The Black Knight (36 page)

‘They’re getting worse,’ Hannah called as she clung to the railings nearby. ‘This cavern could go any moment.’

Ethan kept his hand on the bell, and to his shock he felt it vibrating with such force that his arm went numb and he was forced to place his right boot firmly on the deck and push off from
Die Glocke
while his arm was still able to react to his commands.

The tremendous noise and shaking faded away once more and Ethan shook his hand and frowned at it.

‘What?’ Amy asked.

‘Die Glocke,’ Ethan said as he shook his arm back and forth to bring it back to life again. ‘It was vibrating, made my hand go numb.’

Amy stared at his hand for a moment, then at the artifact, and then she leaped to her feet and threw her arms about Ethan’s neck as she kissed him firmly on the lips. Ethan stared at her in shock as she released him.

‘Warner, you’re a genius.’

‘I keep saying it,’ he replied. ‘Why?’

Amy was already running for the base. ‘I know how to open Die Glocke!’

***

XLIII

‘Are you sure this is going to work?’

Lieutenant Riggs seemed unsure of himself for the first time since Ethan had joined the team as he looked on nervously at Amy.

‘It’ll work,’ Amy replied. ‘You’ve just got to seal this side of the base off. We can’t risk letting anything inside the device reach the other side, okay? It stays in here.’

‘Couldn’t it get through the water channels beneath the base?’ Hannah asked, clearly remembering Amy’s own prior concerns about quarantine.

‘We’ll keep it away from the dock edge,’ Amy promised. ‘And the tent will seal it in.’

Ethan watched as Doctor Chandler sealed the last few edges of the transparent plastic tent that they had erected around
Die Glocke
, sealing it off from the atmosphere. Nearby, a small generator was being prepared by Del Toro, ready to draw out some of the air pressure inside the tent so that nothing could escape in the event of a breach: instead, air would flow in and not out.

‘And what if there’s something, y’know,
alive
in there?’ Hannah pressed.

Amy smiled as she pulled herself into a biohazard suit, a helmet in her hand as she sealed the last of her suit up.

‘Nothing substantial can live for thirteen thousand years, Hannah,’ she assured her, ‘but bacteria and other forms of life have been known to last for literally hundreds of millions of years before being spontaneously brought back to life in the presence of liquid water or vapor. We’re not taking any chances.’

Amy pulled the hood over her suit and sealed it shut as Doctor Chandler moved across to her, and together they helped ensure that both sides of their suits were properly sealed before Amy looked at Riggs.

‘We’re ready,’ she said. ‘Seal the tent from outside, then activate the generator. Once we’re done, get inside the base and seal the door from the inside. That’s about all we can do for now.’

Riggs seemed genuinely uncertain.

‘I don’t like this one little bit,’ he replied as he led his soldiers back toward the sally port. ‘Whatever you’ve got to do in there, make it fast, okay?’

Ethan watched as the SEALs waited as Amy and Chandler walked into the tent, and then they sealed if from the outside before switching on the generator. The air pressure inside the tent rapidly reduced, and Ethan could see the vents drawing air in instead of out, those vents lined with grills designed to stop any foreign objects or bacteria from entering the tent. Simple scrubbers cleaned the carbon dioxide out of the tent, while both Amy and Chandler had oxygen supplied via small tanks on their backs.

‘They’ve got an hour,’ Riggs said as he walked by Ethan. ‘All we have to do is keep Veer off their backs and ours.’

Ethan and Hannah hurried in pursuit of Riggs as he led the team back inside the base and the SEALs worked to seal the door behind them. As soon as it was secure, Ethan hurried up to the command center where a laptop computer was now open on an abandoned workspace, the light from the screen glowing blue through the room.

‘Amy, can you hear us?’ he asked.

‘Loud and clear!’

Amy’s reply came from within the tent, where they could see her and Chandler preparing to open
Die Glocke
. Amy’s voice was slightly distorted but the images were perfectly clear as she spoke to them.

‘It never crossed my mind until that last quake inside the cavern, but these symbols around the circumference of the artifact are likely not alien numbers or letters but sounds, like musical notes. We have no idea how alien forms of life might communicate but as this device seems to have sought out an aquatic environment, it seems plausible that the species that created it might have communicated by some form of ultra-sound.’

