by Art Collins
“But only from the air,” Jockabeb replied with a smile on his face.
As Jockabeb read on, he was particularly interested in the indigenous populations who had inhabited the Arctic down through the ages. When he learned that the present day inhabitants, the Inuit, were descendants of the Thule people, he looked up and said, “Well, I guess I know where Thule Air Base got its name.”
Both the boys had finished reading their briefing papers by the time the plane started its descent into Langley Air Force Base. The landing was much smoother than the takeoff had been. Fifteen minutes after touchdown, the two brothers were escorted to the barracks where they’d spend the night.
Before saying good night, Quade issued orders for the following morning. “In your room you’ll each find a large duffel bag containing toiletries, clothing, and other supplies you’ll need for the trip. We knew your height and weight, so everything will fit. Make sure you set the alarm clock. I want you dressed and ready to go when I show up at zero six hundred, and that’s six o’clock in the morning for you civilians.
“There’ll be a continental breakfast in the briefing room. After you meet the other members assigned to the ETF, you’ll get a classified briefing on the mission. By noon you should be back in the air heading for Thule. Oh, I forgot to mention that the shower room and head are just down the hall. If either of you have questions, let me hear them now.”
“Only one,” Jockabeb said, almost too embarrassed to ask. “What did you mean when you said there was a head down the hall?”
“It’s a toilet, airhead,” Archibald blurted out before Quade could say a word. “Haven’t you heard Dad use that term before?”
“No, I haven’t,” Jockabeb answered defensively. “Okay, so now I know. Anyway, that’s the only question I had.”
Quade’s final bit of advice before he turned on his heels and marched down the deserted hallway was, “Get some sleep. You’ll need it where you’re headed.”
When Archibald set the alarm clock for five o’clock, he turned to his brother and mimicked Special Agent Quade’s voice, saying, “I set the alarm for zero five hundred, and that’s five o’clock in the morning, you dumb civilian, you!”
“Yes, sir,” Jockabeb barked back, saluting and clicking his heels together. “And if you have to use the head in the middle of the night, be quiet. Remember, I need to get some sleep because I’ll need it where I’m headed.”
Operation Deep Freeze
Within a minute of the alarm going off the next morning, the boys were out of bed and headed down the hall to take their showers. Both of them were taken aback when they walked into the shower room and saw Meatloaf standing at the sink brushing his teeth.
Wearing only a towel that barely fit around his bulging midriff, Meatloaf looked like a beached whale with enough blubber to supply an Inuit village for a good long while. When he saw the reflection of their faces in the mirror, he turned and bellowed out, “Well, well, you two topsiders don’t look any worse for wear.”
After shaking hands, the one-armed man patted Archibald’s shoulder and said words that were music to the teenager’s ears. “You know, I didn’t want to have anything to do with this PSA deal, but Willow talked me into it. She said I owed it to her because it was her arrows that saved me from being the Ratweil’s third victim that night.
“If you ask me, Willow’s got a thing for you, but then again, you didn’t ask me, did you? By the way, she’s staying over at the women officers’ quarters, but you’ll see her when we all meet for the briefing in an hour.”
When Archibald looked down and politely replied, “It’ll be nice to see her again,” Meatloaf and Jockabeb exchanged knowing looks.
“Well, I guess we’ll just leave it at that,” Meatloaf said, nodding at Jockabeb and then swiping a finger across his lips as if zipping them shut.
The boys returned to their room after taking their showers. Not wanting to be late, they quickly donned the jumpsuits and baseball caps they’d wear to the briefing. A patch with the PSA letters and the agency’s insignia, which had a telescope encased in a ring of stars, was sewn onto the jumpsuits’ and caps’ dark blue fabric. Jockabeb thought he looked pretty cool as he looked in the mirror, saying, “I kind of look like a member of an emergency task force, don’t you think?”
“Why you’re the spitting image of Special Agent Quade, if I do say so myself.” Archibald answered with more than a trace of sarcasm in his voice.
It was precisely zero six hundred when the real Special Agent Quade knocked on the door of the boys’ room. Ten minutes later, they walked into a crowded PSA briefing room situated three floors below ground. All but two of the people in the room were male, and many of the men wore military uniforms.
When Archibald saw Willow standing in the corner with her back to him, he began to worry as question after question popped into his mind. What should he say? How should he act? How did she really feel about him after all this time? Would they ever get any time alone together?
Willow had been talking with Meatloaf. The moment the one-armed man looked over and saw the two boys, he tapped her on the shoulder and nodded his head in Archibald’s direction. When Willow turned and their eyes met, she smiled. Then she mouthed the word “Hi” and began to cross the room.
Willow had only taken a few steps when her progress was halted by an older gray-haired man who, in a forceful voice, said, “Good morning everyone. For those of you I haven’t met, I’m Director Blair of the PSA. If everyone will take a seat, we can get started. I’d like the members of the emergency task force to come up to front of the room with me so I can make introductions.”
