“Bischoff,” said Erich. “The field glasses.”
Instantly, the funkmaat operator handed his binoculars to his captain.
Raising them to his eyes, Erich focused on the light source which threatened to burn through the curtain of fog at any second. Without warning, a sudden brilliance filled the eyepieces and he yanked them away from his face.
“Sheisse!”
“Look at that!” said Manny, his words shaped by equal amounts of awe and fear. “What is it?”
Erich rubbed his eyes quickly, forcing them to adjust. He looked back at the bright orb beyond the mist, not sure what he was seeing. The object was a girdered tower, similar to the one in Paris, standing alone on a rocky island-base. It rose to a height of several hundred feet and its top held a sphere of glowing light. A thick shaft ran up its center from the earth to the sphere.
Decker and Stirtz had ceased their paddling, transfixed by the structure before them.
Forcing himself to remain calm, to appear in control, Erich raised the field glasses to study the surface of the tower. Magnified, it appeared hastily constructed with no thought to style or design.
“What is that thing?” whispered Manny, as he paused to photograph it. There was something in the timbre of his voice which negated the question. Fassbaden knew what it was—as did Erich.
“Excuse me, Captain,” said Seaman Stirtz. “Do we keep going?”
“I do not remember telling you to stop.” Erich nodded toward the towering object before him and tried to look as implacable as possible.
Instantly both crewmen began paddling with renewed energy, and the rubber craft surged forward. No one else dared speak as Erich continued to stare at the strange tower.
The mist which still roiled in the distance began to thin.
“Look, beyond the tower.” Erich pointed as he raised the field glasses to penetrate the fog-like barrier. Instantly, new details became clear. At the far end of the underground sea, where the curved arch of the enclosure finally curled down in a vertical wall of rock, there loomed unmistakable lines and shapes.
More towers, more structures. Held together by the curves and angles of an unknown geometry, the shapes reached upward to define the elemental, yet very alien, profile of a city.
The configurations were so unfamiliar, and also terrifying…because Erich knew they were not of this time, of this world. He felt it in the deepest folds of his brain, the part some scientist had called the reptilian core. It was the place where cold simple assessments were made, where atavistic reactions originated, and it was screaming a warning to be very careful.
“What is this place?” said Manny. “Where are we?”
“Decker, Stirtz. Ease off.” Erich continued to scan the escarpments of the architecture ahead, looking for any sign of movement, of hostility or danger. Although the men had ceased their paddling, the boat still glided forward with a deliberate tack. They were at least 500 meters from the shoreline, but caution must reign. “Bring your arms to bear, gentlemen. Be ready for anything.”
Manny reached down, pulled his own Walther from its holster. The others, except for Liebling, unarmed, readied their weapons.
“All right, steady as you go. Maintain heading.”
Manny looked straight up at the distant ceiling, then across to the tower and harbored city behind it. “This is so weird. I read a story when I was a teen. A translation of an American writer. He described a place like this—called Pellucidar.”
Erich nodded. “Burroughs. Yes. He wrote Tarzan. Popular, fanciful stuff.”
“But this is real. Could he have known?” Manny said. “The American?”
“Not a chance,” said Erich, who finished a sweeping, binocular study of the landscape ahead, then repeated his search in the opposite direction.
“Do you see anyone?”
“Not a soul. The base of the tower looks barren. No place for anyone to dig in. The buildings on shore, they also look empty. But we are still too far to be certain.”
“All right,” he said. “We will have a quick look around. Herr Bischoff, remain here and alert Massenburg that all is well—so far—and inform him of position and progress.”
Nodding, Bischoff directed his pack-animal, Liebling, to hold the radio steady while the funkmeister dialed up the frequency back to the boat. Liebling rubbed the flaming red wound across his jaw and complied without a word.
They headed to the center of what looked like it may have been some kind of harbor. Mist still hung close to the water’s surface, alternately obscuring, then clearing, their view of the city ahead of them.
As they approached, Erich realized they were victims of some kind of optical illusion. He knew that sometimes when you approach distant objects which are of sufficiently immense proportion, you lose your sense of scale, and he suspected he had been thus fooled. Although they continued to paddle straight toward the unknown shore, the city appeared to remain at an unreachable distance. Erich realized part of this effect was the truly gigantic cavern, an enclosure on the scale of America’s Grand Canyon. The city grew out of the rock that held it as if it were a natural extension or growth of it.
And it was impressive, growing larger with each passing meter which drew them closer, despite the mist which tantalized them with ambiguous views of their target.
Everyone must have sensed what Erich felt about this place. No one spoke as their little boat slid across the inland sea. The gunners paddled in unison, drawing the dinghy closer to the center of what Erich had begun to think of as the harbor for the city that lay before them like a series of sculpted steps carved into the side of the mountain. Within several minutes, the soaring sun-tower lay behind them and along the shoreline the details of individual structures and buildings grew more defined. Checking his field glasses, Erich could see much smaller features now. Openings that must have been windows or doors—some of them in unexpected geometric shapes, and some like flattened rectangles. The latter reminded him of the ports of fortifications like the “pillboxes” the vermacht had strewn along the French coast.
