called.

“Me too!” said another. “Looks like more metal.”

“And here!” Clay shouted.

Six inches into the wall, Pete’s beam came to rest on something large and dark. He squinted. What was it? Not metal. A strange, black, vaguely fuzzy outline of…something.

He slid the beam up, around a shoulder-like curve, to what might have been a head…and then up and over to a single red eye, frozen open, that glared out at him from the depths of the ice.

CHAPTER TWO

Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station

Antarctica

Welcome to Hell, Jason Cosgrove thought.

A biting late-summer wind swept across the Antarctic Plain and hissed through the buildings of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. According to the pilot of the airplane that had just dropped him off, local temperature was a balmy 12° Fahrenheit. Jason already felt a chill penetrating his coat, sweatshirt, and T-shirt. Three layers weren’t nearly enough.

Around him, the wind made a faint, whispery sound somewhere between the screech of fingernails on slate and the hiss of snake-scales on glass, broken only by an occasional shout from the direction of the plane. Twelve different national flags, planted in front of the station’s main building, snapped and cracked like whips. A few stray snowflakes swirled down from a leaden sky.

Jason dropped his two overstuffed satchels onto hard-packed snow, turned from the Basler BT-67 that had shuttled him here from Christchurch, via McMurdo Station, and stared out across what seemed an endless expanse of white. Only a lone black windsock and what looked like a couple of distant storage sheds broke the unending white of the landscape. An old joke popped into his head: What’s white and white and white? A polar bear eating ice cream in a snowstorm.

He snorted and rubbed his eyes. Too long without sleep. He hadn’t even gotten the usual layover in Christchurch. Now he was getting punchy.

A thousand miles of ice-desert stretched in every direction. Pictures online didn’t prepare you for it. The huge, unending bleakness of it all. Even the sky seemed faded and dull by New York standards. The true ass-end of the Earth.

Shouldn’t there have been someone waiting to meet him? He glanced back at the sleek mid-sized plane that had disgorged him minutes before. Its props still turned with a steady whump-whump-whump, as men and women in parkas bustled around the open door in its side. Supplies out, baggage in. And people. There had to be thirty-five or forty scientists and researchers waiting to board. Going back to civilization before the six-month-long Antarctic night overtook the Amundsen-Scott Station. He alone had gotten off.

He turned toward the low sun, white as the snow and dazzling without the haze of pollution to filter it. Only a few more days until the sun dipped below the horizon, dropping the temperature and cutting off all the Antarctic bases from the outside world until spring.

“Dr. Cosgrove?” a man’s voice called from his right.

Jason turned, eyebrows rising. “Here!” he called.

A tall, stocky man with a scraggly black beard jogged toward him. Unruly curls stuck out from under a green stocking cap, and he wore a puffy red coat zipped to the neck. He thrust out a gloved hand, which Jason took. The fellow had a crushing grip.

“I am Milos Pappas.” He pronounced it MEE-los PAH-pahs. His breath puffed visibly in the air. “I am the chief greeter for the station, and also dinner cook. Very pleased to meet you, Doctor,” he said.

“Call me Jase,” Jason said. Everyone did.

“Jase, yes. I trust your journey was good?”

Jason tried to laugh, but the sound came out like a crazy bark. He bit it off.

“No,” he said, “everything was horrible. I hate to fly, and I’m here under protest. I’ve had maybe two hours of sleep in the last three days. I’ve been bullied into this, and—”

Milos raised his hands. “Not me! I am—how you say—only the messager?”

“Messenger. Sorry.” Jason took a deep breath and looked away. Hold it together. Just a few more minutes… “I don’t like having to run to Antarctica to fight for my grant money.”

“Fight?”

“I was told the funding for my research project might be pulled if I didn’t get here within 36 hours to argue my case. Twenty million dollars for Asteroid Belt mining, gone—like that!” He snapped his fingers. “And no explanation why.”

Milos shook his head. “Yes, the newcomers, they are—what is your word? Intense?”

“The newcomers?”

