by Alan Nayes
She tried to quell her excitement as she reached for another slide. This one confirmed what she already knew—and substantiated her original conclusions after examining the bony remains, especially the virtually fully preserved skull.
This would be the first documented case of a great ape inhabiting North America!
The skull fascinated her the most—it was large, yet by the incompletely fused sagittal sutures, she knew the specimen belonged to a very young primate. Only a child. With a double sagittal crest, two parallel ridges of bone running lengthwise along the midline of the bony cranium, the living specimen would have presented an imposing, even scary, appearance. And in size alone, the dimensions already matched a modern-day fully mature adult lowland gorilla! She wouldn’t even hazard a guess what the mysterious perfectly circumscribed hole above the skull’s right orbit indicated.
She heard the lab door open. A tall man—just over six feet was tall when you barely broke five-two—approached carrying a leather satchel. He walked with slight limp, favoring his right, and wore faded jeans and a thick plaid flannel shirt. His close-cropped hair gave him a military look and briefly she wondered if he was from the Eielson base. He appeared close to her age, mid-thirties, perhaps a little older, though she could tell from his rugged looks he’d spent a lot of time outdoors. He cast her a friendly smile. He was also quite handsome, with his piercing blue eyes and masculine jawline.
He switched the satchel to his left and held out his hand. “John Stevens. We spoke on the phone.” He glanced at her cluttered work station—microscopes, lab racks, slides, trays holding a few bones, centrifuges—and said, “Seems you’ve made yourself at home.”
Shelby grinned. “The accommodations work for me. Thank you for the borrowed lab. Shelby Hollister.”
“Nice to finally meet in person.”
“Likewise.”
He set the satchel on a counter and pulled up a chair. He watched her. “So what’s the verdict, Shelby?”
Shelby indicated the bones and slides. “Ape.”
“Not human then.”
She shook her head. “Most definitely not.” She didn’t miss the slight frown. “You look disappointed.”
The frown vanished. “And here I was bragging about how Mark and I discovered the missing link. Imagine, here in the Arctic North. That would have made quite a story.”
Shelby returned the bones to a small freezer. “The story’s not over yet. Not by a long shot.”
He watched her check some other contents in the freezer. “So ape…any estimation as to the age of the bones?”
Shelby hazarded a guess. “Based on the preserved material I’ve examined so far, anywhere from twelve thousand to forty thousand years old. I’ve prepared some samples for carbon dating and will send them to my lab in Los Angeles.”
“How long will that take?”
“I can have a prelim report in a week, maybe.” She met John’s gaze. “Any more info on that weird…what was it…?”
“Cylinder.” He gave her a wan smile. “Oh, the new terminology is UCO…Unidentified Cylindrical Object. That’s the military—thrive on acronyms. Nothing in the press yet either. Keeping it pretty under wraps.”
“U-C-O.” She shrugged. “Sounds mysterious.”
“Oh, it is,” he replied with an exaggerated expression. “And being only an ice and rock guy, I’m officially out of the loop.”
“Sorry.” Shelby feigned a pout. “And you discovered it.”
His expression brightened. “I do get to study the debris that was found with the UCO.”
“So not all is lost.”
“Never.” He smiled and reached for his satchel. “Hey, I’m on my way over to the base now. You want to see what all the secrecy is about?”
“Thought you were out of the loop.”
“Officially. But my ex-army credentials still carry a little weight.” He rose. “I can show you some good aerial images of exactly where the bones were found in relation to the UCO and glacier.”
Shelby noticed the fatigue she felt earlier wash away. “I would like to see those.”
John drove a late model four-by-four Jeep Commander with both a front and back winch mounted on the heavy-duty bumpers. The paint was a camouflage pattern. As he held the door for Shelby he overheard her mutter, “Never lose this in the snow.”
“So a geologist and glaciologist,” she commented, climbing in. “That seems sort of—”
“Incongruous?”
“I was never aware the two disciplines had much in common.”
“Actually the study of rocks and glaciers is not as inconsistent as one might think. Rocks and minerals and glaciers—all can yield information regarding the earth’s past, age, natural events that took place, climate change, and something which interests you—past and present animal life.”
“Fossils.”
“The bones you are studying came from a glacier but pending your carbon dating analysis could have been unearthed by the grinding action of the ice sheet.” Though she was petite, and pretty—large green eyes framed by long lashes, a delicate nose, and full lips—the cool weather wear Gore-Tex hiking pants and goose down windbreaker did not hide her curves. He noticed how she pulled her ash blonde hair over one shoulder. “Top up?” he asked. “Right about now in LA it’s probably around seventy-two.”
He watched her examine the dash and indicated the onboard thermometer.
She grinned. “Forty-nine. Wow. Doesn’t feel that cold. I’m fine.”
“Wait till we get going.”
“How far is the air force base?”
“About a twenty-five-minute drive.”
They drove southeast on Alaska Route 2 along the Tanana River in the deepening twilight, stopping in Moose Creek for a quick takeout meal at a small restaurant John had eaten at many times before. “Okay if we eat in the Jeep? Want to make the base before a colleague is off shift.”
