by S. T. Joshi
He would have been glad had he known, having forgotten that he had ever been a poet, or that he had ever wondered what it could possibly mean that great and paradoxical Pan was dead.
The Shadow of Heaven
Jason V Brock
There are more things in heaven and earth . . .
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
(Hamlet to Horatio)
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.5.166–67
I.
“There—I think I see it, Commander.”
Ensign Adams’s breath disappeared overhead as he lowered his binoculars, pointing with a gloved hand at the unstable horizon through the ice-rimmed main windows of the ship. “Looks like something about ten kilometers out, sir.” Backlit by the windows, he turned to face Commander Merritt, the senior officer aboard the destroyer USS Higgins. Cloaked in his winter overcoat, the ensign’s brittle voice seemed distant in the cold dry air, his words nearly obliterated by the surging wind and unforgiving swells of the squall. Outside, colossal waves, some the size of buildings, slammed the Higgins— exploding across the ship’s icebound hull in frosty white plumes, adding to the inches-deep transparent slick of frozen seawater on the deck as she plunged further into one of the most hostile environs on the planet: the Southern Ocean. Gales such as this arose suddenly and with terrifying ferocity this close to Antarctica, reducing visibility to a few feet, churning the barren seascape into a foamy lather as it thrust icebergs the size of city blocks into the path of interlopers to this foreboding, isolated part of the world. At times, mighty whitecaps pounded on the destroyer with such titanic fury that they caused the vessel to flinch backward, bobbing like an oversized cork in the roiling black depths.
Merritt, his drawn face numb from the chill, carefully considered the ensign’s words, leaning against a deck rail to keep his balance as they rocked in the grip of the storm. Bringing his binoculars to his face, he scanned the dead grey interface between leaden sky and dark water beyond the icy windows Adams was motioning toward, noting the faint curtain of bluegreen ripples from the southern lights, streaked by rose-colored lightning ribbons in the distance as freezing night collapsed around them. Even on the closed bridge, the saline-tinged atmosphere had gotten so frigid that the inside of his nose crystallized with each breath.
Our luck to be the closest in the vicinity of a distress call.
“Are you sure you saw a vessel? Maybe it was a ‘berg,” the Commanding Officer asked at last.
“It didn’t look like an iceberg . . . ” Adams was scrutinizing the horizon as he spoke: “One moment, sir.”
As he worked against the storm’s fury, the commander was troubled that, in their attempts to discover the exact whereabouts of the missing research ship Terra Australis Incognita, they might have gone astray. The weary leader and his crew of just over two hundred were stuck now, committed to the search even as they struggled with the dreadful conditions approximately 300 miles off the coast of West Antarctica—well off-course from their originally assigned bearing based on Australis’s last communique. Merritt was further aggravated that they had been pulled into this mess just as the Higgins was returning for shore leave after a long, tedious mission: Subsonic underwater audio testing. The original search-and-rescue order had instructed them to triangulate the position of the troubled Australis once they were within its last known trajectory, but it concerned him that perhaps she had lost power after her final transmission to the Oceanographic Institute of San Diego, drifting farther than anyone had anticipated. That could mean she was gone—especially if these had been the circumstances for her and her crew in the two days it had taken the Higgins to re-route.
“Still not seeing it, Adams.” Merritt grimaced in frustration.
“Sorry, sir. It was there just a minute ago . . . ”
The haunting Mayday call that Warrant Officer McConnell had picked up as they were adjusting course, scratchy with static and crosstalk, had made it very difficult to decipher who it was, but the co-ordinates and the radar image supported the notion that it had come from Australis. Or at least from a crewmember that might be stranded on the so-called ‘new islands’ that Australis had been allowed to detour and inspect by the Institute.
Contemplative, Merritt lowered his binoculars, sighing in annoyance as he stroked his face. Throw into the mix that the closer we get to the last known heading of Australis the worse the fucking weather gets . . . the more radio-electronic interference— faulty GPS signals, slow clocks, bad wireless connections. Adds up to a lot of irritating bullshit . . . Oh well—‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,’ as they say . . .
Higgins had endured several of these storms, as powerful as any Merritt had ever encountered in his twenty-plus years as a sailor, in their efforts to find the Australis. Then, as the mammoth destroyer heaved and fell like some vast rollercoaster— lights flickering, deck rolling in the strong seas—the senior officer thought he vaguely made out what the ensign had seen: A shadowy triangular central mass situated among a scattering of large icebergs looming along the periphery of his vision like some ethereal vanguard of the Flying Dutchman. He frowned while adjusting the focus ring, his brow wrinkled in annoyance as he squinted past the thickening fog and billowing sea spray. Christ, it’s like something wants to keep us away . . .
He glanced over at McConnell, his grey-haired scalp bristling.“You seeing this?”
McConnell worked to keep his footing as he peered through his binoculars. “Aye . . . Something. Appears man-made, sir, but hard to make out through the mist and—” A crackle from the headset around his neck interrupted him. Placing the speaker to his ear, he listened intently, then moved over to his station, his dark features pressed into a look of apprehension.
Merritt: “What’s happening, McConnell?”
