 
INDEX

Copyright

Dedications

Part 1 - From Another World

Part 2 - Strangers

Part 3 – Identify Yourself

Part 4 – The Thing

Bibliography
First published in Great Britain by Speartip

The text and story contained within is Copyright © 2014, Lee McGeorge.

STRICTLY NOT FOR SALE

This release is not for profit, fan-fiction.

Copyright of the source material exists with the respective rights-holders

http://www.Lee-McGeorge.co.uk

Cover artwork by Miguel E. Santillán

http://santillanstudio.deviantart.com

ISBN 978-0-9546953-5-4

Speartip Publishing

Islington, London, N4
For

Logan, Kaden and Kobi

Special Thanks

Darth Howell, Lady Islington
THE THING ZERO DAY

By

Lee McGeorge
Inspired by John Carpenter's film, 'The Thing'

and

John W. Campbell's story, 'Who Goes There?'
Part 1

From Another World

ANTARCTICA, 1982

The First Day of Winter

The sound rumbled in like a distant thunder, growing with intensity until the men could feel it penetrating their bones. "What the heck is that?" the cook quizzed.

The men in the mess hall stopped eating and became quiet to listen. Hans rested his cigarette on the side of the ashtray to watch the vibration in the rising smoke as it faded in and out. "Is that an earthquake?" he quizzed. "Ice melt?"

Bjorn, the camp doctor appeared at the doorway, out of breath, running. "You gotta see this. Quick. Now, come now."

All men were up and following, grabbing outdoor jackets from the exit. The sun was going down and there was little daylight left other than an orange rim across the frozen Antarctic horizon. "Over there, look," Bjorn pointed to the wheel in the sky as it grew closer and closer.

"What in the hell is that?"

All twelve men stood captivated as the disc in the sky bore down on them. It wobbled awkwardly, like a spinning top with the spike out of kilter, the craft rocking around an off-centre point and throwing off a grinding magnetic hum with each revolution.

"It's getting closer... It's coming straight at us."

The disc began to take on definition. It was illuminated on the underside. The lighting cast against tubes and ridges of the structure. Along its edge was a faint blue lip of light and three orange glowing circles on the underside.

Norstad held his hand to shield the object from his eyes and picked out the almost imperceptible mirage of three invisible legs splayed out below the disc. Invisible legs that picked up the snow and spun it in three spiralling vortexes.

The craft passed slowly overhead with a growl, bringing the snowy whirlwinds rushing through the camp then away on the other side as it departed, the noise intensifying to the roar of a jet engine, then dropping as they were taken through the eye of the storm.

"What in God's name?" Bjorn yelled. It was passing, moving away, wobbling unsteadily and making a sound like it was winding down as it receded from view. "Norstad, you ever see a flying machine like that?"

The pilot shook his head. "Never."

The disc was merging into the orange line of the horizon. It was coming down. Whether it was landing or crashing was up for debate, but it was coming down and it didn't sound or look like a controlled descent.

A bearing, they would need a bearing. Norstad ran to the stationary chopper and climbed into the cockpit. He would use the compass to see its direction... except... it was wrong. They were on the magnetic South Pole. The compass should point straight down into the Earth. It didn't. It pointed north east and it swayed left to right by twenty degrees every few seconds. "What the?" Norstad looked about him. Skis and ski poles behind the seat. He grabbed them and climbed out of the helicopter. He rammed a ski pole into the snow, took a few paces back and closed one eye that he could align himself with the vanishing disc, then rammed another pole into the ground along the line of sight.

The doctor approached him. "What are you thinking?" he asked.

"I think that thing is landing or crashing."

"Yo, man, it was a spaceship," the cook said. "It was from the stars, man."

Norstad and Bjorn held their gaze for a few seconds, both men silenced by the thoughts of alien technology. "There could be people on board," Norstad said pushing away the idea of exotic spacecraft; but it did look like how a child would draw a flying saucer.

Then from far into the distance came something spectacular. For more than thirty seconds a terrific lightning storm erupted, with seemingly every bolt hitting the ground in the same vicinity. It looked as though the heavens were throwing forked arrows of light, but by some crazy quirk of nature, the volts zigged and zagged to hit the ground at a central point.

Norstad looked along the line of sight made by his ski poles. It aligned to the source of the lightning.

"That was a spaceship," the cook said again, hunching his shoulders and pulling up the fur hood to the coat. He swayed a little, moving to keep the cold out of his muscles. "Don't pretend like I'm crazy. You all saw it. Tell me you saw it too."

"I saw something," the doctor replied. "I saw the damndest thing... And you're right. We all saw it."

\----- X \-----

Norstad, Bjorn and Finn had settled into the corner booth for the night. "What's this one?" Finn asked the doctor.

Bjorn shrugged, looking at the script of the bottle. "Russian farm girl goodness. It's got a picture of a young woman carrying reeds."

Three glasses, three drinks. "It's probably piss water in Russia," Norstad said raising his glass. "Skol."

"Skol," the men replied. They tasted their drinks then grinned to one another. Russian vodka was good vodka. In Norway, the government controlled all alcohol production except beers which meant decent booze in country was scarce. It took a trip to the Antarctic and some free trade with Russian sailors at Bellingshausen to get the good stuff. They were going to be here for four months and were allocated official rations of twenty crates of beer. Four hundred and eighty bottles to last twelve men four months. Thank God for the Russians. They'd sold them a season's worth of hard liquor for pennies.

Strand, the base commander, put on some music. Sam Cooke, setting the mood for an evening wind down. "Does anyone want to do an envelope?" he called to the room. The men shrugged, they blew cigarette smoke. They drank.

"We can open one," said Kleppa. "Decide if it's worth doing." The biologist, Asgeir Kleppa, was a short little man with a bald head and wire framed glasses. Strand held out a handful of sealed envelopes for him to choose from.

"What you got?" Finn called.

Kleppa pulled out a slip of paper. "Campmates. Your challenge today is to build a ten pin bowling alley and organise a tournament, the winner takes two bottles of beer."

All of the men laughed at the prize and raised their glasses. "Skol!" came the universal response.

"Does anybody want to do it?" Strand asked?

The climate scientists embroiled in a card game lifted their heads out of a cloud of marijuana smoke and said. "Yeah, we're in," sounding as though they didn't know what they were committing to.

"Those guys are in," Kleppa said. "And I'll do it."

"Me too," Strand said.

Norstad leaned in close to Bjorn and Finn. "The commander is in too," he said with a smile and a wink. They were all thinking the same thing. Camp Commander Strand was tasked with keeping morale high for the four months they would live on this ice cube. He took his job seriously but he wasn't a natural fit for the social work of his contract. Ex-Navy, he was the book keeper, the man who made the trains run on time, but he wasn't the man to get drunk, kick back and be the life and soul of the party.

"Do you guys want to come bowling?" he asked.

Finn shook his head side to side, blowing cigarette smoke, answering for all three. "I don't want to play skittles," he said to the table. "I wanna go find the flying saucer."

"Oh, boy... If it's not out there tomorrow I'm going to cry," Norstad said. "I promise I'll cry like a baby. Nothing happens on this whole damn continent, then suddenly it turns into Space Invaders."

"I'm sure it was something Earthly," the doctor said. The voice of reason, Bjorn, with his trimmed blond hair and constantly shaven face had a professional demeanour at all times; even when a flying saucer had skimmed overhead. "I'm curious as to what it could be. It moved with the speed of a helicopter or blimp. Perhaps it was some kind of experimental craft. My concern is it was large enough to carry people and if it crashed out there they may not survive until morning. We need to prepare ourselves for the eventuality that if we do find something, it will be of this Earth... and it may be unpleasant."

Norstad raised his vodka as though proposing a toast. "We'll know soon enough. I'm keen to head out at first light."

"I'd like to come with you," Bjorn said. "But not if you're flying with a hangover. If you want to go at first light could I ask you stop drinking now?"

Norstad nodded. "Too true, doc." He finished his drink and placed the glass upside down on the table. "I'm going to bed... I wanna be fresh... and I need a little company." He left the table with a slight sway to him. A slight smile. He found most of the men had joined in the ten pin bowling and a lane had been created in the corridor from the galley towards their rooms. MacCloud, the frizzy haired cook, bowled a tennis ball towards the empty beer bottles. It knocked two over and bounced wide. They needed a heavier ball.

Norstad stepped amongst the bottle pins and passed through the game to his berth, a tiny room less than three metres by two with a tiny window. It had a single bed with drab olive blankets and little else other than a blow up sex doll sitting in the corner wearing black lingerie. A collection of hard core porn magazines were on the bedside table. It was often mused whether any other Antarctic station had as much porn as they did. With each crew that visited a whole new stash was added to the collection. None had been taken away and with three crews a year since 1967 they'd accumulated enough filth to open their own sex shop.

It wasn't like this at other Norwegian stations. Tor and Troll stations were run by the Norwegian Polar Institute and whoever was in charge of that outfit filled their bases with young female researches and saunas. This station, Fafnir, was run by the Norwegian Institute of Air Research; and the NIAR thought a man like Strand could organise their happiness for four months armed with nothing more than thirty six bottles of beer per man.

Norstad talked to the blow up doll as he undressed. "How are you tonight, Astrid? Are things good? We saw a flying saucer today and we're going to go and look for it tomorrow."

\----- X \-----

Finn had the blowtorch aimed directly into the helicopter exhaust, blowing a meter long blue flame into the engine cowling to preheat the mechanics. The Bell Jetranger was a reliable workhorse, even in Antarctic conditions, but getting airborne at these temperatures took time. Norstad pumped the pressure on the antifreeze bottle and aimed the hose at the mechanics. "Spraying," he called. Finn stepped aside and shut off the torch whilst the rotor mast got a soaking in ethylene glycol.

Twenty minutes later, Norstad and Bjorn were in the air. They circled the camp once. Fafnir station felt substantial when you were stood amongst the buildings, but from the air it was a few wooden huts and connection corridors half buried in snow amongst an endless wilderness of white.

On the ground, the three climatologists, Hans, Pederson and Rolland, waved to the chopper with wide swings of their arms. The guys were laid-back, tree-hugging hippie types. They were like a trio of brothers all sporting long, wavy blonde hair and full beards. Always together as a tight sub-unit of the crew, they saw themselves as defenders of the Earth. The reality was they smoked too much weed. They were the typical, politically active, educated, stoner Norwegians out to save the planet. Today, saving the planet would involve balloon launches to the high atmosphere which would then detach and parachute their equipment to ground. In a few days they'd have Norstad fly around the wilderness following radio trackers to pick them up. The balloon man, Moller, gave them a two handed wave as they headed out.

"You got your bearing?" Bjorn asked into his headset mic.

Norstad nodded. "North east. We need to go generally parallel to the mountain ridge. A couple of clicks inside."

"I counted," the doctor said. "Yesterday, when the lightning began. Like a child counting to measure if the thunder is getting closer. I counted twenty two."

"Twenty two," Norstad acknowledged. "Twenty two seconds. Three hundred and forty meters per second... that's got to be about seven or eight kilometres... That's as good as any Doc, let's go out eight, two in from the ridge and start circling at a hundred meters. See what we can see." Norstad brought his airspeed to 50 knots and clicked the stopwatch. Wilderness navigation was a mysterious art. There were no guides, no landmarks and no compass headings. Fafnir station put out a radio beacon any time they were airborne which helped to find their way back, but finding your way to a grid reference on a fourteen million square kilometre continent was mostly potluck and instinct. He had the general direction. He would fly for five and a half minutes. He would cross his fingers.

