‘Not again!’ Rocky bawled.
First the sky, then the saucer, a black whirlpool above them, stretching out about fifty feet on either side, a swirling silver-edged glowing mass. The plane’s engine cut out. The swirling mass pressed them down. Rocky fought with the control column and then screamed more abuse. Stanford looked up at the saucer. He couldn’t define what he was seeing. He was looking up at a swirling dark mass that pulsated and glowed. It defied the laws of science. It was black, yet filled with light. It glowed and was devoid of all color, had no depth, yet seemed hollow. Stanford observed it and was foiled. He didn’t know what he was seeing. Then it flared up and changed, became a dull, metallic-gray, possibly spinning, its rim glowing and pulsating, racing in, shooting skyward. Stanford blinked and it was gone. Rocky’s scream made him look down. The plane was just above the ice cap, flying across its glassy surface, the ice rushing up and spreading out around them and becoming a blurred white.
‘Hold on!’ Rocky screamed.
The skis screeched touching down, chopped the ice and sent it flying, a white storm that howled and raged in their ears and pummeled the fuselage. The plane bounced up and down, the skis chopping and screeching, blocks of ice and great chunks of packed snow sweeping past in boiling white clouds. The noise was hellish, almost deafening, reverberating around the cockpit as the skis chopped through the ice and dug deep and finally buried themselves. Stanford saw the spinning sky, his head exploding, stars streaming, heard more screeching and hissing and bawling, felt breathless and bruised. Opening his eyes, he saw Rocky, snow swirling outside the windshield. Rocky jackknifed, slumped over, hanging over his safety belt, then jerked upright and shook his head to clear it as the snow settled down again.
‘Hallelujah! We’ve landed.’
He grinned at Stanford, a wild light in his eyes, then shook his head again, unsnapped his safety belt, slithered out of his chair. Stanford quickly did the same, felt various pains darting through him, twisted out of his chair and followed Rocky back into the holding bay. He saw the eyes of the other men, four wide eyes, glazed with shock, floating hopelessly in the gloom of the holding bay, a scene of chaos behind them. Rocky waved and bawled at them, pushed them, took command, not giving them time to think about it, moving quickly and ruthlessly.
‘Okay!’ he bawled. ‘Get that ramp down! Let’s get the hell out of here!’
The ramp crashed down to the snow, a dazzling brightness poured in, the two men silhouetted in glaring white, the plane filled with an icy chill. Stanford stepped forward slowly, his bones aching, head spinning. He saw Rocky waving frantically, heard him bawling, felt the cold creeping into him.
‘Right!’ Rocky bawled. ‘Fucking great! You’re doing fine! Now let’s get the snow tractor out! Okay! Move your asses!’
The silhouettes became men, heading back toward the snow tractor, light flashing in striations around them as they unsnapped the clamps. There was a sharp ringing sound, the clamps banging on the floor, as Stanford passed the men and went to the ramp and looked up at the sky. A white sheen streaked with blue, stunning clarity, no clouds; then he saw a steel-gray sphere in the sky, high up, hovering silently. Rocky bawled instructions, his voice reverberating, blending in with clanging metal, then the snow tractor, bright yellow and ungainly, slid down the sloped ramp. Stanford shivered, feeling the cold, as the two men filed past him; he stopped Rocky and pointed at the sky and saw his bearded friend nodding. They went together down the ramp, then climbed up onto the tractor. Stanford saw the other men, their eyes too big, glazed with fear, then the tractor suddenly roared and lurched forward, heading east, going nowhere.
There was nowhere to go. They were on a high plateau. The ice cap was a flat snow-white terrain that stretched around them for miles. The tractor churned the snow up. It swirled around them and soaked them. Stanford saw a white ribbon of land between the sky and the ice cap. That land was thousands of feet below them. There might be no way down. Stanford thought about that and felt only a cold, blinding rage.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Rocky hissed.
