The metal base landed with a hefty thump on the dock as Riggs stepped back from then winch, his face sheened with sweat.
‘Heavy,’ he said, ‘but not nearly as heavy as it should be. It must be hollow or something and made of aluminum.’
‘That’s not aluminum,’ Chandler said as he cautiously approached the object and rested his hand against it. ‘The electromagnetic charge proves that.’
He pushed against the object, but he could not move it as Amy crouched down alongside the base and began making careful copies of the inscriptions in her notebook.
‘Looks like ancient Egyptian, or perhaps even the Sumerian script,’ she said as she worked.
Doctor Chandler nodded, a bright smile spreading on his features.
‘That, my dear, would not surprise me in the slightest. The Sumerians recorded in their history the stories of gods from the skies who came down with great knowledge and shared it with the people. They repeatedly stated that these beings resided in the oceans, and that they would come from the water from time to time to help humanity.’
‘And no doubt Santa Claus was there to record the events,’ Amy chortled as she worked.
‘Mock me all you like,’ Chandler muttered in reply. ‘Our ancestor’s tales of ancient intervention by gods from the sky form the basis of all today’s religions, regardless of what today’s believers may assume to be true. This, Die Glocke, is the first tangible evidence of that.’
Amy shook her head in silence as she continued to work.
‘I don’t give a damn where it came from,’ Riggs said as he stared at the object. ‘It’s too big to fit through the front door, so one way or the other we’re going to have to get it out in pieces.’
Chandler stared at the SEAL aghast.
‘Destroy it? The most precious discovery of modern times? An object that will change human history and you want to smash it to pieces?!’
‘It’s not going to change anybody’s history if it ends up buried beneath a couple hundred thousand tons of ice,’ Riggs pointed out.
‘We don’t know what it contains,’ Amy shot back, for once on Chandler’s side. ‘What happens if we break it open and what’s inside is lethal to us, an infection of some kind? We’ll all be dead then, too, regardless of what happens to this cavern.’
Ethan stepped in. ‘Look, there may be another way.’
‘Tell me,’ Riggs said.
‘The device is light enough that it could plausibly be floated out of here using the Seehund, right? We could use the same sub-glacial tunnels that the Nazis used to get into the glacier and build this base. Amy and I saw those channels and there’s life down there, so there must be a way out.’
Riggs frowned. ‘Our support will be coming in using that same path. We can’t risk the chance of a collision beneath the ice.’
‘There’s no guarantee that the channels are still fully open,’ Chandler reminded them. ‘We were briefed that our reinforcements might not be able to make it all the way here, which would mean a longer wait at the base.’
Riggs dragged a hand down the stubble foresting his chin as he looked at Saunders.
‘We heard anything yet?’
‘Nothing on the secure channels,’ Saunders replied. ‘If they’re on their way, they’re staying real quiet about it.’
Riggs nodded and looked at Amy. ‘And you say that this object could contain things that might be dangerous to humans?’
‘It’s from another world,’ Amy pointed out. ‘Another civilization built this. We have no idea what they might have placed inside it.’
Riggs nodded as he made up his mind.
‘If that’s so, then we can’t risk letting it out of this base and perhaps infecting the rest of the planet with some Godawful disease or virus. The only option we have is to open it here.’
‘Say what now?’ Hannah uttered.
‘It’s the only logical course of action,’ Amy agreed enthusiastically, eager to be the one to open the first genuine alien artifact in human history. ‘If this base is about to be destroyed by natural forces, then we know that any virus will be contained by the collapse. All we have to do is ensure that whatever’s inside this bell does not make it into the water flow and out into the wider world.’
‘And how would you do that?’ Hannah asked. ‘This whole cavern is carved from ice that flows out of the glacier, right? One drop of water infected here will be carried directly to the southern oceans.’
‘The blast doors,’ Ethan guessed. ‘We seal them up and open the bell while we’re inside. That way, it can’t get out.’