He nodded. “They do not wear uniforms, but we know they are American military, all very top-secret hush-hush. They are here for maybe two months. Why the secrecy? I do not know, but all make guesses. One guess, it says they are excited for a meteor in the ice. Another guess, it says they are finding vast new oil fields. Me? I cook the food. Too many questions get you only trouble.”

“Or save your life,” Jase said.

Milos considered, then shrugged. His gaze dropped to the bags at Jason’s feet. “This is all you are bringing?”

“I didn’t have much time to pack.”

“I shall help you get the right stuff later. Plenty of everything, with the main season over. But first, the big-dog newcomers wait for you.” He grabbed both bags, turned, and lumbered for the main building. “This way, my friend!”

Jason found himself hustled through a series of hallways. It might be the end of the research season, but the base still hummed with activity. He passed rooms full of people and equipment of every variety imaginable, a cafeteria with a dozen tables, and an empty rec-room with a ping pong table, a pool table, and a jukebox. At last they reached a small conference room. There, two men with laptops worked side by side. They broke off their discussion as Milos swept in and dropped Jason’s bags in a corner.

When the man on the right stood, Jason recognized him—Colonel Franklin Bloch. With his hawk nose, steel-gray hair, and coolly aloof gaze, Bloch made a lasting impression. He had been the one who Skyped Jason, informing him that his funding was under review and would likely be cut off if he didn’t drop everything and get to Antarctica on the next plane. Or series of five planes, as it turned out.

The other man was of Asian descent—Chinese, Jase guessed, from his high cheek bones—and wore thick glasses with black plastic frames. His shaved head made guessing his age difficult, but he had the look of a man who had seen a lot of action over the years. He had also been on that video call. He hadn’t spoken a word, though, just studied Jase across the video link like a shark picking out its next meal.

“A pleasure to meet you in person, Dr. Cosgrove.” Giving a forced smile, Bloch came around the table and extended his hand.

Jase shook it, and found it disturbingly limp and moist, like shaking hands with a mushroom. He had to make a conscious effort not to wipe his palm off on his pants.

“I’m here. What’s this about my funding?”

“Sit down, Jase,” Milos said cheerfully. “I shall get you coffee?”

Jase glanced over, hesitated, then nodded. He could use the caffeine. “Thanks. Black, please.”

Milos glanced at the other two. “For you also?”

Both shook their heads. Milos headed for a Keurig machine on a table against the wall and began pushing buttons and fumbling with k-cups and mugs.

Bloch said, “This is Artemis Wu. He’s chairman of the Armed Forces Research Grants Committee.”

“But I thought everything was settled,” Jason said, looking at Wu. “My project was approved and funded six months ago. Why make me drop everything and rush out here?”

“Two reasons,” Wu said, “First, I require the services of the premiere metallurgist in the world. Second, time is a factor. The weather is about to change, and I needed you here before it does.”

Jason snorted. “If you want the best metallurgist in the world, you picked the wrong guy. You want Nick Armstrong—”

“Dr. Armstrong died five days ago,” Bloch cut in.

Jason stared at him. “That’s not possible. He’s barely 40—”

“Suicide,” Wu said, studying his fingernails. “The Antarctic…did not agree with him.”

“No way!” Jason’s legs felt weak. He had known Nick for the better part of two decades. They’d gone to M.I.T. together, gone to class together, partied together, worked off and on together over the years. Sure, Nick liked to drink…liked it a little too much, sometimes. But suicide? It seemed impossible.

Gulping, he sank down in the chair. Nick…dead. They’d talked only a few months ago.

Then he realized what Wu had said. The Antarctic didn’t agree with him.

“Nick was here?” he asked, looking up.

“Yes. You must finish his work.”

Bloch returned to his chair, took a sheet of paper from a manilla folder, and slid it across the table. He followed it with a silver Cross pen.

“Sign at the bottom,” he said, “and we’ll get moving.”

“Black coffee,” Milos said. He set a mug—WORLD’S BEST DAD! it proclaimed in big red letters—in front of Jason, then left, closing the door.