Quade told the boys he’d bring them some orange juice and a few Danish pastries. Then he added, “You should get up there right now. The Director doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
There was a long table at the front of the briefing room with eleven chairs behind it. Nameplates had been prepared for Director Blair and each of the ETF members. Archibald and Jockabeb quickly took their assigned seats directly to the left of the PSA Director and right next to Lynch and two rugged looking men dressed in Navy uniforms. A woman and two distinguished looking men were sitting directly to Director Blair’s right, with Meatloaf and Willow seated at the far end of the table.
The table, which was flanked by two speaking podiums, faced out toward six rows of chairs where the fifty or so people were rapidly taking their seats. A large screen was on the wall directly behind Director Blair. As the lights dimmed, the PSA insignia was projected onto the screen.
Switching on the microphone that sat in front of him, Director Blair began his remarks by saying, “Thank you all for joining us on such short notice. I know many of you had to rearrange your schedules, but when you hear this morning’s briefing on what we’ve code-named ‘Operation Deep Freeze,’ you’ll understand why that was necessary. However, first I think some introductions are in order.”
Director Blair
He then proceeded to introduce the three PSA scientists sitting next to him. Even though Dr. Susan Henderson, Dr. Hideki Watanabe, and Professor Werner Eberstark had been born in different countries and received their various degrees from different universities, they had one thing in common—all three were experts in paranormal activity.
Dr. Henderson was just shy of fifty years old. She was of average height and weight. Her auburn hair was loosely drawn back into a bun, and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses accented her sharp, angular features. Director Blair said Dr. Henderson had grown up in Boston. She stayed close to home when she obtained both her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Harvard University, and also when she completed her doctorate from MIT. Willow felt a twinge of female pride when Dr. Henderson was also introduced as the ETF’s Mission Commander.
Dr. Hideki Watanabe was born in Osaka, Japan. He was about the same height as Dr. Henderson, and he also wore wire-rimmed glasses. However, that’s where the similarities ended. He was twenty years older, and he carried about
thirty pounds more than his female colleague. His long gray-streaked black hair was gathered in a ponytail. Dr. Watanabe’s four degrees were all from Tokyo University, where he’d also served on the faculty before accepting a visiting professorship at Caltech.
Professor Werner Eberstark was the elder spokesman of the group. In his late eighties, the tall silver-haired, bespectacled old man looked like the stereotypical professor in his gray-tweed sports coat. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, he’d immigrated to the U.S. right before the beginning of World War II. While in Germany, Professor Eberstark earned his Diplom-Ingenieur from the University of Heidelberg. After arriving in the United States, he’d received advanced degrees from Princeton and Rice University.
Dr. Henderson
Director Blair’s introduction of the three men sitting to the left of the boys was brief when he simply said, “Mr. Lynch will be in charge of security, and he will be assisted by two Navy SEALs, Lieutenant Otis Flint and Lieutenant Junior Grade Luke Adams.”
The PSA Director then moved on to the four civilians sitting on the panel. He began his introduction of them by pointing out that they were the only ETF members who’d actually come face to face with an extraterrestrial. Adding extra emphasis, he when on to say, “The two young gentlemen immediately to my left and the young lady and redheaded gentleman down at the far end of the table to my right have been chosen because they have firsthand knowledge of how to track and deal with an extraterrestrial.
“They found what our PSA team couldn’t find far below the streets of Manhattan. And when they were faced with circumstances that threatened their own lives and those of others, they demonstrated undaunted courage and amazing resourcefulness.”
Professor Eberstark and Dr. Watanabe
Looking right and left at the ten-member ETF, Director Blair announced with pride, “These brave men and women will board a transport plane immediately following this morning’s briefing and fly to Thule Air Base. They’ll receive additional briefings at Thule. Weather permitting, they will then be airlifted the next day to a spot a few hundred miles from the North Pole.”
Pausing, Director Blair then started to divulge the most highly classified information, saying, “I’ll now tell you what we think they’ll be looking for once they get there. Our friends over at NORAD have been tracking an object that they first thought was either an asteroid or a comet.”
Seeing the bewildered look on the teenagers’ faces, Dr. Blair explained that NORAD stood for North American Aerospace Defense Command. He went on to explain, “It’s a joint organization we have with the Canadians to provide aerospace warning and defense for our two countries.”
Looking back at his audience, Director Blair resumed the briefing. “The closer the object came to Earth, the more NORAD and NASA scientists concluded that it wasn’t just a large hunk of rock, or metal, or ice. No, it was something quite different because it was emitting, and I will use layman’s terms here, electromagnetic waves in a definite pattern.
“Well, that’s when they called the PSA in. Dr. Watanabe was one of the first experts we contacted because he has dual doctorates in linguistics and physics. He is well known in the physics world for his work in quantum mechanics. As a result, we asked him to work with NORAD and NASA.
Navy SEALs Adams and Flint
“After applying the Schrödinger-Katz Equation to the electromagnetic wave patterns, Dr. Watanabe was able to organize them into logical sequences, resulting in the discovery of an aphonic language. This is not a spoken language but rather a language that can be used for other forms of communication. We have designated it a ‘communications configuration’.