‘Nothing can be sealed so perfectly,’ Chandler insisted. ‘We cannot reliably examine this artifact outside of a proper laboratory.’
‘Bit short on the laboratory side of things, Doctor,’ Riggs said as he strode by and headed for the interior of the base. One way or the other, we’ve got to open it here and find out what’s inside or this whole mission will have been for nothing, so we’ll have to use the field tents instead. Get on it Amy, figure out how to open this damned thing and fast.’
*
Amy sat on the dock, huddled in her Artic coat as she stared at the bell’s implacably solid side and let her mind wander free. Ethan could see her from where he leaned against the railings at the base entrance, Hannah alongside him as they waited.
‘She’s not going to figure this out in time,’ Hannah whispered. ‘Veer’s men could come through the front door at any moment and we won’t be able to hold them off for long.’
‘Give her time,’ Ethan said. ‘She’s desperate to see what’s inside the damned thing and that’s a powerful motivator.’
‘You never heard of what happens to curious cats?’
Ethan smiled as he pushed off the railings and walked down onto the dock. He approached Amy from one side, saw her looking straight into Die Glocke’s featureless surface as though seeking a reflection that wasn’t there.
‘How can it be so smooth and yet not reflect anything?’ she asked him, rhetorically he guessed because he felt like the last person on Earth to have a decent answer.
‘They ran out of polish?’
Amy chuckled despite her deep thinking and shook her head, then sighed and bowed it. ‘I can’t figure these icons out.’
Ethan looked at the shapes and symbols adorning the circumference of the artifact and shrugged.
‘It’s hardly surprising. It took centuries for archaeologists to figure out Egyptian hieroglyphs, and you’ve only got an hour at best.’
‘The archaeologists had the Rosetta Stone to help them,’ she replied. ‘I don’t have a damned thing, and I doubt very much that Chandler’s idea of comparing these to Sumerian script is going to work.’
‘I wouldn’t rule it out,’ Ethan replied.
Amy looked up at him in surprise. ‘You don’t buy into all that ancient alien crap, surely?’
Ethan felt mildly embarrassed for some reason, but he held his ground.
‘I’ve seen quite a bit of evidence to support it, Amy, believe me. We wouldn’t be sitting here looking at this thing if alien civilizations hadn’t launched it here or left it behind. Kind of suggests that people like Chandler might be onto something.’
Amy scowled and looked again at the device.
‘We were always going to find alien life eventually,’ she muttered. ‘Just because we have doesn’t automatically mean that every crackpot theory about ancient aliens is suddenly true.’
Ethan looked again at the icons and frowned.
‘What makes you think that they’re letters or numbers anyway?’
Amy shrugged. ‘I guess it’s because there’s no other thing that they could be. Why inscribe an artifact like this at all if not to pass on a message.’
‘Yeah, but it could just as easily be a registration plate or something, right?
‘Are you always this comical?’ Amy asked him with a wry smile.
‘Just sayin’,’ Ethan shrugged again. ‘We’re assuming t
his thing is of huge importance because it was left here. What’s to say it wasn’t just a simple vehicle left behind by a group of camping interstellar travellers who were just passing through and…’
Ethan was cut off as a deep moan reverberated through the cavern, thundering with enough force to vibrate the air in Ethan’s lungs as he staggered sideways and sought a handhold. He leaned against the side of Die Glocke as the chamber shuddered around them and the icy black water cavitated once more, symmetrical loops shimmering in the dim light from the glow sticks marking the dock’s edge.
‘They’re getting worse,’ Hannah called as she clung to the railings nearby. ‘This cavern could go any moment.’
Ethan kept his hand on the bell, and to his shock he felt it vibrating with such force that his arm went numb and he was forced to place his right boot firmly on the deck and push off from Die Glocke while his arm was still able to react to his commands.
The tremendous noise and shaking faded away once more and Ethan shook his hand and frowned at it.
‘What?’ Amy asked.