Slowly Jason picked up the paper. It was a nondisclosure agreement. He’d signed a couple of them in the past, when he’d done corporate research, but this one struck him as exceptionally draconian. Matters of national security…prison and a multi-million-dollar fine if he so much as shared the project name.… Crazy, all of it!

He shoved the paper away. “I can’t sign this!”

“It is, of course, your choice,” Bloch said, “but I strongly recommend it.”

“Or you’ll cut my funding.”

Bloch shook his head, smiled. “I only said that to get you here.” He spread his hands apologetically. “Mining the Asteroid Belt is a good idea. It’s necessary if our space program is to thrive. But you’re still in the early planning stages, and your associates will manage until your return. You can speak to them every day by secure sat-link, if you like. We have a far bigger project, one of immediate global importance, and we need your help now. Once you have the details, I’m certain you will agree that it takes precedence over everything else. Including asteroid mining. In fact, I guarantee it.”

Jason snorted. “There must be a dozen others available who would do as good a job.”

Artemis Wu spoke for the first time. “No false modesty, Doctor. I only work with the best. And now that’s you.”

“Forget it,” Jason said. He shoved his chair back and stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a plane to catch.”

“Ah…about the plane,” Bloch said. “Bad news, I’m afraid. The one that brought you here is full for the outbound flight. We’ll get you the next available seat, of course. Unfortunately, as you know, there are no commercial flights from this base, and passengers leave as space allows. There is only one more flight scheduled this season, and I hear it’s also fully booked. A spot for you might open up in the spring…by fall at the very latest. But look on the bright side. I understand you get a medal and a certificate from the station for wintering here. And possibly a tee-shirt.”

“Or,” said Wu, “you can join my team, be well compensated for your time, and do your country a service. A vital service.”

Jason stared at him. “That’s blackmail.”

Wu smiled his shark smile. “No, Doctor. A job offer. And as a goodwill gesture, you have my word that I will continue to throw my support behind your asteroid mining project when you return to it. You will find me a valuable ally.”

Ally. Not friend. Did Wu have friends?

“Can you tell me anything about Nick’s work?” Jason asked. “What was he doing?”

“It’s classified.” Bloch said.

I can’t believe they’re doing this, Jason thought. The bottom seemed to be dropping out of his stomach. I can’t believe they’re going to strand me here, whether I want to work for them or not.

Wu leaned forward and set something the size of a walnut on the table. It was made of a silvery metal. One side had bubbled and melted; it had been exposed to very high temperatures.

“What do you think of it?” Wu asked.

Jason reached out and touched it with his fingertips. Cool and hard, it had an almost greasy texture. He picked it up—and gasped. It was feather-light, far lighter than aluminum, or any other metal he knew of.

“Where did you get this?” he demanded. He met Wu’s cool, steady gaze. “What is it?”

“You must sign the nondisclosure agreement first,” Bloch said. He twitched it forward again.

Jason took a deep breath. What would he be getting himself into? What had Nick been working on? What was this metal, and where had it come from?

For a heartbeat, he stared down at the paper, then picked it up and read it a second time, slowly and carefully. The terms hadn’t improved. But as the general said, it did specify compensation…twenty thousand per month, for the duration of his involvement with the project. It guaranteed six months of work, plus an option to extend employment for another six months by mutual agreement. It meant wintering here. But if Wu meant to keep him here, anyway…

Idly, he rubbed his thumb across the lump of strange, silvery, light-as-air metal. Metal like nothing he had ever seen or heard of before. Nick must have been working on it.

It was the discovery of a lifetime. The possible uses in aircraft—in spaceships—even for his own asteroid-mining project—stretched before him.

If it could be mass-produced, it would change the world.

He bit his lip. He had to be part of it.

He signed.

CHAPTER THREE

En Route to Army Corps of Engineers

Special Operations Base, Antarctica

On the two-hour helicopter trip from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to the Army base, Jason barely noticed Wu and Bloch’s presence. The general sat up front, next to the pilot. Bloch sat in the seat next to Jason, typing fast on a small laptop computer.

