The Doomsday Glacier

Sneak Preview, Kirov Series #76 Call of the Wolf

Hans Schoeler, Jim Thornton and the others were not drilling into that void. They had located another suspicious pocket, a smaller cavity at the bottom of the ice, and they could measure its height at the moment their drill hit air—or water. That moment came a half hour later, in a spectacular fashion. Jim Thornton had seen oil geysers before when they hit a pocket under pressure, but this was the first time he had seen a water ice geyser. The last geyser he saw had been at Yellowstone, and this was every bit as awesome and forceful as Old Faithful. Everyone ran to get back from the up welling water but Thornton, stood there and worked the Blowout preventer on the rig to get the gusher sealed off.

“Whoo-eee!” he shouted. “That had quite a kick. Had to be up over 30psi, so they were right in all those papers. These sub glacial cavities are under pressure, and that should increase the melt rate a great deal.”

Hans was far enough back to avoid getting wet, but he saw something strangely out of place on the tumbled surface. It was something metallic, he thought, as it was gleaming in the sunlight. He went towards it, more curious than he was concerned.

“Hey Jim,” he shouted, pointing. “Looks like we might have lost some pipe over here.”

Thornton looked over his shoulder, then started in Schoeler’s direction. Hans was just standing there, staring stupidly at something in the ice slush. The well had ejected a good slurry of melting ice and water—and something else. When Thornton came up, Hans was down on his haunches looking at something, but it wasn’t a piece of pipe, nor anything off the drilling rig. It was segmented, which would enable it to bend and curl, about two inches wide, and circular, like a thick metallic hose. Hans could see a thorny protrusion curving out from one side. He used his gloved hands to push away more of the ice slurry and uncover it.

“What the hell is this?” He looked at Thornton.

“Let it be, Hans. I’ll fetch some tongs and we can get a better look at it.”

Thornton ran off to the tool cache and was back with what looked like a big set of long armed pliers. He leaned in, clamped the jaws on the object and gave it a good pull. Seconds later he raised up a coiling silvery thing that looked like a tentacle from a great Cephalopod, only it gleamed in the sun like metal. Something had been dredged up from the night-black depths beneath this ice, but neither man had any idea what it was.

“It’s metal, alright,” said Thornton. “Looks like a goddamned tentacle, but off what I can’t imagine. You folks don’t make mechanical giant Squids, do you? Look at that claw!”

“Giant squid? Don’t be silly. Who would make something like that?”

“Maybe the fellow that made this one. Because somebody sure as hell made it. This was engineered. Anything else around?”

“Not that I can see. Let’s take it back to the lab and have Del look it over.”

And that is what they did, stowing it in a metal box. It was the flight back to the base that gave Hans the creeps. He started hearing a bumping sound, a clatter of metal on metal that grew louder by degrees. It gave him a chill worse than that of the Antarctic wind.

“What’s that noise? Something loose on this chopper?”

“Over here,” said Thornton. “It’s coming from this box. Hear it?”

The steady clink and bump was unnerving.

“Is that thing moving in there?”

“Sure sounds like it.”

“Damn! How can a hunk of metal come alive and move?”

“We’ll open this soon and have a look, but not here in the chopper.”

After they landed they both took the box to the engineering shed to find Del, the ‘mister fixit’ on the base. If something broke, a compressor, heating system, or water pipe. Del was the man to fix it. He had every tool one could think of, and some many never heard of.

With the box on a workbench, Del cocked his head when he heard the noise coming from its unseen interior.

“What did you two find out there on the ice? You bring back a bird, or a fish?”

“Piece of metal, but damn odd,” said Thornton.

“Metal? Sounds like it. How is it moving in there?”

“Beats me. I thought it was just getting knocked about when the chopper hit some wind turbulence on the way back. But listen up. It’s got to be moving to make what we’re hearing now.”

“Well, let’s get a look at it.”

As Del reached for the securing latches on each end of the box lid, Thornton took a step back, and he extended a big arm to ease Hans Back as well. Del gave them a snide look.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “You said it was just a piece of metal?”

He pulled the lid open and as soon as the neon light drove the shadows from the interior of that box, the thing moved. It moved so quickly that Del could scarcely blink before the hard curved claw at the end of that segmented tentacle was embedded deep in his forehead, and he keeled over, falling with a hard thump.

“Christ!” shouted Thornton. Get back!” He looked around, wild eyed, and saw a heavy metal axe hanging on the wall. He had it in his big hands a second later.

“Sum Bitch!” he said, and he brought that axe down hard on the tentacle, which had writhed its way clear of Del’s bleeding skull and was, coiling and contorting on the ground, its clawed end scratching the wood of the floor. The sharp well honed axe cut the tentacle right in two with the blow Thornton delivered, just below that terminal claw. It made a few more failing twitches, and then lay still. He stood there panting with his effort, watching for any sign of further movement from the thing, but it now seemed dead and lifeless again, as it should have been all along. After all, it was just a hunk of metal.

“Go get Doc!” said Thornton to Hans.

“Hell, look at his forehead. He’s dead.”

“Well get him anyway. We owe Del that much.”

“Alright, but you might want to put that axe back on the wall or they’ll think you did this. Who would believe that thing could? Stay back from it. I’ll get Doc.”

Hans ran off, but Thornton kept a firm hold on that axe, his eyes never leaving that coiled metal on the floor as Poor Del bled out. He was long gone, and would never feel pain again. Hans was right, the Engineer was dead seconds after that claw hit his forehead. Now Thornton was standing there, tense, guarded, and wondering what in hell that metal tentacle could have come from?” In all his years he had never seen anything like it, but it was clearly engineered, something designed and built. But why who—and for what purpose? And what was it doing under that glacier?

In the deep ice of Earth, things dwell that could only live in the murky shadows of the human imagination. Whatever that came from had to still be under that ice, he thought. And if that were so, then it would have to be tens of thousands of years old—over a hundred thousand years old! What could be out there under the Doomsday Glacier that was engineered metal that long ago? Did this thing have anything to do with the accelerated melting and deterioration of the glacier?

There were too many questions. He was imaging some nameless mechanical terror sleeping beneath the ice, and their recent drilling escapade may have pricked it and sheared off the end of one of its loathsome tentacles. What if the damn thing awakens? And what if those that built it came looking for it again one day?

He shuddered with the cold and zipped his parka up tighter on his thick neck. Thornton wasn’t a man to frighten easily, but he was suddenly afraid, not because of the horror of Del’s untimely death; not for what he had seen here, but for what still lay unseen out there under that 45 mile wide glacier.

This was a small slice of the novel Call of the Wolf, Kirov Series #76

Coming Soon! Thanks for reading, John Schettler.