The Thing: from the Depths of Hell Read online

He explored over to his side and discovered equipment and small vehicles and a colossal generator and examined the controls and realized how new it was, and he traced cables from it to more equipment and massive lights!

  He activated the generator and it swiftly started, and when the lights brightened he gasped, slipped, and collapsed onto the slippery icy ground!

  The cavity was immense and went into the distance, but what really staggered him was the black object at its center! It was immense and bigger than any manmade object that he had seen! It was circular and he estimated it went out for at least quarter of a mile in every direction!

  He was staggered and exhausted and could not understand any of it! They surely could not have put it there? The construction of it there would have taken vast resources! They would have had to have vast amounts of men and vehicles being brought in!

  How could anyone have been able to hide and carry out such an operation without being noticed?

  Even if they had worked on it at night lights and sounds would be visible, and vehicles and airplanes taking in supplies would have left signs of activity everywhere.

  The ice cavity above and around him also looked like the ice in the tunnel and as though it was different from regular ice! It seemed to him to have been formed from water that had melted and had been frozen quickly afterwards!

  He realized that it could have been built when the large ice station had been constructed and that it could well have been a hidden part of it! Whatever it was it had to have been even more secretive than it!

  What the hell was it? It staggered him when he thought of the nature of the ice station! The place had been built for atomic warfare!

  Could it be an ultimate atomic weapon and doomsday device?

  He realized the danger that he was in and he had to get out, and realized he would have to leave the ice station! It was far too dangerous and he considered if he should have it investigated!

  While he started wandering up to the deadly black object he wondered how the thing could even lift off! The power behind it had to be colossal and new and highly confidential!

  He quickly returned to where he had been and did his best to remove all signs that he had been there. Except the rope was still attached at the top of the tunnel and he had to ignore it and left! He would have to go into hiding for a month or two and hope that it might be forgotten!

  He soon found a vehicle and sat in it and got ready to drive away. He was staggered at his original thoughts of what was there! It did not add up! What the hell was it doing there?

  He barely even grasped why the ice station was situated there! The Antarctic was not near anything! Surely America had enough land and hidden places where it could be hidden away? It was located away out there where anything could happen!

  He shifted the vehicle away slowly getting use to using it while examining the black object and its immense shape, but never saw anything on or in it, or marks of anything, which would had shown that it had been welded or parts had been somehow fitted together!

  When he stopped to feel its surface he was surprised that it was not a type of metal and was some new unknown substance.

  There had to be a way into it or something, and he raced along its side gasping at the immensity of it. Now amazed that there had been only two gunmen looking after it! How could it have been so hidden away?

  The structure was circular and flat at the top and bottom, and he when he reached the furthest region he realized that it was a least quarter of a mile long all around it, and he was staggered!

  Eventually he found an opening tunnel in the ice cavity where large vehicles had entered and left, and he followed a road slightly going upwards to the surface and discovered a vast metal door further up, and he failed to discover a way of opening the lock, and he realized that he was trapped in the cavity!

  Once at the bottom again he continued going around the black object searching for anything strange, and slowly started falling asleep, still trying to find a solution to finding a way out and what he had discovered, and finally he allowed the vehicle to come to a standstill against a slightly different flattish region of the black object, which looked like the front of it, where he went to sleep and had strange dreams!

  When he awoke a few hours later he had a throbbing head from the cold and he was dazed from his dreams, and he jumped out the vehicle and spotted and stared over at a hole in the black object, wondering where it came from!

  It confused him and he even wondered if he was imagining it being there and that it was something else!

  Where had it come from? He searched around looking to see if anyone had been there or was about!

  How recently had the opening in it formed?

  He tried to recall if there had been any marks on it or anything there, and again he wondered how long ago it had appeared? Were there people inside? And how dangerous was it being there?

  He moved directly below it and listened into it. It was only a few feet above his head and was a perfect circle at the same size as his height!

  It still confused him greatly as he did not have a clue what he was dealing with and he realized that he had to investigate it as he would not forgive himself for letting go a chance of explaining it or getting some information! He was a keen scientist and had also investigated everything of the slightest interest.

  He shifted the vehicle correctly below it and stood on the highest part of the vehicle and hoisted himself up into it, fascinated at the dangers and the impact of such a discovery! He had been waiting his entire life to see something like it! Even though the dangers were tremendous!

  Light dimly beamed through the hole only lighting a small empty area and he looked about and moved into the darkness further in, where dim black shapes became vaguely visible.

  He could not recognize if it was a room or large hall and he strolled slowly and blindly into it, wearily resting, and got ready to escape if he heard or seen anyone and stayed observing what the black shapes were, while he let his eyes adapt to the darkness.