Doctor Chandler cut in as he worked.

‘Most marine species on earth use ultra-sound as a means of communication,’
he said.
‘This device cavitated at the same time as the cavern during the last quake, and likely conducts sound just like an ordinary bell. If Amy is right, then applying the correct frequencies to the artifact should open it or perhaps even activate it.’

Hannah glanced at Ethan. ‘Am I the only one thinking this is probably a bad idea? Didn’t Chandler say that the Germans activated their
Die Glocke
during the war and that it melted people or something? I’d rather wait until some secret government organization can open this thing somewhere really remote.’

‘We are remote, and working for a secret government organization,’ Ethan pointed out.

‘I mean remote from
me
.’

‘It’s more than likely hre stuff of myth and legend,’
Amy said in reply as she worked,
‘but it is at the very least plausible that if this device has a defensive mechanism then sound may form a component of that. Everybody’s heard an opera singer hit a note and shatter a wine glass: it’s all to do with resonance. Match the resonance of an object with soundwaves, and you’ll shake it apart.’

‘The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was destroyed in 1940 by the same phenomenon,’
Chandler added.
‘The bridge was already known as “Galloping Gertie” because of its undulating behavior. The bridge was peculiarly sensitive to high winds. Rather than resist them the Tacoma Narrows tended to sway and vibrate, a tendency which progressively worsened due to harmonic phenomena. A forty mile per hour wind storm ripped the entire massive bridge apart.’

Ethan looked at Riggs.

‘Would the construction of this base provide any protection from something like that, a sound weapon?’

‘Maybe. Extremely high-power sound waves can disrupt or destroy the eardrums of a target and cause severe pain or disorientation,’ Riggs acknowledged. ‘The NYPD uses the LRAD-500X sonic weapon to disperse crowds but a base this size would prevent soundwaves from such weapons from reaching us if we were on the submarine pens on the other side.’

‘I heard that the crew of the cruise ship
Seabourn Spirit
used a long-range acoustic device to deter pirates who attacked the ship,’ Sully said, ‘so it’s possible this thing could use sound as a defense. The fact that it’s shaped like a bell suggests it would be effective at dispersing sound over long ranges, and if it’s really powerful even the water wouldn’t protect us – sound passes easily from water into the body.’

Ethan watched as Amy prepared an amplifier that they had bludgeoned together from the base’s old tannoy system. Attached now to a laptop using a complex series of cables and transistors that allowed the amplifier’s 1940s technology work with a modern computer, Amy had scanned in images of the icons on the artifact’s exterior and then applied a computer program to detect likely audio patterns matching the symbols.

‘Okay, we’re ready,’
she said finally.
‘Here goes.’

As Ethan watched, across the data link he heard a strange series of whoops and growls emitted by the amplifier. It sounded rather like a herd of cattle moving by, grunts and snorts that sounded similar but had no particular rhythm or pattern to them.

‘That’s not it,’
Amy said as he looked at the artifact and saw nothing.
‘Next pattern and frequency.’

Another blast of noise hit the rear dock, this time sounding reminiscent of a boulder rolling and bouncing down a rocky hillside.

‘This is going to take hours,’ Riggs uttered from nearby as he listened to the stream of noises coming from the laptop. ‘There must be billions of noises that program could rustle up, and none of them matching the frequency that Amy thinks will open the artifact.’

Despite the noise, Amy could apparently hear the soldier as she worked.

‘Not so,’
she replied.
‘This is a learning program. Every time a sound doesn’t work, it removes both it and its data stream from the list of possible choices, along with all variables in the same tone. Every test we run removes millions of sequences and narrows down the actual frequency and tone that matches the symbols.’

‘You ever done this before?’ Riggs challenged.

‘No,’
Amy replied.
‘But then it’s not every day we find an alien device in the middle of Antarctica with the hieroglyphic version of a doorbell on it, right?’

Riggs scowled and moved away but he said nothing as Amy continued to work.

