and fear. ‘Who are you? Where am I?’
‘My name is Wilson. You will address me as that. You’re in a colony located
inside a mountain in Neu Schwabenland, or Queen Maud Land, in Antarctica. You
are here as my prisoner.’
Clarke started sobbing, uncontrollably, like a child, wiping the tears from his
cheeks with a grubby hand as he stared down at his own feet.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he said. ‘Oh, Jesus, I don’t believe... Oh, God help me, I’m
dreaming.’
‘No, Mr Clarke, you’re not dreaming. Nor are you imagining things. This is real.
We are real. What’s puzzling you, Dr King?’
‘Something about your face.’
‘I’m seventy-seven years old, doctor, but look fifteen years younger. My face lacks
a certain mobility due to crude plastic surgery. I also need improving in other ways,
which is why I need you.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Clarke sobbed. ‘Why me? What the hell am I doing here?’ ‘You’ve been brought here,’ Wilson informed him, ‘because you were unfortunate
enough to witness the debris of a crashed flying saucer and its three dead crew
members. We can’t permit you to talk about it, so you’re here to be silenced.’ Clarke
burst into tears again as Wilson turned to the other man. ‘As for you, Dr King, you’re
fortunate enough to be one of the world’s leading specialists in research into the
myoelectric control of external prosthetics, or artificial limbs. You’ll therefore be
invaluable to this community and need have no fear if you co-operate.’ ‘Co-operate?’ King asked as Marlon Clarke sobbed hysterically beside him. ‘What
do you mean?’
‘This is a secret community devoted to science,’ Wilson explained, ‘with no moral
impediments to progress. We’ll do anything necessary, no matter how ruthless, for
the advancement of the technology we’re creating. We’re a society of masters and
slaves, scientists and their servants, and we live beyond the reach of so-called
civilisation and its antiquated moral constraints. You are either for us or against us,
Dr King - willing worker or slave. The choice is all yours.’
‘I think I’m dreaming,’ King said. ‘I just can’t accept this.’
‘Don’t be as foolish as him,’ Wilson warned, indicating the sobbing Clarke, ‘by
putting this down to imagination or dreaming. This is real, Dr King, and it cannot be
stopped. Outlawed by the world we may be, but we’re well out of reach. The saucers
are my creation and just the tip of the iceberg. My ultimate purpose is a new kind of
man, both physically and mentally: the mythical superman made real in a world based
on logic, not emotion. We’re a unique community, Dr King, and you will be part of
it.’
‘What if I refuse?’
‘You don’t have a choice. Either you do it willingly or we compel you to do it. We
have our ways, Dr King, and you can’t escape from here. Outside this mountain is the
Antarctic wilderness. Where would you go?’
As the full implication of what Wilson was saying struck home to Clarke, he
sobbed more profusely and visibly started shaking. When Wilson nodded, one of the
guards took hold of Clarke’s elbow and managed to steady him. Dr King, though
clearly frightened, remained in control of himself and stared about him in wonder. ‘I take it you’re human beings,’ he said, turning back to Wilson, ‘and not creatures
from outer space.’
Wilson smiled coldly. ‘Alas, yes, we’re all too human.’
King glanced at Stoll, Kammler and Nebe, then nodded, indicating the armed
guards. ‘You look like a bunch of Nazis to me.’
‘I’m an American,’ Wilson said, ‘but one without political allegiance. These men,
it is true, were in the SS, but all that is behind them now. There are no nationalities
here; we’ve all disowned that. Here, our only religion is science. We don’t worship
false gods.’
‘I know I’m not dreaming,’ King said, ‘but I still can’t accept this. I don’t know
who you are or how long you’ve been here, but you won’t be able to stay. Sooner or
later, the West will learn about you and put a stop to your madness.’
‘Some of them know we’re here,’ Wilson said, ‘but they can’t get us out. No one
can get us out of here. No one has the technology.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ King said.
‘It’s true,’ Wilson insisted. ‘The US government knows we are here, but they can’t
get us out.’
‘You mean they’ve already tried?’
‘Yes. Last January they launched the biggest Antarctic expedition in history,
Operation Highjump, led by the explorer and naval officer, Rear-Admiral Richard
E.Byrd. The resources of the assault force, which was disguised as an exploratory
expedition, included thirteen ships, two seaplane tenders, an aircraft carrier, six twoengine R4D transports, six Martin PBM flying boats, six helicopters, and a total of
4,000 men. When this supposedly invincible assault force reached the Antarctic coast,
it docked, on January 12, near Queen Maud Land, or Neu Schwabenland, then
divided up into three separate task forces. When the expedition ended, in February, a
lot earlier than anticipated, there were numerous stories in the press about RearAdmiral Byrd’s references to enemy fighters that came from the Polar regions and
could fly from one Pole to the other with incredible speed. The machines to which he
was referring are the kind that brought you here and were created by me in Nazi
Germany. As for Admiral Byrd’s mission, it was deemed a disaster and the United
States has since declared that it’s withdrawing from the Antarctic for at least a
decade. They know they can’t get us out of here. They don’t have the technology.’ Dr King did not reply, but he licked his lips and glanced about him, still in a state
of disbelief, trying to accept the reality of this nightmare as the farmer, Marlon Clarke, sniffed back his tears and looked frantically around him, his eyes stunned by
dread.