“No problem.”
He pulled back out on the two-lane, casting glances Shelby’s way as she downed her burger. “I see everyone in California is not a vegan.”
Shelby smiled, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “A few of us carnivores still exist.”
John indicated the lights in the near distance just past a rolling hill, surrounded by low-lying marshland. “Eielson. Constructed here in 1943 because of the relatively flat terrain.”
“Ideal for runways.”
“Exactly.”
Shelby indicated another marsh nestled below a copse of spruce. “A lot of water on the ground.”
“A major storm whipped through a couple weeks ago. But you’re correct, the Yukon River basin is wet pretty much year round.”
“Except in the winter.”
“Yup. Then it’s all frozen.” John finished his meal just as they approached a security gate with a guard house. He flashed an ID to the uniformed guard. “John Stevens. Lt. Mendle is expecting me.”
The corpsman took Shelby’s temporary University of Fairbanks ID also, made a call, and then returned the cards. He opened the gate. “So you’re the Dr. Stevens,” he addressed John. “You found the UCO. What the hell is that thing? The entire base is buzzing about it.”
“You telling me the military hasn’t figured it out yet?” he quipped.
The guard waved the heavily equipped Jeep through. “No sir, still ‘unidentifiable,’ but the rumor mill is in high gear.” He indicated a high-ceiling hangar next to a smaller control tower west of a long airstrip. “Hangar Thirteen.”
Shelby smiled. “How appropriate.”
Shelby marveled at a locomotive sitting outside what she presumed was some type of power plant. Frosty vapor rose from several vents along the roof. She pulled her windbreaker tighter around her chest. The temp was dropping. “An air force base with trains.”
“Used to transport coal,” John explained. “See that second massive hangar next to the large air traffic control tower? That’s
called Thunderdome.”
“As in Mad Max.”
John grinned. “I think the hangar was christened well before Mel Gibson wreaked havoc in the Australian outback.”
Hangar 13 was a single-story vanilla-colored concrete structure with an elongated high-domed roof. A line of window panels ran along the roofline the entire length of the hangar. Up close it appeared much larger and Shelby guessed it probably covered close to half an acre. Floodlights kept the entire area well illuminated. Several military transport helicopters were parked on an adjacent tarmac. Immediately she noticed the men patrolling the hangar’s periphery—each armed with automatic weapons.
John parked next to a brown Humvee. A man in green fatigues met them at the hangar’s doors. He led them inside. The warmth was both immediate and refreshing. Shelby unzipped her jacket. John shook hands with a uniformed airman and introduced them. Lt. Mendle was shorter than John but stockier, carrying a slight paunch. His dark skin covered a wide face which seemed to smile easily. “So you’re the scientist in charge of the bones,” he said to Shelby.
“Dr. Reddic heads the paleoanthropology department at UCLA and chairs the Center of Primatology. He had a prior commitment. They sent me instead,” she acknowledged.
Mendle exchanged a quick glance with John. “I don’t think there’ll be many complaints.” He turned and led them across the concrete. “So let me show you what has held everyone’s fascination since that ex-army soldier next to you decided to take a hike across Little Okpilak Glacier.”
Shelby followed the two men down a wide partitioned corridor which terminated abruptly into a deep interior. A low din of voices mixed with mechanical equipment filled the hangar. Large metal piping coursed across overhead and she noted the pair of fighter jets parked before a large bay door.
“F-22 Raptors,” Mendle commented. He led them away from the jets toward a heavy metal platform. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s the UCO.”
Shelby said the first thing that came to mind. “It’s huge!”
CHAPTER 2
The Unidentified Cylindrical Object rested upright on a temporary platform of heavy-duty steel. A metal barricade surrounded the UCO stage, which was close to sixty feet across, and on one side a short three-step set of stairs allowed access to the staging area. A second entry point opened where a wide ramp had been constructed. Shelby couldn’t identify much of the equipment packed on the platform around the cylinder but guessed one was some type of scanner—it certainly resembled CT scanners she had used in the past to conduct research on fossilized bones. Numerous floodlights bathed the object under an intense glare. Four airmen stood at each corner of the platform. For a fleeting instant, Shelby experienced a sense of unease at all the lights and heat generated by the illumination but had no idea why.
She voiced her next thought out loud. “You dug that out of a glacier?”
Lt. Frank Mendle replied, “I’ll let John answer that since he was there. All we did was transport it here once it was ice free with one of those big birds you saw on the tarmac.”
John explained. “Initially we—meaning the Arctic Rescue team, and Mark and I—rappelled into the crevasse and ice axed as much of it free as possible. This is how we collected the bones. Then with acetylene torches we freed both ends and winched it out of the fissure. Took two days, and once on the surface Frank took over.”
Mendle indicated the stairs. “Let’s go up and get close.”
Again, inexplicably Shelby sensed an ill-defined unease. “Is it safe?”