"Who won the bowling?" Norstad asked.

"The game came from one of Strand's envelopes," the doctor replied. "There's no winning at those games ... only degrees of losing... When I went to bed, do you know what they were using as a bowling ball?"

"I saw a tennis ball."

"They were using a cabbage. They said it was the only thing heavy enough... Some days I wonder how I ended up here. Trapped in isolation with a bunch of drunkards, having a bowling contest with a cabbage."

Norstad laughed. "MacCloud let them bowl with food?"

"Yeah... and he said it's cabbage soup for dinner tonight... I suppose that's a good thing... No more bowling."

\----- X \-----

At five and a half minutes in, Norstad slowed the chopper and began rolling in a wide, snake like pattern, zig-zagging in and out from the mountain ridge at a hundred meters altitude.

"That looks like a lake," the doctor said. "It looks like water."

Norstad saw it too. On an endless white plain, there was a long streak of what looked like fresh water reflecting the sunlight. He banked the helicopter towards it and lowered the altitude. It was long. Maybe two and half thousand meters in length and a hundred meters wide. "It's iced, Doc. It's like someone has melted a runway and it's iced over."

"What could do that?"

"Heat. A lot of heat. An ice lake that size would take more heat than you could imagine."

Norstad slowed the helicopter to ten knots and glided across the frozen surface. The compacted top snow had transformed into a glassy, reflective surface. It was almost a mirror.

"What the... Norstad, look."

"I see it," the pilot said. Although he wasn't sure of what exactly he was seeing. Deep in the ice, melted and refrozen, was some kind of structure or mechanism. It looked like a huge disc had fallen into a sinkhole, the surface was iced and the craft was covered, but it was still visible.

Norstad put the helicopter into a wide turn.

It was a disc of some kind... a machine of some kind.

"Holy cow. This could be... It must have landed way back there and skidded forward, melting the snow," Bjorn said. "It's melted everything."

"Yeah, but look where it is now. It's deep. Nothing could have melted itself that deep without a huge amount of power. It's underneath the ice, Doc. It's either skidded under, or melted the surface and sunk below the meltwater. We're not going to get to it without thermite and decanite charges and..." Norstad suddenly banked the helicopter away.

"What's wrong? Where are you going?" Bjorn quizzed.

"Grab a beacon, will you. Activate it and throw it out. That thing would need a lot of juice to melt itself under the ice. It could be nuclear... and what we're doing might be like flying over Three Mile Island... Safety first my friend."

Bjorn didn't respond, but got to work unwrapping a radio beacon. It was bright orange, the shape and size of a beer can. He twisted the end cap fully until the small white light blinked. "I'm going to drop it by the ice lake, fly us along the edge."

Norstad headed back towards Fafnir as the beacon was dropped through the window. He adjusted the cockpit equipment to check they could find the disc again. The beacon signal was strong.

\----- X \-----

Asgeir Kleppa took a break from his microscope and walked through to the rec room. His eyes were tired. The work required concentration and could only be done in short bursts, but the continued strain of microscope work wasn't helping his poor eyesight. He wasn't the young, fit and healthy type like the others. He was the short, fat, bald and boring microscope nerd.

"Hey, Kleppa," MacCloud said as he passed the galley. "There's coffee in the pot."

"Great, thank you." He took a cup and sat in the rec room to stare through the window. Outside he could see the climatology boys fixing their experiment to one of Moller's balloons whilst Ingvar and Oyvind exercised the dogs by having sled races through the camp.

There was little to do here other than work on his science project and that required no more than three or four hours a day. It was his theory and a theory of others, that micro-organisms lived in the deep ice. There was even some evidence that more complex bacteria lived there too. Not frozen, but living and moving, producing proteins that acted as antifreeze. It was an interesting concept, that a bacteria in a block of ice could melt its surroundings, effectively giving it an ocean to swim through. The problem was he could find the trace evidence and the complex organic proteins that melted the ice, but he couldn't find the micro-organism that produced it.

"Do you think they'll find anything?" MacCloud asked. "Bjorn and Norstad, I mean. Do you think they'll find what we saw last night?"

Kleppa shrugged his shoulders. "It would be fun if they found something."

Almost on cue the sound of the helicopter faded into his ears. "That was quick," the cook said. "They can't have been gone an hour."

They watched as the big pontoons of the helicopter skis touched down. The men got out. They began talking with the climatologists. They waved to the guys running the dogs. Strand was there too. They were discussing something. Something so important they didn't wait to bring it inside.

"Hey!" MacCloud exclaimed. "We're missing out."

Kleppa was already out of his seat. MacCloud took a half minute to shut down the gas in the galley and followed him, grabbing coats at the exit.

Everybody was congregated by the chopper.

"It looks like a giant disc that has skidded in and melted the surface layer," Norstad was saying. He explained the scene, his fears of radiation, the need for thermite and decanite charges. "But let me tell you straight, guys. This could be the real deal. The thing that's out there looks like it's from another world."

\----- X \-----

"Norstad wants the Geiger counter," Oyvind shouted to Kleppa.

The biologist opened the wooden storage box and checked the battery. The instrument was old, a hefty metal enclosure with a hand held cathode. It was his ticket to the spaceship. Everybody wanted to go, but the helicopter could only carry four and the tractor could only take four before it got cramped. It was decided not to use the dogs. Normally he would have been excluded from anything exciting, but today he was needed. He was the one who could make a decision on safety.

Oyvind was preparing several crates of explosives. Thermite charges and decanite.

"How much are you bringing?" Kleppa asked with concern.

Oyvind stroked his beard and grinned. "A lot. If it's as big as Bjorn says it is... I don't wanna get out there and find we have to come back for more."

Kleppa trudged outside, his short legs struggling with the deep snow more than the other men. Norstad waved him to the chopper. "You ride with us, you can check the area from the air."

The tractor rumbled to life with the deepest growling engine and a puff of black diesel smoke. The Tucker Sno-Cat was the bright orange workhorse that had built Fafnir Station back in '67 and she still ran like a champion. With four independent caterpillar tracks and a top speed of only thirty kilometres an hour she wasn't fast, but she was just about unstoppable over any terrain.

The chopper lifted into the air and Norstad set his instruments to home in on the radio beacon. They were on the scene and gliding over the lake within minutes.

Kleppa pulled open the helicopter window and pointed the cathode wand outside. The Geiger counter clicked, the needle swung.

Bjorn was sitting in the rear seat, looking over Kleppa's shoulder at the equipment in his lap. "It looks like you were right to be cautious," Bjorn said to the pilot. "This thing is clicking like crazy."

"It's only alpha particles," Kleppa said. "It's background and it's on the surface of the ice. It's not dangerous." He tried other settings on the counter. "I'm not detecting anything else. No beta, no gamma. We'll be safe so long as nobody eats the snow."

Norstad pointed to the end of the frozen lake and the pit.

Kleppa pushed the wand outside of the window and aimed it at the disc. He lost interest in the reading as soon as he saw the spacecraft. It was incredible.

"That's safe too," Bjorn said looking at the counter. "We can land, Norstad. It's safe."

\----- X \-----

"Tell me about safety, why is there a cliff of ice around this thing?" Strand asked to nobody in particular.

"It's backscatter and sub-glacial pressure." Hans answered. "Under the crust, there is water movement and glaciers moving below the surface. It's pushing up ice from deep down. The ice at the bottom of the cliff could be as old as one hundred thousand years."

"But is it safe to climb into?"

Hans nodded nonchalantly. "This is a sinkhole. It's a gap between two sub-surface glaciers. The hole could give way, but there's no way to tell whether it will go in a few weeks or a thousand years. Not without doing a deep survey. We need to go down and check it out."

Strand collected flags from the tractor and began distributing them to the men. "Finn, could you bring the deep bore... and Kleppa, you should work the video camera. We need to document this. Oyvind, if you back up the tractor, we should be able to drop the rope ladder to the surface. I'll go first to check the ice integrity and if it looks safe I'll wave you down."

The work began in earnest, but even with the speed and enthusiasm it was an hour before the whole crew made it into the sinkhole. The disc was shallow enough to be seen but the detail was obscured. It wasn't deep. In some places it was only fifty or sixty centimetres and there were bubbles under the ice that showed the craft was sitting in liquid water. The men spread out with their flags to encircle it showing that the disc was approximately forty meters in diameter, a lot smaller than the sinkhole. Kleppa filmed the scene with the video camera, feeling his heart beating faster and faster with anticipation. This was really happening. They'd found a mystery under the ice and they had the tools to dig it up.

"Bore here," Oyvind said as he sprayed an X onto the snow with red paint. Beside it he wrote 2m to indicate depth. Finn got to work with the drilling using a small petrol generator in a backpack to power the ice bore. In all he needed to cut twenty holes, but being shallow the work was fast. Oyvind used a chainsaw to fracture areas between the boreholes on the far side of the disc. "I'm going to burn a channel along this edge," he said as he began working with thermite grenades. "I need everyone to get back."

The men moved away as he unscrewed the grenade triggers and dismantled the can of thermite that he could pour the silvery dust directly onto the ice and into the channel he'd cut. "Fire in the hole," he called as he ignited the mixture. The iron oxide compound burned with an impossible brightness as it melted through the ice and blew great geysers of illuminated steam into the air as it sunk into his channel.

"I think we're ready," Oyvind called to Strand. "It looks like the surface ice is floating on liquid water. I'm going to set decanite charges on this side. It should roll a shockwave across the top of the structure to the channel on the far side. It's gonna blow chunks high and away, but I still want everybody at least a hundred meters back. We're talking a thousand cubic meters of ice so this is gonna be dangerous."

"Alright, you heard the man," Strand called as though commanding the action, but the others were already retreating.

The decanite came in foil cans with ring-pull triggers that packed the same punch as a hand grenade but without the fragments. They were loud and had a lot of force but no compression. It was only when packed in ice that they had any real effect. Oyvind carefully unscrewed the ring-pulls and disconnected the triggers from the blasting caps. To each he connected yellow detonating cord. Then he set his grenades into the boreholes and retreated.

Kleppa got his video camera ready. "Filming."

Oyvind popped the detonating cord, the yellow cable exploding a shockwave towards the decanite at seven thousand meters per second. The grenades threw up a mountain of ice along with a blast wave that knocked the air from the lungs. The explosion was spectacular to watch and the men gave a few whistles, cheers and claps. It was always the same cheery reaction. Men loved blowing stuff up.

The blast was precision. Oyvind's knowledge of ice fracturing was masterful and, just as he'd said, the decanite had rolled a shockwave across the top of the disc and thrown the debris to the far side of the sinkhole. In fact, the ice clearing was almost too good to be true it was so accurate.

As the men returned to the disc they all began to feel a warmth from craft. Finn took off his gloves and touched the hull. "Hey, this thing is warm."

Oyvind touched the hull also. "It melted the ice around it, that's why it's came off cleanly. It was sitting in water with a frozen crust."

Norstad strode boldly ahead of the others to stand on a small raised turret in the centre of the disc. Then he got on his knees and inspected further to lift a metal door away from the structure. "Hey," he called. "It's open."