Ethan perched on the edge of the table nearby and watched as Amy’s amplifier rig emitted sound after sound, each one being systematically rejected by the computer program. Hannah joined Ethan as they listened to the noises.

‘They’re starting to develop a pattern,’ Hannah said as she listened.

Ethan frowned, unable to hear anything that he would have called a melody or tune. ‘I don’t hear anything.’

‘It’s in the background,’ Hannah insisted. ‘Listen.’

Ethan closed his eyes as he heard what sounded like bubbles billowing beneath water, and suddenly he detected the same rhythm that Hannah’s more sensitive ear had picked up on moments before. The random noises were gradually being replaced by a subtle, repeating signal.

‘It’s sounding more like ultra-sound too,’ he whispered as he listened.

‘We’re getting something,’
Amy called.

The SEALs gathered and listened too as the computer’s repeated attempts to match the symbols to sounds began narrowing down the frequencies. Ethan heard a long, low whistle that sounded something like a train approaching down a tunnel, and he realized that he had heard something similar himself.

‘Whale song,’ Lieutenant Riggs recognized the same sound. ‘Damn me, maybe she was right after all.’

As Ethan listened, so he heard something behind the gradually refining whistle, a series of whoops and low, gently rippling howls that began to sound like something approaching…

‘Dialect!’
Amy shouted in delight.

Ethan felt a strange sense of fear as he listened to the noises now emanating from the amplifiers in the rear dock. A harmony of warbles and indistinct noises that somehow still sounded like the conversation of intelligent beings, a rippling back and forth of sounds that he realized must literally be the words of some other species from who-knew-where across the galaxy.

‘My God,’
Chandler exclaimed as he worked alongside Amy,
‘this is a dialect, a discernable language of some kind!’

Ethan was about to ask what Chandler thought the language, odd as it sounded, might mean when suddenly the computer beeped and Amy let out a squeal of delight. Ethan looked at the monitor and saw the computer in Amy’s tent stop producing sounds and instead present her with a file that was blinking on her screen.

‘This is it!’ she chirped. ‘It’s ready.’

Lieutenant Riggs shoved his way to the monitor. ‘Play it, now.’

‘Hang on,’ Hannah said. ‘Why not let them get out of the tent first and then play the sound remotely. We don’t know what’s gonna come out of there.’

‘Like Amy said, there’s nothing alive in there,’ Riggs shot back without looking at Hannah. ‘Open the artifact.’

Amy did not hesitate to proceed, either not hearing or more likely choosing not to hear Hannah’s suggestion as she hit a key on her keyboard. Ethan stood up as he stared at the screen and the amplifier emitted a final sound.

Even from his position looking at a small monitor Ethan could see the laptop inside the tent, the individual icons and symbols on
Die Glocke
appearing with each new note of the melody now playing throughout the base. Ethan could already tell that it was the sound of some kind of other-worldly species, a resonating series of low hums, howls, hoots and even clicks that corresponded with the symbols on
Die Glocke
.

The sequence played out and then the base returned to silence. Ethan looked at the artifact but it remained silent and still. Amy frowned at it and then stared up at the camera.

‘I don’t get it.’

Ethan shrugged, ‘So, maybe it is just a registration plate after all?’

Saunders’ voice attracted their attention away from the screen. ‘We’ve got company.’

Lieutenant Riggs cursed under his breath as he grabbed his rifle. ‘Damn it, this was a waste of time.’

Ethan accompanied him over to the shattered windows and looked down to see Veer’s men fanning out toward the base.

‘They’re going for it,’ Saunders said. ‘They’re attempting a full-frontal assault.’

‘Their funeral,’ Riggs growled. ‘Let ‘em in close and then we’ll take them to pieces.’

‘Roger that.’

Riggs looked across at Ethan. ‘Time to end the games out back. If we can’t open that thing up, then neither will they. Be ready to dump it back into the ocean if the base is breached.’

Ethan nodded as he drew his pistol and checked the mechanism. He hurried across to the monitor and spoke quickly.

‘Amy, we’re under attack. Get out of there, right now.’

They were out of time.

*

‘It’s over,’ Chandler said. ‘We just don’t have the time to finish this.’