Ice Rift (10 page)

“It was probably never meant to lift off from any planet,” said Eli. “I imagine a craft this size, of which we've only seen a small part and I suspect have a lot more to discover, would probably have been constructed in space where weight and size would not be such a problem.”

“I'd like to know why it's here?” said Lucy.

Richard was becoming impatient, he wanted to move farther through the craft and start exploring. “Whatever speculations you come up with, until we investigate and take a look around, they'll remain just that. We need to begin our search. Only then will our questions be answered. Whether it's built by Nazis, someone else, or aliens, it's still the find of the century.”

“Though it pains me to say so, for once, I agree with Richard,” said Jane.

“But none of us are qualified,” argued Henry. “We're not space scientists or rocket engineers. Our fields of specialty are concerned with geology, ice and microbes, not spaceships.”

Looks of disappointment spread over the team.

“But we have to explore,” said Max. “If it turns out to be something constructed by an alien race, just imagine what advanced technology lies inside and the benefits they could bring to the scientific community. It could advance so many areas of our knowledge by hundreds or thousands of years.”

“What we might learn in the next few days might enable humans to travel to other worlds far sooner than anyone expected,” added Theo. “I believe it's our destiny to enter this spaceship for the benefit of mankind.”

“Or its destruction,” said Jack, realizing that exploring might not be such a good idea. “An alien craft might carry alien germs that could wipe out the human race.”

“Like the Spaniards did to the Incas,” said Lucy. “Around ninety-five percent of them died from European diseases.”

“Even though I'm reluctant to explore further, I'm sure that won't be the case here,” said Henry. “If an alien race was advanced enough to build a craft capable of crossing the vast reaches of space, I'm certain they would likewise be advanced medically. I would think if any germs were going to harm any species, it would be ours harming them.”

“I understand your concerns, Henry,” said Jane, “but this discovery has been thrust upon us all. The raging storm above prevents us from calling in outside experts or help. The ice rift that at any moment could break off and take this ship with it until it slips beneath the sea forces a time limit upon us. If we don't document as much as we can in the limited time available, no one will and then it'll be lost forever.”

“Perhaps you're right, Jane. Don't get me wrong, I'm keen to discover more about this vessel and its secrets, but I know how quickly events in the Antarctic can turn against you. However, if we're all in agreement to explore the ship, then I'll be a willing participant.”

Everyone was and they searched for an exit to lead them deeper into the interior.

Jack wandered to one end of the room, wondering what they'd find when they explored the craft. His eyes darted to every new piece of strange machinery he encountered and each time he wondered as to its function.  He reached a wall and moved along it, halting at a large shape set in the wall. It looked like a door and the exit they searched for. The door, segmented into four parts, was three yards high and two wide. He found the button to operate it set in a panel beside the door, slightly higher than the normal height for humans, an indication along with the door size that the crew was taller than them. Though he didn't expect the door to open, he pressed one of the buttons. The four parts of the door slid back into the wall with a metallic rasp, loud enough to capture the others' attention and lure them over to investigate.

Before they entered, they all stared for a few moments through the large opening that led to a four-yard high by three-yard wide corridor. Their lights invaded the darkness that had for so long remained trapped behind the door, but failed to reach its end.

Jane, as astonished as the others by the size and unknown length of the revealed passage, said to no one in particular, “Just how big is this thing?”

The excited expression painted on Max's features revealed his enthusiasm to find out. “From the little we've seen, I think it's going to turn out to be a lot bigger than any of us can imagine.” He was first through the door.

Dwarfed by the large corridor, abnormally oversized by human standards, eight pairs of eyes roamed over its bizarre architecture. Light beams revealed ribs of dark metal with bone-like forms set at regular intervals along its walls, which gave the appearance of looking through a strange creature's ribcage.

Henry stroked a hand over one of the shiny, black, skeletal struts. “Though a little weird, it's amazing architecture.”

Theo wondered at the strange design.
Why fashion the supports in such a weird form when a simpler straight or rounded design would have sufficed
. It convinced him even further of its alien origin. “If there were any doubts before, there can't be now. No way was this thing built by humans.”

Lucy was in total agreement. “Perhaps the size of the corridor reflects the size of the crew who used it?”

Heads turned to gaze at the high flat ceiling.

“Giants!” said Theo.

Lucy peered along the corridor and wondered what planet the craft had originated from and the species of its crew. If any were still aboard, perhaps preserved by the extreme cold, she would receive an answer to one of her questions. She felt both excited and apprehensive by the prospect of coming face to face with an alien species. All thoughts of the planktonic dinoflagellate that had caused her such excitement a short while ago had been forgotten.

Jack's eyes roamed over the corridor. He'd never seen anything like this other than in science-fiction movies. The cave-like subterranean atmosphere reminded him of a tunnel system he'd explored in his youth. The difference between these two experiences was the cave had already been explored, while here in this ship there was only the unknown. Though he shared some of Henry's concerns, this was a once in a lifetime experience he was more than willing to participate in.

“I suggest we head for the front of the ship,” said Max. “There must be a control room and it makes sense it would be at the front. Perhaps we'll be able to power up the ship to turn on some lights, if that's still possible.”

“Though it would be good to have some light,” said Henry, still not convinced exploring the ship was a sensible thing to do, “we must be careful of what we touch. Pressing buttons willy-nilly might prove dangerous.”

“Given the length of time this thing has been entombed beneath the ice, I very much doubt anything is working,” said Richard.

“The heat extruded from the exhaust and the functioning door we just passed through, indicates something is,” argued Theo.