“Reports,” the colonel told him, voice tinny and distant in the headphones.

Jason barely nodded. He was already pawing through a satchel stuffed with Nick’s papers—scribbled notes, field reports, test results—trying to make sense of the work.

From what he could tell, Nick had made almost no progress. Clearly the Antarctic had gotten to him. His journal spent as much time complaining about migraine headaches and night-terrors as it did documenting tests on the metal fragments. The journal painted the picture of a man slowly falling apart under immense stress and close confinement. Worse, no one at the base had recognized danger signs until Nick hanged himself.

And the metal… It defied analyses on so many levels, at least with the tools available at the army base. He knew more about what it wasn’t than what it was.

Non-radioactive.

Non-conductive.

Acids had no effect.

The most interesting results came when he used a small foundry to discover its thermal properties. It melted at 1,180 degrees—roughly 300 degrees more than zinc, but 40 degrees less than aluminum. Given those properties, it shouldn’t have been harder than steel.

Then, against all logic, it burned explosively at 1,640 degrees.

He dug out a pen and scribbled a few notes in the margins of Nick’s journal, double-checking all the calculations. The energy output seemed to violate Hess’s Law governing constant heat summation. That, or Nick had made a series of gross mistakes and miscalculations. And that wasn’t like Nick.

He sat back, staring at the calculations, trying to wrap his mind around the implications. Could Hess’s Law be wrong?

He jumped when Col. Bloch’s voice broke in on his thoughts:

“Dr. Armstrong got that same look the first time he tried to analyze the metal.”

“There must be a mistake somewhere,” Jason said, turning to meet his gaze. “The math is wrong.”

“Or we don’t understand how the universe really works.”

Bloch cleared his throat, then proceeded to explain about the object found in glacial ice. “We suspect it to be a 19-million-year-old spaceship,” he said flatly.

“A…spaceship?” Nick started to laugh, but Bloch didn’t seem to be joking.

“This is the second one we’ve found,” the colonel said.

“No shit?”

“Scout’s honor.” He held up three fingers. “A research station found the first one in 1938. They accidentally blew it up when they tried to melt the ice with thermite.”

“That was a monumental bit of stupidity. Thermite burns at more than 4,000 degrees.”

Bloch nodded. “It was a different age. They weren’t prepared the way we are.”

“How come word never got out?”

“Hard to prove, when you’ve blown up the evidence.”

True. “Tell me about the metal.”

“We have a team from the Army Corps of Engineers tunneling down to the spaceship. They have been passing through a debris field—it’s mostly rock and dirt thrown up by the crash impact. But they found a few lumps of this super-light metal.”

Jason rifled through the journal pages. “Nick destroyed…let’s see…two of the fragments during testing, when they caught fire in his lab. How many others are there?”

“Four more.”

General Wu broke in, voice tinny over the earphones. “News from the base. The tunnel has entered a larger debris field.” He turned in the front seat and faced Jason for the first time since they had left the Amundsen-Scott Station. “They have made several new discoveries that will interest you.”

Jason leaned forward. “More of this metal?” he asked.

“Much larger pieces, yes.”

“Great.” They needed decent samples. “You have to get one to a lab with a scanning electron microscope, and I need an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer.”

“Yes. I believe Dr. Armstrong ordered one of those X-ray things shortly before his death. It hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Put a rush on it. I need an elemental analysis of the metal. Given the properties, it might even contain exotic matter with negative mass…or something even bigger.” Jason paged back through the journal, looking for a passage he’d read half an hour before. “Nick thought there might be something screwy with it on the molecular level. Some sort of forced bond that shouldn’t occur—can’t occur—in nature.” He looked up. “This is important. If we can replicate this metal, it will change everything in the world, from toasters to airplanes. You have to send it out for analysis immediately.”

There was a sharp click on the audiochannel, and the general faced forward again. Jason could see him talking, but couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the ’copter’s rotors.

Bloch had heard him, though, and shook his head. “Negative. The general doesn’t want word leaking out. See what you can do on site.”