“It looks dead,” said Manny.
Erich grunted softly. “But we know there are survivors.”
Erich nodded, but preferred not to imagine too deeply what forces might be at play. He didn’t like this place. Too many questions that could not be answered.
The rubber boat slipped ever closer to a narrow quay that fingered outward through the water as though pointing at them. Directing his men to put ashore at the base of the quay, Erich appraised the strange city from closer range.
The buildings were far from equal in size. There were innumerable honeycomb-like arrangements of enormous proportion, as well as smaller, separate structures. The general shape of these things tended to be conical, pyramidal, or terraced; though others were perfect cylinders, perfect cubes, clusters of cubes, and other rectangular forms.
Erich allowed himself to think aloud. “How could our people build something like this? In just a few years? It does not seem possible.”
“I have never seen anything like this,” said Manny as the boat was within meters of the quay. “Who builds things that look like that?”
A rhetorical question to be sure. No one offered an answer as Decker reached out with his paddle to ease them to a stop. “Captain?” he said tentatively.
“Stay here with our boat,” Erich said to him. “Everyone else—with me. Now.”
He stepped onto the quay first, followed by Manny, then Bischoff, then Liebling with the radio strapped across his back, followed by Stirtz with his MP-40 at the ready. Motioning his gunner forward, Erich looked toward the city which lay in wait for them. “You take the vanguard,” he said to Stirtz, whose growing beard gave him a dark, angular aspect. “Anything that looks threatening, shoot it.”
Stirtz nodded, swallowed with difficulty. “Aye” was all he could mu
ster in reply.
Erich started walking toward the shore, noting the construction of the quay appeared to be a seamless shape of some sort of metal or polished stone. It looked as if it were one solid piece, as if popped from a gigantic mold, or rose fully-formed from the seabed. Whatever it was, he had never seen anything like it.
Walking in single file, they entered the city as Bischoff re-established contact with Dr. Jaeger, who gave them specific directions to navigate the station.
Up close, surrounded by countless structures, Erich felt overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the place. It was not so much the expanse of the city being so large, but the buildings themselves conveyed a sense of immensity and great age. It was like walking into the tomb of a great ruler, instantly knowing the chamber was sacrosanct, and apart from any other location in the world.
The effect was mitigated by the presence of German military equipment, large field tents, several motorcycles with sidecars, and large crates of supplies. And of course, flags and banners. And everything strewn and smashed as if by a cyclone
And many corpses.
As they moved deeper into the warren of buildings, they found the bodies of soldiers and civilians. So mutilated and bloodied, on cursory glance it was not possible to tell if they’d died from an explosion, gunfire, or something worse. The casualties littered the installation. Something terrible and sudden had happened here. But somehow, Dr. Jaeger and a few others had survived.
Erich did not like the situation. Too many questions. Too many ways to have a calamity.
In addition, Erich noticed an air of instability in the way things were arranged and set up. Hasty and impromptu—exactly how long had Dr. Jaeger and the others been established here?
“Easy now,” he said to Stirtz, who was advancing down a wide avenue bordered by soaring towers that appeared to have been lathe-turned into great, soft spirals. The gunner’s mate pointed his Schmeisser forward from his hip, finger on the trigger ready to fire instantly. He looked like most soldiers who believed they might die—anxious but resolute.
“Not much farther.” Bischoff pointed straight ahead.
“Captain?” Stirtz had spoken softly, but his voice, amplified by the architectural acoustics, rolled back over them as if he’d used a megaphone.
“Yes?”
“I think we’re heading into an open space up ahead.”
“I see it,” said Erich. “Keep going. We should be close now.”
Stirtz had managed to pull away from the others without realizing. He was more than fifty meters ahead of them when he suddenly starting shouting.
Looking up, Erich could see that his gunner had cleared the canyon-like walls of the buildings, and was now standing at the edge of what appeared to be a vast open space. As Erich advanced, he entered a plaza in the center of which stood a tall domed structure with eight sides. Each face of the building held a large arched entrance.
Stirtz moved carefully through the nearest opening, lost from Erich’s view. Several moments later, the seaman rushed out to face the rest of the party. His eyes were wide, his jaw slack. Something was wrong.
“Captain!” he yelled hoarsely. “You must see this for yourself!”
On Erich’s signal everyone, including Liebling, moved forward to join Stirtz, who guided them into the hexagonal structure. The interior walls were devoid of ornamentation or design—perfectly smooth. But Erich barely noticed this because his attention focused on the thing in the center of the space.
Towering 20 meters just below the vault of the dome, a gigantic statue dominated the space. Erich stopped in mid-stride, as did the rest of his crew, locked into a sudden paralysis. So shocking and utterly alien was this monstrous sculpture, no one could move or speak. A silence gripped them and an almost palpable sense of dread enveloped them.
The statue’s posture proclaimed total predator—hunched and coiled as if captured in stone at the moment just before it lashed out with primordial fury. A great hulking body supported by saurian-like hind legs ending in webbed claws and long, thickly-corded forelegs rendered ordinary only because of the hideous and hugely out-of-proportion talons that gripped the edge of its pedestal perch. Curving scimitar-sharpness that could gut a dinosaur with a single cursory swipe.
