The Sign (3 page)

Dalton looked up from behind the camera and asked, “You think it’s some freaky aurora borealis thing?”

She’d been thinking the same thing, wondering if it was a trick of the light, an illusion caused by a reflection off the ice. In Antarctica, the sun never set during the austral summer. It just circled around at the horizon, a little higher during the “day,” a little lower—almost a sunset—during the “night.” It had taken some getting used to and it played tricks on you, but somehow Gracie didn’t think it explained what she was seeing. The sighting seemed more substantial than that.

“Maybe,” she replied, almost to herself, lost in her thoughts, “but I don’t think it’s the time of year for them . . . and I’m pretty sure they only appear when it’s dark.”

“Gracie?” Roxberry again, waiting for an answer. Reminding her that she was going out live.

To a world audience.

Christ almighty.

She tried to relax and put on a genial smile for the camera, despite the tiny alarms buzzing through her. “This is just . . . It’s pretty amazing, Jack. I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe someone else on this ship knows what it is, we’ve got quite a few experts on board.”

Dalton lifted his tripod and tracked along with Gracie as she edged over to the scientists and crew members on deck with her, keeping the apparition in frame.

The others were discussing it in excited, heated tones, but something about their body language worried Gracie. If it was a rare, but natural, phenomenon, they’d be reacting differently. Somehow, she got the impression that they weren’t comfortable with what they were seeing. Not just uncomfortable, but . . . rattled.

They don’t know what it is.

One of them, who’d been watching it through binoculars, turned and met her gaze. He was an older man, a paleoclimatologist she’d met on arrival named Jeb Simmons. She read the same confusion, the same unease, on his face that had to be radiating from hers. It only confirmed her feeling.

She was about to speak up when another wave of gasps broke out across the deck. She turned in time to see the shimmering shape suddenly pulse, brightening up to a blazing radiance for a heartbeat before dimming back to its original pearlescent glare.

Gracie glanced at Simmons as Roxberry’s excited voice crackled back. “Did it just flare up?”

She knew the image on the screen he was looking at would be grainy, maybe even a bit jumpy. The live video uplink back to the studio was always compromised, nowhere near as clear as the original, high-definition footage on Dalton’s cameras.

“Jack, I don’t know how clearly it’s coming through to you, but from out here, I can tell you, it’s not like anything I’ve seen before.” She tried hard to hang onto her unflustered expression, but her heart was racing now. This didn’t feel right.

She suddenly remembered something, and turned to Finch and Dalton. “How quickly can you get the bird up?”

Finch nodded and turned to Dalton. “Let’s do it.”

“We’re sending the skycam up for a closer look,” Gracie confirmed into her mike, then turned to Simmons, breathless, and clicked her mike off. “Tell me you know what this is,” she said with a tense smile.

Simmons shook his head. “I wish I could. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“You’ve been here before, right?”

“Oh yes. This is my fourth winter out here.”

“And your specialty’s paleoclimatology, right?”

“I’m flattered,” he smiled, “yes.”

“And yet . . .”

He shook his head again. “I’m stumped.”

Gracie frowned, her mind spinning, and pointed at his binoculars. “May I?”

“Sure.” He handed them over.

She looked through them. It didn’t add anything to what she’d already observed. The shimmer was more pronounced. It appeared hazy, slightly more mirage-like . . . but it was definitely there. It was real.

She gave the binoculars back to Simmons as a few of the others congregated around them. They seemed as bewildered as he was. She darted a look behind them. Finch had the skycam’s arms clicked into place while Dalton was double-checking the second camera’s harness and settings, both of them keeping an eye on the sighting. She noticed the captain coming out on deck. Two crew members hurried to join him. Gracie turned to the others. “None of you have any idea what we’re looking at here?”

“I first thought it might be a flare,” one of the other crew members said, “but it’s too big and too bright, and it’s just there, you know? I mean, it’s not moving, is it?”

The sleek noise of air being whipped around startled them just momentarily. It was a sound they’d heard earlier that day, when Gracie and Dalton had used the small, unmanned remote-controlled helicopter to get some panoramic establishing shots of the ice shelf.

Dalton shouted, “We’ve got liftoff,” over the whirr of the skycam’s rotor blades.

They turned to watch it rise. The Draganflyer X6 was an odd-looking but brilliant piece of engineering. It didn’t look anything like a normal helicopter. It was more like a matte-black alien insect, something you’d expect to see in a Terminator movie. It consisted of a small central pod that was the size of a large mango and housed the electronics, gyroscopes, and battery. Three small collapsible arms extended out from it horizontally, at twelve, four, and eight o’clock positions. At the end of each arm was a whisper-quiet, brushless motor, each one driving two parallel sets of molded rotor blades, one above it and another underneath. Any type of camera could be fitted to the rig under its belly. It was all powered by rechargeable lithium batteries, and the whole thing was made of black carbon fiber that was incredibly strong and yet super-light—the Draganflyer weighed less than five pounds, high-definition video camera with a helicopter-to-ground link included. It gave great aerial shots with minimal fuss, and Dalton never traveled anywhere without it.

Gracie was watching the black contraption rise above the deck and glide away slowly, heading toward the ice shelf, when a female voice yelled out, “Oh my God,” and Gracie saw it too.

The sighting was changing again.

It flared up again, then dimmed down from its outward rim inward, shrinking until it was barely a tenth of its original size. It held there for a couple of tantalizing seconds, then slowly flared back to the way it was. And then its surface seemed to ripple, as if it were morphing into something else.

At first, Gracie wasn’t sure what it was doing, but the second it started changing, something deep within her knotted. The sighting had clearly come alive. It was shapeshifting, twisting into itself, but always within the confines of its original envelope. It was taking on different compositions with alarming speed, all while keeping up its barely noticeable rotation, and they were all perfectly symmetrical, almost as if it were a kaleidoscope, but less angular, more rounded and organic. The patterns it took on melted from one to another continuously at an increasing, dazzling rate, and Gracie wasn’t sure of what they were, but they reminded her of cellular structures. And in that very moment, she felt a deeply unsettling sensation, as if she were staring at the very fabric of life itself.

The small gathering froze, equally dumbstruck. Gracie glanced over at them. A whole range of emotion was etched across their faces, from awe and wonder to confusion—and fear. None of them was debating what it could be, not anymore. They just stood there, rooted to the deck, eyes fixated on it, their only words brief expressions of their amazement. Two of them—an older man and woman—crossed themselves.

Gracie saw Dalton check on the fixed camera, making sure it was still capturing the event. He held the skycam’s remote control unit, which was suspended from a neck strap, at waist level, his fingers expertly controlling both joysticks.

She caught his gaze and moved her mike down. “This is . . . Jesus, Dalton. What’s going on?”

He looked up at the sighting. “I don’t know, but . . . Either Prince has a new concert tour coming up, or someone’s spiked our coffee with some serious shit.” Dalton could usually see the humor in anything, but right now, he sounded different to Gracie. His tone was drained of all light.

She heard a few gasps, and someone said, “It’s slowing down.” All eyes strained in nervous unison as the sighting moved to take on a final shape.

For a second, it felt to Gracie as if her heart had stopped beating. Every pore of her body was crackling with fearful tension as she stared dead ahead at it. Without daring to take her eyes off it, she said, almost to herself, “Jesus.”

The brighter zones of the sphere were being consumed by a spreading darkness, and it kept going until the sphere’s entire surface looked blackened and coarse, as if it had been carved from a lump of coal.

A
ripple of terror spread among the crowd. The apparition had lost all of its splendor. In the blink of an eye, it had gone from being strangely wonderful to sinister and lifeless.

Finch moved close to Gracie, both of them riveted by the ominous sight.

“This isn’t good,” he said.

Gracie didn’t reply. She glanced down at the skycam’s control box. The image on its small, five-inch
LCD
monitor was very clear, despite the light mist. Dalton had guided it in a wide, slight arc, in order for it not to come between them and the sighting. With the Draganflyer now more than halfway to the shelf, Gracie was able to get more of a sense of scale. The apparition dwarfed the approaching flying camera, like an elephant looming over an ant. It held the dark, lifeless skin it had assumed for a minute or so, bearing down on them with what seemed like a malevolent intent, then it flared up again, burning brightly, only this time, it took on a more distinct shape, defined by the light which was radiating with different strengths. It now looked unquestionably like a three-dimensional sphere, and at its core was a bright ball of light. Around it were four equal rings, running along the sphere’s outer face, evenly spaced. As they weren’t facing the ship head-on but were at a slight angle, they appeared like elongated ovals. The outer shell itself was brightly illuminated too, and rays of light were projecting outward from the core, between the rings, petering out slightly beyond the edge of the sphere. The whole display was hypnotic, especially as it blazed away against the dull, gray backdrop.

The sight was beyond breathtaking. It electrified the crowd and brought some of them to tears. The couple who had crossed themselves were holding each other close. Gracie could see their lips trembling in silent prayer. Her own body stiffened, and her legs went numb. She felt a confusing surge of euphoria and fear, which seemed echoed in the faces around her.

“Whoa.” Dalton recoiled.

Finch was also motionless, gaping at it. “Tell me I’m not really seeing this,” Finch said. “Tell me it’s not really there.”

“It is,” Gracie confirmed as she just stood there, enthralled. “It absolutely is.”

She held the mike up and struggled for words as everything around her faded to oblivion, a complete sensorial disconnect from her surroundings, her every thought consumed by the apparition. It was beyond understanding, beyond definition. After a moment, she emerged momentarily from her trance, and faced the camera again.

“I hope you’re still getting this, Jack, ’cause everyone here is just stunned by this . . . I can’t even begin to describe the sensation out here right now.” Her eyes dropped away for a passing glance at Dalton’s monitor. He was using the joysticks to zoom in on the apparition, which filled the screen with its radiance before he pulled back out.

She looked out at it again. The skycam was closing in on it. “How far from it do you think it is?” she asked Dalton.

“A hundred yards. Maybe less.” His voice had a slight quiver in it as his eyes darted from the monitor to the apparition and back.

Gracie couldn’t take her eyes off of it. “It’s just magnificent, isn’t it?”

“It’s a sign,” someone said. It was the woman Gracie had noticed crossing herself. Gracie looked over, and Dalton panned over to her.

“A sign? Of what?” another answered.

“I don’t know, but . . . she’s right. Look at it. It’s a sign of . . . something.” It was the older man who was with her. Gracie remembered being introduced to them on her arrival. He was an American named Greg Musgrave, a glaciologist if she remembered correctly. The woman was his wife.

Musgrave turned to Gracie, waving toward the skycam, jabbing a nervous finger at it. “Don’t send that”—he stammered, struggling with what to call the Draganflyer—“
thing
any farther. Stop it before it gets too close.”

“Why?” Dalton sounded incredulous.

Musgrave raised his voice. “Pull it back. We don’t know what it is.”

Dalton didn’t take his eyes off his controls. “Exactly,” he shot back, “it can help us figure out what the hell it is.”

Gracie looked out. The skycam was very close to the apparition. She glanced at Finch, then at Dalton, who seemed determined to see it through.

“I’m telling you, pull it back,” Musgrave said, moving toward Dalton now, reaching out to grab the remote control console. Dalton’s fingers jerked against the joysticks, making the Draganflyer yaw and pitch wildly, its gyroscopes kicking in to keep it airborne.

“Hey,” Gracie yelled at him, just as Finch and the captain stepped in to restrain Musgrave.

“Grace, what the hell’s going on?” Roxberry again, in her ear.

“Hang on, Jack,” she interjected quickly.

“Calm down,” the captain snapped at Musgrave. “He’s gonna pull it back before it reaches it,” then, to Dalton, pointedly, “aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Dalton replied flatly. “You know how much that thing cost me?” He checked out the monitor, as did Gracie. The apparition filled the screen. It was grainy, but there was a subtle, undulating shimmer within the image that really gave the impression that it was bubbling with life. Gracie caught the worry in Dalton’s eyes, then looked over at the skycam. The tiny black dot was almost on it.

“Maybe it’s close enough,” she told Dalton, under her breath.

Dalton frowned with concentration. “A little closer.”