The men jogged to him, all filled with anticipation and excitement. A sense of great discovery running between them all.

"What have you got?" Strand asked.

"A way in," he said. "Once we drain it."

The door was the same size and design as a human hatch, the sort of thing to be found on a submarine, but having been submerged in meltwater, the entrance was flooded to the top. "What do you make of this, Bjorn... Bjorn?" Norstad looked between the men. "Hey where's the Doc?"

The men looked between them, then turned to search. "Is he back at the chopper?" Strand asked. "Anyone see him at the tractor?"

Then Kleppa called, "There he is."

Almost on the horizon and out of the sinkhole, the doctor was on his hands and knees. He was almost invisible when obscured by the glare of the ice lake.

"I'll get him," Norstad said as he began the walk to collect his friend. "What the hell are you doing up there, Doc?" The walk took several minutes and at times was like ice skating uphill. "Doc?" he called. "Hey, Bjorn... what are you doing? You've got to come down and see this."

The doctor turned his head but didn't answer. He remained on his hands and knees and went back to staring at the ice.

"Bjorn? Bjorn, answer me, man. What's wrong, are you sick? We've found something amazing down there, you should come and see. It's the most amazing thing you're ever going to..."

Norstad choked on his own words as he reached Bjorn. He'd thought the disc was amazing, but the doctor had discovered something even grander. It was frozen in the ice and it was looking back at them with three red eyes.

\----- X \-----

The sun was going down as the helicopter landed at camp. Moller the balloon expert, MacCloud the cook and two of the climatology boys, Pederson and Rolland were the only crew to remain at Fafnir.

"Did you see the spaceship?" MacCloud asked. "Look, man, you've gotta tell me everything."

"We've got more than a spaceship," Norstad said with a grin. He pointed to the tractor, a small orange dot coming over the horizon. "Wait till you see what they're bringing back."

MacCloud watched expectantly as the vehicle closed in. Norstad and Oyvind got to work pulling the tarp across the helicopter. Bjorn, the doctor, had travelled out in the helicopter but insisted on switching places with Oyvind so he could ride back with the tractor. He was like a child on Christmas morning and wouldn't let the prize out of his sight.

The tractor had its full beaming headlights shining from a rack above the front window. A light snowfall started, the flakes showing through the beams. It growled into camp dragging a block of ice that was laid across two sleds.

"What in the heck is that?" MacCloud asked.

Bjorn got out of the tractor and began barking instructions. "Inside, we need to get this inside. The best place is the tractor workshop."

"Well, where's the tractor going to go?" Strand asked.

"The tractor will be fine outside, but this is too valuable, we've got to get it under cover." Bjorn moved to the back of the ice block. Ingvar, the dog handler, was already uncoupling the cargo. Finn took control of the tractor and moved the vehicle so that the ice block could be pushed into the workshop. Pederson and Rolland walked in with the ice block, trying to see through its surface. Hans came in with them and wiped the snow off with his arm.

"Take a look," Hans said to his colleagues. The three climatologists stared into the ice transfixed as Finn backed the tractor out of the workshop and shut down the engine.

"Get the door closed," Bjorn said. "And get some lamps in here, we need to warm the place up."

Norstad finished securing the helicopter with Oyvind and they crossed to the workshop. Finn watched them approach but before they arrived he closed the door in their face and locked them out. "What the hell... Hey, guys?" Norstad hit his hand against the door. "Too much excitement," he said to Oyvind with barely contained anger.

"They can't abandon us now, they need to come back out," Oyvind said. "We need to unpack the explosives. We can't leave them in the tractor, it's unsafe,"

"I don't think they care," Norstad said. "They've become so excited by that thing in the ice, they're behaving like jerks."

\----- X \-----

Norstad picked up a mug of coffee from the galley and wrapped his fingers around it. It was normal after any period of outside work for the crew to grab hot drinks and sit around tiredly. Working in snow, in heavy boots and thick clothing was exhausting. They'd been out dusk 'til dawn without lunch and Norstad was so hungry that even bowling ball cabbage soup would taste good.

Oyvind, Strand and Ingvar joined him, pouring their coffees and crashing heavily in the rec room. The last one in was Kleppa who picked up a cup of coffee whilst staring into space. Norstad noticed that the little biologist looked unsteady on his feet but didn't think anything of it until Kleppa dropped his mug, spilling the coffee and smashing the cup. "Whoa, butterfingers." Oyvind called. "Sack the juggler, he's rubbish."

"Are you alright?" Norstad called.

Kleppa didn't answer. He rooted to the spot and stared at the spilled coffee, then raised his hands to his temples and swayed unsteadily like he was about to topple over. Norstad leapt from his seat to wrap his arm around the biologist's shoulders as he started to fall. "Take it easy big fella. Let's get you sat down."

"Oh... I'm sorry." Kleppa exhaled hard, puffing his cheeks. "I don't know what happened. I've got a sudden headache and feeling dizzy." He rocked backwards hard. If Norstad hadn't held him upright he would have fallen. Ingvar came to help and the men guided Kleppa to a seat.

MacCloud was emerging from the galley with an empty ice cream box to pick up the pieces of porcelain, his face softened when he saw the hunched shape of the biologist. "You alright, man?" Kleppa stared at the table and didn't respond. To Norstad, "You want me to get the Doc?"

Norstad looked up to MacCloud and made a nod sending the cook away to the tractor workshop.

MacCloud ambled without speed along the main corridor from the rec room. "Hey, Doc..." he started to say as he entered the workshop, then forgot what he was talking about, or why he'd come. All of the men were surrounding the giant block of ice, staring at it as though hypnotised.

Bjorn stood at the top like a high priest at his altar whilst the climatologists stood along one side and Finn and Ingvar stood on the other. MacCloud walked down the steps and made his way beside Finn who wiped at the surface of the ice, polishing it, making it easier to see.

There was something in there. Dark, almost black but with a purple or bluish tinge. Perhaps the colouration came from the ice; but the one thing that stood out firmly were the three blood-red eyeballs, protruding from the mass as though on stalks. The creature was twisted, it's body on its side, it's head staring up and through the ice to the men looking in. It had powerful legs, bent backwards like a dog's and long thin arms that ended in spindly fingers.

The men stared at it.

Transfixed.

Hypnotised.

\----- X \-----

"Where the hell is the Doc?" Norstad asked after ten minutes.

Kleppa hadn't improved, in fact he'd gotten worse. His skin had gone white and clammy. He was staring at the table and concentrating on his breathing. His eyes were open but he wasn't communicating other than to mumble or make odd groans as though in the midst of an anxious nightmare.

Strand knelt beside Kleppa to try and make eye contact. "Kleppa... Kleppa?" There was no response. "Asgeir Kleppa look at me!" he commanded with force to his voice. Kleppa remained locked in his dream world. "Norstad, go and find Bjorn, get the doctor back here."

Norstad left the rec room lamenting MacCloud. "Never send a cook to do something important," he mumbled. "Bjorn!" he shouted in the corridor. "Hey, Bjorn, where are you?"

Norstad stopped by the doorway to the laboratory feeling the quiet as an eerie presence that surrounded him. Nobody could be seen in either direction. He was only a ten second walk from the rec room and he knew there were men in the workshop, yet here, suddenly, he was alone and overwhelmed by a crushing fear of isolation. The feeling was profound, like he was the last man on Earth, but it was countered by a strange beckoning pull from the workshop.

He was afraid. Genuine spine tingling fear rooted him to the spot, yet what caused that fear couldn't be determined.

He was going to the tractor workshop... but why? What was the reason for him to go?

Kleppa... the doctor. Yes. Kleppa was acting weird.

He called out again. "Bjorn... BJORN!"

There was no response. "Oh, Jeepers, where are you Bjorn?" he whispered as he edged to the workshop. The door was closed. He pressed it with fingertips feeling a worry that he should return to the rec room and pretend he hadn't even been here.

The door crept open.

He saw the men. Bjorn at the top of the ice block whilst three men stood either side. "Holy hell, Bjorn. Did you not hear me?"

"Come in, close the door, we need to defrost this."

"Defrost?" Norstad asked not really registering what he'd heard. "No. Wait. Bjorn, you're needed. Kleppa's sick." The doctor didn't move. "Bjorn... what the hell is wrong with everybody? Kleppa is sick, we need you."

"This is more important," Bjorn said.

"Have you lost your mind? No, it isn't. Kleppa is sick, you're needed. Listen to me!" he said it with such force that all seven men were startled and broke eye contact with the ice to look at Norstad. "Bjorn! Kleppa is sick. Now. You're needed."

The doctor rubbed his eyes as though he'd just woken up. "Where is he?"

"Rec room, come on man, what is wrong with you? Are you daydreaming?"

Bjorn rubbed his whole face with the palms of his hands. "Sorry, yes... Let's go."

\----- X \-----

Norstad and the doctor returned to the rec room to find Kleppa slouching forward across the table. "There's something wrong," Strand said. "He's not talking at all."

Bjorn knelt down and began asking Kleppa questions to which the biologist didn't respond. Norstad hooked a finger to beckon Strand then whispered to him quietly. "There's something real weird going on in the workshop. Come and check it out."

They left Kleppa with the doctor and walked the corridor. "Take a look at this," Norstad said as he opened the door.

The scene was as he'd left it, with three men on either side of the block of ice. "What are you guys doing?" Strand asked.

Only Finn raised his head.

"Guys... Look at me when I'm talking to you!" Strand shouted with the force of command he'd picked up in the Navy. It jolted the men and broke their gaze. "Come on, out of here. Kleppa is sick. I want everyone back to the rec room... Now."

Slowly, the six men began moving, shuffling towards the door, climbing the steps and filing past Norstad. Strand pulled a large bunch of keys from his pocket and locked the door. "Come with me," he said to Norstad. They walked together back to the entrance and Strand handed him a coat.

"We're going outside?" Norstad asked. "It's after dark."

"We'll only be a few minutes. I'm going to make sure the tractor workshop is locked from outside too. "Grab a flare."

Norstad did as instructed and stepped out into a wind that was picking up strength. He triggered the flare which burned a red firework flame from his fist as they walked into the forming blizzard. Strand locked the tractor workshop. "These are the only keys," he said. "I'll keep them on me."

"What do you think is wrong?" Norstad asked.

"I don't know, but that isn't normal... We dig something up from another world and people suddenly stop listening and one goes into dreamland. Safety first. We isolate it."

Norstad nodded, gave a thumbs up then headed back towards the entrance.

\----- X \-----

Norstad and Strand were removing their coats when they heard a man cry out in pain. They looked to one another, then ran to the source. The rec room. It was Kleppa, falling forward out of his chair and rolling to his back in the grip of a seizure of some kind. His hands grabbed at his head, he foamed from the mouth, he twisted and writhed in pain whilst sucking in air and biting to hold his breath before bursting it out and sucking in again.

"What's wrong with him?" Strand asked.

"Nothing serious," Bjorn said as he stood up and moved back. "Epilepsy. Just let him have his seizure. All we need to do is make sure that he doesn't hurt himself. It will be over in a few minutes."

Norstad knelt beside Kleppa and rested a hand on his shoulder.

"It'sssss nnnnnn," Kleppa babbled.

