The Nexus Colony (16 page)

The plane circled for about five minutes when at last, it made a turn into what they all thought was one last pass over the group before heading back down the glacier toward the east. Prall watched it like a hungry cat would watch its prey from the distance. It took another minute before everyone realized it wasn’t ascending. It was landing.

“Shit!” Prall exclaimed angrily. “Come on Donnie,” he ordered, then turned to Lisk and said, “He’s coming down. Tell Abbott I’ll handle it from here.”

“Gerry!” Lisk called. “Just don’t do anything irrational until Marsh gets down there. We don’t want any goddamn incidents with civilians!”

Even through the goggles, they could see that Prall’s eyes were saying,
Go fuck yourself, Lisk. I outrank you.
“Let’s go, Donnie,” he said calmly.

Monroe started the machine, and in a minute they were zooming down the glacial slope headed for the plane that was starting to make its final turn and come in for landing.

Lisk had already been yelling down to Abbott to inform him of the situation. Ruger, who had been down a little deeper than Abbott belaying the ice along the vaulted ceiling to get a better look at the structural piece, couldn’t hear what Lisk had been yelling. Ruger stopped and worked his way back over to Abbott.

“…some tourist plane,” Abbott was saying. “Adventure something…They said it’s landing. We’ve got to go back up, Mike. Now.”

It took only a moment for Ruger to realize what the presence of the aircraft meant. “Lightfoot!” he blurted out angrily under his breath.

Ruger scurried along the line toward Abbott. “Shit!” he exclaimed. “I know who it is, Marsh,” he said, huffing his way back into a dangling position, suspended again out over the main shaft of the crevasse.

“What?” Abbott responded from his position against the wall ten feet above Ruger.

“I said I know who it is,” Ruger repeated.

“You know, or you think you know?”

Frustrated, Ruger replied, “All right. I
think
I know who it
probably
is. Keep moving.”

Abbott pulled himself up along the wall. “Who is it?”

“Guy named John Lightfoot.” Ruger pulled hard and in a moment was next to Abbott. “He’s a photo-journalist. Been at the base all summer. Works for National Geo.”

They rested for a minute. Abbott asked, “How’d he find out about this?”

“For Christ’s sake, Marsh,” Ruger responded. “I told you before the whole damn continent knows
why
you guys are out here and
where
you are. Lightfoot tried his damnedest to come along with me. Even went to Jimmy Morrison, the Base Manager, and begged him to appeal to the government officials to catch a ride as the official photographer. Of course they turned him down flat.”

“Then how is it he’s showed up?” Abbott replied, looking up at the top edge where Lisk was now within thirty feet or so.

Ruger was shaking his head. “I should have known he was up to something. Saw him twice in the communications center. It’s obvious now he was chartering a plane.”

“This was supposed to be a restricted area.”

“That doesn’t mean shit out here, Marsh,” Ruger said. “Especially to the people who run those expeditions out of Chile.”

They stopped again momentarily to catch their breath. One more run and they’d be back at the top. Ruger said, “The Chilean government still doesn’t recognize a lot of the provisions of the Antarctic Treaty. Especially since the Falklands War back in the eighties. Things got a little screwed up politically in the whole region. That’s why all these tourist companies base themselves out of there. Mostly Puntas Arenas. The Chilean government doesn’t do anything to them when they violate territorial claims.”

Abbott asked, “What’s this guy like?” He resumed climbing.

Ruger let out a cynical laugh. “If I was you, Marsh, I’d tie him up, put him back on that plane, and pay the pilot to ferry him to the Arctic.”

“That bad?”

“This guy will compromise your whole project here. He gets his nose into everything.”

They reached the top where Lisk had been patiently waiting. “Prall and Monroe went down,” he said, pointing over his shoulder as he helped Abbott to get a hold on the line.

Suddenly, Allison called down to the three of them as they made their way back up to the snowmobiles. “It’s taking off! Look!”

As the three men scurried to the top of the ice ridge, in the distance they saw that the aircraft had just lifted off the ice runway and was climbing rapidly to the east.

“Guess he got his pictures,” Ruger commented.

“Like hell, Mike,” Grimes said. “Take a look down there. Real close.”

“Looks like somebody got off,” Almshouse said, squinting. They all watched the tiny dot moving away from the landing area beyond the base camp.

“Come on!” Abbott suddenly shouted. “Al…bring everybody back to camp while I find out what’s going on.”

“I told that bastard Prall…no incidents,” Lisk said.

Abbott quickly jumped into the rear seat of the snowmobile, beckoning for Ruger to hurry up. Looking down the glacial slope, they could see that Prall and Monroe hadn’t yet reached the solitary figure that was walking along the ice toward the base camp. They apparently had been stopped and were waiting to see what the plane was going to do.