“These notes complain over and over that facilities are inadequate.”

“As I told Dr. Armstrong, make a list. I will get everything you need, if it’s at all possible.”

Sighing, Jason looked down at the papers in his lap. No sense arguing; Bloch and Wu clearly meant to keep the find to themselves for now. He’d survey the lab and make a list of anything that might prove helpful. Who knew, perhaps the army would deliver.

Never mind that what he really needed was a state-of-the-art research lab like they had at Cornell or CalTech. What could he do at the base that Nick hadn’t already done? Jason chewed his lip and looked out the window at the white-white-white land flowing endlessly below. The ’copter cast a long shadow to their right, the only feature in this impossibly bleak landscape.

Slowly the reality of what Bloch had told him sank in. Could the metal be from a spaceship? It seemed incredible. Impossible.

And yet, when he had touched that bubbled, half-melted bit of metal, no other explanation seemed to fit.

An hour later, the ’copter came in low over what Bloch described as their “permanent base.” Jason had only a few seconds’ look at three long, low buildings arranged to form a triangle before the helicopter settled onto a snow-crusted landing pad between them. The sun, its red-gold edge already dipping below the horizon, vanished behind fifteen-foot-tall steel walls, though its glow bathed a giant satellite dish atop one building in spectacular colors.

Bloch touched his arm and pointed toward what looked like an airlock in one building. “Put on your hat and gloves,” he said, voice crackling over the radio. “ We don’t have far to go, but it’s well below zero here. We’ve already had a couple of frostbite cases. Bring the papers, leave your gear. I’ll have it brought to your quarters.”

Jason nodded, took off the headset, and pulled on the goggles, heavy ski mask, insulated gloves, and heavy parka that Milos Pappas had given him back at the Amundsen-Scott Station. The station had a good supply of thermal gear abandoned by former researchers. That, plus three unopened packages of thermal underwear, insulated leggings, and several used-but-clean sweatshirts, now supplemented the cold-weather gear he had brought from home.

General Wu had already climbed out and was striding briskly toward the building. Bloch stepped down, gave Jason a hand to the ground, and led the way toward the door.

The entered a room about the size of an elevator. Here Bloch pulled off his ski mask, and Jason did the same. Next they went through a second door, into a room lined with benches. Hot air gushed in from wall vents. It felt like the blast of heat furnace after the bitter cold outside. Jason’s eyes started to water, and he blinked and rubbed at them. Parkas, ski masks, boots, and other gear had been hung on hooks or stowed on high shelves.

Then the stench hit. A sour mingling of human sweat, old food, body odor, and other smells Jason couldn’t begin to identify.

“God!” he gasped, covering his nose with the ski mask. He took a step back. “What the hell is that—”

“In a day or two, you won’t even notice,” Bloch said flatly. “Living in close confinement, in a sealed environment, there’s little you can do about the smell. It’s far worse on submarines, trust me. At least we vent in a little fresh air here.”

He finished hanging up his gear and waited while Jason did the same. Then he led the way into a corridor barely wide enough for two people to pass each other. Fluorescent light panels glowed overhead, revealing pale gray walls and flooring. There were no windows.

“Grim little place you have here,” Jason observed. No wonder Nick killed himself.

“It’s built for practicality and survival,” Bloch said. “This building houses your lab, as well as our offices, the communications room, the rec room, and the mess hall.” He nodded toward the left. “Sleeping quarters are in the next building over—and yes, everything is connected. You don’t have to go outside. Not that you’d want to, in this weather.”

What have I gotten myself into? Jason thought. I must have been crazy to agree to this.

Block stopped in front of a steel door. Someone had written “LAB” on the wall beside it in black magic marker. He pushed it open, reached inside to thumb a switch, and fluorescent lights began to flicker on.

“Welcome to your new lab,” he said.

Jason went in. It was a tiny room, maybe eight feet square, crammed with a pair of work tables, a battered old laptop, and a jumble of equipment that looked like it came from a salvage yard.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jason said.