Erich swallowed hard as his mouth had turned instantly dry. Just gazing at this hideous apparition filled him with what could only be described as the most atavistic fear he ever experienced. As if he knew the thing in front of him was a true and terrible representation of a real horror beyond imagining.
And it had wings.
Fanned out beyond its broad shoulders, as if grafted from a gigantic bat or pteranodon. They looked both absurd and terrifying, because the thought of this leviathan being able to fly just didn’t compute. Was it possible such a massive behemoth could actually lift itself skyward?
But it was the bulbous, tilting head that kept the men mute and immobile. Erich knew they all shared the same thoughts searching for a means to refuse the basic existence of such a creature. Such a thing, thought Erich, simply could not be. Beneath a baleful pair of huge, blistered, amphibian eyes there swarmed a swollen tangle of tentacles curled and spread as though probing in constant search of prey.
Suddenly nauseous, he staggered back, dizzy and disoriented. Unprepared for what he had seen, Erich felt stunned into silence as though stricken by the hand of God.
Erich had often imagined the awe and the sense of insignificance men must have felt when they first gazed upon the unearthed bones of the dinosaurs. What kind of wonder and terror crossed their minds when they realized what horrific beasts once walked the earth?
Now, Erich had an answer to that question…but others leapt to mind.
Was this sculpted nightmare the vision of a tortured artist, or the fearful icon of a lost religion? Or was it something far, far worse?
Erich could not escape the notion, rooted deep within him, that they all stared at something of an age unknown and uncountable. What race of beings had created such a thing?
Manny, standing next to him, squeezed off several shots with the Leica.
Erich was not certain if the other men understood fully what they were looking at, but the troublemaker Liebling was clearly disturbed as he backed away from the statuary and began to sob.
“We have entered the gates to Hell,” he said.
Liebling was an embarrassment, but on second thought, maybe Erich had not given the man enough credit.
At least he had the good sense to be terrified.
Regardless, a distinction must be made between feelings and actions. Liebling’s behavior was not befitting of a kriegsmariner. When Manny angrily reprimanded him, ordering him to attention, the man ignored the command, and began to wail. So loud, his voice echoed off the distant walls.
Erich was incensed. There was no time for such distraction.
“Stirtz, get him out of my sight.”
As Stirtz reached for Liebling, the man wrenched Stirtz’s pistol from him and ran full speed out of the domed building, back toward the quay. Before anyone could react, he had gained enough distance to dodge down an adjacent intersecting avenue. He waved the Sauer sidearm wildly as he ran, firing off several rounds into the air.
“We cannot have this,” said Erich. “We have a job to do.”
Stirtz spit contemptuously before speaking. “I’ll get him, Captain.”
As the gunner ran off in quick pursuit, Erich, Manny and Bischoff followed more slowly. Liebling had no way of orienting himself. He could become hopelessly lost in the labyrinth, but he made no effort to hide himself as he rushed headlong away from them.
Angrily, Erich wished he had listened more sincerely to Herr Kress, who had warned of the man’s instability. All the more reason to keep him under watch, but now Liebling had become more than merely a problem. He was a dangerous problem.
G
radually they closed the gap and caught up with Liebling. His frantic pace had exhausted him. Stirtz ran him down outside a large building flanked by supply wagons and several mangled corpses. But Liebling complicated things. Instead of accepting the end-game, he emptied his stolen weapon at everyone.
But wildly, with no effect.
Erich grinned ironically, thanking the fugitive for making things easier.
“He is out of shots,” said Erich. “Stirtz, take him out.”
The gunner raised his Schmeisser, shot Liebling once—through the heart. Turning away, they left him slumped against a wall where he dropped. No one wanted to bring him back.
“Very well,” said Erich. “Let us finish this job.”
But as they walked away, embraced by the cold, ancient spaces, Erich experienced a strange guilt. Not for killing—because his business had been killing. Rather, he feared he had, in some way, violated this place.
They moved quickly after that, until they reached what was obviously their target objective—what had been a series of stepped terraced buildings now violated by a large crater and huge mounds of debris. Following Bischoff’s instruction via radio contact, they located Jaeger and four other survivors trapped behind a wall of rubble that had been part of their laboratory.
Requiring a slow, methodical approach, the rescue took several hours to clear a passage through the debris. A thin man with small wire-rimmed glasses and a thick shock of blond hair emerged first.
“Thank you! Thank you, gentlemen. We have two people back there hurt quite badly.”
Stirtz helped an older gray-haired man in a white lab coat out of the hole in the wreckage, then joined Bischoff and Manny, who went inside to assess the situation.
Erich, however, wanted answers. He remained with the two survivors and introduced himself.
“I am Dr. Bernhard Jaeger.” The blond man reciprocated and gestured at the older lab-coated man. “This is one of our engineers, Hervie Waechter.”
“What happened here, Doctor?”
He shook his head, held up his hands. “An experiment…an explosion. We were in a shielded area when it happened. But we were trapped as you found us. We thought other station personnel would be coming to our aid, but…something happened to them, they were…attacked.”
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