“Gun it!” Abbott called out over Ruger’s shoulder.

The snowmobile jumped out onto the ice slope into the new tracks made by Prall’s machine. “Don’t worry, Marsh,” Ruger replied over his shoulder. “Lightfoot’s not going anywhere.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Abbott responded.

“Prall?” Ruger replied, but Abbott did not respond, probably because of the wind whistling rapidly by their faces as the machine accelerated down the slope.

“Go a little faster!” Ruger heard Abbott yell from behind him as he felt the tap on his shoulder.

Ruger gunned the throttle up a notch, but resisted going any faster than he was already going. Even though the tracks he was following had cut a nice path through the crust, it was always a distinct possibility that the machine could dump if you hit a sastrugi at too high a speed. The laws of physics as enforced by
The Ice
.

Though their vantage point was still over a mile up the slope, they could see that Prall and Monroe had arrived at the lone figure. Whoever it was, the figure was standing to face the two men who were still a distance away where they had stopped the machine. Then the two men got off to approach the lone figure on foot.

The gap closed. The bulky snowmobile bounced in and out of the ruts and moguls along the carved path. Ruger had trouble focusing his vision on the activity ahead which was now less than a half mile away at the bottom of the slope. His vision was jarred by the motion, but not jarred enough to realize that Prall and Monroe both had raised their weapons and were pointing them at the intruder. And then Ruger saw Prall give a hand gesture to Monroe as if to say
go ahead
.

Major Monroe raised the gun and aimed it at the intruder as he moved forward toward the figure. The intruder started to back away, dropping the rope of the small sled he had been pulling. The intruder held his arms up, pleading surrender.

Ruger found himself yelling at the top of his lungs. “Goddamn it, Abbott! The bastards are going to shoot him!”

Ruger opened the throttle full, and from behind he heard Abbott yelling in his ear, “Blow the horn! Blow the Horn!” To which Ruger responded with a series of continuing blasts.

Ruger yelled back over his shoulder, “I swear to God if they shoot him I’ll run those bastards down! Right now!”

The distance was down to a hundred yards, and Ruger veered off the track heading directly toward Monroe, the throttle full open and the horn blaring. The speedometer was hovering near sixty when Ruger saw Prall spin and turn his weapon toward him.

In the closing seconds before the machine zoomed past Monroe, who was diving out of the path of the speeding snowmobile, neither Ruger nor Abbott knew if Monroe had managed to pull the trigger. But out of the corner of his eye in a blur, Ruger saw the eyes of John Lightfoot peering up from the ice where he had fallen. It was a look of both horror and disbelief.

“T
hought you might need a little humor,” Maggie said, sticking her head through the door. “OCEANIA SECTOR reports arrival at McMurdo Station 11:59 a.m. local time on the 8th. They departed for the glacier at 12:32 p.m., ETA 2:00 p.m.”

Korbett looked up. “That’s nice,” he said with a tone of sarcasm, shaking his head in disgust. Looking across the room at the others, his face betrayed the annoyance at the fact it took so long for the first departmental communication to reach them. They already had received the same information from the Internet communication sent yesterday from McMurdo Station when Marshall Abbott had set up camp on the Mulock Glacier.

Maggie snickered along with the rest of them.

“Thanks, Maggie,” Korbett replied, facetiously. “Let us know right away when any more timely information comes over,” which of course she would do anyway.

Korbett shook his head. “Never thought I’d see the day when talking to the Internet would scoop normal intelligence channels.”

“Welcome to the world of high technology, Bill,” Maislin said sarcastically.

“And we wonder why the aliens don’t want to contact us,” Korbett commented under his breath.

Korbett looked at the clock again for the umpteenth time. It was still another hour or so before the satellite window opened up again and Abbott could get out another communiqué on the status of their progress. It would have been nice if they could link up directly with the team like they could with McMurdo Station. The only other report they had—and the Base Manager, Jim Morrison was kind enough to pass it along—was a periodic weather report for the whole of Victoria Land, including what was going on weather-wise up in the Transantarctic Mountain Range.

For at least the tenth time during the past hour, Korbett picked up the weather report to look at it again. It wasn’t favorable. Frigid temperatures and an onslaught of katabatic winds, whatever the hell they were. Didn’t matter. No wind was good out there. All they could do was wait. Not much unlike Marsh Abbott out on the glacier.

Maggie poked her head through the door again, and as if on cue, said, “Here’s the latest weather report from McMurdo.”

Korbett quickly walked over taking the report from her. It read:

“Wonderful,” Korbett replied, the sarcasm still there. “At least the weather has abated.” With disgust, Korbett passed the report around the room, not that it was any different from the last one. Everyone took a few seconds to glance at it, then it was tossed onto the growing pile of other weather reports.

“We’ve wasted a whole morning,” Koslovsky said.

