People were now investigating each other, and he had been watched by just about everyone, and he himself had listened in on others and followed their movements!
He noticed some of the places in the structures were dirtier and in many he had to sweep away webs and he realized that the place was not being searched as much as they were making out, and he eventually put it down to them concentrating in the main areas! So he started looking in the areas that they missed and looked for signs that someone had visited there and hid it.
Reeves joined him searching an old hut with a rusted discarded snow vehicle in it, and they rummage through the junk!
“Well,” Reeves announced, breaking his silence with him. “We now know that the guy that took it has not been here!”
The place looked as though it had been untouched for decades and he examined different things to see what they were, and their uses, and if they had been recently used.
“Look at this monster!” Reeves announced, jumping into the worn seat of the vehicle.
“Any fuel?” he replied, wondering if it could be used.
“What’s that!” he spoke, looking closely at the controls. “Someone has recently checked it! The fuel meter has been cleaned recently!”
Weaver checked it to see the petrol in it and saw it had been checked, and realized the person had been planning to use the thing and checked it and the mess that it was in! There was so much rust and dirt over it that it looked unusable.
It was like being at an ice station on another world with the strange sun and snow, and appalling coldness. He recalled a story that he had once read of Artic explorers all being found frozen to death! Which made him consider if there was such a condition that could instantly freeze people and everything at the one time? He had seen things there that had suggested it! There were immense waves that were entirely frozen! How could you freeze an entire large falling fast moving wave without instantly freezing it! There were cases of large amounts of animals and humans being found frozen at the same time!
The place was like it was haunted at times; creaking and rustling from huts, ice shifting, and strange whistling breezes.
He thought of all the years of people living there and it interested him. What kind of life did they have? Why did they stay in such places?
The place must be one of the most empty and empty of life places that there could be on the planet! He wondered what it was like at its worst, freezing in drifts of heavy snow, silent and empty of life as was possible. Even indoors with the lights on at night there were strange haunting dark shadows and glows that held secrets and dangers!
They finished searching the rubbish and structure and moved out together and wandered about before joining the others having their meal.
Most of the people around the dinner table looked startled and tired and looked as if they wanted to leave the place, and he realized again the difference there was at the proper ice station.
Even the Russian base looked as though it had things wrong with it and that many of them would have preferred going home, when their mission was complete.
He noticed that Commander Craven looked happier, but still depressed, as though he had achieved something, but he could tell that it was not enough. Yet he still looked the happiest there!
“Anything new?” one of the soldiers finally asked, smiling.
“We think we may have who was behind taking the alien sphere!”
Everyone looked up, and Weaver gasped at the attention that it got from them, and especially from the Russians there and he sensed how desperate they had become!
“Where is he?”
“He was one of the dead! We searched him and everywhere he was seen!”
“Have you anything on what he was like?” another soldier asked curiously, looking at the Russians for reactions, jokingly.
“I got some information about him from the X1 Ice Station, and from the Russian base, and from civilization!”
He showed them a sheet of printed paper, and when the others had finished looking at it blankly Weaver managed to get a look at what was on it and realized there was little there. Yet as he was handing it back he realized it said that he had an interest in vehicles and rebuilding them and he wondered if he had been the one that had cleaned the petrol meter on the vehicle, as he surely would have been the most likely person for wanting to leave there!
They had other vehicles there and he wondered if he might have hidden it on one with other things, which he intended to take if he left there in it. Would they actually look there?
Suddenly he noticed that some of them thought that he had found something and he realized that he had reacted too much, and he decided to play safe and not check there until at least the following day. Even if there was a chance that someone found it first! The Russians there were desperate and would try anything, and he wondered again what Commander Craven was up to allowing them to stay there! They were a menace to them and threat to their lives, and the end of them if they got unlucky!
He tried to work out what Commander Craven wanted with them and was sure that they he might consider at least one of them knew where it was!
Chapter 21
The Search
When he finally searched the vehicles he was on his own and he started to realize the true danger if he found it! What the hell were they actually looking for anyway, and what would he do with it?
He finally started to lose interest and just completed his mission anyway, by checking the vehicles swiftly and intensely and finished by checking the vehicle with the cleaned petrol meter, and never realized how dark it had actually been there and had a bad time seeing properly!
When he finished he wondered why the petrol meter had been cleaned anyway! Then he started to realize that he could have thought the petrol tank was a good place to hide it and Weaver removed the petrol cap, which looked like it had been loosened, and he wondered if he could have traveled with it in the tank, without it stopping with it there! Not many people would search a petrol tank for something!