  He was sure what was confusing him and stopping him grasping small details was what the whole object actually was! The material it was made of was clearly unknown and capable of withstanding tremendous forces, and nothing was familiar to him, which he had not done in a long time and in such a way!

  He felt strangely shaped black things about his front in the blackness, and smelled a musty synthetic scent in the air. His eye pupils slightly adjusted, to the blackness, and he stared at places covered in lines and curves.

  He moaned thinking his tiredness and disappointment at not receiving any answers to what was going on! Surely it was something? They gunmen were willing to kill for it! The size and cost was tremendous, as well as their bringing in such equipment and building such an immense structure there!

  It startled him and he could not grasp the purpose of such a thing! A curved part of a wall had shapes on it and he tried touching them and seeing if they did anything, but there was no response.

  He moved further along to another area and observed a dark shape and had a feeling of something being there, like he was being watched!

  Something lifted him and he gasped, and it shifted him away, with nothing visible holding him, and he felt some force moving him away into the interior of the black object, and he realized slowly that it could kill him easily!

  He tried to theorize about it but there was nothing he could grasp! All he saw was strange dark shapes!

  Was it of military origins? It could be to camouflage the technology and confuse any observers? Whatever it was the cost and time behind it proved that it could take warfare to a new level!

  Blackness covered his vision and he felt a strange sensation like he was floating through space, and something opened at his front like an energy curtain, and he felt as though he had entered something strange!

  A strange blue radiance shone out so dimly that he could not properly see what was there. It shone like a faint blue star.

  It s
wiftly shifted away and his emotions ran amok when he started seeing spectacular views of space, and he could no longer feel any floor beneath his feet or see any of the black shapes.

  An eerie sensation gripped him! Something was not right! He sensed a weird presence of something, which he never recognized!

  Nothing but space formed around him in stages as though he were standing out in deep space, and he stood staggered trying get how it was implanted within his mind, and he watched a sphere of light floating through the darkness and passed him, and he realized that it had to be telepathically transmitted into his mind, covering his entire sight with vivid visions.

  Strange displays of visions and sounds altered and vanished about him, and they reformed into other things, and visions of space appeared and vanished like something was searching through memories for something, and he was sure something was trying to adapt it to him, so that he could understand it. Some of the strange sounds and lights gave him artificial sensations, which he could not grasp the nature of!

  He was sure he was picking up knowledge of things but he could not understand what they were, and he then watched infinitely streaking stars, of solar systems, flickering by.

  Suddenly he realized the black object he was in was a voyager spacecraft, which had a new form of propulsion, with mind-boggling technology and powers, and an accuracy and capacity inconceivable, and was built to travel into deep space, and he watched its voyage across star quadrants and through clusters of stars, exploring vast unexplored stars.

  He wondered what it had been designed to do! Had they built it to make contact with something that they had detected? Perhaps the radio signals from it had been detected?

  He wondered if it was in a probe of immense proportions, as there was no mention of any humans!

  There were sights of it exploring worlds, but he could not grasp its mission. He knew that it had to be more than for doing what normal probes did and that alien contact and deep space exploration had to be part of it! Had something made contact with them? Did they have a real Star War program hidden away?

  Why did this voyager end up there, embedded in ice in the Antarctic? Was it there as it would not be detected by the rest of the world? It surely would be detected coming down even at the Artic! Yet he could not even imagine such a large object not being detected coming down anywhere!

  Willis gasped as new visions appeared and he saw nothing but a vision of blackness, and it hurtled through the outer limits of space and time, racing into this universe, and he watched, staggered, realizing that it had traveled beyond the universe, and he realized it had a way of making vast leaps through space with it, but it was inaccurate, and that star traveling was needed to carry out the majority of its voyage!

  For some reason its form was a mass of energy and it became unstable and it created vast unstable energy explosions across space and time, which he realized were so powerful that they ripped at the fabric of space and time and made regions temporary unbalanced and warp, with only its protective energy shield holding it from the effects.

  Star formations flashed by, as it continued its pursuit of something, with its sphere of white glowing energy floating by like a colossal ghost. Voyaging through billions of stars, while transforming its energy states further from their original states.

  Willis watched the visions vanish and the normal surroundings there emerge, and felt himself being moved away and was left standing at the entrance hole, where he gasped and saw the two gunmen standing below at his vehicle, who aimed their guns at him and ordered him to climb down!

  Chapter 2

  The Secret Military Operation

  Once the military aircraft neared Ice Station X1 the soldiers aboard swiftly fitted on their parachutes and adjusted their gear, while receiving updates for the mission from Commander Craven.