Ever curious about human emotions, since he had so few himself, Wilson decided
to take the confused, disbelieving Dr King and terrified Marlon Clarke on a tour of
the colony.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’
Confident that neither King nor Clarke would try to escape, since there was
nowhere to go, Wilson nodded at the armed guards, who put up their weapons and
left the room through the door leading to the corridor. Wilson then entered the lift,
followed by Dr King and the dribbling Clarke, then Stoll, Kammler and Nebe. Stoll
pressed the button for the third level. When the lift had descended and the doors
opened again, Wilson led the group out into a clamour of hammering, pneumatic
drilling, and echoing voices.
Another tunnel, being hacked out of the mountain, was being walled and roofed
with reinforced concrete and steel wiring. As Wilson led King and Clarke through
churning dust in the arc-lit gloom, it was clear that the work was being done by the
filthy men and women who slaved under gunpoint and to the cracking of the whips of
other guards.
‘This all started in Nazi Germany,’ Wilson explained. ‘Contrary to popular belief,
the Antarctic continent has many unexplored, ice-free areas, many of which are well
hidden from view by va
st ice sheets and mountains. In other words, Dr King, we are
not quite underground, though we’re hidden by high mountain peaks. We’re carving
the rest of the space we need from the interior of the same mountain.’
Gradually accepting that all of this was real, Dr King was glancing about him, with
awe as well as fear, at the many unfortunates slaving in this dust-filled, arc-lit, rocky
hell.
‘Nazi Germany,’ Wilson continued, ‘had a genius for the construction of immense
underground production plants and factories, most completed with the ruthless use of
captured slave labour. Indeed, most of the underground research centres of Nazi
Germany were gigantic feats of construction, containing air-shafts, wind-tunnels,
machine-shops, assembly plants, launching pads, supply dumps, accommodation for
all who worked there, and adjoining camps for the slave workers - yet few German
civilians knew that they existed.’
A whip cracked and someone screamed. Dr King twitched but walked on, though
Clarke, growing ever more terrified, released an audible groan.
‘Take Peenemünde, for instance. The full enormity of that research complex can
only be gauged from the fact that apart from its wind tunnel - the most advanced in
the world, containing its own research department, instrumentation laboratory,
workshops and design office - it also had its own power station, docks, oxygen plant,
airfield, POW camp for specially selected prisoners who provided cheap labour, and
social and medical facilities associated with a town of 20,000 inhabitants. It was
therefore the prototype for the even larger underground factories to be built secretly in Germany and Austria, notably at Nordhausen in the southern Harz mountain range of Thuringia, which is where I created my first piloted flying saucer, the Kugelblitz.
Do you know about Nordhausen, Dr King?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘It was an immense rocket research and construction facility, consisting of a series
of linked tunnels carved out of the Kohnstein Mountain, near the town of
Nordhausen. The parallel tunnels were 1,800 metres long. Leading off them were
fifty side-chambers, a main work area of 125,000 square metres, and twelve
ventilation shafts that had been bored down from the peak of the mountain. Work at
converting the tunnels into a mass-production facility for rockets began in September
1943 with the use of 2,000 engineers and 15,000 inmates from the nearby
concentration camps. The slaves were kept in a separate camp located in a hidden
mountain valley, less than a kilometre from the entrance to the tunnel. A new
underground complex, to be linked to Nordhausen by another network of tunnels,
was in the process of being built sixteen kilometres under the ground around the town
of Bleicherode, twenty kilometres distance. Between them, Nordhausen and
Bleicherode constituted the first of the SS underground factories - virtually living
towns - and what the Nazis were doing there, under the earth, we are now doing here,
in the Antarctic.’
‘I can’t imagine how you managed to get so much equipment and so many of these
unfortunate wretches here,’ King said, glancing around him at the sobbing, sweating
captives now slaving in abominable conditions.
‘The labour force and equipment were shipped in submarines, in the course of
many voyages, over a period of years, throughout the war, when other Nazi boats and
submarines were protecting the South Atlantic coastline of Antarctica. Bear in mind
that the normal U-boat of that time could cover 7,000 miles on each operational
cruise. Also, the Germans had submarine tankers spread across the South Atlantic
Ocean at least as far as south of South Africa, and any one of those tankers, which
had a displacement of 2,000 tons, could supply ten U-boats with fuel and stores, thus
trebling the time that those submarines could stay at sea. It took a long time, but we
managed to get enough men and equipment here before the war ended. We should
have enough to last a couple more years, by which time we will have more and bigger
saucers to fly in what we need.’