He used a thin pole to probe inside and heard something rattle about, and felt it move about, and he looked about him and found a second thin pole and used them to grasp the object and pull it out the tank.
Once it was out he saw it could not be it and that it was just a ball of rusted metal in a ripped up plastic bag and he threw it away, and fitted the cap on and cleaned himself up, and went for something to eat!
He realized that the ice station was a bad place for a party or for an active life, and that there was little to do there!
He wondered what would happen next! They had to leave there, and the object would be lost and could be discovered months or years later!
They could send in a team of people to search everything, with specialized equipment.
Later when he was eating at the dinner table one of the Russians burst in the door and started arguing loudly with other Russians there, in Russian and so they could not understand and come to any conclusions, and Weaver noticed that he had a hidden handgun that he had not shown before, and he watched him start an argument with Commander Craven!
The scene was incredible! None of them knew what he was talking about and he avoided saying anything and blamed him for something that he refused to say what! It was strange also as they reacted differently at the cold desolate lost ice station! They seemed to want the conclusion of what was going to happen more!
To their surprise he removed the handgun and shot the roof, spraying pieces of the ceiling over the table and them, and stood shouting in Russian! The explosion left them stunned and they all considered him mad and that some form of ice station isolation madness existed!
People from other rooms rushed along to the doorway with guns and he started shooting them or at them as they avoided them! Then one of the younger soldiers suddenly rushed out and shot him dead, and he fell over and hit the floor with a thud!
“What the hell was that about?” Commander Craven moaned, looking at the dead Russian inn
ocently.
He then lost his temper and demanded that the Russians tell him what he had spoken to them about, and demanded again that they better tell him!
One of them finally came forward and announced that he had something to tell them!
“Well!” Commander Craven moaned. “Tell us before it’s too late!”
“I believe he knew where the alien sphere was located and it was taken!”
“Why did he not tell us?”
“He did not know if he could trust you!”
“Well! Where the hell was it?”
“Only he knew where it was! One of the six Russian renegade soldiers that survived, after your battle with them, who was taken away as a prisoner, knew where it was and told him where before he left!”
“So the alien sphere does exist and we are now looking for the person who took it!”
Chapter 22
The Conclusion
The whole place seemed to go into madness and transform over night and many of the soldiers started to get heavily drunk, and many arguments broke out! Everyone there was a suspect to the crime, which could hold the fate of the human race! Nobody came forward with the alien artifact and they now knew that nobody would be allowed to leave the ice station until it was handed over or special investigators arrived to find the person.
Commander Craven had sent out messages about what had happened and their replies had arrived! The object was far too valuable and dangerous and the military was going to go to any lengths to get it!
Weaver even wondered if he would be tortured or something by them until they got it, and he wished he had stayed with the others at the other ice station.
Everyone there seemed to be the source of all the trouble! Even Commander Craven looked a suspect, because of the Russian’s direct attack against him!
The final conclusion to the problem was staggering to Weaver, and he never realized that he would be the one with it in the end and that he would solve the problem!
While the Russians had all been silently eating their meals Weaver had passed the dinning room and he realized that they knew more! So he returned and they offered him a seat beside them, and he grabbed something to eat, and he started talking to them and asking them about what had happened!
“Where do you think he had the object?” he asked one them, who properly translated it to the others.
They all discussed it and he heard some replies in English and some Russian words but he got little.
“They are not sure!” the Russian replied, which interested him as it suggested that they knew something.
“Where did he go before he entered the dinning room and pull out the gun?”
They all went silent and he saw one react strangely and knew that he might get what he wanted after all, and was surprised when he described that he had gone into a hut and that it was the one with the vehicle that had the petrol meter cleaned by someone!
He realized that it could have been there all along. He tried getting more from them but they never had anything else. He knew there was something, but just could not grasp what! Was Reeves capable of taking it and selling it? It was worth a vast amount of money if he found a place to sell it, which he might be able to do through someone to the military!
He decided to tell Reeves and Commander Craven about it and take them to the hut and the vehicle to look for it, as perhaps the person that took it had hidden it somewhere else there and they might find something altered and see where he could have put it!
When they entered the hut he and Reeves saw straightaway the place around the vehicle had been altered and that the Russian had smashed parts of the vehicle with something!
“Well!” Commander Craven groaned. “This is where he had it hidden!
Reeves started examining the vehicle and Weaver realized that the object had to have been on the vehicle and he should have looked in other places on it.
“For some reason he seems to have smashed the bottom out of the petrol tank?” Reeves stated.
Weaver gasped and stood staring at it!
“It looks as though it was in the petrol tank!” Commander Craven confirmed.
“I checked there though!” Weaver replied, and realized that it might have been in the petrol tank all along and that someone had taken it before him or that it had been hidden in some secret compartment area of the petrol tank.
“So you checked there and never found anything at all?” Reeves continued.
“There was an old piece of rusted metal in the remains of a plastic bag!” he answered.
“Where did it go?”
“I threw it over there!” he replied, pointing over into some rubbish.
Reeves swiftly bent over the rubbish and searched through it until he found it, and cleaned what Weaver had thought had been a piece of rusted metal, and showed them that it was a sphere of some type, which he proved was the same material as the voyager, and that it could not be damaged!
Chapter 23
The Alien Sphere
The black alien sphere rested in his hand and he played with it! Wondering what the hell it was! None of them had worked out what it was!
They had earlier arrived back at Ice Station X1, and left the freezing old Russian ice station behind, and they had just taken the alien sphere into the cavity with voyager to show the scientists, and they still had not solved what it was and all of them had repeatedly examined it!
All the scientists there were working away on various projects, and they had clearly been making progress in many regions!
The whole cavity seemed alive with action, with scientists and technicians discussing things and doing research, and monitoring equipment that was carrying out various functions.
The commander of the Russian base took the alien sphere and examined it trying to grasp what they had been talking about and what all the fuss had been about. It definitely was the real alien sphere! The people that had admitted seeing it also confirmed it! The soldiers all were astounded with it and that it was such a deadly ultimate object, created by the vast advanced alien technology that had created the voyager!
How could such a small device have such vast powers? Perhaps it used powers from elsewhere or created something like a chain reaction that could destroy the planet!
Many of the scientists examined it and could not find anything, and he noticed Willis knew something so he finally showed it to him and he examined it.
“What do think of it?” Weaver asked. “You’re the one that has been in contact with it!”
“I think it could function by thoughts!”
Willis concentrated his thoughts on the object and closed his eyes, and tried to do something! Then Weaver started to wonder about the dangers of it! What if it was activated by the mind? That could mean anyone there could activate the thing. And they could do it deliberately or accidentally!
To their surprise the alien sphere split in half, opening up, and at first Weaver thought that it was empty but when he looked closer at it he started to see a small piece of something, which Willis removed carefully and they all looked at what looked like a slide for a small slide projector, and they stared at it bewildered.
Weaver examined the sphere shell and found nothing else, and it was only a container for the slide!
“The thing is empty!” one of the scientists announced, and Weaver put it away in his pocket, and they examined the slide.
What the hell was a slide doing there? If it was a slide? They had become so engrossed in finding an ultimate weapon and finding it that they just stood staring.
“There’s a lens over there!” a scientist announced, and marched away to get it, and quickly returned with it and they used it to see the slide.
Willis examined it first and swiftly passed it over to Weaver for him to examine.
“It’s definitely a slide with something on it?”
“It’s a microfilm!” Weaver confirmed, but he could not see what was on it, and started to realize that it could be more
valuable than he thought.
It surely had to be the plans of the ultimate weapon! If they actually had the weapon they might not have been able to construct another or even find out how to use it! The material it was made of was indestructible and they would not have been able to open it and would have only had one of them, which might not have been as deadly as they imagined anyway. If the plans were there they could construct it and discover how it worked and use the technology for other things! And as far as he was concerned it was worth far more and he wondered why he was allowing all of the scientists and Russian scientists to see it, and he started to realize how dangerous it was becoming, and how much it actually was worth and why the renegades had been killing so many for it!
He decided to remain silent as they were unable to see any detail on it, and he started trying to find a way to get it.
As he watched the reactions of the Russian scientists and soldiers and their sudden aggressive communications and their reactions starting to become hostile he started to realize that they surely were going to get hold of it and he could tell by Willis’s behavior that he was thinking the same thing. He even thought of running away with it and hiding it away and calling in some more intelligence agents to help him. But that would be incredibly stupid as they had cameras and surveillance all around there now.
The person that looked the least interested in it was Willis who only tried to examine it further to clarify some point, and he wondered what he had planned. He kept showing he had more interest in the voyager!
To their surprise Willis looked at the Russians about him aggressively and removed a lighter and set fire to the microfilm, and they all just watched it burn away into nothing!
Weaver watched in amazement and surprise as all the scientists about them started clapping their hands, and the Russian scientists started clapping louder and he joined in and he realized that they never wanted anyone to have the weapon!
The Black Hole Experiments Quadrilogy (2017) Page 16