“We should be getting something within the next few hours,” Korbett responded, looking yet again at the clock.

Korbett paced back and forth between the huge bay window and the table, seemingly deep in thought. “Why in the hell…
rookery
.”

“Penguins,” Maislin replied. “You know…a gaggle of geese? A pride of lions? A herd of buffalo?…a rookery is penguins.”

“It’s a colony, William,” Koslovsky said. “That’s what they call a colony of penguins.”

Korbett answered, snickering, “I
know
what a rookery is. I didn’t ask
what
it was. I was just thinking out loud about why and where in the hell they come up with these code names.”

“I think it’s appropriate, don’t you?” Darbury commented, but nobody bothered to respond.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, all of them coincidentally contemplating the same thing. This was the worst part of intelligence work. Waiting for information. Unable to take any action because everything in this business is
reaction
.

Everybody was getting fidgety. Maislin got up himself and walked over to the wide bay window that looked out into the wooded back yard. It was a serene setting, despite the bareness of the trees and the barren landscape of February. The only greenery was the few pine trees in the distance. Maislin imagined what it would look like in the spring and summer with the trees blooming, and then again in the fall when they changed to their radiant colors. It was very cold outside at the moment, and the angle of the late morning sun cast a wintry glow across the path through the shrubbery.

“I had an interesting thought,” Maislin said, turning away from the window and resuming his seat at the table. Everyone waited, no one pressing him to offer his comments, as they were all used to the brainstorming ideas which usually didn’t go anywhere.

Maggie stuck her head in the door. “Ted Payne wants you to call him back around one o’clock after lunch.”

“Okay. Take care of it for me, will you, Maggie?” Korbett requested, which meant,
make sure I’m ready and in the mood to talk to the asshole before you dial him up for me.

“Sure. You want lunch yet?” Maggie asked them.

Korbett looked around the table. Everyone shook their heads “no”, and Maggie left, closing the door behind her.

“Sorry, Eli,” Korbett said. “You were saying…”

“No problem…what I was thinking was…” Maislin got up again and walked back toward the window. “Actually, this is really off the wall.”

“So are crocodiles in the Ross Sea,” Koslovsky said.

“Yeah. Really,” Vandergrif agreed.

“I was thinking about
Foo Fighters
,” Maislin said, turning around again.

Foo Fighters was the nickname given to a very strange phenomenon during the waning days of the Second World War. Everybody at the table knew what they were. They were weird, glowing objects that were appearing all over the skies, mostly in the European Theater. They dogged aircraft, but never demonstrated any hostile intent. The Allied Forces thought they were secret weapons developed by the Nazis. Oddly enough, after the war was over, it was discovered that the Axis Powers suspected the very same thing of the Allies. As it turned out, neither side was responsible for their presence. There never was a full official explanation about them, and as time went by, the Foo Fighters disappeared from the skies, the phenomenon left to the mysterious world of the unexplained. And, as would be expected, they entered the chapter reserved for UFO’s.

“What about them?” Korbett asked, the tone of his voice not showing much interest.

“Well…,” Maislin continued. “You know, of course, that the Allies at first suspected them to be secret weapons developed by the Nazis.”

“That’s true,” Darbury replied, his interest piqued in his usual, non-subtle manner. “A suspicion never substantiated, however. Intelligence efforts investigating them after the war proved they were not of German origin or design. Everybody knows that, Eli.”

“Do they now?” Maislin responded. “That’s what the official records say. You know how much talk there was after the war about the Nazis setting up secret bases all over the world to continue their experiments. There were so many secret projects going on that it was finally conceded after several years that there had been no one department within the Reich which held
all
the official records.”

“I guess that’s true,” Korbett commented.

“Yet even today,” Maislin continued, “there is still some belief that all remnants of these secret Nazi projects were wiped out or absconded in the aftermath of the occupation of Germany. But we all know that isn’t true. A lot of people have always suspected that some day we’ll find out something more substantive about their secret experiments than we’ve ever imagined. Even sixty years after it was supposed to be over,” he added as an afterthought.

“What are you getting at?” Koslovsky asked.

Maislin was deep in thought. “I remember reading somewhere about Foo Fighters being linked with the Third Reich’s experiments with the ‘V’ rockets. Tracking devices, they were suspected to be. And that they continued those experiments in secret locations long after the war.”

“I still don’t see what you’re getting at,” Koslovsky reiterated.

“I don’t know why this popped into my head a minute ago,” Maislin responded, “but one of the rumors was that the Nazis had set up a secret base somewhere in Antarctica to further their experiments with, among other things, Foo Fighters.”

Darbury began to laugh. “Eli, Eli…I can tell you exactly where you read that. A man named Harbison wrote a science fiction novel…I think it was called
Genesis
. I remember reading it a long time ago. It was about Foo Fighters and the renegade Nazis. And, yes…I do recall that it took place in Antarctica. It was just a story. Nothing more.”