First the light, then the gloom, the snow billowing up around them, a humming, a vibrating, a savage jolting sensation, a black hole one hundred feet in diameter hovering quietly above them. One man cursed, another screamed, the tractor sliding to the left, Rocky hissing a stream of vile abuse aimed at the saucer. The saucer remained where it was, offering a faint humming sound, its base a vast black hole revolving above the tractor to create a blinding, pummeling snow-storm.
‘Fucking cunts!
They’ll just bury us !’
Ricky bawled his defiance, pushing the tractor to its limits, grinding over the ice cap, fighting through the swirling snow, heading into a featureless white haze that offered them nothing. Stanford looked up at the saucer, at that rotating black base; when it moved to the side he finally saw its seamless, silvery-gray body sweeping up to what he thought, vision obscured, was a solid, metallic dome. The saucer appeared to be motionless, always keeping the same distance, but in fact it was moving, inching forward, pacing the tractor, still whipping up the minor snow-storm. Rocky cursed and tried to lose it, swinging the tractor left and right, but the snow swirled and hissed and devoured them, totally blinding them.
Rocky kept going across the ice cap, heading nowhere in particular, just desperately hoping to escape from the hovering saucer and the snow it was whipping up. They were moving through an eternity, time frozen, all frozen: the tractor and the men and the landscape and the saucer above them. Stanford saw the other two men, one cracking and screaming and shaking and frantically waving his hands. He tried to leap off the tractor, was pulled back by his friend, both falling down and rolling on the floor. Stanford shivered and looked up, numbed by cold, choked with rage, and saw the black base of the saucer as it suddenly glided toward them and then came down upon them.
Then its laser beams shot down, turning the snow into steam, two beams of pulsating light that split the ice right in front of them. The ice cracked in jagged lines, spewing steam and spinning diamonds, hissing and snapping and exploding with an earthquake’s fierce venom. Rocky cursed and spun around, was flung forward, hands outstretched, as the tractor crashed down into a crevice and the laser beams vanished. Rocky spinning – Stanford saw it, his own body jackknifing, rolling over and exploding with pain, his feet finding the floor again. The tractor growled and churned the snow up, tilted downward, going nowhere, a much stronger, more devastating storm howling wildly about them. Stanford stood up, felt lost, heard a wretched, shocked sobbing, saw the dark mass of the saucer just above, now obscured by the swirling snow. The sobbing turned into a scream, a pair of hands waving frantically, the man pushing his friend to the floor, then falling over the side. Stanford saw him, did nothing, thought of nothing, felt dreamlike, was pushed forward by a pair of strong hands and urged over the side. He dropped into the snow, was whipped by it, numbed totally, saw the dark mass in the sky, the three shadowy forms just ahead, stumbling blindly and bawling.
First the wind, then the snow, then the dark mass, then the whiteout, then the running, crouched low, seeing nothing, then the beam of pulsating light. The beam swept across their path, and they ran, leaping forward, heard a scream and turned around and saw a man sinking down, disappearing. The ice snapped and the chasm widened, falling a thousand feet, and they turned away and plunged into the storm, the great saucer above them. Stanford heard another scream, couldn’t tell one man from the other, saw a rigid beam of light beaming down upon a dancing silhouette. The man quivered and spun around, his face briefly illuminated, then he jerked and fell back, his eyes bright in the light, and the snapping ice split and opened wide and then swallowed him whole.
Stanford turned back and ran, turned right and saw the other unknown man as a shadowy form. They fled together, as one, moving blindly, not thinking, pushed onward by the dark mass above them, each leaning on the other. Then more beams of light shot down, the lasers cutting through the ice, the
ice snapping and hissing and streaming and exploding around them. They both stopped, feeling trapped, both alone with a shadow, then they moved again, running around the beams of light, the snow flaying their skin. Too late: they saw the end. A beam of light shot between them. Stanford jumped back and stumbled and fell and heard the other man screaming. Then darkness, the snapping sound of ice splitting, the dying echo of the man plunging down a thousand feet to his death. Then silence. And nothing.