"It's okay, Kleppa. Just be cool, ride it out." Norstad said.

The biologist shook his head and opened his eyes at Norstad, trying to speak, trying to say something.

"Bjorn, you sure this is epilepsy? He's looking at me." Norstad asked.

The doctor didn't answer.

Strand was about to ask again when he noticed a peculiarity to the crew. They had taken opposite sides of the rec room. Kleppa was on the floor suffering and in pain. Norstad was holding him and behind him stood himself and Oyvind.

On the other side of the rec room stood Bjorn at the centre, flanked by the climatology boys, Hans, Pederson and Rolland on one side, and Finn, MacCloud, Ingvar and Moller on the other. They looked unmoved by the situation.

"Are you going to help?" Strand asked Bjorn directly. "This is a medical emergency. Are you going to help?"

"It's an epileptic seizure," Bjorn responded. "There isn't anything to do. We let it pass, put him into bed so he can rest and that will be the end of it."

The way he said it, the impassive manner, not to mention the deadpan faces of the men flanking him told Strand that this would not be the end of it. Something was happening. Something strange. It wouldn't end with an epileptic seizure. Strand could sense it.

This would only be the beginning.
Part 2

Strangers

Kleppa didn't come round easily. Norstad, Strand and Oyvind helped the biologist to his feet and half walked, half carried him to his room. They sat him on the side of the bed and Strand unfastened his boots and pulled them off as Norstad pulled the covers back.

"What the hell is going on with these guys?" Oyvind asked. He had his back to them, standing in the doorway and looking out into the corridor. "It's like they don't care."

"Weird, something weird," Norstad said. "They were all stood around that thing in the ice. Just staring at it."

"Then what do we do?" Oyvind asked.

"Nothing," Strand replied. "We keep it together and go about our routines... We get them to go about their routines... Kleppa, Kleppa can you hear me? I'm going to come and check on you every hour, okay?"

"Bjorn's coming," Oyvind said.

Norstad and Strand moved to the doorway expecting the doctor to come in but he passed without even acknowledging their presence. Strand stepped out into the corridor watching as he went towards the tractor workshop.

"It's locked," Strand called. "It's staying locked." Bjorn tried the handle and pushed at the door, then turned on his heels and walked back along the corridor to Strand. "What the hell is wrong with you, man? Kleppa is barely conscious and you're not tending to him."

"He'll be fine," the doctor said. "You'll all be fine."

\----- X \-----

Strand called everyone to the rec room for a meeting. The music was off. The tone was serious. "I want to talk to everybody about safety," he began. "When it comes to safety we are all duty bound to put the welfare of camp crew above any other consideration. I know we've found something exciting. I'm just as thrilled as anybody, but when it comes to the way we do business it's safety first, science second, then adventure last and we do things in that order for a reason."

The men sat impassively. Norstad found it unusual that none of them had gone for hot drinks. Usually they would have their fingers wrapped around a warm mug with steam rising from it, but tonight they all sat staring into space. It looked as though Strand's words were going in one ear and out the other.

"Look at them," Oyvind whispered to Norstad. "They're in their own little worlds... what the hell has happened to them?"

Strand talked for a while to a silent room. He repeated his concerns, he gave his reasons and labelled the point. "Finally, I want to talk about that thing in the ice." At this, Bjorn, Finn and Hans raised their gaze to glare attentively at the camp commander. "Some of you seem to have changed in disposition since it was brought back and that worries me. Some of you have behaved unusually... Does anybody disagree?"

The men didn't respond. They barely seemed to have registered the question. Strand turned towards Norstad and Oyvind and the three of them shared the furrowed brows and tight lips of concern.

"Things feel strange. Some people here are behaving strangely. So until things are back to rights and I feel assured that we're operating safely that thing in the workshop will remain locked and off limits... Now I suggest we all try and unwind and relax tonight. Tomorrow, we can start fresh and look at the situation again... Would anybody like to say anything?"

Silence.

Unmitigated silence.

Strand selected some music, contemporary blues, a bit of light rock and roll. He looked to the cook. "Mr. MacCloud, the evening meal, if you please." He rolled through the keys on his belt, isolated one and gave it to Oyvind. "Bring the beer," he whispered to both Oyvind and Norstad. "Bring all of it, let's try and turn these guys back into happy drunken assholes."

The food was served. Cabbage soup followed by meatballs and pasta.

The beer was served. Strand put an open bottle in front of every man and left the opener with the other crates.

John Lee Hooker played on the stereo, singing Boom Boom, but even the master bluesman couldn't invigorate the crew. It was painful. A dead party with the host doing everything possible to help the guests have fun. It wasn't that they rejected Strand, it was more that they gave one word answers to questions that killed conversations.

Norstad took a single beer. "I'm drinking just this one," he said privately to Oyvind. "God help me I want to drink myself to oblivion to escape this weirdness but at the same time I want to be stone cold sober."

"I hear you," Oyvind said. "I want to hook that thing back onto the tractor and take it back and leave it there."

The evening died a slow death. After a few hours the crew started drifting off to bed at times much earlier than normal. Strand occasionally patrolled the corridor to make sure nobody was trying to get into the workshop, but the men seemed true to their intentions of going to bed and sleeping. By midnight only Norstad, Oyvind and Strand were left in the rec room. "I've changed my mind," said Norstad. "I'm having another beer before bedtime." He opened a bottle and brought two more for Oyvind and Strand.

"You know what scares me," said Oyvind. "They've left all that beer. I feel like we're in the Twilight Zone. In what universe do these guys sit quietly ignoring beer?"

"I can't understand Bjorn," said Strand. "We had a medical emergency and it didn't register with him."

"I've known the Doc for five years now," Norstad said shaking his head. "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed he could behave like that." To Strand he asked, " Have you got a plan of what to do next?"

The commander shrugged. "We see what happens tomorrow. If anything is amiss, even slightly, I'll radio Troll and Tor and inform them we're evacuating to the American bases. McMurdo preferably. Outpost 31 at a push but that's a small base like ours."

Norstad sucked air over his teeth. "Full evac? For what reason? You can't say what we're all thinking... that there's a thing in a block of ice and people are acting weird."

"I don't even need to say that. There's only twelve of us here. One is unconscious and eight have diminished capacity for unknown reasons... It would be my decision and I'd happily lose my job over being wrong if it keeps people safe."

\----- X \-----

Norstad could hear boots walking the corridor by early morning. There were voices; serious tones. His clock said it was half six. The camp normally didn't awaken and get moving until eight.

He sat on the edge of the bed holding his head in his hands. Terrible dreams of being fed rotten food by an old Japanese woman who was offering sex. She was diseased, the woman in his dreams, she offered sex and sweetness but it was bad. The food was rotten and just thinking about it made him gag.

He stood feeling as though he had a hangover. "Bad dreams," he mumbled. Jeepers, he felt lousy.

He opened the door to find Hans and Pederson patrolling the corridor. "Morning fellas," he said. Both looked at him impassively then walked away. Whatever had happened to them yesterday, whatever mysterious wizardry had been cast upon them hadn't dissipated. "Ah, to hell with you," he whispered.

Before heading to the rec room he tapped on Kleppa's door. "Hey, Asgeir... Kleppa? Are you in there?" There was no response. Norstad turned the handle and found Kleppa sitting up in his bed, shuddering and trembling with fear. He had the covers pulled up to his neck like a child scared of a dark shadow in their bedroom. "Kleppa, what's wrong?"

The biologist looked up. "It's dying... It's dying and it needs help before it dies."

Norstad sat on the edge of the bed. "What's dying?"

Kleppa pulled the sheet down slightly. "The Thing... it's dying."

Norstad rubbed his eyes. "I'm glad you're talking... but, man, you're not talking sense."

"It's alive, Norstad," Kleppa said, suddenly paranoid and looking through his open door. "The Thing in the ice... it's not dead, but it's dying in there. It needs to get out."

Norstad didn't pay attention. "Are you hungry? You missed dinner last night. Are you well enough to come and get some breakfast, or do you want me to bring you some?"

Kleppa shook his head. "No. I want to go home. I want to go back to Norway."

"Alright then. I think perhaps you need a few more hours sleep. I'll come back and look in shortly."

\----- X \-----

Strand watched the crew filter in for breakfast. MacCloud was working diligently, he had the coffee already prepared and spooned out bowls of porridge as each man arrived.

"Finn, what are your plans for today?" Strand asked.

"General maintenance," the engineer answered whilst staring into space. "I'll check the station integrity."

"Ah, ha. And Ingvar, what are your plans for today?"

"Dog sled check, dog exercise and laundry." Like Finn, he answered impassively whilst staring into space. It was all it took to convince Strand that something was really wrong in the camp. He went to the radio room and powered up the shortwave transceiver and left for a few minutes whilst the electronics warmed. Like most things in the Antarctic, it was always a good idea to let machines wake up and acclimate before pressing them into service. He dialled the volume low and listened to the background static, then adjusted the squelch to cut the white noise.

He saw Norstad heading for the rec room and followed him. More of the crew were taking breakfast. All blank faced, staring into their porridge.

"How are these guys?" Norstad asked. "It doesn't look any different to yesterday."

"It isn't," the commander replied rubbing his eyes between thumb and finger. "How about you? You're looking rough."

Norstad shook his head, trying to blow away the cobwebs. "I feel like dirt. Bad dreams and nightmares all the way through."

"Yeah, me too. Did you check on Kleppa?"

"I did, he's awake and talking but he's not making a whole lot of sense. I think there's something wrong with him."

"Something's wrong with everything. I'm about to radio McMurdo Sound and request we all take a trip down there for medicals but I think you should fly Kleppa down this morning. I don't like that he had a seizure. There's no history of that happening in his medical file, so as it's the first time it's prudent to get him checked out before winter locks us in."

Norstad nodded.

Strand returned to the radio room and checked the frequency for McMurdo coms. The American base was immense and could support over a thousand people. They had radiotelephone and teletype links to New Zealand and rapid emergency transport if they couldn't handle an event at their own field hospital.

He cleared his throat and called it out in English. "CQ DX, for McMurdo Station. This is Fafnir Station. Do you read me, over." He waited... nothing. "CQ DX, for McMurdo Station. This is Fafnir Station..." then he noticed the warning light on the shortwave, a tiny red light with the name VSWR. He set the unit to low power and keyed the microphone. The red light came on again. The VSWR, or v-swar stood for voltage standing wave ratio. When the signal went out of the radio, the VSWR showed how much was reflected back by the antenna. Too much reflection could blow the electronics and damage the set.

Strand hunted on the shelf between books, cables and spare parts for the v-swar meter and jump cable. He disconnected the antenna from the shortwave and patched the meter between the radio and aerial and keyed the microphone again... The needle of the meter blew straight across to the opposite side of the dial showing the signal reflection at one hundred percent.

"What the heck?" Strand said aloud. "Is the aerial down?" He got out of his seat and followed the antenna cable to where it passed through a hole drilled in the window frame. He could see the antenna tied up to the roof of the dog shed.

Then he noticed the problem.

"Oh, my God," was all he could say.

Outside of the window the antenna cable was cut. It wasn't torn or broken, it was cut. More importantly, he could see on the side of the dog shed the other end of the cable. The length of coaxial between the two buildings had been cut away.