The tunnel led into another large viewing bay in which the plate-glass windows
had yet to be inserted. Far below was a workshop of massive dimensions, with jibs
and cranes, whining machines, and sheets of a metallic substance, dull grey and
different shapes, being swung to and fro. There were many workers down there, also,
as well as long work benches, steaming vats, blast furnaces, screeching electric drills,
and the ribbed bodywork for other, larger saucers. The walls of the workshop were
solid rock, hacked out of the mountain's interior, but the vast ceiling was reinforced
concrete, as was the floor.
‘The workshop’s 300 feet long and 138 feet wide,’ Wilson explained. ‘Its roof is eighty feet high and made from twenty-three-feet thick reinforced concrete. To pierce it, you’d need a bomb weighing about twelve tons and striking the ceiling at a speed of Mach 1, the speed of sound. In order to construct it, we needed 49,000 tons of steel and concrete for the roof alone. Hundreds of jacks were used to raise the roof slowly, inches at a time, with the walls being built up beneath it, as it was raised. The enormous amounts of steel, cement, sand and gravel needed were brought in by Uboat and airplane over a period of years, like the rest of the material and the labour force. The site used about 5,000 workers, who were shipped here from the occupied territories, mostly from concentration camps. At any one time there were always at least a thousand men at work. This went on around the clock in twelve-hour shifts, and my guards had no hesitation in executing anyone too ill or exhausted to do it. For this reason, we managed to complete the construction of the workshop in a year. With
logic, Dr King, and not emotions, men can do the impossible.’
Dr King gazed down on the skeletal saucer prototypes and the great steel plates
being swung to and fro. ‘So it was one of your flying saucers that crashed at Socorro,
New Mexico.’
‘No,’ Wilson said. ‘Not one of ours.’
King started to respond, obviously wanting to know about the other saucer, but
before he could do so Wilson waved him into silence and led him and the others
across a catwalk, through another, shorter tunnel, eventually entering a steel-plated
room which had rows of frosted glass cabinets on the shelves and naked, dead bodies
inside them.
Clarke stopped walking when he saw the bodies, letting out another groan, but the
dark-eyed Artur Nebe, who still had his hand on his pistol, roughly pushed him
onward. Dr King merely gave a slight shudder, but continued walking behind Wilson.
They soon emerged from the tunnel to another room, a laboratory, its steel-plated
walls climbing to a ceiling of chiselled rock that was part of the interior of the
mountain.
Here, the members of staff looked perfectly normal, men and women in white
smocks, reading and writing, peering down through microscopes, checking printouts,
gauges and thermometers, working quietly, intently. More appalling, however, were
the specimens in the cages and glass jars: human heads, artificially pumping hearts,
floating brains and intestines. There were also cabinets containing artificial joints and
various prosthetics.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Clarke groaned. He covered his face with his hands, started shaking
even more, and became so weak that he had to be propped up by Ernst Stoll. Clarke
started sobbing again.
‘Take him away,’ Wilson said. ‘Might as well prepare him immediately. Stoll,
come and see me in five minutes. I’ll be in my office.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Stoll said. He and Kammler then slipped their arms around Clarke and
practically carried him out of the laboratory, leaving only the dark-eyed,
expressionless Artur Nebe with Wilson and Dr King. The latter was gazing around him in amazement, but not shock, as prosthetics were what he had been working on in
the hospital in England.
‘A familiar sight?’ Wilson asked, pleased to see that Dr King was in control of
himself.
‘The prosthetics, yes. The rest of it, no. We work under certain moral restraints, as
you’ve already noted.’
Wilson smiled thinly. ‘The work that goes on here,’ he explained, ‘is not only for
the production of advanced prosthetics and organs. Its ultimate goal is life extension,
first through the transfer and replacement of bodily parts, eventually by discovering
the secrets of longevity. Right now, we need primitive life extension through
prosthetic replacement, which is where you come in. Your work will involve human
prosthetics and the creation of cyborgs: half man, half machine. I’m sure you’ll find
it highly satisfying.’
‘You realise I think you’re insane.’
‘I’m not. I’m just logical.’
Dr King was not swayed by Wilson’s brand of logic. ‘I’m fifty years old. I have a
family and friends. Even were I to accept that I can’t escape from here, I’d still find it
psychologically impossible to adjust to the loss of everything I’ve known, loved and
need. In short, even if I tried to co-operate, I don’t think I’d succeed.’
‘You worry unnecessarily. We have ways of indoctrination. Drug therapy,
combined with psychological persuasion, will aid your adjustment while letting you
retain all your faculties. That process of indoctrination begins today.’ Dr King just
stared at him, blinking too much, turning pale. ‘Are you frightened?’ Wilson asked. ‘Yes, I’m very, very frightened.’
PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series) Page 4