“Not—not sure, sir . . . There’s a lot of static; I thought I heard . . . A voice. It was coming in on the same frequency as the last transmission—”
Continuing to monitor the gloom outside, Adams said, “Definitely something there, Commander. Looks to be a modest- sized vessel.”
McConnell: “I’ve got something—putting up on speakers, sir. I have a radar reflection, too. One small shape and a few larger masses; the larger areas could be land, but hard to say in this climate . . . And I checked again—not on our maps.”
A smoky haze of static filled the room, pushing back the sounds of the tempest for an instant: <
More intense static. Then, garbled: “If you can hear my voice, please acknowledge! [blip, blip, blip] . . . is not— [blip,blip, blip] My name is Christopher Faust, over. [blip, blip, blip] . . . urgent mes— [blip, blip, blip] . . . communicate! Repeat: This is—”
Silence. The wind howled in the sunless tumult outside the Higgins, sending chucks of ice and snow to shatter against the windows of the darkened bridge. Lightning seared again: closer, redder, like an eruption of stroboscopic tendrils cracking the black-ice sky into pieces. Distant thunder bellowed.
“McConnell, stay on that frequency, but keep monitoring the others; Adams, your thoughts?”
The young ensign was staring into the starless night, struggling to keep his equilibrium in the storm. “I . . . I believe it’s Australis, sir. Who else would be this far from McMurdo? Granted, farther away than we expected her to be, but we heard the distress call . . . so we’re obligated to check it out, Commander.”
Merritt looked again, the stiff rubber eyecups of the Steiner chafing his eyelids: Illuminated by flashes of scarlet lightning, the triangular shape appeared to be a bow, with part of a mast attached as well; perhaps a half-submerged wreck, though it was too dim, too turbulent to make out anything definitive.
“Aye,” the commander said. “Set a course for it.”
II.
“Looks like we’ve found her, Commander. No one h
ere, though.” Ensign Adams released the button on his handheld as he stared into the blue-toned water, the white mast and bow of the sunken Australis thrusting up from the briny deep like the hand of a skeleton. The elements had relented since their post-midnight arrival; the ocean was almost peaceful.
At first light, Commander Merritt had deemed it safe enough to dispatch a small advance team of four men through the half-mile or so of chop between the moorage of the Higgins and the suspected wreck of the Australis. Though slightly overcast, the sun was evident, clear, though quite low on the horizon even now, at mid-day; it was urgent that they discern what was happening before night fell and the temperatures dropped.
“Roger that, Adams,” McConnell replied. “Stand by.”
As Adams and his crew of three awaited their next orders on the drifting rigid-hulled inflatable, he studied the Australis: It was spooky, surreal. The water here was so clear he could see far down into it, almost to the bridge of the research vessel. Straining, he swore he could see something . . . something large; a supple darkness—
“Adams, we have something near you, but not from the wreck, over.”
Startled from his thoughts by McConnell’s gruff drawl, Adams replied: “Roger that. What do you have?”
“Well . . . There’s a signal coming from nearby. The co-ordinates are dodgy, as there seems to be some strange interference. Looks like it’s coming from that mass I was explaining from the radar, though. Some seismic disturbances there. I got another signal a while ago like a voice, too. See anything? Over.”
“Actually, yeah; over to my left there’s a big fogbank. Looks like about 300 or so meters away. Could it be from there? Over.”
“That’s about the proximity of the radar image, over.”
Adams brought his binoculars up. As he peered through them, he thought he saw something large move in the mist on the horizon: What the hell was that?
“Roger, McConnell. I see something; request permission to investigate, over.”
There was a long pause.
“Roger, Adams; weather’s returning. Merritt says you’ve got an hour, over.”
III
“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky—”
Like the Indianapolis at the bottom of the deep . . .
Down to a dreamless sleep . . .
Drifting,
Spiraling:
IV.
Back onboard the Higgins, Adams was shaken, dazed as he reported what the search party had discovered: “So there are some islands, Commander,” He looked from Merritt to McConnell as they stood in the infirmary, regarding the apparent sole survivor of the Australis: an unconscious man on a sickbay table. “The radar image was correct . . . We found Australis, and there was something else . . . something deeper in the water, looked like it was poking around in the wreckage—”
“What? Like a seal? A shark or something? Or did you see a body?” Merritt asked, his voice edged.
“I—I can’t say; it was some weird . . . black-looking shape, but iridescent, too. Like oil on water. It seemed to be part of something else even larger . . . maybe it was just the water playing tricks on my eyes, or a part of the ship, but . . .” Adams looked to the floor. “Anyway, after we went through the fog, we all noted that the temperature was rising; it was becoming quite humid, too. I had to lose a jacket I got so warm. Then, as we disembarked onto this beach we landed on, we were accosted by these giant . . . flying bats or something, but with feathers. They were shrieking and carrying on. Sounded very human at times. Like a cat in heat. Our compasses were flipping out, and that’s when one of my guys saw a helicopter blade half-buried in the sand. We a search line and walked for a mile or so—”
Commander Merritt’s hands clinched. “No one authorized that, Adams! You should have radioed—”
“We tried, sir. The radios went dead right after we landed, and once we found the pieces of the helicopter . . . Respectfully, we weren’t trying to get into trouble; we just wanted to see if there was anyone hurt—”
McConnell: “He’s right, sir. The radios were unresponsive after the first forty-five minutes or so, and they were DOA back onboard.”