Mendle led. “We’ve tried to X-ray it, scan it, ultraviolet light it, we even attempted sonar—nothing. Of course as paranoid as the military is, especially in such close proximity to Russian airspace and the Bering Strait, we thought could this be some type of weapon. But so far as we can tell, it’s just a large chunk of as yet unidentified metal. Totally inert. No radiation detected and no explosive residue of any kind. But it is extremely dense. Its Brinell hardness coefficient exceeds a diamond’s or even lonsdaleite’s, which might be only a strange coincidence or extremely pertinent, as lonsdaleite, the hardest known compound, can be formed when meteorites containing graphite strike earth. Oddly no reaction to a magnet nor hydrochloric acid, but the structural engineers still feel it’s composed of some type of iron compound. We called in some metallurgists from the university but they are still debating what the hell the UCO is composed of. Thus far we’ve been unable to collect a piece of it even after submitting the surface to a polycrystalline diamond drill bit. Didn’t make a scratch. We also attempted to heat a small surface patch to close to ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit—the UCO didn’t melt, it didn’t even get warm! We are expanding our consult list as we speak if our attempts fail to identify the compound. I have some more data for John to look at once we’re through here.”
“And I got some prelims on the surrounding rocks which we can review later,” John added.
“Entirely solid?” Shelby asked.
Mendle shrugged. “Can’t tell. It is heavy—over five thousand pounds. But an object this large and this dense would be over a hundred times heavier if solid throughout. A real bona fide conundrum.”
On the platform, Shelby moved closer. “Can I touch it?”
The lieutenant shrugged nonchalantly. “We all have.” He held up a palm. “Still got all my fingers.”
Shelby could hear John and Mendle conversing behind her as she reached out and tentatively at first, then with more force, stroked the sides of the cylinder. The metal, if it was metal, was dark gray and very smooth. Cold, too, though already she could feel herself perspiring under the floodlights. She found her thoughts returning to the bones found next to this…thing. Whatever it was. Could they be related? It seemed too much a stretch to think they weren’t, as both rare discoveries had been collected not just in the same glacier but virtually in contact with one another. On the other hand, what could a partially disarticulated prehistoric primate skeleton have in common with such a strange modern object? She had no idea and from John’s and Lt. Mendle’s comments, no one else did either. She moved around the UCO’s base and glanced up.
Mendle must have seen her because he said, “Twelve feet eight inches tall and six feet one inch in diameter with a circumference of just over nineteen feet.”
The more she gazed at the UCO the more she experienced a strong desire to get back to the bones. She didn’t know why, except some intuition told her they were related. Closely related.
She watched two men checking something along the circular base of the cylinder where it contacted the steel platform. One held a small hammer, periodically tapping the cylinder’s surface, while the other held some type of listening device. She began to remove her hand and turn away. What the hell? She started, wondering if anyone had seen her jump. Plainly no one had. Mildly embarrassed, she stared back at the place she’d just had her fingers. She almost expected to see the mysterious imposing object glowing a different color—a fiery red or sunlight yellow—which was foolish, she realized. She was just on edge as was everyone else. But one thought she couldn’t so easily toss off. Had she really felt a slight vibration in the wall of the UCO or was it only her imagination? It was the men using the hammers, she quickly told herself. Yes, of course, that was it, the only logical explanation; yet even as her fingertips lightly ran over the smooth surface, she felt nothing—and the men were still tapping. She shrugged and stepped back. John and the lieutenant motioned her to follow them to a temporary cubicle set up behind the UCO staging area.
She’d just reached the steps when she heard one of the men curse.
All lights went out, plunging the entire staging area in cobalt darkness.
No sooner had the shouts of alarm erupted than all lighting returned. They’d only been off a few seconds at the most. But the reaction around her had been instantaneous. Shelby heard orders being given, observed men rushing in from outside the hangar while Mendle bounced around a series of computer t
erminals near the portable cubicle constructed near the platform, speaking on a radio set. Shelby overhead him speaking to someone on the other end, “What the hell just happened? I want readouts now. The brass are going to want answers…” She tuned him out when she felt a hand on her arm.
John had leaped back onto the platform. “You okay?”
Shelby grinned sheepishly. “Yes, I’m fine.” She indicated the commotion around her. “What is all the ruckus about the lights going out?”
John indicated the workstation where Mendle was studying a computer screen with a tech. “It wasn’t just the lights. All electricity blanked out—the computers, cell signals, lights, even the portable radios were interrupted.”
Shelby watched where the two soldiers had been tapping. They’d backed off the platform while a uniformed man with a Geiger counter moved cautiously around the cylinder. Shelby mouthed, “They think it was the UCO…” It came out more as a question.
“Did you feel anything when the lights went out?” John was asking.
She continued to watch the tech with the Geiger counter. His expression remained calm, which mitigated her unease. “No, but just…”
Mendle climbed up the steps. “Well, nothing like a little excitement to maintain reflexes.” He called to the man examining the UCO. “Anything, Johnson?”
The tech shook his head. “Nothing, sir. Not even the hint of a blip.”
“Let me know if that needle even looks like she wants to move.”