Nobody else was laughing as Darbury continued to snicker.

Maislin shrugged off his insinuation, as he always did. “For your information, Mr. Darbury,” Maislin said, smiling back, “I have never
heard
of this gentleman Harbison or his book,
and
I do not read science fiction.”

Korbett interjected, “Is there any credence to those rumors, Eli?”

“Might be,” he answered. “Who knows?”

“Who
would
know?” Vandergrif asked.

Korbett thought. “I’d have to solicit somebody elsewhere in the department who is an expert on post World War II intelligence. Let me think about it. Might just be a dead end. Willard seems to think so.”

Darbury nodded his head in agreement.

But Maislin, undaunted, said, “Well, let’s just go on the assumption that there is something to it. Let’s say…” Maislin thought for a moment. “If the Germans were building advanced aircraft devices, one of the things that would be conducive to their success would be higher advanced composites. Construction materials, if you will.”

“Like stronger metals,” Koslovsky said.

“Precisely,” Maislin responded. “At the end of the war, everybody, including the Germans, were making progress in leaps and bounds in certain technological areas. For instance, metallurgy.”

“The beams?” Vandergrif asked.

“Why not?” Maislin answered, walking over to the table and picking up one of the artifacts. “It’s very possible they developed the technology to manufacture a material just like this. Virtually indestructible as an outer casing. Impenetrable to weapons trying to destroy it.”

“What about the box?” Darbury asked, impetuously.

Maislin just shrugged his shoulders. “What about it? Who knows?”

“Here’s a thought,” Vandergrif offered. “Who’s to say the Nazis didn’t recover a downed UFO long before the Roswell incident?”

Korbett commented, “We
are
of the opinion that the emergence of the transistor was a result of Roswell.” Everybody already was aware of this, but nodded anyway.

“The Nazis were
this
close…” Koslovsky demonstrated by pinching her fingers, “…to developing the V-3 rocket. Russian intelligence figured that out after they moved in on Penemunde. They were that close to having the capability of launching on Europe and the U.S.”

“I thought it was determined after the war,” Vandergrif replied, “that neither the Nazis or anybody else had advanced that far.”

“That we know of,” Maislin interjected. “There is always covert research going on, even within the ranks of the same departments responsible for the so-called secret projects. If the Foo Fighters actually
were
of Nazi origin, Hitler probably would have known. But
possibly
he didn’t.”

“Even so,” Korbett responded. “Something that important should have fallen through the cracks.”

“Maybe it was
so
outlandish, nobody thought to give it any credence at all,” Koslovsky said. “Consider the time period. It was two years before the so-called ‘summer that changed the world’.” She was referring, of course, to Kenneth Arnold’s now historic 1947 encounter in Washington state with the objects that some journalist described as, “…saucers skipping across water”, the birth of the phrase
flying saucer.

“And…” Maislin continued, “there is always the possibility, however outlandish and improbable it may seem, that the Nazis
did
somehow end up in Antarctica.”

“Somehow I doubt it,” Darbury said, skeptically.

“Why not?” Korbett asked. “The Nazis ended up all over the globe.”

“Because…” Darbury answered, looking not at Korbett, but at Maislin, “somehow I doubt that they could establish the logistical support to set up shop out there.”

“True,” Koslovsky said. “That would be a problem.”

“But nothing seems insurmountable,” Korbett replied, “as we have all come to learn in this business we’re in.”

“You’re right,” Maislin said. “We always have the tendency to think in terms of the impossibility. And we always end up getting surprised.”

“So you’re suggesting that we may have stumbled upon a post World War II secret Nazi base. Is that right?” Darbury asked sarcastically.

Maislin answered, but not directed at Darbury, “It’s certainly not a probability, but it remains a possibility nonetheless.”

“What about the hieroglyphs?” Vandergrif asked.

Korbett snickered. “Hell, the
box
could be alien for that matter, and the other artifacts could have come from some terrestrial source.”

“Like Anton said,” Koslovsky observed, “Maybe the Nazis
did
recover a downed alien craft and the box is just another piece of the big puzzle.”

“The structural pieces could have been formulated from chemical processes discovered through their research,” Vandergrif said. “Keep in mind that in nineteen forty-five the whole world was virtually on the brink of the nuclear age. Who
really
knows how much research went on within the Third Reich during the last months of the war?”

“And who knows how much of
that
went down the tubes? At least in the annals of history.” Maislin added.

Korbett was in thought. “Let’s just assume for a moment that we really have stumbled onto a Nazi base here. Wouldn’t it be logical to assume that there would have been a continuation of the Foo Fighter phenomena following the end of the war?”