“You’ll hear more of the details later in the briefing, but the bottom line is that the message that was repeatedly sent from whatever was hurtling toward Earth included a statement and a question. The statement was: ‘This is a peaceful mission.’ The question was: ‘Will you send a small delegation?’
“Just before the spaceship, if it really is a spaceship, entered Earth’s atmosphere two days ago, we beamed a series of powerful electromagnetic waves directly at it. Using the communications configuration I just mentioned, we answered back, ‘Yes, we will.’
“Soon after our reply was sent, we lost contact with whatever or whoever was trying to contact us. However, based on the last contact we had, we know one thing for sure—the alien craft was headed for a spot near the North Pole.”
For the rest of the morning, the three scientific members on the ETF took to the podium to express their views and answer the host of questions that followed. Lynch fielded a few inquiries relating to safety measures that were being taken, including contingency plans should the ETF encounter any trouble. Even Meatloaf made a few comments on what had happened the night the Ratweil was killed.
It was close to noon when the briefing session ended. Half an hour later, Jockabeb looked out the window of a government van and saw the gray P-3 Orion turboprop that would fly him and the other ETF members to Thule.
Even though the P-3 Orion’s primary mission was anti-submarine warfare and maritime surveillance, Director Blair had commandeered the plane after pulling some strings inside the Department of Defense.
The ETF’s journey to the North Pole was now set to begin, and it would turn out to be a journey that would test human survival skills in ways that no one who sat through the PSA briefing that morning would have ever imagined.
Thule Air Base
Archibald had waited to board the plane until Willow arrived in the second van. Immediately after the briefing session had concluded, the emergency task force members had been split into two groups for the short ride to the waiting plane, so he’d barely had a chance to say hello.
“Do you want to sit together?” he asked as she stepped out of the van.
P-3 Orion
“What do you think?” she replied with a big smile on her face. Her next words erased all doubt as to how she felt about him. “Archibald, it’s been five months since I’ve seen you. Of course I want to sit with you. I just hope we’ll have time to talk.”
From the door of the airplane, Dr. Henderson looked at her watch and yelled down, “Okay you two, you’re the last ones left to board. We’re already running fifteen minutes behind schedule, so get a move on.”
Jockabeb had taken a window seat in the last row, reserving the seat next to him for Archibald by putting his cap on it. When Archibald arrived and saw that the only other empty seat in the cabin was next to Lynch, he leaned forward and whispered, “Do me a big favor and let Willow take your seat, okay?”
“You owe me one,” Jockabeb said as he stood up. Then seeing the person he’d be sitting next to on the long flight to Thule, he turned and added, “Now you really owe me one, and it’s a really big one!”
Once airborne, Dr. Henderson handed out box lunches and thick manila envelopes with briefing papers inside. After explaining that there’d be another oral briefing as soon as they landed, she reviewed the envelopes’ contents, emphasizing that everything had to be read before they reached Thule. “Go ahead and open your packets,” she began.
“First, you’ll see a series of aerial photographs of the base, together with some close-up shots of the facilities we’ll be using during the short time we’re there. As you’ll note, the whole complex isn’t very big. And, yes, there’s only one runway.
“Next, there’s a detailed history of the region, including all of the events leading up to the United States establishing the first military installations there in 1941. Even though President Franklin D. Roosevelt got the ball going when he signed an agreement with Greenland pledging to ensure its security, construction of the current Air Force base didn’t start until 1951. Needless to say, Thule’s building season isn’t very long, so it was a minor miracle that the project finished on time in 1953.
“There’s also a full listing of all the military commands and other government organizations that have occupied the base since it was first established.”
&n
bsp; Laughing, Dr. Henderson looked over at the two SEALs and added, “While some of the civilians may skip over this part, I know at least two ETF members who’ll find this very interesting reading.
“The final pages summarize the chronology of all of NORAD’s and NASA’s interactions with the alien object they’d been tracking until they lost contact two days ago. There’s a lot of data in this section, and the information may be too technical for some of you. If you find that to be the case, you can just skip over it.
“Even though you’d hardly call Thule a tourist spot, it sits on North Star Bay and has some of the most spectacular vistas you’ll ever want to see. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see much of anything. That’s because it’s dark day and night this time of year. If we do a good job, maybe we can all come back next summer when there’s twenty-four hour sunlight!”
Dr. Henderson stressed again how important it was for everyone to finish reading the briefing papers before they landed. She then finished by saying, “The pilots have informed me that there’s some pretty rough weather on the way to Thule, and that they’ll do their best to bypass it so we have a smoother ride. That will probably add to our flight time, so it may take five to six hours to get there.”
“Oh, good,” Willow whispered. “That’ll give us plenty of time to talk. Let’s get our reading out of the way first. That way we won’t be rushed at the end.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Archibald answered, opening his box lunch. Seeing the roast beef sandwich with horseradish sauce, potato salad, and chocolate-chip cookie inside, he noted, “Do you know, this is our first meal together.”
“Bon appetit, mon ami,” she said as she opened her container.
“Do you speak French?” he asked, looking surprised.
“A little,” she answered, “but my German is much better. Koro speaks six languages, and he has taught some of them to several of the Moonlight Clan kids.”