\----- X \-----

"We must be allowed to carry out scientific work on the specimen," Bjorn said with some force. "It needs to be eased from the ice gently, but time is against us. We must do it now and I demand you hand over the keys."

Strand shook his head. "Nobody is going into the tractor workshop."

"That's not for you to decide," said Hans. The other two climatology boys flanked him and the trio joined Strand to surround the commander. "You're not a scientist. You're a Navy man and you're going to destroy the most important scientific discovery on Earth through your own ignorance."

"You must allow us to do our jobs," said Pederson.

"This is too important for you to decide alone," Moller chimed in.

"Give me the keys," Bjorn said with his hand out.

Strand unclipped the keys from his belt, held them tightly in his fist and pushed his hand and the keys deeply into his pocket. He stepped back to break out of the circle of inquisition. "I've given you my answer and the answer is nobody goes in there."

"We must get it out of the ice," Bjorn said, pleading. "We must."

"Are you listening to yourself?" Strand spat back with incredulity. "That thing came from outer space. It could be covered in space bacteria, space viruses, space disease. I thought you wanted to go back and look at it, but there's no way in hell you're going to take it out of the ice. That only happens in a controlled scientific environment, not a tool shed; and it's done by men who know what they're doing, not three stoner climate geeks and a half-assed medical doctor... What the hell? You want to thaw it out? You're ridiculous."

Strand turned and left the rec room. He saw the door open to Kleppa's room and found Norstad in there with the biologist who was shaking in fear and gripping his temples. "It's dying," Kleppa said. "It's dying and they won't let it die."

Norstad shrugged his shoulders. "He's not saying much else."

"That's the least of our worries. I tried to radio McMurdo Sound and found the antenna cable has been cut. It's not snapped, it's cut. Sabotaged. There's a section of coaxial missing between the station and the dog shed."

"What?" Norstad gasped.

"It's the thing in the ice," Kleppa chimed in. "It's not ready. It can't let us go until its ready."

Norstad and Strand turned their gaze to the mumbling Kleppa. "Can you fly him out?" Strand asked. "Take him to McMurdo and get him checked out?"

"I can, but if the antenna is down then you can't operate a beacon. I can fly out, but unless we've got perfect weather I wouldn't be able to find you on the flight back in. We need the navigation beacon."

"It won't let you," Kleppa hissed. He grabbed at his temples then pressed his eyes in with his thumbs whilst wincing in pain. "It's sending men to the helicopter now. It needs the helicopter and the tractor and won't let you leave yet"

"Kleppa, what are you talking about?" Strand asked.

"It's dying. It needs to get out of the ice and it needs to escape."

"What's dying?"

"The thing in the ice," he said with a burst of energy. "It's dying."

"It's dying?" Norstad said. "You think it's not dead? Why do you think that?"

Kleppa lowered his hands from his face and made two tight fists. "Because I can hear it whispering."

Strand made a small shake of the head. "Prep the chopper. Take him to McMurdo and raise the alarm that we have an unexplained situation developing. I'll get the beacon repaired."

\----- X \-----

Norstad wrapped himself in outdoor gear to prepare the helicopter. Over the cotton base layers he pulled on a fleece jacket and winter coat. It would take at least an hour to get in the air and the weather was already looking bad. He pushed through the exit into heavy snowfall. Flying would suck. Visibility was below a hundred meters and if it stayed like this there was no way he could return.

He trudged to the chopper stopping to check the antenna cable. Strand was right, it was cleanly cut on both sides and missing almost four meters where it stretched from one building to the next. Who in the hell was so insane they would cut off their coms?

He thought of what Kleppa was saying. His assertion that he could 'hear it whispering'. It should have been the rantings of a crazy man. Except it wasn't. From the moment Kleppa said it, he realised he'd heard something too. Whispers. Temptations. Odd tastes in his mouth and strange stirrings in his groin and stomach.

He could see two men by the helicopter. They flanked the machine and stared at him, unmoving as silhouettes in the snowfall. "Oh, you're joking with me..."

He moved towards them to discover the figures as Ingvar and Finn.

"Where are you going," Finn asked.

"I need to prep for flight, what are you doing out here in snowfall?"

"If you want to prepare the helicopter," Finn said, "you will need the blowtorch. It is in the tractor workshop. Do you have the keys."

Norstad took a few breaths. He scrutinised the faces of Ingvar and Finn. Why were they so different? They were acting bizarre. Crazy. Insane... but were they crazy enough to cut the line of communication? "Finn? What the heck is happening to you? You're my friend but you're acting like a zombie."

Finn remained impassive. "You need to unlock the tractor workshop to get the blowtorch."

"Oh, really," Norstad said. "Well... I better go and get the keys."

\----- X \-----

Norstad came back into the base and went to find Strand. It was easy, he just followed the sound of the argument coming from the radio room. "You don't know what you're doing. You have to let science take command here," Bjorn was yelling.

"But you're not a scientist, Bjorn. You're a medical doctor. The other guys, they're climate scientists. The only person who has a remote understanding is Kleppa and he..."

"...Kleppa can't be trusted," Bjorn yelled.

Strand went quiet.

Norstad approached and saw Strand raising a hand as though to signal he should keep his mouth closed. "What do you mean, Kleppa can't be trusted?"

Bjorn softened his tone. "The type of seizure he had... it can make people delusional. It can make people say strange things. You should not pay any attention to what he says."

Strand held eye contact for a moment, seemingly as he tried to find the right words. Norstad had the sense to stay quiet. "And what do you think he's saying?" Strand finally asked. "You don't know what he's saying. I mean, he might agree with you. He might be telling me to let you into the workshop."

"He isn't saying that," Bjorn said with conviction.

"But how do you know? I've been trying to get you to treat him. You haven't... and you haven't spoken to him. So what makes you think..."

"...Kleppa can't be trusted," Bjorn interrupted. "Now give me the keys to the workshop, otherwise I'll find my own way in."

Strand stood up to face his adversary but the doctor was already heading out of the room. "You'll do no such thing," he called out, but it was too late, Bjorn was out of there. Strand put his hands on his hips and purged a few deep breaths. "We've got real problems here. When you get the chopper up I want you to take Oyvind as well. We have no control here... How long to prep the helicopter?"

Norstad shook his head. "Finn and Ingvar are outside. They're expecting me to open the workshop to get the blowtorch."

"Ah... I forgot about that."

"Everything is in there. The blowtorch, the anti-freeze. I checked the antenna cable and you're right it's cut on both sides. We could patch it with co-ax but that's in the workshop too... I think... I think sooner or later they're just going to try and break in anyway. They may be trying now. I don't know why Ingvar and Finn were outside but I've got my suspicions."

Strand nodded. "I agree."

"We could take Kleppa to McMurdo in the tractor," Norstad volunteered.

Strand shook his head. "It's too slow and too far. You would be driving for three days and three nights and you'd have to pull a sled with fuel drums. What we need is to patch the coms, but the coaxial cable is in the workshop. As is the blowtorch, the anti-freeze... and so is that thing in the ice and pretty soon I'm sure these guys will be in there too."

Norstad leaned against the doorframe and looked into the empty corridor. In his mind he apologised for all the times he'd thought little of Strand. For all of his social awkwardness the commander was the person you want to be stood next to when the building catches fire. "I don't know what we should do," Norstad whispered. "Things are getting weird and we're slowly being cut off."

"We're not isolated yet. We can use the tractor if we're desperate. We can open the workshop and get what we need. In a worst case scenario we open the workshop, let those guys in, take what we need and you, I, Oyvind and Kleppa head down to McMurdo to seek help for the others... But my job, my overarching priority is to look out for the safety and welfare of the entire crew."

"I don't think these guys care."

"No, they don't," Strand said with a sigh. "They're jeopardising safety for themselves and others."

"Then let's leave them. Let's go and get help. We're three guys against eight. Those eight need help and we're not in a position to do that. I mean, we've got a saboteur, or suspect a saboteur has cut the radio line. Do we wait until they damage something else? We've tried to help them and they haven't responded. Perhaps the best thing we can do is go now and come back with help."

Strand nodded. "I agree. It's better than waiting for things to get worse... But first I want to speak with Kleppa. Go and find Oyvind, bring him to Kleppa's room. We'll see how the little guy is and we'll take a vote on what to do next."

\----- X \-----

Kleppa was sweating profusely. His skin was white and his eyes darted about as his hands twisted and fidgeted.

"Kleppa, do you know what is happening with the men, or what has happened to you?" Strand asked. "Do you know? Can you explain it?"

The biologist nodded rapidly. "It's dying."

"You've said that before. Explain to us what is dying."

"The thing in the ice... It's not dead, but its dying."

Norstad asked, "How do you know that?"

"I can hear it... It's in my mind, trying to hurt me. It wants me to help it out of the ice but I'm too scared."

Norstad looked to Oyvind and Strand. "I know this will sound weird, but I've felt something strange too. Like a compulsion that I should be in there helping it out of the ice."

Oyvind nodded. "I dreamed of exotic women taking me to the workshop to make love. I've been thinking about it since I woke up and I feel a strong compulsion to go and check that there aren't any women in there."

Strand screwed his face and held his chin in his hand. "I had dreams of escaping monsters and the only place of safety was the workshop."

"That's what it does," Kleppa said. "It gets in your mind and makes you do things. But it's dying. Soon it will die unless it can get out of the ice."

"Wait a minute," Strand said to Kleppa directly. "Are you suggesting that the thing is alive... and it can read our minds?"

"It's gonna be real mad when it gets to me," Norstad mumbled.

Kleppa shook his head. "Not all people. But it can sense feelings... and send feelings."

"How the heck can it do that?" Oyvind asked.

"It's from outer space, man," Norstad said. "Who knows what it can do?"

"Regardless of where it came from, that thing has a hold over the crew and I think we can agree we've all felt strange compulsions towards it... In the interests of safety I say we make sure it's dead. If it's frozen in ice it's biologically contained and I'd like to keep it that way. So how could we make sure we kill it, whilst keeping it trapped in ice?"

"Thermite," Oyvind said. "In a straight drop. We put a canister over its head, or it's chest and let the thermite melt straight through the ice and through the creature. The heat will cauterize any living tissue as it burns. Then we pack the melt-hole with snow, some water and let it refreeze and the thing is sealed again."

Strand nodded, "Norstad, do you agree?" Norstad nodded. "Okay, Kleppa you stay here. Let's go to the explosives shack and get a thermite charge."

The three men left the room.

Kleppa sat back on his bed and pulled the covers to his chin. "It can hear you," he whispered. "It knows you're coming."

\----- X \-----

Strand, Norstad and Oyvind prepared themselves at the exit. Decanite and thermite was kept in its own storage shed one hundred meters from the base and dug two meters into the ground. In the event of an accident, the blast was going straight up in the air.

"Okay, here's what I'm thinking," Strand said. "We all go together to the explosives shack. Oyvind, you get what you need. We come back together and head straight for the workshop. Once we're in, Norstad, you and I make sure the door stays closed whilst Oyvind does what he needs to do."

They stepped outside. The wind had picked up and visibility was cut by the snowfall. It wasn't a blizzard yet but it soon would be. The explosives shack was barely a smudge through the weather. The men took a few steps from the base and grabbed for a guide cable, strung out between the station and the shack as they began the walk against the weather.