CHAPTER FOUR

Army Corps of Engineers

Special Operations Base, Antarctica

General Wu pulled off his ski mask as he entered the mouth of the ice tunnel. It lay inside the third of the three prefab Army buildings. His breath plumed in the air as he looked around. Heaters kept the tunnel—and the building behind him—at a steady twenty-eight degrees. The third building existed solely to provide sheltered access for workers entering and leaving the tunnel. An cargo-container-sized airlock on the building’s outer-facing wall also provided access to the ice-field a hundred yards from camp, where mini-bulldozers dumped debris from the tunnel excavation.

Corporal Menendez had been waiting for him beside one of their golf carts. She straightened and saluted as she noticed him..

He returned the salute. “Status?”

“Sir. We recovered three more pieces of metal—I had them moved to the lab—and two more are accessible and can be dug out. One of the recovered pieces shows signs of machine-work. It may be part of an airlock. And…” She hesitated.

He settled into the passenger seat. The cart rocked once, then steadied.

“Spit it out,” Wu said. “What couldn’t you tell me over the radio?”

“We found something else.”

“Damn it, found what? I don’t have time for nonsense, Corporal!”

“Some…thing. A…a creature, I guess you’d say, frozen in the ice. It’s…it’s…” She shuddered, looked away. “You can’t see it too clearly, but what you can see—I’m sorry, sir. It’s like something out of a nightmare.”

Wu felt a stab of panic as he remembered the report he’d read at the Pentagon. Remembered how the 1938 researchers found an alien creature frozen in ice and thawed it out, only to have it come to life. Nineteen million years frozen, and it came to life!

He had never dreamed they would find one of those alien things here. He felt his jaw tighten. It had to be contained. And then it would have to be destroyed. No chances.

He said, “You didn’t dig this creature out, did you?” Somehow, he kept his voice steady.

“No, sir.”

“Good.” He gestured down the tunnel. “Drive. I want to see it.”

Menendez accelerated, and as the golf cart hummed down the incline and into the tunnel, ice closed in on every side. It glistening faintly. Ahead, puddles of illumination from arc lights broke the darkness every thirty yards.

“It it blocking the tunnel path?” he asked.

“Partly, sir. But we can go around it. And—if you don’t mind—maybe I can cover it with a tarp.” Quickly she added, “Most of the men find it unnerving.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.” He chewed his lip. Probably a good idea. The fewer people who saw the thing, the better. Less to deny later, if necessary.

When they turned at the first switchback, Wu realized he hadn’t seen any workers yet. Nor could he see any in the stretch of tunnel ahead. Just more arc lights and orange-glowing electric heaters.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

“At the discovery site, sir. They all wanted to see it.”

He nodded. Understandable. The team had been working for two months with no real discoveries beyond a few small lumps of alien metal to break the monotony. Of course they’d all want to check out a frozen alien monster. In their place, he would have done the same thing.

Corporal Menendez turned at the second switchback, and Wu spotted fifteen or so people at the end of the tunnel. All work had ceased, but the gathering didn’t have a festive atmosphere. If anything, it struck him as overly hushed, subdued…almost funereal. Anything but happy.

The engineers called to each other and snapped to attention as Menendez pulled the golf cart to a stop. Wu climbed out, and the crowd parted silently, clearing a path to the rough-hewn, vertical wall of ice at the end of the tunnel. There, a section roughly a yard square had an inch-deep channel etched around it. For a second, it reminded him of a picture frame. And it framed…what? He squinted. All the arc lights had been angled away; he couldn’t see much, beyond a dim, shadowy hulk buried perhaps eight or ten inches within.

Frowning, he swept his gaze over the whole team. No one met his gaze. Didn’t they want to see their discovery? Even those two civilian geologists looked pale and unsettled.

“Flashlight,” he said, sticking out his hand. Was it really that bad?

When someone handed him a heavy steel flashlight, he flicked it on and pressed the lens against the milky ice, angling the beam first up, then down, then across. Definitely something. Could that be…a head? He squinted, shifting the beam up a few inches. Possibly a head, but something like a mass of worms covered it. Then his light caught a gleam of red, and he focused on what might have been an eye. It seemed to be staring straight at him.

His stomach churned, and he almost dropped the flashlight. He took a step back, looked around at his men. Now he understood. They felt it, too. An overpowering, visceral urge to destroy the thing. To smash it, burn it, grind it to dust. It was a primitive, from-the-gut reaction, an absolute need to see it dead and gone.

Skin crawling, he snapped off the flashlight and forced himself to walk back to the golf cart at an unhurried pace. No doubt about it. This had to be a Thing like the one from the 1938 report.

And it had to be destroyed.

“I want it left strictly alone,” he told Menendez, but he made sure his voice carried to every man and woman present. “We’ll swing the tunnel to the left and go around it. No one is to touch this wall or dig an inch closer. I want a guard posted day and night to make sure. This—this sea lion or whatever it is—must remain in place until further notice.”

“General?” said the blond geologist. What was his name? Garvin? “We were talking about cutting it out. That isn’t a sea lion. With a find like this, shouldn’t we—”

“No!” That sounded too sharp, too panicked. He cleared his throat, then added in a normal tone, “It’s several million years old. It may be carrying bacteria or viruses that could prove dangerous to modern life. I’ll bring in a hazmat team to deal with it.” With flame throwers, if necessary. “No point taking chances.”

He glanced around at the Menendez and the men. “I think we’ve all had enough for today. Let’s knock off early and head back up to base. I’m declaring a holiday. I think we still have a keg of beer in storage. Let’s have some fun.”

As expected, the workers cheered. Even so, they seemed strangely subdued.

He hopped into the golf cart. Menendez called orders, picked an unfortunate soldier for guard duty, assigned another to cover the thing with a tarp, and then climbed back into the cart. In silence, she drove for the surface.

CHAPTER FIVE

PFC Hector Dobbs scuffed at the ice floor with the toe of his right boot as everyone else started the long trek up to home base. Just like that bitch Menendez to pick him for guard duty. He’d miss most of the fun. At least she’d only given him a four-hour shift.

He pulled a battered old .mp3 player from his breast pocket, thumbed earbuds into his ears, and pressed the play button. It might not be as fancy as an iPod or iPhone, but it played nearly two days of audio without recharging, and that’s what counted out here.

As Metallica blasted his eardrums, he gave Menendez the finger—though she’d probably already reached the surface—played air guitar for a few seconds, then climbed onto the mini-bulldozer and shifted until he found a comfortable position on the worn plastic seat. Better than standing or sitting on the ice. Like that Thing would be going anywhere…or like anyone would want to dig it out.

So cold…

Those two civvies doing make-work on the walls had wanted to dig it out. They’d gotten real hard-ons when that big chunk of metal turned up, whooping and hollering about aliens and UFOs. Yeah, right. Fucking aliens. It had to be some kind of seal or walrus.

He yawned. Although two layers of thermal underwear normally kept him pretty comfortable down here, it seemed colder than usual today. He glanced up the tunnel, at the pools of light dotting the way toward the surface. Nothing moved.

So cold…

His gaze fell on the closest of the half dozen industrial heaters. Its heating elements glowed faintly reddish-orange. They needed a few more of those babies.

As Kirk Hammett riffed through “The Day That Never Comes,” Dobbs’s mind started to drift. Metallica faded. The tunnel blurred. He closed his eyes.

So cold…

He barely noticed as he pulled out the earbuds and dropped them on the seat, climbed down from his perch on the mini-bulldozer, and crossed to the closest of the gently whirring heating units. Without thought or hesitation, he grabbed the handles, tilted it back, and wheeled it toward the end of the tunnel. The heater’s bright yellow power cord unspooled behind him with a faint whir.

After dragging aside the tarp, he pointed the heater toward the Thing in the ice, twisted the knob to “High,” and then returned the mini-bulldozer. As he settled back into his seat, he closed his eyes and drifted back toward sleep, lulled by the sound of dripping water and the faint snap-crack-snap of warming ice.