The Thing: from the Depths of Hell (12 page)

Chapter 31

The Opening

Many scientists wanted more investigations to
be done and the president and military decided in the end to allow
the energy bubble around the explosion zone to be examined more
closely, and them to remove the energy shield, by slowly opening
small holes in it to allow air in, and to fill the vacuum in, and
to remove the entire shield from around the zone.

The idea was done slowly, and the
ship
’
s air
supplies at the region were increased to compensate, and they soon
filled the entire region in the energy bubble with air, and removed
the entire shield from there, and the media showed the immense hole
in the spacecraft, and how the scientists were investigating
it.

Kruger gasped a few times when they opened
it, wondering what the consequences would be, and saw that they had
handled everything, and that nothing had happened.

He realized that it was better that they did
it now, as he would not like the alien if it were still there to
get to the Earth, and he would rather they handled the problem
there, and correctly.

Near the laboratory of paranormal scientists
Kruger got another surprise when he met other scientists there,
from different regions of the ship, who were arriving there to do
work, and he realized from what they told him that they thought
there could be a problem, and that they thought there was a chance
of the alien still being there, and though the scientists wished
that they should not have taken the energy screen down that it was
better for them to handle the problem there and then.

At the
laboratory he realized that they had clearly predicted that they
would take the energy shield down for a long time, and had been at
work on hundreds of elaborate contraptions that they had invented
for their purposes, and that they had clearly been working like
crazy to build for a long time, with the majority of the large
laboratory covered in tools and equipment, and their contraption of
hundreds of parts being fitted together at the center, and parts
being tested there, with immense power supply cables coming in
through areas of the floor to give them as much power as
possible.

Not only that
after some time he started to realize that far more was behind it
than he had thought, and that him taking a break away from the
outer spacecraft, and relaxing in his quarters, with Marsha, had
left him out of touch with what was happening.

Yet he had
checked all media updates, and nobody had contacted him about
anything!

After some
time he managed to get to talk to Bryan, when he managed to pull
himself away from his work for something to eat.

“
Why was
I not informed of anything?” he asked, worriedly.

“
Good
one! But they did not need you! Or for the moment, anyway
...”

“
What’s
happening then?”

“
As you
know the energy shield was taken down?”

“
Right!
It was!”

“
Well
that thing was still there! And it managed to hide
itself!”

Even though he
had suspected it was he felt like fainting or something, and felt
deeply annoyed, as he knew what was going happen, and he was
trapped, and he had to go through the whole situation again, and
very well could be killed this time around!

“
Great!
They could have done a lot of things! They had it as a prisoner,
and trapped in there. They could even have created a gap leading
out of the spacecraft from it with an energy shield tunnel, to stop
it escaping, and taken it out through the outer energy shield, and
if it refused to leave shrink the energy bubble until it either
left through it or decrease the energy bubble to a size that it
could be removed through the tunnel, and thrown out into that world
...”

“
Good
one! But they thought it never existed there, and would not have
gone to that length for nothing ...”

The next thing
that happened shocked Kruger further, and further than ever before,
as his communicator announced a message to him, and he answered the
message, from someone at the military control center, who told him
that Marsha Pendleton had been killed by the alien.

Chapter 32

The Monster
Returns

Kruger was
staggered, and was even more shocked when he met Don, and found out
that he was more staggered than him, as it was the first time that
he had seen him properly react to anything. Even when he had
attacked the alien with the weapon in the bar he had reacted
little, and he sensed that he had known that the weapon would not
kill it, or do anything other than make it angry, and perhaps
attack them or something.

The alien was
now killing people in a rampage through the spacecraft. It had
developed a great deal since it had been blown up, and trapped in
the energy bubble, and had developed a method of leaping from
location to location, avoiding any traps or repeats of what
happened.

Its leaps were
instantaneous, and it never appeared at the same location twice,
and they had problems avoiding it – other than the fact that it was
possessed with doing as much damage to them and their property as
it could. It had waged war on them, and it was ready to fight for
its survival.

When Kruger
returned to the laboratory, Mitchel and Bryan were working and
making all the scientists work like crazy to finish their project,
which they all called the STP1, and they only stopped to greet him
as he entered.

What they were
building was beyond his imagination, and the majority of the
scientists there, and he knew that they could not get anything out
them, but worked on fascinated with the technology, especially as
most had not even properly encountered new technology, which was
virtually a thing of the past.

The thing had
lost shape and did not resemble anything, and would not be noticed
by anyone.

The alien
could appear there at any time, kill them all, and not even bother
with it!

When Mitchel
finally stopped for a drink, Kruger marched over, and asked him,
“How are we going to catch that thing now? It leaps about the ship
too randomly, and has not actually been found to arrive at the same
location twice. They are unable to predict its moments!”

Kruger spotted
a brief glimpse of disappointment, but saw that he had known it,
and had thought of the answer.

“
We have
compensated for all that, and you forget we came up with a way to
detect it in other dimensions!”

He took Kruger
over to the equipment that they had used to detect it, and showed
him its location in the ship.