‘Die Glocke,’ Ethan said as he shook his arm back and forth to bring it back to life again. ‘It was vibrating, made my hand go numb.’
Amy stared at his hand for a moment, then at the artifact, and then she leaped to her feet and threw her arms about Ethan’s neck as she kissed him firmly on the lips. Ethan stared at her in shock as she released him.
‘Warner, you’re a genius.’
‘I keep saying it,’ he replied. ‘Why?’
Amy was already running for the base. ‘I know how to open Die Glocke!’
***
XLIII
‘Are you sure this is going to work?’
Lieutenant Riggs seemed unsure of himself for the first time since Ethan had joined the team as he looked on nervously at Amy.
‘It’ll work,’ Amy replied. ‘You’ve just got to seal this side of the base off. We can’t risk letting anything inside the device reach the other side, okay? It stays in here.’
‘Couldn’t it get through the water channels beneath the base?’ Hannah asked, clearly remembering Amy’s own prior concerns about quarantine.
‘We’ll keep it away from the dock edge,’ Amy promised. ‘And the tent will seal it in.’
Ethan watched as Doctor Chandler sealed the last few edges of the transparent plastic tent that they had erected around Die Glocke, sealing it off from the atmosphere. Nearby, a small generator was being prepared by Del Toro, ready to draw out some of the air pressure inside the tent so that nothing could escape in the event of a breach: instead, air would flow in and not out.
‘And what if there’s something, y’know, alive in there?’ Hannah pressed.
Amy smiled as she pulled herself into a biohazard suit, a helmet in her hand as she sealed the last of her suit up.
‘Nothing substantial can live for thirteen thousand years, Hannah,’ she assured her, ‘but bacteria and other forms of life have been known to last for literally hundreds of millions of years before being spontaneously brought back to life in the presence of liquid water or vapor. We’re not taking any chances.’
Amy pulled the hood over her suit and sealed it shut as Doctor Chandler moved across to her, and together they helped ensure that both sides of their suits were properly sealed before Amy looked at Riggs.
‘We’re ready,’ she said. ‘Seal the tent from outside, then activate the generator. Once we’re done, get inside the base and seal the door from the inside. That’s about all we can do for now.’
Riggs seemed genuinely uncertain.
‘I don’t like this one little bit,’ he replied as he led his soldiers back toward the sally port. ‘Whatever you’ve got to do in there, make it fast, okay?’
Ethan watched as the SEALs waited as Amy and Chandler walked into the tent, and then they sealed if from the outside before switching on the generator. The air pressure inside the tent rapidly reduced, and Ethan could see the vents drawing air in instead of out, those vents lined with grills designed to stop any foreign objects or bacteria from entering the tent. Simple scrubbers cleaned the carbon dioxide out of the tent, while both Amy and Chandler had oxygen supplied via small tanks on their backs.
‘They’ve got an hour,’ Riggs said as he walked by Ethan. ‘All we have to do is keep Veer off their backs and ours.’
Ethan and Hannah hurried in pursuit of Riggs as he led the team back inside the base and the SEALs worked to seal the door behind them. As soon as it was secure, Ethan hurried up to the command center where a laptop computer was now open on an abandoned workspace, the light from the screen glowing blue through the room.
‘Amy, can you hear us?’ he asked.
‘Loud and clear!’
Amy’s reply came from within the tent, where they could see her and Chandler preparing to open Die Glocke. Amy’s voice was slightly distorted but the images were perfectly clear as she spoke to them.
‘It never crossed my mind until that last quake inside the cavern, but these symbols around the circumference of the artifact are likely not alien numbers or letters but sounds, like musical notes. We have no idea how alien forms of life might communicate but as this device seems to have sought out an aquatic environment, it seems plausible that the species that created it might have communicated by some form of ultra-sound.’
Doctor Chandler cut in as he worked.
‘Most marine species on earth use ultra-sound as a means of communication,’ he said. ‘This device cavitated at the same time as the cavern during the last quake, and likely conducts sound just like an ordinary bell. If Amy is right, then applying the correct frequencies to the artifact should open it or perhaps even activate it.’
Hannah glanced at Ethan. ‘Am I the only one thinking this is probably a bad idea? Didn’t Chandler say that the Germans activated their Die Glocke during the war and that it melted people or something? I’d rather wait until some secret government organization can open this thing somewhere really remote.’
‘We are remote, and working for a secret government organization,’ Ethan pointed out.
‘I mean remote from me.’
‘It’s more than likely hre stuff of myth and legend,’ Amy said in reply as she worked, ‘but it is at the very least plausible that if this device has a defensive mechanism then sound may form a component of that. Everybody’s heard an opera singer hit a note and shatter a wine glass: it’s all to do with resonance. Match the resonance of an object with soundwaves, and you’ll shake it apart.’
‘The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was destroyed in 1940 by the same phenomenon,’ Chandler added. ‘The bridge was already known as “Galloping Gertie” because of its undulating behavior. The bridge was peculiarly sensitive to high winds. Rather than resist them the Tacoma Narrows tended to sway and vibrate, a tendency which progressively worsened due to harmonic phenomena. A forty mile per hour wind storm ripped the entire massive bridge apart.’
Ethan looked at Riggs.
‘Would the construction of this base provide any protection from something like that, a sound weapon?’
‘Maybe. Extremely high-power sound waves can disrupt or destroy the eardrums of a target and cause severe pain or disorientation,’ Riggs acknowledged. ‘The NYPD uses the LRAD-500X sonic weapon to disperse crowds but a base this size would prevent soundwaves from such weapons from reaching us if we were on the submarine pens on the other side.’
‘I heard that the crew of the cruise ship Seabourn Spirit used a long-range acoustic device to deter pirates who attacked the ship,’ Sully said, ‘so it’s possible this thing could use sound as a defense. The fact that it’s shaped like a bell suggests it would be effective at dispersing sound over long ranges, and if it’s really powerful even the water wouldn’t protect us – sound passes easily from water into the body.’
Ethan watched as Amy prepared an amplifier that they had bludgeoned together from the base’s old tannoy system. Attached now to a laptop using a complex series of cables a
nd transistors that allowed the amplifier’s 1940s technology work with a modern computer, Amy had scanned in images of the icons on the artifact’s exterior and then applied a computer program to detect likely audio patterns matching the symbols.
‘Okay, we’re ready,’ she said finally. ‘Here goes.’
As Ethan watched, across the data link he heard a strange series of whoops and growls emitted by the amplifier. It sounded rather like a herd of cattle moving by, grunts and snorts that sounded similar but had no particular rhythm or pattern to them.
‘That’s not it,’ Amy said as he looked at the artifact and saw nothing. ‘Next pattern and frequency.’
Another blast of noise hit the rear dock, this time sounding reminiscent of a boulder rolling and bouncing down a rocky hillside.
‘This is going to take hours,’ Riggs uttered from nearby as he listened to the stream of noises coming from the laptop. ‘There must be billions of noises that program could rustle up, and none of them matching the frequency that Amy thinks will open the artifact.’
Despite the noise, Amy could apparently hear the soldier as she worked.
‘Not so,’ she replied. ‘This is a learning program. Every time a sound doesn’t work, it removes both it and its data stream from the list of possible choices, along with all variables in the same tone. Every test we run removes millions of sequences and narrows down the actual frequency and tone that matches the symbols.’
‘You ever done this before?’ Riggs challenged.
‘No,’ Amy replied. ‘But then it’s not every day we find an alien device in the middle of Antarctica with the hieroglyphic version of a doorbell on it, right?’
Riggs scowled and moved away but he said nothing as Amy continued to work.
Ethan perched on the edge of the table nearby and watched as Amy’s amplifier rig emitted sound after sound, each one being systematically rejected by the computer program. Hannah joined Ethan as they listened to the noises.
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