The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu, Volume 3, page 3
The Sno-Cat negotiated the cold, unrelenting terrain through flurries consisting of wind-blown old snow for what felt like an interminable time.
Eventually, the great rusty sphere hove into view.
“I think I’m getting the chills,” Sofia muttered, teeth chattering.
Redpath nodded. He understood what she was talking about. This was not the chill of the Antarctic air, but a deeper one—a chill of the soul known only to the intuitives of the world.
As the pitted sphere loomed larger and larger, they began to hear banging.
“Don’t like the sound of that,” said Redpath.
Then a voice shouted. The words were unintelligible. Redpath brought the great grinding machine to a halt, then looked toward Sofia in the passenger seat and asked, “You can wait here if you want.”
“I was going to tell you the same.”
Redpath grunted. “One of us should remain in case the other one gets shot, or captured.”
“You have the wheel. You can get away quicker. Don’t turn off the engine, whatever you do.”
The passenger side door fell open. The cold blew in and Sofia vanished into the swirling snow.
Raymond Redpath swallowed his angry exclamation. Through the lazy windshield wipers that kept clearing the glass of blown snow, he watched her shift around like a pale, fuzzy shadow.
Over the wind howl, her voice called out, “Hello! American here!”
Someone yelled gruffly, “Americanski! Americanski!”
More shouts came volleying back, and then voices could be heard shouting back-and-forth. Redpath could not make out any of it.
The Lakota medicine man had one hand on the door lever and was about to exit when Sofia came striding back and climbed aboard, slamming the door shut.
“Those dolts have sledgehammers, and they’re trying to smash the skin of the Furnace. They don’t understand why they can’t dent something that looks so battered. It’s just a matter of time before they find the lever buried in the snow. Once they do, they’re really going to have a party.”
“Did any of them speak English?”
“Two of them seemed to grasp half of what I was trying to communicate. But I couldn’t convince them of anything. Probably imagine it’s some kind of crashed off-world vehicle that they are claiming for the motherland.”
“Did they understand anything of what you said?”
“Hard to say. Russians are so damned dense, it could go either way. But they’re determined. They think they have an important find. Probably from watching too many History Channel ancient aliens programs.”
Ray Redpath was silent for a long while.
“We might have to just kill them.”
“I was thinking the same thing. But they have rifles, and at least one AK-12. I counted twelve soldiers. Probably more on the other side of the Furnace.”
Redpath took the wheel. “We must return to base.”
“What about killing them?”
“If we leave now, they will not suspect anything when I return with my knife.”
“Oh. So it’s that way, is it?”
“Yes, that is the way of it.”
Redpath threw the Sno-Cat into reverse, laboriously got it turned around, and headed back to base on grumbling tracks.
He was silent during the ride. Sofia maintained a similar silence. They had worked together a long time, but belonged to different worlds, one a Strega witch and the other Heyoka.
* * *
That evening, while they were warming up with coffee and hot chocolate away from the others, Sofia said, “You know it’s murder.”
Redpath’s voice was somber. “Man has killed to eat and survive since the beginning of Man. It is no different from tribe to tribe. In this bitter time and place, I must kill in order that the Nations may survive. All nations. Including Russian ones. My mind is clear and my conscience is clean.”
After a pause, Sofia said, “I’m prepared to go with you.”
“Have you ever cut a man’s throat?”
“Never.”
“It is no work for the unskilled. And guns make noise. I must go alone.”
“I can distract them for you.”
“I must kill them in their sleep. It is the only way it can be accomplished.”
“I can see that your Heyoka mind is made up.”
“My mind is made up. I must consult with my grandfather for guidance.”
Sofia asked, “Should you not return, what do you expect me to do?”
Ray Redpath was a long time in replying.
“If I do not return, it will be up to you to convince everyone that the only solution is to bomb the thing out of existence with a nuke.”
“Are you serious? We don’t even know if that’s a viable solution. It might work, or it might not. But it will certainly accelerate the melting of Antarctica.”
Redpath stood up. “It will be up to others to make that determination. We can only do what we can when confronting the Other Ones from the Outer Dark.”
“I’ll do my best to see that an Air Force bomber is mission-ready for the run.”
“And I will do my best to see that you do not have to do your best.”
Raymond Redpath retired to his cramped quarters. He sat down upon a floor rug and began praying.
“Grandfather, guide me in my actions this day. Protect me until I have accomplished what I set out to do, and if it is the will of the Great Spirit, see that I return to give a full accounting of my deeds.”
Squatting with his eyes closed, Redpath waited patiently for a vision from his grandfather. But Grandfather Crowwolf did not come. It was strange. He did not know what to make of it.
But a memory came to him. A saying his grandfather uttered often.
“The only easy day was yesterday.”
It seemed appropriate to the mission.
After an hour, he struggled into a white survival suit, into which he placed a Bowie knife. The knife had been given to him by his father, who had gotten it from his grandfather, who had taken it off a white man who no longer had any Earthly need of it.
Attired for the Antarctic day, Redpath took a Ski-Doo snowmobile and went out into the blowing snow, the knife snug against his ribs where the handle and blade would stay warm.
For he knew without that precaution wielding a knife would be next to impossible….
* * *
Colonel Sobir Sternanko of the Russian military intelligence did not appreciate his latest assignment. He did not like Antarctica. He thought it would be like Siberia. Siberia was not so terrible. There was game there. Reindeer. Grouse. Woodcock. Capercaillie. A man could hunt in Siberia and feed himself.
Here in this bleak land, there was nothing—unless one counted the penguins. Hunting penguins was a ridiculous idea. Eating them did not appeal to him at all.
The GRU colonel was rushed to Vostok Station, then his squad of Spetznaz soldiers were airlifted to the weird object discovered by Russian satellites, and deposited there to fend for themselves.
Sternanko had seen a classified picture of the globular thing. He understood that it was large. But until he stood in its shadow, he did not comprehend how large it truly was. Nor how strange.
When he first laid eyes upon the vast sphere with the degraded rusty surface, he thought, this was not of this Earth. It was not made of stone or a recognizable metal. It could not be a meteorite or asteroid. More ominously, it was emitting an unnerving roar, like a katabatic wind, but steady and unceasing. Logically, it must be some form of technology.
It was far too large to transport intact. So he ordered his men to take sledgehammers and axes to it. The futility of this endeavor became abundantly clear in the first hour of work. The convoluted surface refused to be dented. Even the rust did not flake off.
Sternanko called a halt to the effort.
During the interval in which his soldiers piled about while awaiting further orders, a Sno-Cat rumbled up. They could not see it in the blowing snow, but they heard it approach and then come to a rumbling halt.
After a time, a woman’s voice spoke, calling out in English.
Unfortunately, the colonel was not on the side of the sphere facing the new arrival. Otherwise he would have engaged the woman, for he spoke serviceable English.
The Sno-Cat went away by the time Sternanko had circumnavigated the giant oblate Object. This is what the thing was called in Russian: Veshch, the Object.
After two of his men recounted the exchange with the American woman, Sternanko realized that the woman must have come from the American scientific research station a good distance away.
Sending a detachment after the Sno-Cat was about as useful as hunting penguins. They had no vehicles.
“Did you understand her?” he asked the pair.
One soldier shook his head no, but the other nodded yes.
“She did not make any sense,” said the one who thought he understood the visitor.
“The Americans know about Object now,” he told his men.
“What can we do about this?” asked one.
“We cannot wipe their minds clean of this knowledge. We will guard Object while we investigate it.”
Tents had already been pitched a distance away so that they could sleep despite the constant dull roar emanating from the Object. But they were designed for temporary respite, and not a protracted stay. They were of the highest quality, but were also of old Soviet manufacture. That meant they were deficient, and might fail at any time. Probably sooner than later.
Night was coming on, and Sternanko ordered his men to dig at the base to see if the object sat on a pedestal, or was possibly supported by landing gear. If landing gear, this would be a find indeed.
After Sternanko had retreated to his tent, his men dug well into the night that was like day. Finally, one reported to him in a breathless tone that exhaled equal parts awe and breath steam.
“Colonel, we have discovered a lever at the base.”
“Show me.”
Stepping out, then buttoning up his tent flap behind him, the colonel followed his subordinate through the blowing snow until he came to the spot where the lever had been excavated.
Taking hold of it by both gloved hands, Sternanko attempted to move it in one direction, and then in the other. But the lever would not budge. It was immobile. No doubt the mechanism was frozen.
The roaring of the Object continued unabated. It would become disquieting. It abraded the nerves. But there was nothing that could be done about it.
Since it was halfway through the work shift, Sternanko, announced, “All will retire. Sleep well. We will address this lever in the morning.”
Retreating to his tent, Sternanko removed as much clothing as was safe to do and crawled into an insulated sleeping bag. The qualities of its insulation were questionable. But he was also exhausted. Soon enough, he slept.
Some time well past dawn, he could hear men shouting.
Strenanko listened. He could make nothing of their outcries. Only that they were excited. The ceaseless roaring masked some of the words.
Colonel Sternanko looked at his wrist watch and frowned. He had not slept more than six hours. He was not enthusiastic about stepping out into the too-bright Antarctic day once again. A moment later, he realized he had no choice.
A soldier came to his tent flap and called for him.
“What is it?”
“Colonel, several of the men have perished.”
“They died of cold?”
“No, they were liquidated, their throats cut while sleeping.”
Now the colonel had no choice. “Come in. I will have your report.”
The soldier pushed in, sat down on the fleece rug, and fought back tears.
“Every man in every other tent is dead, comrade colonel. There are no signs of struggle.”
Sternanko blinked. “This does not make sense. This is how Turks operate. We are in South Pole. No Turks dwell here.”
“Nevertheless, half of the men are cold corpses.”
Angrily, the colonel put on his insulated outfit, gloves, and boots, then followed the subordinate out into the roaring snow barrens.
Going from tent to tent, Sternanko saw that it was true. Every man died without a struggle. He studied the footprints around the camp and saw that they were boot prints belonging to a man with a size eleven boot. They told him nothing more.
“Gather weapons,” he barked. “We will hunt this barbarian.”
Rifles were issued. They were the best weapons for this weather. Whether they worked was another matter. The cold made all mechanical things unpredictable.
The colonel himself was the first to pick up the trail of the boot tracks leaving camp. He followed them, his men taking up protective positions at his rear.
The tracks went around in circles, but the circles made no sense. It did not appear that the attacker was attempting to escape. Sternanko could not tell where he was bound.
The boot prints ultimately went to the great rust-colored Object, and became enmeshed with the pre-existing prints of his team.
Ultimately, Sternanko could not discover where they went. They did not seem to lead anywhere in particular. They just circled in senseless loops in such a way as to confound his thinking.
“Where did this man go?” he muttered aloud.
Sternanko did not suspect the old Lakota trick of walking backward to leave a confusing trail. He was still trying to figure out what Turks were doing in Antarctica.
Baffled, he gave up.
It was during the trek back to the encampment that they discovered where their elusive enemy had gone.
They were walking past a long hummock of accumulated snow when they lost one of their men.
No one realized this immediately.
But when they reached the encampment, and Colonel Sternanko ordered the men to line up for new orders, he noticed one man was missing.
“Where is Private Prostakov?”
No one knew.
So they backtracked and found Prostakov sprawled in the snow with his throat cut, his life blood creating a frozen pool around the body.
“Find this Turk!” roared Sternanko.
Foolishly, the men spread out, and the Russian colonel realized that in their camouflage Gorka-4 survival suits, they made prefect targets against the snowpack. The green camouflage color had been chosen to make a lost soldier easier to locate in white-out blizzard conditions.
They did not find the attacker. But when the team returned, it was once again short a man, Orlov this time.
This victim they found to the northwest, face down in the hoarfrost, his head surrounded by a halo of freezing gore that was still giving off steam.
Standing in the bitter cold, staring down at the cooling corpse, Colonel Sternanko considered the situation with a coldness that had nothing to do with the surrounding atmosphere.
“We will return to our camp,” he said in the voice loud enough to carry.
To one man, he whispered, “You will take up the rear, but you will walk backward. Take care not to become lost in the blowing snow.”
The soldier stood stone-faced when he received the order. But his eyes were uneasy.
Back they marched. From time to time, Sternanko stole a backward glance. But he saw nothing. Only the correct number of surviving soldiers.
Evidently, their opponent was quite wily. He did not strike again.
All of this exertion put them at no position to resume work around the Object. Calories are precious in the Antarctic, and they had expended too many of them already.
“Retire to your tents, get warm. Eat. Someone make tea.”
These orders were executed with alacrity.
Back in the warmth of his tent, Colonel Sternanko tore off his Soviet-style earflapped cap and mouth mask to enjoy his tea. He wished he had sugar. Normally he drank his tea entirely black. But energy was so easily expended in this terrible place that sugar would have felt fortifying, even if its nutritional value was doubtful.
Somewhere out there beyond the radius of camp their enemy lingered. Who was he? An American? That was more than likely. But he did not act like an American. Americans came out you directly. Usually after they battered you with artillery or mortar fire.
This Americanski was different. He was stealthy. More like a Turk or Mongol.
His purpose seemed plain on the face of it. He was out to obliterate all Russians investigating the Object. This was no surprise. Once the Americans learned of the Object, they would naturally vie for it.
It is obvious that cold-blooded murder was the way they intended to take possession. But how could anyone take control of such a monstrous structure? Only by breaking into it and removing its inner technology could value be extracted. While this task alone appeared to be daunting, it might also be impossible, short of explosives. Colonel Sternanko was not authorized to use explosives on this mission. Too much was unknown.
Perhaps, by engaging the lever, the Object could be made to open up and spill out its secrets. Whatever they might be.
After a few hours, Colonel Sternanko stepped out of his tent and inspected the troops assembling before him. He was relieved to see that everyone had survived their meal. He had had his doubts.
“We will return to Object. Bring sledges. We will force lever.”
And so they marched. With a different man taking up the rear end, walking backwards, so that they would not be ambushed from behind.
When they reached the Object, they discovered that the lever had been deliberately buried in snow.
Sternanko said, “Americanski has been here. He knows about lever. He does not want us to engage it.”
“He cannot stop us, comrade colonel,” said one soldier.
“Two will stand guard. One facing north and one facing south. But no one approach. Shoot any on sight.”
Two soldiers took up sentry positions, rifles at the ready, while the others uncovered the lever, then fell to with sledge hammers and attempted to knock the obstinate control into a different position.
The problem was they could not tell in what direction the lever mechanism operated. They tried hammering it in one direction, but accomplished nothing.
