The Antarctic Discovery (Novelette) (5 page)

“
He
’
s not one of us!
”
another finally stated.

“
That
’
s a good one!
”
Weaver replied, considered
a way to get them to give their fantasies.
“
Who or what could it
be?
”

“
He must have something to say if he
traveled here!
”
one of the scientists quickly replied, confusing him
further.

“
It might be one of the killers of your
scientists and soldiers here?
”
Reeves stated firmly.

Weaver watched them all become aware of the
further danger, and start to think of ways of protecting
themselves.

“
What does it want?
”
the scientist replied
first.
“
That’s the question! Why does it want to meet
us here? It could easily have kept itself hidden!
”

Weaver had a
shudder rush up his spine!

“
What actually are we talking
about?
”
one
of the silent soldiers asked, who had sat out of the way, and he
moved over to it, getting ready to do something, and was
immediately stopped by Commander Craven.

Weaver studied the figure and realized that
it had not moved or done anything since it had sat down.

“
What do you want?
” the soldier asked it,
confused.

Weaver knew there would be no reply and that
someone might do something, and might do something stupid and fire
their gun there, and he rushed over before anyone could and slowly
lifted the faceplate of the spacesuit, and stood back shocked!

It was the soldier that had been killed when
the gunmen had attacked them, and they stood staggered, and the
others that could not see its face rushed over see there.

The dead soldier was lifelessly dead and sat
without moving in its seat, and they examined him in every detail
and saw that his clothes were identical, and they wondered how it
had moved!

“
We cannot leave
this!
” Commander Craven
finally moaned out loudly, showing his annoyance. “Great! How am I
going to explain this in my report?”

While most of them sat down confused, trying
to explain how the body had moved there, they watched it fade away
and vanish!

Chapter 6

The Hauntings

The events were staggering afterwards! Some
of the soldiers seemed to get crazy thoughts about what occurred
and they gave accounts of there being something supernatural!

Weaver thought it was something to do with
the scientists!

Scientists
openly talked about their work researching it at the dinner table,
and about mysterious occurrences in the corridors at night. They
actually warned them about them, claiming that they regularly
occurred in my regions of the ice station.

The way some of
the soldiers there talked about it and warned them left them as
unexplained deadly occurrences.

Yet the deaths
there were worse and major scientists, as well as solders, had been
found dead all over the ice station, but the vast majority were
outside.

They gave
detailed accounts of a group of scientists whose bodies were found
scattered throughout a lower corridor, where nobody usually went,
and now avoided after the incident.

Weaver was
confused more than ever! Would the professional gunmen that
attacked them carry out such an attack? Yet he had not heard
anything like it! He was not sure if he believed that they had even
entered the ice station! He and the others seemed to be protected
from them there! Though there was a chance that they could enter by
a hidden entrance! Yet they had not seen them or had one clue as to
what they were like! Any manic could be given a gun and carry out
what they did!

They could be
trying to cover their identity, which they had done and he had
proven it, and they could have panicked when they had seen their
team of highly advanced soldiers coming down from the plane, and
had attempted to annihilate the threat against them. But just what
the hell was their motive? Maniacs never attacked military ice
stations out in places like the Antarctic!

It also
surprised him to hear that many of the scientists had been chased
by swift-moving lights that had been seen shifting through metal
walls, which they never had any knowledge of being possible.

Eventually Commander Craven took the soldiers
out to get the dead soldier’s body and to check it, and prove it
had not risen from death or whatever they had claimed.

It was far easier in sunlight and out of the
blizzard, and they had men surround the area with guns and
communicators ready to inform them of any attack, and Weaver
wondered why they were not contacting the outside world of the
occurrences as they had a form of communications to a satellite at
least! Then he discovered that they had to put up a large antenna
over the top of the ice station, which was folded away so the
station remained strictly hidden away, which they only used when
they gave out their communications and for extra supplies to be
brought.

The soldiers eventually found the body under
snow and soon realized that it had not been moved since the soldier
had been killed, and they took it back to the ice station.

Chapter 7

The Scientists

He was glad that their investigation of
outside for the gunmen had never revealed anything, as he knew it
would have ended in many deaths by them, as they were not equipped
to carry out such an operation, and he was sure that it would still
have done so!

It had amazed him that they could not find
any traces of them anywhere and that they just concluded that their
base was miles away, and perhaps buried away underground.

Yet he could still not conclude what they
were doing there with so many gunmen and who they were, and why the
people running the ice station never acknowledged that they were
outside. There were a vast amount of deaths and they were in an
immense and major military ice station at the Antarctic with many
soldiers and they had gunmen running around outside, who had
attacked and killed their soldiers and they ignored it!

After discussions with the leader of the
soldiers at the ice station they had found out little other than
the fact that the soldiers there surely had nothing to do with the
deaths and that they had been at the station too long and many of
them had turned useless as soldiers, and others drank crazily into
the night in loud parties into night!

His investigations for his intelligence
mission had him all over the place meeting different people, and
getting suggestions of other things that still never added up,
which he was sure he was being denied as it would be dangerous.
Something was being hidden and they were all avoiding telling him,
and some even showed deep fear of something, which he never
grasped! Were people being killed for saying too much? If so he may
be able to find one!

The problem was he never knew what he was
actually investigating, and he entered many laboratories and drank
with many of the scientists and tried to work out what they were
working on, but they normally just told him about what they were
doing, and he would realize that there was nothing there. Yet there
was always a suggestion that work was being carried out somewhere
else, which they refused to say anything further about, and many
times they belied he knew about it.

He knew there were scientists that knew
something and he had to find a way to get them to tell him what he
wanted!

He had some scientists show him around the
ice station and tell him what was happening there, and in various
laboratories, and he started removing things from a list of things
he wanted to investigate.

The large aerial communication tower and a
satellite disc for satellite communications, which were folded down
to make the place hidden, were finally raised up to transmit
communications.

It surprised him that the commander of the
ice station at breakfast announced that a supply plane would arrive
that day and he wondered why they had to parachute down when they
could have arrived in it, and he later went up to see it land on a
flat region, where their small vehicles had cleared a landing site,
which looked just like a frozen lake.

Yet the thing he was surprised the most at
was the size of the plane and incredible amount of food supplies
that was taken from it into the ice station, and in the end he
explained it as them building up their supplies perhaps for the
dark polar winter.

None of the scientists ever mentioned the
lower floors and he tried to question them and received little so
he decided he had to go there and see what was there for
himself.

Technicians fixed up a small vehicle for him
and two scientists, which they used to transport themselves around
the ice station, and they finally persuaded them to go to the lower
floors of the ice station.

They went down different floors at a
specially designed region for the vehicles, away at the end of a
main central corridor, and when they started to get near the lower
floors he started to see the deterioration in the corridors and
rooms, and it was as though he were traveling in a time machine
into the past, and at the bottom two floors there was so much
deterioration there that rubbish and rubble, collapsed walls,
dampness and rot was covering the entire corridors and rooms, and
only a few lights were still working. And he started to realize
that the killers, who surely had a highly desperate and ongoing
motive to kill, could be outsiders and be hidden away there, and
that they could be part of the gunmen group that had shot at
them.

When he got out the vehicle he watched
everywhere for movement and evidence showing that anyone had been
there, and he and the two scientists marched through the bottom
corridor and connecting corridors searching for anything, and
anything lurking in shadows. The place was vast and went out to
quarter of a mile forward and sideways.

Weaver had his gun, and army clothes on, and
led them along occasionally entering rooms studying everything and
things of interest, while curiously watching the reactions of the
scientists to things, and he sensed that they had not been there
and had been warned about the dangers of the killers.

He noticed that his surroundings suddenly
seemed to get dirtier and dirtier and seemed to remain clean in the
central region for some reason, and it became clear someone had
cleared everything away from there to make a pathway.

There were too many unsolved mysteries!
Another main one emerged and what the place was to do if a war
broke out and it was to be used, as it had no real use in a war
anywhere, and he could not see it even carrying anything out! They
built such a massive building and kept the place going for nothing
as far as he could see. Occasionally he heard loud deep thuds below
and realized that the thick Antarctic ice was under there.

Further in he had to sweep away webs to enter
rooms, and some hanged down from the roof overhead going across to
the walls, and he would study ancient laboratories and apparatuses
with deep interest wondering what they had been for, and what
highly confidential discoveries they were researching and
creating.

He wondered if they would have anything left
to discover someday, and tried to find any books with details of
the work and found little, other than old tattered sheets of paper
with useless scribbles on them.

He even started considering if the place
could be revived someday, and if the world in the future, hundreds
or even thousands of years from then could increase their
transportation and civilization to the Antarctic, and if they would
have cities at the region and if they had to defend it in future
world wars, and he realized that he was underestimating the
future.

He realized that no real dampness and water
had entered that area recently, and there were cracks in the outer
places where the outer ice was.

“
Well!
”
one of the scientists conclusively
announced, breaking his silence.
“
We have searched! The rest of the
place must be the same, as it is throughout the
complex!
”

They entered deeper into it and he turned on
lights in some of the rooms to see there in more detail, and it
looked incredible, and he realized that he had started to enjoy
exploring there! It looked entirely different to anywhere he had
normally been, and mysterious things kept him intrigued. It had
preserved itself and it held all the past secrets, and perhaps
hidden military secrets, and he wondered what kind of secret
weapons they could have discovered that might not have been
revealed to the world, and he wondered what the whole structure
might have originally been like when built.

Then while approaching a corridor going
sideways at his front, a white shape seemed to jump out, and he
then saw a scientist in a white laboratory jacket march out in
front of him, and mutter something to them and march off towards
where they had come from, and the scientists with him shrugged and
he watched the scientist curiously go to a spiral staircase to walk
up to the higher floors, and he wondered what he had been up to, as
the place should have been deserted, and he saw that he clearly had
been actively at work at something somewhere.