Stanford lay there on his back, the snow settling around him, his skin numb, his bones aching, head spinning, the brilliant daylight returning. He observed the saucer descending, no longer glowing, enormous and very real in the sunlight, descending gently and quietly. Stanford sat up, fell back, pressed his hands into the snow, gasped and turned onto his belly, saw the radiant blue sky. He was near the edge of the ice cap, a thousand feet above the lowlands, his eyes drinking in a stunning panorama of white, frozen wilderness. It was too much, too blinding, too remote to be real, and he sighed and rolled onto his back and then forced himself upright. The saucer was there before him, its seamless sides sweeping up to a large steel dome, resting lightly on the snow of the ice cap, the sun flashing around it.
Stanford studied the saucer. He felt cold, but very calm. He sat there on the ice, in the snow and the silence, a white wilderness one thousand feet below, a radiant blue sky above. Stanford sat there and waited.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Stanford waited a long time, his eyes fixed on the gleaming saucer, the snow drifting lazily around him, the silence unbroken. The saucer seemed enormous, its sloping sides a seamless gray, sweeping up to a solid metal dome. The dome was thirty-five feet high, the saucer three times that in width, sunlight beating down and flashing off its gray surface and turning it white. All white. Everything. The land and sky looked the same. There was no definition, no sense of direction; just a glaring, white void all around him, that stark, total silence.
The saucer didn’t move, made no sound, offered nothing, was simply spread out across the ice cap as if actually part of it. Stanford sat there and studied it, feeling cold but very calm, occasionally squinting into the white haze on all sides, a light frost gradually covering him. The saucer still didn’t move. It made no sound at all. After a long time, feeling the cold eating at him, Stanford climbed to his feet.
His bones were bruised and aching, his skin numb, his head light, and he stood there for a moment, uncertain, the snow drifting about him. Then he walked toward the saucer, feeling small, slightly unreal, stopped a few feet away from its near edge and saw it towering over him. He stared at it with wonder. The steel surface swept up to the dome, exceptionally smooth, totally seamless, curving back down and then under its edge, becoming part of the base. There were no doors or windows, no visible lights. He looked up at the solid metal dome, but it was vague in the white haze. Stanford stood there, bemused. The saucer filled his line of vision. He stepped forward, stopped close to the curved edge, then reached out and touched it.
The metal felt like sandpaper. Stanford ran his fingers across it. He felt air, or he thought he felt air, and then he stepped closer to it. The metal was porous, the holes smaller than grains of sand, scraping almost imperceptibly against his fingertips and releasing trapped air. Stanford smiled and looked closer, examining the curved edge; he saw fine, nearly invisible lines crisscrossing each other. The lines formed various rectangles, some small, others large, sweeping up to the base of the metal dome, dissected by other lines. Stanford studied them at length. He heard a low-pitched humming sound. Panels slid upward around the sloping edge to reveal hidden lights.
Stanford stood there, not moving. The lights were covered with convex glass or Perspex, various colors, thick and opaque, with a very slight ripple finish. None of the lights were on. The low-pitched humming sound grew louder. A series of panels slid upward where the sloping surface was almost vertical, revealing a long, rectangular window that curved around the whole body of the saucer. The windows were illuminated with violet light, then this color changed to a whitish yellow. A group of shadowy, human-shaped figures were lined up along the window, obviously staring down at him.
Stanford stood there, waiting patiently. He heard a muffled hissing sound. A large section of the curved wall moved forward, tilting back from its top edge. It slid out on large steel hinges, tilting backward, moving forward, its front edge eventually touching the ground, its back edge still inside the saucer. The section of wall was now a ramp, leading up into the saucer. Stanford studied the wide, rectangular opening and saw a white wall beyond it. The men at the windows were looking at him. The windows were well above the door. Stanford smiled and then walked up the ramp and found himself in a corridor.
The inner wall was white and blank. There were windows on the other wall. These windows were behind the gray shell of the saucer’s body, or fuselage. The corridor curved away from him and obviously ran around the saucer. He then heard a sharp hissing sound and the door closed behind him.
