The Nexus Colony (27 page)

Monroe didn’t want to talk, either. Allison had attempted several conversations, each time being met with a disinterested response. These people were beginning to frighten her. As she sat huddled in the machine, at the moment out of harm’s way of the frigid element, Allison began to reminisce the events of the past forty eight hours. She could describe them only as an ordeal. This was not a scientific mission, at least as scientific missions were designed. But rather one in which she—and Hilly and Ruger for that matter—had more or less been impressed into service at the whim of who knows who? The powers to be. Whatever those powers were.

The thought was depressing. She was now very concerned about how all of them were going to fare after this ordeal was ended. Abbott and his people were the kind you only read about in books. They really don’t exist except in somebody’s imagination. These individuals have notions about extraterrestrials, and somehow they’ve managed to project that scenario into the human realm of reality, and they’ve made the perception almost believable with this situation.

The experiences out here on
The Ice
had been all around her, had now become ingrained as a part of her conscious memories. But still, the rationale of Allison Bryson was refusing to accept it. She breathed a long sigh of frustration, and the white streamer of her breath lingered in the frigid air. She glanced again at the distant storm clouds.
How far are they?
she asked herself.

Recalling that somebody had binoculars, she got up to move around and spotted the case in the snowmobile occupied by Prall and Monroe. Looking over toward the solitary man, Monroe was staring off in the distance looking away from her.
What if I just started this machine and drove off?
she asked silently to herself.
Are you going to shoot me like you were going to shoot Lightfoot?

She reached inside the machine to retrieve the binoculars. Monroe didn’t flinch.
Screw you, you bastard!
she thought, defiantly. Taking them back to her machine, she removed them from the case, adjusted the focus, and aimed the glasses off toward the distant mountains. The resolution of the images was crystal clear.
Fascinating
, she thought. Allison couldn’t judge the distance accurately, but she remembered Mike Ruger telling her that you could only see a maximum distance of twenty miles to the horizon, and that was on the flat ocean. The storm had to be at least ten miles away.
Sure hope it doesn’t come in this direction.

Allison watched the weather activity for quite a while until it finally started to bore her. Glancing periodically over her shoulder at Monroe, he was still staring off into space.
The gargoyle pose
, she thought. Either he hadn’t noticed her peering through his binoculars, or else he didn’t care. Panning the area through the glasses, she gazed again at the majestic peaks that rose like crystalline spires above the ice-encrusted mountains. Then down along the glacial field, imagining in her mind how the ice was actually a massive frozen river flowing with great power over the face of the earth. Finally here eyes came to rest on the encampment.
Poor Lightfoot
, she thought, even though she disliked the man intensely. No wonder he was sick. It was a wonder
everybody
wasn’t sick the way Abbott has been pushing everyone to their physical limits.

And then it struck her that something was amiss. Something was odd about the encampment below as it filled the field of view in the lenses. She knew how meticulous Mike Ruger was about the configuration. The camp looked in disarray. She could see where the supply sleds had been moved around—that was going to set Mike off—but the other snowmobile was right where Mike wanted them all to be parked. Why would they have moved the sleds?
Lightfoot must have moved them, or maybe these two goons had been looking for something and moved them out of the way, or…
then she noticed the odd depression directly in the center of the camp. She was certain it hadn’t been there before. The circle was so apparent, so perfect, that she wondered why she hadn’t noticed it up until now.

Allison dropped the binoculars from against her face, then turned back to check on Monroe, who was still staring off.
What in the hell is going on out here?
She peered again through the glasses.
What is that thing?
It wasn’t there when they had left camp earlier that morning. For some reason, she turned quickly around to see Monroe staring at her. Caught. At first, Monroe didn’t react. Allison felt the fear rising from the pit of her stomach. Trying to quell her panic, uncertain how this maniac was going to react to her, she called to him casually, “Looks like the storm might be heading this way.”