“How about we move along?” said Richard. “Why speculate when we can find out for certain what is and isn't working?”

Excited and a little apprehensive, the team moved through the strange alien vessel. The vast weight of the surrounding ice squeezed the hollow shell. The hull creaked, groaned and amplified every sound of the ice's movement, like some immense, empty coffin crying out for corpses.

A short walk along the corridor brought them to a door set into the side wall. To find out what was behind it, Max pressed the nearby button to see if it would open. With a protesting groan of long misuse, the four door segments juddered, but refused to open more than a finger width. Stale, musty air tainted with the odour of wet metal whooshed from the gap with a screech, as if relived to be free from its long confinement. It rolled along the passage into the engine room and out through the hole.

“The room must have been pressurized,” said Eli.

Max hooked his fingers around one edge of a door segment. “Let's try forcing it open.”

Theo, Jack and Eli each hooked their fingers around one of the two lower segments and pulled. With a grinding of metal, the doors moved a short distance, but then stuck fast.

Theo thrust his head and flashlight through the cross shaped opening. His eyes scanned the huge room. Something in the middle gave off a green glow. He squeezed through and the others followed.

When Lucy squeezed through, the door shuddered, releasing flakes of rust. Concern spurred her to move quickly through the gap.

Richard, the last one to enter, remained in the corridor with his eyes focused worriedly on the door. He imagined its edges slamming together while he was between its jaws. He pushed away the unpleasant thought and sidled quickly through the gap. He was barely halfway through when the door juddered and began to close. Someone gripped his arm and yanked him to safety. The door scraped the sole of his boot when it slammed shut with a resounding clash of metal that echoed through the cavernous chamber. He let out a relieved sigh.

Jack released his grip on Richard's arm. “Are you okay?”

Richard nodded. “Thanks.”

“You're welcome, but you still owe me a plane.”

Richard snorted.

“That's strange,” said Max.

The whole ship was strange. With this in mind the others turned to see what Max had found particularly unusual. Their gazes followed his pointing finger. Four thin hollow tubes oozing a clear viscous liquid hung from a small oblong hole where the door button should have been attached. Unlike electrical wire, the tubes could not be reattached to open the door.

Theo bent down and picked up something from the floor. It was the missing door control. “It's been deliberately ripped off!”

The scrape marks around the hole in the frame added credence to his words.

They each examined the twisted metal panel with a button in its center.

With a creased brow, Jack watched a drop of the thick fluid splatter to the floor. “It's troubling that it seems to have been done recently.”

“But why and by whom?” asked Lucy, nervously.

Richard glanced anxiously around the gloom-filled room. “Probably to stop something from getting out, which now also includes us!”

Their gazes searched the darkest recesses of the room as a sense of foreboding swept over the group. They jumped in fright when the broken door control Theo dropped clattered noisily to the floor.

“As creepy as this place is, it's only our imaginations making us nervous. Whatever once roamed through this ship is long dead,” Henry reassured them. “With luck we'll find their preserved corpses so we can see what the crew of this ship looked like. At the very least we should find skeletal remains.”

Eli directed his torch around the huge space that was so large their flashlight beams failed to reach the far walls. His wandering light came to a halt on the high ceiling the beam only just managed to reach. “This room has the appearance of a cathedral.”

Thick arched ribs with the appearance of stone, but by the evidence of the rust streaks covering them, were in fact metal, towered from the floor to a round transparent feature in the roof that was segmented by metal, rust-covered frames, some of which were broken and hung down at twisted angles. Ice-formed stalagmites poked through areas that were missing the transparent panes. Melted water dripped onto the floor or dribbled down the sloped walls leaving trails of rust wherever they wandered. Between the rib-like supports the walls were fashioned to resemble rough, dark rock. A high balcony, whose balustrade was formed of short, twisted, tree-like columns, ran almost the entire circumference of the room. The floor wasn't smooth metal like the others they'd thus far encountered. To match the walls it too was sculptured to mimic rock, though this was a lot smoother. Bridge paths with edges of rough rock led out from the central green glowing feature, one of which led to the door they'd just passed through.

Jack walked over to an edge of the path and peered into the deep void. Mist hugged the ground, obscuring the details of the lower level. The musty smell of ancient abandoned places wafted up from the darkness shrouding the space below. His headlight moved over the thick, swirling mist that continued under the bridges and flicked back to its previous position. He thought he had seen something move in the mist.

Jane peered over the edge. “What do you see?”

Jack turned with a smile on his lips. “Only my imagination playing tricks.” He noticed the others moved off along the path. “This is certainly one strange spaceship and far removed from what I expected.”

“I know what you mean. It's not like the type of spacecrafts normally portrayed in science fiction movies like Star Trek and Star Wars.”

Jack glanced around at the strange architecture and then into the misty void. “It's more like something out of that Alien movie we watched last night.”

“Well, let's hope we don't meet any of those aliens. I'm no Ripley.”

Jack smiled. “I'm not sure I'm the hero type either.”

Jane grabbed his arm gently and flashed him a smile. “Oh, I don't know. I can easily picture you saving us from terrible alien monsters.”

“Are you two coming?” called out Henry, from halfway along the path. He was keen to make sure they all stayed together.

Jane reluctantly let go of Jack's arm and side-by-side they walked off to catch up with the others.

The group headed for the green glow emitted by something in the room's center. Everyone was struck speechless when they were close enough to make out its details. Rough sculptured metal rock surrounded the base of three two-yards-wide by five high transparent cylinders, set in a circle. Each was filled with a semi-transparent emerald green liquid and occupied by an alien creature almost as tall as the container.