There was a grumbling sound that carried through the air as they reached the shack. "That's the tractor," Strand shouted. All three of them turned to look but with a sudden pick up in the weather even the base became obscured. They could see nothing, in the space of a few seconds the weather turned their world into a whiteout where there was nothing but the guideline against their hands and the growling of the tractor's engine.

They traversed the guideline, moving in deep snow, lifting their knees high and sinking into deep foot holes. The hundred meter walk left them tired and breathing heavily. Once the weather turned bad it was an effort to walk only one hundred meters.

Strand held the door open as Norstad and Oyvind came inside. The shack was a relief from the wind, but no respite from the cold. There was no light in the explosives shed so the door was left open to cast light down the stairs. At the bottom, on two racks, were wooden crates of thermite and decanite grenades. Oyvind grabbed two thermite cans and pushed them into his coat pockets, then took a third for good luck. He searched for something, getting on his hands and knees, looking under the shelf units.

The growl of the tractor became louder.

Oyvind stood up holding what he was looking for. It was a plant pot. "We need this," he said passing it to Norstad. "Let's go."

As they came out of the shed they saw the six beams of light coming from above the tractor cab pushing towards them. Then like some mythical beast bursting through the weather, the bright orange nose of the vehicle rushed towards them. Snow kicked up from its four caterpillar tracks as the men dove to the side.

"RUN!" Strand yelled.

Norstad lifted himself from the snow and looked at the plant pot he was holding. His instinct was to toss it aside but Oyvind said it was important. He saw the two figures of Oyvind and Strand rushing along the guideline as the tractor spun around behind him. It hit the corner of the explosives shack and pulled one side of the building down, the roof collapsing and falling into the hole above the explosives.

"Oh, hell no!" Could it explode? Could the shack explode?

He fought to his feet and ran along the guideline as the sound of the collapsing wooden building filled him with the terror of an impending explosion. The beams of light from the tractor swung around him. Yellow light on the snow casting a long shadow from his running body. His shadow got shorter, the lights grew brighter and the tractor engine intensified as the vehicle rushed up behind him.

Who was driving? Who the hell was trying to kill him?

The lights burned on his back and his shadow rushed up to join him. It was going to hit. Norstad turned quickly as the orange nose was right on him and dove to the floor. For less than a second he managed to see the driver. It was Moller, the balloon man.

Norstad hit the ground directly between the tracks and felt the underside of the tractor hit his shoulder as he fell into the snow. The beast rumbled overhead and away, passing directly over him, his body slipping into the gap between the tracks.

Norstad looked up to see the caterpillar tracks mowing down the guideline, ripping out the posts and burying the route as the vehicle rushed on towards Strand and Oyvind. He climbed out of the snow and followed, running hard to keep the tractor in his sight as his only real guide back to the camp.

As the buildings emerged out of the snowfall the tractor engine eased down and the vehicle turned right to head past the dog shed and towards the helicopter, slowly fading from view as it re-entered the blizzard.

Norstad was staggering and falling with exhaustion by the time he reached the station. He opened the door and was grabbed by Strand.

"He tried to kill me," Norstad gasped. "It was Moller. He ran me down."

"He tried to kill all of us," Oyvind gasped.

Strand threw his gloves aside and pulled off the outdoor coat. He unclipped his bunch of keys. "Have you got what you need?" he asked Oyvind. The man nodded his reply as he took the plant pot from Norstad. Strand held up the key to the workshop. "Then let's make this fast."

\----- X \-----

The station was empty. The men had deserted the rec room and there was no sound coming from any of their quarters. Strand unlocked the door to the workshop and entered first, clicking the lights on.

The block of ice stretched to almost the full size of the space. Norstad and Oyvind entered and Strand locked the door behind them, trapping the three of them in the room.

Oyvind didn't waste any time. He climbed atop the ice and positioned the plant pot.

"Norstad, get the coaxial," Strand said pointing to a roll of cable on a high shelf. "And some wire cutters and tape." Oyvind got off the ice and started unfastening the trigger from the thermite. "What's the story, Oyvind?" he asked.

"I need to dismantle it. The grenades throw molten iron in every direction," he answered whilst unscrewing the trigger. He carefully poured the silvery powder into the plant pot. "When I light it here it will pour through the hole in the pot and fall in a straight line."

Oyvind took his cigarette lighter and popped the lid. He sparked a flame and reached towards the thermite.

Norstad had climbed onto a workbench and was stood on tiptoes to reach the coaxial cable from a high shelf when the whole building suddenly shook, the walls flexing to the sound of cracking wood.

The workshop doors exploded outwards, ripped out by the tractor. The powerful beams of the tractor lights flooded the space, with blinding glare.

"LIGHT IT!" Strand yelled.

The men came rushing in. Hans launching himself at Oyvind as he touched the thermite sending a shower of sparks upwards. Hans threw punches wildly, knocking over the plant pot and spilling the contents as the thermite reaction took hold. The powder was blown across the top of the ice. Once thermite was lit nothing could put it out. Not cold, nor ice, nor the deepest depths of the ocean and had Oyvind's plan been given a few more seconds the molten iron compound would have burned a hole straight through the thing. Instead the burning powder became a fluid of molten iron rolling across the surface of the ice, filling the room with smoke and steam as it thawed the top layer.

Strand rushed to help Oyvind but the room had become a blind bar fight as more men joined Hans in attacking. Steam and smoke from the thermite filled the room. The lights from the tractor shining through the open doors turned the atmosphere into a glaring fog. Men's fists and arms flailed in blind, awkward wrestling as Oyvind was pulled away from the ice block. Norstad was on his back, fallen from the workbench when the doors were ripped open. Strand grabbed Norstad and pushed him towards the outer doors, then went back for Oyvind who was wrestling with Hans. A man at the side, possibly Ingvar, was holding an ice axe menacingly, ready to enter the fray if Oyvind got the better of Hans. Meanwhile, at the ice block, the other men desperately tried to brush away the burning thermite with their sleeves; risking injury to preserve their precious thing.

Strand grabbed at Oyvind and dragged him out of Hans' grip and back towards the doors. Hans and Ingvar watched them leave, standing as imposing silhouettes in the steam. The other men surrounded the ice block whilst Bjorn positioned himself at the head as though he were high priest to this alien altar.

Norstad stepped in to guide Oyvind back out past the tractor, out of the steam and smoke filled air and into the blizzard.

The tractor was hooked to the doors with chain. Madmen. They'd ripped the doors open with the tractor.

"Wait," Oyvind called as they retreated. He went to the back of the tractor and opened the doors to grab a case of decanite charges, still inside since the trip to the craft. He opened his coat and stuffed a few thermite grenades in too.

Whilst Oyvind grabbed his supplies Strand ventured back to the front of the tractor. Finn was uncoupling the chain from the front tow bar. He checked the workshop doors as though looking for damage. "Finn," Strand called in a whisper. "Finn, what are you doing?" The engineer looked at the commander briefly then went back to his doors.

Inside the room, the block of ice was surrounded by the men who had equipped themselves with ice axes. All of them stared at Strand, all of them held their axes menacingly, a silent show of how determined they were to defend their prize.

Strand stepped back to rejoin Norstad and Oyvind as Finn closed the door.
Part 3

Identify Yourself

Strand's quarters were marginally bigger than any other but the space was taken up by filing cabinets containing paperwork of unknown purpose. He got to his knees and pulled a steel chest from under the bed. It was a gun case and once unlocked showed itself to contain a Heckler and Kock HK93 assault rifle and a P9 pistol. "You both did your national service I assume?"

"Yeah, I was a pilot," Norstad said.

"Ground forces," Oyvind said.

Strand handed the assault rifle to Oyvind. "Ground forces wins." He loaded the pistol and kept it for himself.

"No weapon for me?" Norstad said with a sudden worry. "What do I get?"

"You get to stand behind me until I fall," Oyvind replied as he started pushing bullets into the 40 shot magazine.

"I want to know what they're doing in there," Strand said whilst straightening his clothes and finger combing his hair. "There's a vent that goes through the wall of the science lab straight into the workshop."

"We blocked that?" Oyvind said with a shake of the head. "I remember it on the job sheet a long time ago. Cold air was blowing into the lab."

"Finn blocked it by folding a blanket and stuffing it behind the grille. Low tech. If we pull it out we should be able to see through into the workshop."

Norstad watched the two men gain in stature as they prepared their weapons. They had guns. They were dangerous. He had nothing. "What's the plan?" he asked softly. "Are we still looking to leave for McMurdo?"

"Yes," Strand said. "ASAP. The chopper's no good so we need the tractor and it's a three day trek. We need twelve days of rations from the galley and portable stoves. We need to lash fuel drums onto sleds to drag behind the tractor."

"What about Outpost #31?" Oyvind asked. "The American base is closer. In the tractor we can reach it in less than a day."

Strand looked to Norstad. "We can get to McMurdo by following the ridge... Can we navigate to #31?"

"We would need to home in on their navigation beacon. We'd need the directional radio from the helicopter. It can be removed in ten or fifteen minutes... but that isn't the problem. We would need #31 to be operating their beacon and if they're anything like us they'll only activate it when their helicopter is up. We can't guarantee they'll be broadcasting and that might leave us driving into the wilderness."

"I've got an idea to repair the radio," Oyvind said. "Instead of patching the cable between the radio and the dog shed, why not take the whole radio to the dog shed, connect it to the aerial and power it from the lighting circuit in there."

Strand and Norstad weighed up the proposal. "Genius," Strand said. "We can try that... But I still want to see inside the workshop. Let's go and take a peek first, then we'll try and fix the radio."

\----- X \-----

In the science lab, the men pushed things aside from one of the benches on Kleppa's side of the lab. Everything was neat and fastidious. Papers on clipboards were neat, the writing was neat, his petri dishes were stacked neatly and everything had its place. A far cry from the stoner climatologists he shared the room with who had mess and dirty coffee cups amongst the experiments.

Strand climbed onto the bench and reached up to pull off the grille cover. It was small, no more than twenty centimetres square. "I'm not going to be able to see anything," he said pulling the blanket out from the cavity wall. "Oyvind, can you connect the camera to the monitor?" he asked whilst pointing to the portable video unit.

Oyvind worked with the black and white monitor, spooling the cable to the camera and plugging the unit in to get it powered up. "Here!" He passed up the camera and stepped back to watch the screen as Strand pushed it into the vent. "Go closer, press it right against the grille... that's it. Keep it there."

Strand pushed the blanket back into the hole, wedging the camera in place. He climbed down from the bench to look at the monitor. On the little TV screen they could see the men in the workshop working on the ice with axes, chipping away in delicate and careful motions. Finn was stood to one side with the blowtorch, unlit but ready for use. MacCloud, the cook, had a small brush that he used to clear away the ice chips.

"They really are going to get it out," Norstad said.

"They're insane," Oyvind opined.

Strand watched for a full minute then said, "Kleppa was right. This thing has some kind of psychological hold over them."

"And he said it's not dead," Norstad added.

The three men left the science lab and went back to Kleppa's room. The biologist was off his bed and had cowered into a ball in the corner, his legs pressed to his belly and his arms wrapped around his knees. He looked a state, but it was the best he'd looked since yesterday.

"Kleppa, this thing in the ice, how does it control the men?" Strand asked.

"It whispers to them."