He stood there in the corridor. He waited, but no one came. There was a muffled humming all around him, above him, below him. Intrigued, he started walking. He felt no fear at all. The humming sound was filling his head and it helped him relax. The corridor curved around the saucer, its white walls and ceiling arched, then a door slid across the space directly in front of him, forcing him to stop walking.
There was a room to his left, white walls forming a perfect circle, broken up by the rectangular windows at which the men had been standing. A small hunchbacked man approached him, waving an unusually delicate hand, inviting him in. Stanford stepped into the circular room and stopped close to the hunchback.
‘You’re all right?’ the hunchback asked.
‘I think so,’ Stanford said.
‘I’m Ruediger,’ the hunchback said. ‘Please don’t worry. We will
take you down now.’
Stanford gazed around the room. It was shaped like a large dome.
The walls were covered with control panels and consoles and what
looked like computers. There were eight men in the room. They were
uncommonly small. Some were young boys, others were Ache Indians,
three were fair-skinned and middle-aged. About half of them wore
masks that were made of thin metal, covering their noses and mouths,
molded close to the skin. Stanford studied them, fascinated and
horrified, realising that they were cyborgs: part men, part machine. The
boys and Indians were at the consoles, seated in chairs fixed to the
floor, the control panels flickering. The other men studied Stanford, not
smiling, their eyes dead, then they turned away and sat in other chairs,
turning knobs, pressing buttons, flicking switches. The computers
started flashing. The muffled humming sound grew louder. Stanford felt
a light vibration, thought he felt it, wasn’t sure, then he looked down at
the small man with the hunched back, saw his upturned brown eyes. ‘Come,’ the hunchback said. He was smiling and indicating with
his hands. The hands had an unusual delicacy, a feminine grace.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘I will show you.’
He led Stanford across the floor, up some steps to a raised
platform, the floor running right around the dome, above the computers
and consoles. The long windows were there. Stanford stood beside the
hunchback. The ice cap was shrinking beneath him, blending in with the
mountains, the glittering snowfalls of the wilderness spreading out until
they encompassed the horizon. The saucer was ascending, climbing
vertically, leisurely, then it stopped, or seemed to stop – Stanford didn’t
feel a thing – then it moved horizontally, as if flying backward, and then
descended again.
There was no sense of motion. The saucer descended at the spe
ed
of an elevator, falling into the mountains. The mountain peaks climbed up around them, first the rock, then blocks of snow, then the sheer,
towering walls of blue ice, turning green, disappearing.
They were moving faster now. The saucer was flying horizontally.
Walls of algae and plankton, moss-covered rocks splashed with white,
were sweeping past on both sides of the saucer as it raced through a
canyon. There was still no sense of motion. Stanford thought he could
feel a light vibration. Looking down, he saw the rim of the saucer,
metallic-gray in a pulsating, glowing haze. Then he looked ahead again,
saw the canyon walls parting, opening out around a lake, the lake
whipping out of sight, more snow, more brown earth, a rich green
spreading outward, then an immense, round valley, its white cliffs
soaring skyward, the ice flashing and fading away above the earth and
then becoming pure rock. The saucer flew across the valley, the green
earth rushing at them, then the rushing earth slowed down, almost
stopped, then rose gently to greet them.
Stanford didn’t feel a thing. There was no sense of movement. The
saucer drifted, or appeared to drift, across the wide valley, heading
toward the towering cliffs that surrounded it and cast gigantic shadows.
The hunchback raised a hand and pointed. Stanford stared straight
ahead. He saw the mouths of large natural caves at the base of the icefree cliffs.
‘We go in there,’ the hunchback said.
Stanford glanced at the rim of the saucer, saw the pulsating glow
dying, the panels around the rim opening to expose all the lights. Then
the lights started flashing, left to right, right to left, a kaleidoscope of
GENESIS (Projekt Saucer) Page 60