“
How
come this is not at the control center?” he moaned.

“
Or why
don’t we have another model created for them? Well, for one thing
it moves too fast, and it moves within seconds of attacking each
area, and the fact that it would now take too long for us or them
to create another, and they would have a hard time building more as
there are not enough of some of the parts aboard!”

“
So what
now?”

“
We have
a better idea?” he replied, finishing his drink, and pointing at
what they were building, and he quickly left him and returned to
building it!

Chapter 33

The Space/Time
Project

For a moment
Kruger heart leaped as though something strange had happened, as
though something had vanished.

The scientists
had not even finished building the STP1 when they had heard about
the attack on the control center, and he knew that they had not
been able to get the energy shield up in time.

He had never
realized how determined Mitchel and Bryan were, and could become,
until now, and he watched them start activating their equipment,
even though it had not been tested.

All the
scientists stood back as it burst into life, using massive amounts
of energy, through the attached cables, with the shear energy
making the very ship about them vibrate, and lurch.

It was then
that something strange had happened, and Kruger wished he had
forced Mitchel into giving more information on what they were
doing.

White translucent lights appeared magically
around them, floating inertly in mid-air, in front of their eyes,
like stars in space, and Mitchel continued activating controls, and
energy discharges fired out at regions of them, and they
simultaneously increased their light to bright whiteness, and the
power being used could be felt in vibrations and whirling
sounds.

A vociferous blast of gleams of light
exploded out, and the lights rotated, with fuzzy multidimensional
forms rotating behind them, clearly from time shifts, and some
formed clustered layers.

At times it felt like they were in a
bubble of pure energy
–
buzzing and vibrating wildly and dangerously
about
them
.

Kruger knew
that they were only experimenting with something, but was at a loss
to what it was.

They had clearly just created a miniature
version of an area of space, and they stopped its progression at a
calculated point, and carried out a series of basic experiments,
and they decreased its size and form.

It was like an altered projection of reality
magically spinning around them, in patterns of light, like a light
show.

“
We were not able to carry out our
original plan,
”
Mitchel announced to all the scientists, who stood
gasping.

“
Basically speaking! We were going to
detect the alien and throw it out the universe, where it would not
bother us again.
”

Kruger gasped, and wondered what he meant
outside the universe!

“
We have
to do something before the alien, which has just entered the
control center, deactivates the spacecraft’s energy shield, as it
will not only destroy everyone here, it will be able to find our
worlds and destroy them. It is crazy enough already!

“
The
outer entity, in the surrounding void, is too powerful. It could
destroy whole galaxies.”

“
So what
is your answer to that then?” Kruger asked.

“
We only
have the one answer, and the first part of it is that we leave the
universe!”

Mitchel
started activating controls, and the other scientist joined in,
until they had completed all their procedures, and
Kruger felt something leaving him, and the essence of the
universe vanishing away, and realized the earlier stuff was just
rehearsals for the real stuff, and
that they
were now leaving the
universe.

There were sudden explosions of movement, of
everything around them, as space and time altered, and the universe
shrank away, and Kruger felt like losing consciousness.

He had feelings of being alone, and he
realized that his mind was not able to function in different
ways.

Everything about him turned transparent, and
he saw the darkness outside. The voyager about him was
disappearing, and turning into an energy state, and he watched his
body fade into nothingness.

They were going beyond reality to what? It
was as though he were dreaming in an altered state of
existence.

Kruger sensed telepathic thoughts of the
alien, and that it could not handle not existing in the universe,
and he heard its last gasps before it died, and he wondered if they
would die too, or if they were going to enter he universe
again.

He realized then that they had invented
something to keep them and the voyager existing.

However, Kruger could not realize what would
happen if they could not enter the universe again, as there clearly
was nothing outside it.

He sensed that there was power there though,
and it was more than anything that he had ever thought existed, and
he wondered what the hell it was, and why it was hidden away from
him.

Light from it shone over him, and
entities in the form of large bright globes appeared, and he
recognized that they had some features, and that they really had
the appearances of ghosts, and
he lost consciousness, with the
others
.

Part II

Ice Station X1

Prologue

The Visitation

The pale cold complexion of the Russian
scientist entirely altered! Sounds he gave took strange tones
everywhere as he started trying to explain, and Weaver strained his
eyes trying to see him now, while he considered it, and the
darkness in the room grew!

“
Normal astronomers and observatories
around the world never detected it, and would have studied it with
great curiosity if they had at a far lower velocity, and would have
been baffled, as it went at many times the speed of
light!
”

Weaver grasped at what it was and started to
comprehend what he had been missing! He wondered what could detect
such an object, and if they even had anything available!

“
Its origins were undetected by the
sources that had seen it and had been set up for high speed
objects!
”
The scientist continued, biting his lower lip hard.
“
The detection
sites were mainly created and functioned to discover and track any
high speed objects for military detection systems and unidentified
flying objects of any kind, and from all the accumulated sources
known only Russian intelligence agencies investigated it further
because of its tremendous velocity and the fact that the location
of its descent was accurately traced into this place and region of
the Antarctic!
”