Monroe approached her. The annoyance was evident on his face, what little she could see of it through the overhang of the furry parka hood. He stopped next to her. Slowly, he reached out for the glasses and took the binoculars from her weak grasp. He said in a very low, condescending tone of voice, “Don’t even think about going down there.”

She hesitated, swallowing the lump in her throat. “I wasn’t.”

“Good.”

As he turned to walk away, the panic still rising up inside her, Allison found herself blurting out, “Stop!”

He turned.

“What’s happening down there?!” she cried out. “I demand to know right now!”

Monroe replied, “Just stay put and you won’t have to worry.”

“
What
?” she exclaimed. “What are you telling me?” Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest cavity, and she felt the tension rising to her neck.

“Nothing is going to happen to anybody,” he responded callously. “If
they
were going to do anything to us,
they
would have done it by now.”

“
Where’s Lightfoot
?!”

“Just follow the Colonel’s orders. You got that, lady?” Monroe stomped away, taking the binoculars along with him.

You asshole!
she screamed inside her head. Trying desperately to maintain control over her emotions, feeling totally abandoned, Allison Bryson realized she had only two choices. Either huddle down in the lee of the snowmobile and wait for Ruger’s return, or else steal the damn machine and go down there and get it over with, whatever it was that was going on down there that Abbott was keeping them away from.
Hell of a choice
, she thought.

A brief wisp of frigid wind found its way into the seam of her parka hood, sending a chill all the way down her spine. Hunched back inside the shelter of the big snowmobile, Allison Bryson would weigh the dilemma only a short while longer before the choice would be made for her.

* * * * *

It was an outer shell. The panels, the pieces of artifacts, they were all part of the protective dome that surrounded an inner structure which was shaped like a giant honey-combed gumdrop. They had cautiously entered the opening in the ice wall, Prall leading the way, carbide light in one hand, his weapon held steady in the other, although what purpose weapons would serve at this point was moot. Abbott entered second, instinctively holding the weapon pointed forward, followed closely by Lisk.

They emerged into a corridor which apparently wrapped itself around the massive facade much like a tire wraps around a rim. They estimated the corridor was about ten feet wide. The facing of the inner structure was equidistant from the inwardly curving panels of the outer shell. The facings of both appeared to continue to remain equi-distant all the way around and all the way upward making the spatial plane slanted inward. Abbott immediately realized that your standard six foot human actually only had about five feet of usable space, as the headroom was reduced along the curvature of the wall.

They shone the lights up along the curvature of the inner facade, but the angle of the surface and the effective length of the carbide light beam prohibited them from seeing anything beyond fifty feet. Abbott aimed the light in both directions down the corridor. Again, they could only see about fifty feet into the blackness. Whatever this structure was, it was immense. Whatever this structure had been, it hadn’t been put here by human hands.

The foul odor inside was still horrible, but by all indications on the meter that Lisk was intently monitoring, there weren’t any toxic gases present. As far as any bacteria…well, that was another matter. There was no test for that. It was too late anyway, and Abbott dismissed concern at this point. They were at the hands of fate on that matter.

Abbott’s mouth was dry like cotton, and for the first time in his life he felt out of control, even more than the dread he had experienced back on the surface where he conjectured the fate of John Lightfoot. Trying to quell the rising of his emotions, he fought desperately to maintain command, not let any of the others see the fear he knew must be evident on his face. His gut feeling was telling him to leave this place, and he knew that over the years it was his gut feeling that had kept him alive thus far.
The mission is over. The source is found.
Whether this place spelled their doom or not, it was not meant for human intrusion even though, at the moment, the residents didn’t appear to be at home. At least not in the outer corridor.

Abbott!
He heard his name being called from somewhere behind. The inflection of the voice was very clear and the whispering projection reverberated through the corridor. It jolted him back into the reality—and the overwhelming magnitude—of the situation.

“Here,” he responded in a low voice which should have been barely audible, but reverberated clearly. “We’re right here.”

Ruger called again from the ice opening. “What’s in there? What did you find?”

Abbott, Lisk, Prall…they all passed their lights again over the foreboding honey-combed facade of the inner structure. They could see now that it was a series of grates, the separating seams barely discernible in the low light. Abbott tried to draw some moisture into his mouth, but it was still difficult to swallow. He replied, “It’s…not human…I suppose.”

His words resounded very clearly to those listening at the ice opening. Ruger and Grimes and Almshouse all looked at each other. The words
not human
stuck in their minds.

Ruger moved forward to peer through the opening.
They took their masks off
, he thought. “We’re coming in,” Ruger called assertively to them inside. He sensed the danger, the awful feeling of dread, but he forced himself to move forward.

Ruger shone the light into the pitch blackness to the left in the direction where he had just heard Abbott’s voice. The lamps of the three men were a short distance ahead. The floor was ice-covered on the other side where some of the ice debris had fallen through the opening, but the floor turned smooth a few feet farther in. Ruger shone the light down at his feet, where he saw that the flooring was like a series of interlocking tiles configured in a strange asymmetrical pattern. Grimes and Almshouse followed silently behind.

“Abbott,” Ruger called, cautiously. “I’m coming at you.”

“Right,” Abbott replied, almost indifferently.

“Sweet Jesus!” Grimes suddenly exclaimed. “Will you look at that!”

His light was shining on the inner facade of the honey-combed wall. As Grimes moved the light beam up along the curving surface, he said, “It doesn’t reflect hardly any light. Almost like it absorbs it.”

Ruger shone his light to the left where the familiar pattern of the artifact panels came into view.

“It’s a structure inside another structure,” Grimes commented.

“Oh, God!” Almshouse suddenly blurted out. “I think I’m going to throw up. That smell is awful…” He began to gag.

“Breath through your mouth,” Ruger advised.

Unexpectedly, one of the lights up ahead shone directly at them. Abbott’s voice was louder. “I thought I told you to wait.”

“You did,” Ruger responded. “We waited. Now we’re here.”

“I want somebody to remain behind at the opening,” Abbott said.

“For what?” Ruger replied.

“In case something goes down,” Abbott responded. “That’s why.”

“If something goes down, Marsh,” Ruger replied, “I don’t think it’s going to matter one way or the other who’s located where.” The words reverberated through the corridor along with the subtle creeping footsteps of the three men. Abbott did not reply.

When Ruger reached Abbott’s location, they saw Lisk closely scrutinizing the honey-combed grates of the inner facade, Prall standing guard over him in the blackness.

“What have you found?” Ruger asked.

“Nothing,” Lisk replied. “These grates seem to be identical everywhere.”

“We need more light,” Abbott said. “Can somebody go out there and get the Coleman lanterns?”

“Yeah. Sure,” Almshouse replied.

For the next minute they all stood quiet. The absolute silence was overwhelming.
Beneath a sea of ice…
Almshouse returned rather quickly with the lighted lanterns, and the honey-combed surface cast an even more ghostly effect all around, making the structure even more alien than imagined.

“Here. Come here, Hilly,” Almshouse said, breaking the eerie silence. “Help me out.”

Almshouse picked up the lanterns and placed each one against the outer edge of the wall about twenty feet apart. He then positioned Grimes near to the inner wall at one end, himself against the inner wall at the opposite end. “Mark your spot,” he said to Grimes, making a mental mark of his own.

Grimes knew exactly what he was doing. Marching off the distance along the tangent line, Grimes and Almshouse quickly calculated the approximate circumference of the inner shell.

“Assuming, of course, it’s got a circular base,” Almshouse inferred. “I’d say it’s about three hundred fifty feet in circumference, which makes it about a hundred, hundred ten feet in diameter.”

“How high?” Abbott asked.

They all shone their carbide lights up into the blackness.

“Can’t really tell,” Almshouse replied. “At least fifty, sixty feet, that’s for sure.”