"So how do we stop it whispering, is there something we can do?"

"The whispering is the host... Not the... not the other thing."

"I don't understand, Kleppa," Strand said kneeling down to look the biologist in the eye. "Help me understand?"

Kleppa rubbed his eyes and took a deep ragged breath inwards. "The thing we can see in the ice, the creature, I don't think that is the problem. It is still alive, but there is something else in there with it. I think it's a parasite of some kind. I don't understand what it's whispering, I can't understand what it is trying to say... but there are two voices. One voice is temptation, trying to encourage us to free it from the ice. The other voice is a warning."

"A warning of what?" Norstad asked.

"A warning against the parasite... I think the creature in the ice is benign, it can sense our thoughts but it has been hijacked, it's body is being consumed by a parasite that has taken over its form. Sometimes I can hear the parasite and sometimes I can hear the creature."

"And what does the creature say," Strand asked.

"It tells us to run."

"And the parasite? What does it want?"

Kleppa looked up as his eyes teared over. "Everything. It wants to spread. It wants to get out of the ice and spread."

\----- X \-----

Strand handed his pistol to Norstad as he worked on the shortwave set and the power transformer. From a desk drawer he found a pair of scissors to strip wire with. "Oyvind, when we get in the dog shed, we'll need to wire this power unit into a light fitting."

Oyvind looked at the fitted plug. "There's no socket in there, but we can cut off the plug, cut the end bulb off the string and splice it direct."

The three of them moved to the exit to grab their coats and found Kleppa booting up unsteadily. "Are you coming outside?" Strand asked.

"I'm scared, I don't want to be here alone."

Coats on, gloves on, Norstad opened the door and began the short stretch to the dog shed, pulling open the doors to a few soft barks from the huskies. The dogs acknowledging the men's presence, standing in their pens in expectation of exercise.

"I'll be outside," Oyvind said. "I'll get on the roof, unclip what's left of the cable and figure out how to get it down to you."

Strand followed the lighting string. Eight dim yellow bulbs in a daisy chain hung between the wooden rafters. A sound came from above as Oyvind climbed onto the roof. The thud of boots, the sound of cable being ripped away, popping the brackets under the strain. "Turn off the lights," Strand said pointing to the switch by the door.

Kleppa shut off the power. The little man's pale face was surrounded by the fur of his coat hood. "I think it senses what we're doing," he whispered.

Strand held his hands as a stirrup on his lap and beckoned Norstad, offering to boost him higher. The pilot climbed onto the beam above the dog pens and Strand handed him the scissors. "Cut the end bulb off and strip the wires back."

Norstad straddled the beam with his legs hanging either side and got to work trimming the cable. Kleppa pointed to a thin black wire snaking its way down from the ceiling, the antenna cable, pulled away and threaded through a pencil sized hole in the roof. "Pass the transformer," he called. Strand lifted it to him and he balanced it on the beam above them, cutting away the plug and letting it fall into the dog pen. He stripped the wires and twisted them onto the lighting cable then held out his hands for the radio.

"It knows," Kleppa said. "It's sensing what we think."

Norstad plugged the power pack into the radio. "Juice it," he called for Kleppa to reactivate the power. The lights came back on and a burst of static poured from the speaker. He let the microphone dangle down as he peeled back the sheathing of the coaxial and wrapped the central core around a fixing screw.

Oyvind came back into the building. "Are we on? Are we live?"

"Just a second," Norstad said twisting the outer wire between thumb and finger to wrap around the second fixing screw. "That's it."

"Show me the frequency," Strand asked. Norstad tipped the radio on the beam for Strand to see; it was still set for McMurdo.

The commander wasted no time. He keyed the microphone making the lights dim slightly as the radio took its share of the power. "CQ DX. CQ DX, this is Fafnir Station for McMurdo Sound. Emergency, do you copy, over?"

They waited a moment.

"CQ DX, Fafnir calling McMurdo Sound. Do you read me, over?"

The radio buzzed into life. A sleepy voice replied. "Copy you, Fafnir, this is McMurdo. Over."

All four men breathed out together. Oyvind grinned. Strand's shoulders relaxed and a smile touched his lips as he keyed the microphone to speak... Then the power cut out sending the dog shed into darkness.

"Oh, no... no, no, no..." Strand said.

"It knows," Kleppa said. "They've cut the power... MacCloud and Pederson are coming... and they're afraid."

Oyvind unslung the rifle from his shoulder.

"Let's get back inside," Strand said. "Unhook the radio, leave the transformer for now." Norstad unwound the wires to the antenna and unplugged the power pack. He dropped the radio to Strand and climbed off the beam.

The four men headed outside. Snowfall was light but the wind was strong, blowing a ceaseless drifting flow through the camp. Two figures emerged from the exit and ran towards them. Oyvind was quick with the rifle, jamming the stock in his shoulder and pointing the barrel. Norstad quickly followed raising the pistol as the men approached.

"Identify yourself!" Strand commanded.

"It's me. MacCloud... Don't shoot. Don't shoot."

The second man raised his head to reveal himself as Pederson. Then raised his hands in surrender. Neither of them were wearing outer coats and in this weather they would be dead within the hour if they didn't dress correctly.

"What do you want?" Norstad asked.

"Want?" MacCloud said with incredulity. "I want to get away from that thing in there. Bjorn has it out of the ice. He's insane."

Against the wind Strand yelled, "You're helping it too. You locked yourself in the workshop to help it and you cut us off. Now get out of the way."

The two men stepped aside looking ashamed but anxious not to be rejected.

"They're out from it," Kleppa said to Strand. "It doesn't control them anymore. The whispering is going quiet. I don't think it can hold on to the men. Not all of them. Not all at once."

"Are you sure?" Strand asked.

"Not entirely, but something is changing. It's going quiet. The whisper is going softer. It's all the parasite now, but it's definitely losing its strength."

"Alright... You boys are with us. But I promise you, Norstad, Oyvind, if these guys act freaky again you have authority to shoot them." MacCloud and Pederson looked to one another then to the men with guns. They looked lost and frightened. "Let's get back inside."

\----- X \-----

Once inside Norstad threw his gloves away quickly so he could hold the gun and he kept his eyes on MacCloud and Pederson who were both shivering from the brief exposure. It was gloomy throughout the base without power but at least it was still warm.

"How did you cut the power?" Strand asked Pederson as he helped brush snow from his clothing.

"I didn't cut it. It was Finn. He threw the trip switches at the generator."

"And how did you get out of the workshop? Did you come out by the corridor?"

MacCloud shook his head. "By the outer doors. That's how we met you outside. Bjorn locked the door from workshop to corridor. He only opened it to allow Finn out then locked it again when he returned."

"Is that when you escaped?"

Pederson made the reply. "We escaped when that thing started climbing out of the ice."

"It's horrible," MacCloud added. "It's back is made of blue worms. They're moving and sliding. It has three stalks on its head that look like eyes and squirming blue worms running down its back."

"It's hands are like claws," Pederson said holding his fingers into a twisted talon shape to demonstrate.

"It's legs bend into an awkward shape like a dog," MacCloud added. "But it's sick, or injured. It could barely move when it woke up and the others had to hold it and lift it out of the ice."

Strand, Norstad, Oyvind and Kleppa had all taken a step back to listen to the tale. MacCloud and Pederson behaved as men who had woken from a nightmare but now couldn't fully believe what they were saying had really happened. Was it real, or was it imagination?

"Let's get the power back on," Strand said. "Let's turn it on, keep it on and try with the radio again."

The odds had changed. They were now six, providing MacCloud and Pederson could be trusted. If what Kleppa said was true, that the creature was losing its ability to hold the men by whatever alien means it had, then they were now six men with guns against six without.

They headed along the corridor towards the workshop and ultimately the generator room until they passed the science laboratory. The video monitor was still active, running on battery power. "Let's take a look at this thing."

The men crowded the little black and white monitor to see dark shapes of the men bundled together, working on something. It looked like they were helping to dress someone. Bjorn was in the middle with his hands in the air.

"So where's the creature?" Norstad asked.

The men in the workshop worked at something with feverish energy for a few moments then stepped back to reveal Bjorn as he lowered his arms. The creature was hidden from view, standing behind him.

"What the?" cried MacCloud. "It's eye is stuck onto the back of Bjorn's head... Look. It has three eyes. One is drilled into Bjorn's head and the others are dug into his shoulders."

It was true, or it looked true. On the grainy black and white monitor, it appeared that something with bent legs was standing behind the doctor, but it had in some way fused with Bjorn, turning his skull into a malleable object to deform and warp into a teardrop shape.

"Are his arms getting longer, or is it just the video?" Oyvind asked.

The men stared at the screen, barely daring to breathe as they focussed on Oyvind's observation. It was true. Bjorn's hands were hanging by his side but were now closer to his knees and his fingers were slowly extending, growing to twice their normal length as his limbs became thin and spindly with the increased length. At the same time, the arms of the thing began to wither and absorb into its body, changing the thing behind into a monstrosity of thick bent legs supporting a smooth torso that then attached to the back of the doctor's head. A fusion of man with alien. The flesh morphing and moulding with the viscosity of poured honey.

Then one of the men in the workshop began stripping off his clothes. It was uncertain which of them it was, the clarity and angle of the image too difficult to give identification; but the naked man approached the amalgamated human alien being and wrapped his arms around the beast as though to hug it. Within moments, the man began to melt as though he was gripping an acid of such corrosive power it could demolish him as surely as a hot pan could melt butter. The thing was taking him, absorbing him, melting his flesh and adding the man's cells to its own to grow in mass.

"Strand... Strand, what the heck do we do?" Norstad asked with a sense of brewing panic.

The commander stared at the horror on the screen with an open mouth. "What we do? We get the hell out of here." Suddenly the commander was back, snapping away from the gruesome melting people on the monitor to bark commands and orders at the crew. "Oyvind, take Pederson and get the tractor. Bring it back to the entrance. If anyone gets in your way, shoot them... Norstad, you come with me, we'll try and get to the generator room, throw the trip switches and give the radio one last shot before we leave... MacCloud, we need provisions for six men to last three days, take Kleppa and get what you need from the galley. We all meet up at the exit in twenty minutes, we strap as much fuel as we can to the tractor and we head to McMurdo... Any questions?"

Nobody said anything.

"Gentlemen... See you in twenty minutes."

\----- X \-----

MacCloud worked through the larder at speed. He went straight for the high energy proteins and began packing a box with survival rations. "This is all we really need," he said passing an entire box of survival biscuits to Kleppa. "One pack lasts a man three days, but it's like eating stale tasteless cake. If we're going to be out there for three days, I want to take some hot foods, instant coffee, powdered milk and sugar... We're going to need cups and mess tins too."

Kleppa stared at the cook as he packed a few tins of soup into the box. He dropped three small gas canisters in there too. "What was it like?" Kleppa asked. "What did it feel like, when you were helping the thing?"

MacCloud stopped his larder raid to consider the question. "At the time it felt like bliss. Like being in a dream that was so warm and comfortable I would never want to leave. That was how it felt at the time."

"And how does it feel now?"

"Now... I'm terrified. I'm scared it could happen again and I just want to get as far away from it as possible." He took a small camping stove, a tripod burner that connected to the gas cylinders. He dropped it on top of the provisions. "This is all we need to survive." Then as an afterthought he opened a cupboard and took bars of chocolate and some cookies. "We'll take these too. To keep our spirits up."

\----- X \-----

Oyvind and Pederson fought against a howling wind and biting snowfall. Visibility was cut to less than twenty meters and from leaving the exit, they followed the building until they saw the orange mass of the tractor.

Pederson led the way, holding his hood forward with one hand as he stooped into the blizzard. "Come on," he yelled, beckoning with a sweeping wave of the arm as he ran towards the vehicle. He climbed onto the front caterpillar track and opened the door, beckoning Oyvind to enter first.

Oyvind unslung the rifle from his shoulder and climbed the caterpillar track to get into the vehicle. The air temperature inside the metal hulk was at least fifteen below, but getting out of the cutting wind and snow felt like he'd fallen into an oasis.

Pederson moved back along the caterpillar track towards the door and climbed inside. He smiled to Oyvind as he went to close the door, but suddenly the door pulled back, wrenching his arm. Hands stretched into the cabin and grabbed at his clothing to drag him back out of the vehicle. It was Hans, the leader of the climatology scientists. His thick blonde hair and beard uncovered. He wore no outdoor clothes. Madness. He would die without them. Oyvind thought Hans was fighting to get inside the tractor, but as Pederson began to scream he saw that Hans intention was to pull Pederson back out.

"Help me!" Pederson screeched, but it took only a moment for the man's huge frame to be sucked outside and into the blizzard. Oyvind pulled off the glove to his right hand, the better he could pull the rifle trigger, and positioned the weapon towards the door but it was too late. He could see nothing but snow lashing past the vehicle with flurries coming into the cabin.

"Pederson... PEDERSON!" he yelled.

From within the snowstorm he heard the piercing screams of Pederson. The man was crying out. In trouble, in need. Fighting against Hans in the midst of a ferocious snowstorm that cut visibility down to only a few meters.

Oyvind slid back across the seat and out of the vehicle, swinging the rifle ahead of him, searching through three hundred and sixty degrees. "Pederson... Pederson..."

He heard screams coming back, but mixed with the howling of the wind it was impossible to determine the direction.

He had to go. He knew he had to go before Hans or some other crazy man from the workshop attacked him, but he couldn't leave a man in a blizzard. "PEDERSON," he yelled again. "PEDERSON..."

There was no answer.

With the gun as his protection he circled the tractor, crying out the man's name, screaming into the wind in the hope of a response but with one full circle of the tractor he knew it was hopeless to do this alone. He would take the tractor back to the exit and alert the others. They couldn't leave Pederson out in this. They had to come back and find him.

\----- X \-----

Norstad and Strand cut through the ice tunnel to the generator shack. When the camp was first built, the engineers had cut a trench to make a refuge from the weather. The walls were ice, but it was possible to survive in this subterranean corridor. Once the camp was functioning, this existing corridor had dictated where the generator would go.

The lights were on in the corridor. Pale bulbs on a string that looped along the wall, but despite the illumination, the far end of the ice tunnel was barely visible.

"Let's go," said Strand, ushering Norstad forward.

"You expect me to go first?"

"You have the gun."

Norstad contemplated for a second then started down towards the generator. The machine could be heard rumbling which meant Kleppa was probably right in that it was only the trip switches that had been thrown.

At the far end of the tunnel, Norstad climbed up the wooden steps into the generator shack. The bulk of the machine was a heavy looking diesel engine painted in dark green. Against the wall were racks of spare parts. As the generator was essential to life support there were almost enough spare parts to build a second generator should it be necessary.

"The switches," Strand said pointing to a grey fuse box on the wall. Norstad opened the unit. Two banks of switches presented themselves, almost all of them were shut off. All except the workshop. "They cut power to everything except themselves." Norstad said.

"Put it on in the dog shed," Strand said. "Leave the rest, let's not draw attention to it otherwise they might come back and cut it off again."

Norstad reached his hand to the switch but stopped when he heard footsteps. "Do you hear that?"

It was in the ice corridor. Somebody down there, coming towards them. Norstad moved to the front and kept the pistol by his side but firmly in his grip. He could see a man moving in the corridor, coming towards them. Strand went back to the switch panel, threw the switch for the dog shed and closed the box.

"Who is that?" Norstad whispered.

Strand stepped to the entranceway and called firmly, "Identify yourself."

The man in the corridor didn't respond but continued walking forward. Silhouetted by light from the far end of the tunnel, he moved in and out of the pools of light from the bulbs without giving away his face.

"I think it's Moller," Norstad said. "He ran me over in the tractor, he tried to kill me."

"He tried to kill us all," Strand whispered. Then firmly to the corridor he yelled. "Moller? Moller is that you? Come on out."

The man in the corridor moved faster, walking with pace as though he had decided to give up the subterfuge and step forward boldly. It was... They were right, it 'was' Moller.

"Moller, you've got some explaining to do..." No sooner Norstad spoke than the balloon man rushed in pulling an ice axe from behind his back. He raised it above his head as he charged, running in to attack.

Norstad raised his pistol but hesitated.

"Shoot!" Strand commanded but it was too late. Moller was slicing through the air with his weapon and Norstad, in the blink of an eye, had pushed in to meet him, grappling with the man and pushing him against a rack of spare parts. The shelf units shook and crashed against the wall, shaking their wares and spilling things to the floor with the sound of crashing metal.

Strand ran in to help and grabbed at Moller's axe wielding hand, but it was as though he had the force of ten men and he tossed Strand and Norstad back like they were children against a bear. Norstad hit the ground and scrambled to his feet, running around the generator to buy time. Strand scrambled to safety and found a snow shovel. He turned to face Moller, holding the digging tool at full stretch to keep the balloon man at a distance but Moller raised his axe again and charged at Strand.

There was a single gunshot.

Aimed true, Norstad placed a bullet in Moller's chest, above the heart. Strand pushed the man back with the shovel to the wall and jammed his weight against it, pressing the diamond shaped tip through his abdomen in a move that would almost sever him in two.

Moller's face twisted in agony as he swiped air back and forth with his axe above Strand's head. The commander pushed him backwards as Norstad came to help, grabbing Strand and pushing Moller harder with the ice shovel until the man hit the open door and the tool passed through his body, cutting through his spine and impaling him to the door.

Strand and Norstad fell backwards as they released, both dropping to the floor gasping. "I shot him," Norstad gasped between breaths. "Oh, my God. I shot him."

"He would have killed us both," Strand gasped.

Norstad looked up to his assailant, impaled with a shovel and stuck to the back of the door. Moller's right elbow was jutting out awkwardly and his mouth was slack jawed, his eyes looked back with lifeless penetrating stares. Then Moller tilted his head and moaned with an almost inhuman cry as his left hand gripped the handle of the shovel. There was no way he was going to attack, he was almost severed in two, but he wasn't dead. Not by a long stretch was Moller dead.

Norstad raised the pistol but didn't shoot. "His hand, look at his hand," he cried out.

Moller's right arm had fallen low but his hand was stretching down to the floor as though his arm was made of rubber.

It was then that Strand realised the impaled man should be bleeding, but instead dark flesh had begun to wriggle by the wound as though he were filled with bubbling tar rather than human fluids.

"His hand..." Norstad cried again, this time in a high pitched squeal. Moller's hand had reached the floor, his arm stretched to almost the full length of his body until a sudden spasm of movement jerked Moller in a fierce spasm. Worms of human flesh began burrowing out of his face and chest. They were like creatures of their own design, digging out from within his body, eating their way to freedom through his eyeballs and cheeks, from his neck, from the bullet hole to his chest.

Norstad stood captivated and horrified in equal measure as his friend, Arne Moller, was eaten alive from the inside out by tentacles of flesh. What was left of the man screamed a low moaning sound that was neither human nor animal.

A sudden swipe, as Moller's extended arm whipped across the room, sending both men into a crouched position. Norstad fired twice, hitting Moller both times but the bullets had no discernable effect.

In defence, both Strand and Norstad backed up as the monster impaled to the door swung its extended arm back and forth across the room. It's long extending fingers growing to talons with sharp claws protruding from the tips. It's hand grasping like a claw, trying to reach and capture them.

"We've got to get out!" Norstad yelled. But how? The Moller creature was against the only exit. Strand looked about him and spotted a small steel bucket under the chugging generator. He knelt and pushed it to the fuel drain and turned the tap, pouring off a half bucket of diesel. Norstad saw what he was doing and reached in his pocket for his cigarette lighter. A Zippo. He flashed it to Strand, both men on the same wavelength, thinking the same thing.

Strand threw the diesel over the Moller creature as it's taloned hand slashed through the air. The fuel only partly hitting Moller but it was close enough. Norstad sparked the Zippo and threw it at the creature.

Flames burst up to the ceiling with a high pitched scream from the monster. An orange and yellow fireball rolled up the wall and across the ceiling towards them. The blast of heat was intense and both men ducked away to cower behind the generator as the fire began to take hold of the shack and the room filled with smoke.

Strand grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and primed it, holding it towards the generator. To hell with Moller, he could burn, but the generator was life giving. It had to be preserved.

Within seconds the room was filling with acrid black smoke. "Shoot out the skylight," Strand called. Norstad aimed the gun high to the window in the ceiling and placed one shot into the glass. It splintered, cobwebbed and a second later began raining down in pieces whilst simultaneously sucking the black smoke out like a chimney.

The fire began dying down, the heat not intense enough, the fire retardant of the generator shed coating working well enough to fight the flames.

"What the hell," Norstad exclaimed as the air cleared. He was looking at Moller. The man had stopped moving, killed by fire. His burnt and blackened body contorted into some grotesque and inhuman shape.

Strand moved closer and sprayed the fire extinguisher on the remnants of flame. Both men moved closer at an ever slowing speed. Wanting to get closer, not wanting to do it quickly. Then came the crash as Moller's arm moved and seemed to run up the side of a rack. Both Norstad and Strand jumped back as they saw Moller's distended hand break away from his arm and run like a giant spider. It was a new creature in its own right, scurrying on blind legs away from the heat still inherent in the dead man's body.

Norstad grabbed the gun and trained it on the body part as it began scaling the wall.

"Wait," Strand said. They both watched, mesmerised by Moller's hand, its fingers now twice the length of normal grew coarse looking hairs from the pads of the fingertips and began crawling out onto the ceiling like a spider.

Strand looked about the floor and spotted Norstad's lighter. He passed it back and said, "Get some more diesel." He then took hold of the burned shovel used to impale Moller and yanked it back, collapsing the charred remains of the Moller creature against the floor.

Norstad had the diesel and nodded that he was ready. Strand stretched the shovel to full extent and swiped it hard against the spider-hand on the ceiling. The thing dropped down with a squeal, emitted from a mouth that couldn't be seen and Strand pinned it to the floor with the shovel. Norstad was in quickly, throwing his diesel onto the unholy moving flesh and then dropping his burning lighter into the pool.

The hand creature shot out from under the shovel as it burst into flame. Running blindly away, beneath the generator and towards the ice tunnel where it slowed, stopped and seemingly died. Strand grabbed the fire extinguisher but showed no hurry to extinguish the alien hand, preferring to let the diesel burn out.

As the last flames died the scene went back to the steady chugging of the generator as snow flurries dropped in through the broken skylight.

"Are you alright?" