The Thing: from the Depths of Hell

by V Bertolaccini

  The immensity of the cavity about him was staggering and the structure of the shape that he had been studying in the dark left him gasping and wondering what the hell it was, as the cost of it must have been colossal!

  It was clearly highly confidential and hidden out there for a reason, but he just could not grasp what it was! It clearly was to do with space, and he even considered if it was a spacecraft of some form, and if they had been building a starship.

  The scientist that he had followed there communicated with someone about him being there.

  The thing was colossal, and he felt as though he had never seen anything so big, and tried examining different parts of it to identify it! It started to resemble some form of communications device, which stretched across to the end of the cavity, and he stared, staggered.

  It was black and had golden areas, and lights on it were like stars in the depths of space, and tightly packed together in areas.

  Nothing seemed to justify its presence to him, and he sensed from the scientist something mysterious existed there, and that he might not grasp it.

  It was beyond comprehension how it managed to exist there!

  Four of the scientists that seemed to be running things gathered into a group near him, and he listened to some of the things they said, but he only picked up some things and something about a possible first contact scenario, and he started to consider it.

  “What the hell is it?” he finally moaned loudly, dazzled by the massive black shape of the object covering his vision.

  “The world’s most advanced telescope!” one scientist replied.

  “That’s a telescope!” he moaned.

  “We’ve moved on since the days of radio telescopes!”

  “Incredible! Is it American?”

  “Yes! And we want it to remain only American!”

  “Have you found anything with it?”

  Suddenly all the scientists reacted, gasped and went silent!

  “There could things hidden in the depths of space everywhere?” one of the scientists finally replied.

  “Incredible! Such power! It does not even need to be out in the open – or on top of a high location!”

  Strange objects about his sides vaguely captured his attention as they started to function and he saw that they were the main controls and monitors, and where the information was gathered.

  At his feet, partly buried away in dust, he saw something glitter, and he crouched and realized that there was a hole in the floor, where it had been smashed by something heavy, and that there was a small fossil buried in the ground, which was the ground under the Antarctic ice.

  Chapter 9

  The Second Encounter

  The drinks at the ice station bar were great and Weaver watched Reeves at the other side of the table drinking fast and laughing with another soldier beside him, and more of the soldiers arrived at the bar and he watched them.

  It was incredible he had found the immense cavity below and all it had done was add more facts that never added up! What did a new telescope for searching for aliens have to do with anything! What were the Russian scientists doing there?

  Had they detected something in space and were trying to cover it up? Or perhaps the technology behind the telescope was highly secret and had military uses and they were using it out in the Antarctic to hide it and the Russians were trying to get it!

  He left it again, and saw he needed more intelligence, and he realized he might be able to get in with one of the Russian scientists!

  He kept wondering why he never had memories of having such a situation. There was something far more unique about this case! Everything he had been confronted with had been new! They were all connected, and he did not know what to do! Surely something must exist about that could be triggered by something to surface for him to grasp the big picture?

  While they sat there the soldiers drinking seemed to increase, and he recalled that many of them at the ice station seemed to drink more, especially with winter and the dark nights approaching.

  One of the other soldiers seemed to provoke Reeves further and further, trying to achieve something, and Weaver watched on watching their reactions.

  Reeves in the end laughed loudly and thanked him for it!

  The other solider then started questioning Weaver about where he had been when Weaver had been down investigating the lower ice station and the telescope.

  Then when he avoided replying he tried questioning him on various subjects, and it was clear that he was testing him, trying to discover something!

  Reeves suddenly leaned over the table, with his face bright red, and suddenly removed his handgun, which was very dangerous and powerful looking in the bar, and Weaver did not know what he wanted to do!

  Everyone stopped talking in the entire bar and stared at something behind Weaver, and he slowly followed their eyes!

  Suddenly, at the side of his vision, he saw a faint mist surrounding something and people started examining what was there, and gasping, and instantly looking for a fire, but it was not coming from anywhere.

  A thick cloud swiftly emerged from no visible source, like it was some form of gas condensing into a cloud, but when he examined it in detail he saw that it was made of some form of energy, with no visible source, hung in the center of the bar floor behind him, thickening in the air, swirling around in an intelligent way! He watched it confused and tried to see if was being controlled by something!

  He saw straightaway Reeves knew something was going to happen and was reacting in an uncontrolled fashion! Though he knew he was mentally actually planning something! Weaver watched on confused, wondering if any of them knew something, which some seemed to give reactions to.

  He was sure something had happened while he was in the lower ice station that he had missed!

  H was not fully able to explain its presence and stayed still and where he was, ready for action, and to take any course of action that appeared and he could!

  He recalled the ghost sightings and the dead man in the spacesuit that had walked in the dinning room!

  The thing shifted creepily, forming a more turbulent thickening formation, and they started rushing over to the doors, while people from outside came in to check what the excitement was, and they stood pondering what was occurring.

  Weaver went to the side of the door and listened to strange silent sounds, which were barely perceivable, which manifested everywhere about it!

  It looked to him to be actually forming itself into something!

  It resembled a mind-bending round life form that he could not recognize!

  “Is it dangerous?” Reeves finally moaned, trying to grasp its nature. “Can it kill?”

  Bursts of energy exploded through it and bright blinding beams of light blasted out, and its energy pulsated!

  It or whatever was causing it seemed to Weaver to be trying to form something that it did not have either enough energy or ability to manifest, and he gasped realizing that he actually thought something of unknown origins existed!

  Yet what was there had to be of unknown origins! Yet he was sure it was not of supernatural origins! Yet he was sure it was unbelievably advanced!

  What was there? What had taken the body of a dead soldier and put it in a spacesuit and sent it to them? Just what was it trying to achieve? Was it connected to the ice station and what was happening there?

  At the door they watched and filmed it as the formation formed into an acceptable ghost life form, which they were sure was supposed to be solid, which still took flashes of small shape alterations, and it floated away and passed straight through a thick hard wall, like light passing through a window, and as it was fully entering another room they watched it vanish!

  Chapter 10

  The Russian Scientists

  The underground chamber fascinated Weaver and he did what the scientists working there had asked him to do and to remain silent about its presence, and he did, but he knew that he would eventually have to put it in
his report to the intelligence agency!

  They allowed him to visit the telescope chamber again, and he realized while there that they knew that he could not get anything on how it functioned and that the normal scientists there that had worked on it had only been given information on the sections that they had built or used and did not have enough to reconstruct it.

  The Russian scientists there fascinated him and he could not grasp how Russian scientists had managed to get there and why they had not thought that they were a potential security leak! Yet after visiting a few times he realized that their knowledge and work had helped it to be built and that they were not capable of giving enough information away about it to be a security threat.

  He sensed something and knew there was more and that they were doing something else that he could not figure out as he had to little to go on.

  Eventually he started meeting with and talking to the Russian scientist that he had followed to the underground chamber.

  Outside his room he met him one morning and told him that he had found information on him spying on them, and that he could be in serious trouble!

  To his satisfaction he started confessing that he was not responsible for anything that had happened there!

  “I have not given any confidential secrets!” he pleaded to him.

  “But you work with people that have killed people here?” he replied, recalling all the deaths there, and he watched the scientist’s startled face.

  “We are not responsible for the gunmen outside and the deaths that they carry out!”

  Weaver knew he had finally made a breakthrough and he was connected to them and knew what was happening, and he could not let it go!

  “The deaths in the ice station must be?” Weaver replied.

  “They are by soldiers put here with us who are working with them! They are part of a Russian renegade group that has separated from our group! They are illegal! We do not know what they are after!”

  Weaver knew that he was telling the truth! Yet he could not determine what was so valuable! Or if they would go to such lengths to get their hands on knowledge of how the secret telescope worked! If they got all the information from all the scientists and put it together surely they could put it all together and fill in the rest, or just find away of getting the information out of the people that had invented it!

  “What about the telescope technology?” he muttered out loud.

  “That is not what they want!” he moaned, looking at him as if he was acting crazy.

  “If you give me something I’ll make sure you get away with it!”

  The scientist slowly nodded in agreement towards him and offered to show him what it was, and Weaver suddenly noticed his appearance had changed and that he was up to something!

  The scientist insisted in showing him, and he wondered what it was, and if it was just a waste of his time checking, but he knew if it was not that he would get him to tell what else he knew, and he decided also to allow him to think things over for a while.

  When they arrived at the bottom of the elevator and entered the large cavity with the telescope he noticed he started playing his role as a scientist to the other scientists!

  At a point at the furthest away point where there was a concrete wall, at the furthest point from the ice station above, where he thought there was only outside ice, he pointed at a hidden large metal door and they went to it and he started unlocking the door, which confused him again as he could not visualize what could be there, and wondered why the telescope was not the ultimate confidential prize!

  Once he had opened the door he turned on lights and they entered a brightly lighted corridor and he took him along it.

  Weaver stayed silent and wandered along the corridor after him.

  He was confused when they reached a door at the end of the corridor and he watched him open it and darkness appear outside and they entered it trying to see about them and he saw nothing, and as his eyes adjusted and he searched the abyss above and round him, as they walked on.

  A deep thud echoed down, from high above somewhere, and he wondered why whatever he was in was so large, and he could scarcely grasp the concept of there being another chamber there, and he realized that they had more stuff buried away there and he wondered what the hell it was this time!

  Chapter 11

  The Secret Military Chamber

  A swift explosion of light exploded down as the Russian scientist turned on the lights, and it blasted into their vision out of the blackness, silencing Weaver, and he saw the most unbelievable and deadliest sight he was sure that he had seen!

  Everywhere he looked he saw colossal atomic missiles going out, stretching away out until he could not see passed them, and going away up to the Antarctic surface above, and he gasped when the soldiers there started entering the chamber!

  The expense of it had to reach many billions and he wondered what the hell he had entered himself into! He could not even believe that they had such military weapons at the Antarctic, as it was highly illegal! Then he realized that the Russians or someone might have something there!

  The size and power of the missiles exceeded his comprehension, and he could not justify their size and tried to think of other uses for them! They looked like the rockets for the moon landings or deep space travel!

  He even considered if they were actually starships, and what starships actually would be like, as they would need tremendous power and supplies of fuel.

  Yet what the hell would they need so many for? Would they be going to explore vast amounts of stars? Or were they to attack and destroy an alien world?

  He was surprised that the soldiers there removed his weapon and took him and the Russian scientist away to be interrogated!

  When he left the chamber he examined one in detail and was staggered as they were the most advanced version that he had seen! They had to be atomic missiles for a World War 3!

  They took him away into a small room and questioned him and they only got what they knew already, accept him interrogating the Russian scientist, and they met Commander Craven and Weaver was soon released.

  Soon after it he went to the Russian scientist’s room and started questioning him about the base and he soon started to talk, especially when he showed him that he had a handgun, and he started off confirming that they were part of a massive defense system, and the missiles were highly advanced and that the telescope in first chamber was not only for detecting alien civilizations and it and their satellite system had the ability to detect objects in far greater detail and with smaller sizes, and the ice station helped covered it up, and what surprised Weaver was that he still was avoiding telling him things, and Weaver was now determined to get what he had.

  The scientist tried to avoid all his attempts of getting an answer until he shouted at him that he would have to give it to him or he was not going to leave the room alive, and he sat down on his bed with his head in his hands!

  “It is going to come out eventually!” Weaver continued.

  “Why don’t you get it from someone else? I’ve given you what you need to know!”

  “You’re the one!”

  “I’ll only tell you if promise you will not tell anyone, and if caught you blame it on someone else?”

  “I’ll not tell anyone of your identity! You’re not using your real identity, anyway! You can get away from here on the next airplane and go home!”

  “I will do that! But what you are about to hear is highly confidential and I believe you may not believe what I have to tell you! I never believed it until they confirmed it!”

  Weaver’s face went pale and he wondered what the hell he was talking about as he had not even described the missile chamber as being that!

  Chapter 12

  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 consider
ed 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!”

  “My god!” Weaver gasped, realizing the mistake he had made and what the outcome of what was occurring could be!

  “Yes! The location was traced to this top secret American military ice station base, where they investigated!”

  “It must have been incredible!” Weaver answered firmly. “The impact must have been tremendous! Did that telescope here with its new technology have anything to do with it?”

  “The scientists here, and in the underground telescope chamber, did not even know of its arrival! If it had been far slower they might have recorded it as an asteroid of immense proportions! It was only recorded as an immense explosion or earthquake of unknown origins, which had lasted seconds, and which had occurred during the night!”

  Weaver was amazed that it actually landed nearby, and he believed it had to be the telescope that had been responsible, and he had detected that they had been up to something with it when he had discovered it in the secret chamber below.