After a silence, Commander Merritt nodded: “Carry on, Adams. Then what happened?”
“Well, we thought we heard screams—human screams— coming from somewhere up the beach, though the place has strange acoustics; the surf, the wind make it pretty noisy, not to mention those flying things squealing overhead, so it could have been coming from the dense vegetation toward the center of the island. Anyway, after about ten more minutes of walking, we ascended a small dune, and that’s where the rest of the helicopter was.” Adams swallowed, staring at the C.O. in trancelike, unblinking remembrance. He motioned toward the man on the bed. “We found him like this . . . Completely nude, crumpled up next to a bunch of half-frozen papers and the debris of the ‘copter with the walkie-talkie in his hand. Only a few scratches on him from what we could see, just knocked out. I’m . . . amazed he’s alive . . . ,” Adams said. His voice was quivering. “How . . . how could he be alive? In those temperatures . . . Naked? I mean, it was warmer, but still plenty cold if you’re exposed like that. And . . . and the helicopter was demolished, like there was an accident or something. The bloody clothing next to him had a tag: Faust. That’s the guy from the transmissions, right McConnell?”
McConnell was gawking at the man in the infirmary bed, stunned, his hand covering his mouth. He shot a glance at Commander Merritt, whose red-eyed gaze was also fixed on the sleeping man, and nodded. “Tell him about the other thing you brought back, Adams.”
Merritt broke away from his thoughts. “There was something else? What?”
Adams swallowed, his face suddenly ashen, and looked to the floor. Merritt looked again at McConnell, who took a deep breath.
“What did Adams bring back, McConnell? Another survivor? Where—”
“No, sir,” Adams interrupted. “Not a survivor. It’s in another lab; one of the medics is investigating it.”
“Well let’s go see, Adams,” the commander said. He looked at McConnell. “I want to know the second this guy comes to.”
McConnell nodded again. “Yes, sir.”
V.
“Commander, are you familiar with the term ‘globster’?” Medic Aaron Randolph asked.
“Yes, I know it. Like sea monsters or something.”
The medic smiled, thin blond hair falling over his forehead, freckled cheeks creasing at the corners of his eyes as he looked between the sullen Adams and his C.O. The ship was beginning to gently roll as night approached and a storm once more buffeted the Higgins. “That’s sort of it, sir. Globsters are . . . kind of mysterious relics that wash up periodically. They can be hard to identify, as they have features of several different animals, or it seems like they do. Almost like the chimeras from Greek mythology. Some people even claim they’re ‘cryptids’—previously unknown or undocumented creatures, possibly related by era or locale, like the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot. I mean, maybe they are, but it’s doubtful; apocryphal accounts of plane wing gremlins, Chupacabras, and moth men make no sense, as they’re generally too divergent from one another.” Randolph paused, then added: “Of course, there are exceptions. They didn’t think Giant Squids, okapis, coelacanths, or Komodo Dragons were real once either. Usually, though, it’s a lot less interesting than that—they’re just pieces of some animal, like that huge blue eyeball that washed up a couple of years back that they now think belonged to a dead marlin, or the badly decayed carcass of a big shark or whale—”
Adams looked up sharply, eyes wide. “That’s no whale, Randy. Look again!”
The medic raised his hand: “I hear you. It's weird alright! But stuff is starting to show up all over; things that were unknown before from the deep, or critters that normally never appear where they’re f
ound. Even mass strandings. Happened just recently in L.A.—one day a damn deep sea oarfish washed up, completely intact, then a few days later a barely-living Alaskan saber-toothed whale! They say it might be Global Warming or something, who knows? It’s weird, though, and becoming more common. Not sure what this thing is; I checked it out under the 'scope, too. It's not like any other specimen we have onboard, that's for sure. The cryptozoologists would love it.”
Merritt straightened up. “Can I see what you’re talking about?”
“Absolutely, Commander. Right this way.”
They walked to the rear of the room where the storage freezer and the other autopsy tools were stowed. The medic opened the locker door, pulled a covered tray from inside, and set it on the counter. The tray was about two feet long and over a foot wide; the white cloth covering the specimen barely concealed the bulging object underneath. The medic smiled at the C.O. and the ensign. “It’s dense, heavy.” He pulled the cloth away unceremoniously.
The thing on the tray was hard to comprehend; there was no visual context for it. It was a drab grey, mottled with blooms of light pink. On one end, it was severed all the way through, the raw wound displaying its musculature and a core of bone. This side was slender, smooth; toward the other end of its length, there were what appeared to be scales that became an almost chitinous, hard appendage of some type, resembling a fixed-open claw. Within this structure, there was a softer retracted piece with what looked to be a suckered tentacle covered in miniature hooks. This black flesh was pliant, and the appendage seemed to be gently moving within.
Merritt’s eyes widened. “Is that thing—”
The medic nodded. “Yes: It’s moving. It’s been moving since I got it.”