  Weaver gasped considering the dangerous mission ahead, and gasped again at what had occurred already! Certain things that had occurred interested him greatly!

  There was more action than he could believe! What were the events that they were on the trail of? Were the soldiers on the plane being intentionally secretive or covering not knowing things for reasons? What had he let himself in for?

  He was to masquerade as a soldier to get into the Antarctic ice station and basically find out what was happening there without getting caught, and to take any action if needed!

  Sunlight blasted through one of the windows of the plane, giving him some warmth. The Antarctic conditions were slowly entering the plane and digging deep into his body, and he gasped at the temperatures recorded there and at the fact they were at such a height, which increased it! Normally he did not mind the winter but he liked to get use to low temperatures, and he had not been anywhere as cold before!

  So when the plane door was opened for them to parachute and the winds hit them he shuddered and put his helmet over his head!

  He automatically dived out with the others gritting his teeth!

  He started getting his body use to it, and could still hardly believe the location below and that he would be trapped there without help if anything happened! There was nothing for miles going into the flat white horizon! They had not even seen anything below since they passed the last ship over the sea.

  He realized that they had made a mistake! They had been too keen to enter the mission and they had dropped down a greater distance away from the ice station than they should have! And he could barely even see it and only recognized it from the secret intelligence photos of the highly confidential underground base.

  The fact that he had been a soldier and his military record and his keenest, fitness, and record of successful spy missions for the intelligence agency were the main reasons for him being chosen for the mission and to infiltrate the soldiers to enter the ice station.

  They had given him little and he knew they had little to give! Basically they had little of what was happening and he was to get information!

  He discovered little in what he had been told and really only knew that there were deaths occurring all over the ice station, and most had been killed by military weapons, which was why the soldiers were sent in to stop, and he was put there by intelligence agencies to find out more on.

  Nothing added up! Who wanted to kill anyone at such a place? It was basically a military and scientist ice station and he could only think that another country was behind it! Yet who had done it and why had they been done it? There were no known cases like it on record, which they or he could find, and he had also unsuccessfully searched for comparisons!

  Who could profit from it? They clearly would replace the people killed, and what good would it do for them! There had to be far more behind it! Surely other countries would not have any reasons or be able to profit from it with it being there.

  It was there to cover that region of the world if needed.

  Someone that he knew had been sure that they had discovered something and that the military and scientists there that knew about it were being killed, and if that was true he believed that he might be able to find something or someone with something.

  He gazed over at the underground ice station gleaming with sunbeams and wondered what the hell was there! The case was important and something had to have occurred!

  He recalled the immense size of it below the ground as he watched the others let out their parachutes, and he copied them and was left staggered when his entire parachute shot straight upwards, and flew away into the distance!

  He gasped and examined the straps and saw that they had been deliberately cut!

  He instantly dived towards the only person directly below him, where he could properly reach, and realized that the speed that he was traveling at by diving might be too fast to do anything, and that he would have only one chance and less than a second to grab hold of the other parachutist to save his life!

  As he shot down he saw the plane vanish beneath the horizon and grasped the full dangers and loneliness of the Antarctic, and again reali
zed the dangers!

  He made himself move over towards the parachutist below and swiftly and powerfully grabbed his waist, and realized he could not hold on and swiftly grabbed a strap from him and tied it to the other soldier’s parachute straps.

  Close to the ground he rested and considered his chances of survival and gasped! Someone clearly knew that he was there and had intended to kill him!

  Chapter 3

  The Gun Battle

  Behind them, below the horizon, the sunlight vanished and the early Antarctic night engulfed the soldiers and Weaver studied his surroundings trying to explain why they had made such a mistake! The entire mission had been planned down the smallest detail!

  The ice station was further away and the snow deep and terrain virtually impossible to get quickly through! It was incredible that they had actually not landed earlier than when the sun was going down. The incident with his parachute had been a major incident and he knew there was someone there against him and perhaps the mission, and he wondered who had access to the parachutes!

  When a loud blast exploded out and a bullet hit and killed one of the front soldiers, beside Commander Craven, Weaver was not fully surprised, and realized that someone was attacking them!

  It was lucky there was cover and they rushed below two small hills as bullets flew in hitting the snow all about them, and he realized that there were at least six of them, and that they had made the mistake of being too far away. The bullets were off and they had been lucky that they had hit the soldier.

  None of them could see who was there though, and they were hidden away at different locations and moved around, and they were unable to recognize anything! Were they professionals and had planned the whole thing well before they had arrived?

  The whole terrain was unfamiliar too them and they had the advantage over them! How could they move forward and get to the ice station without receiving many deaths?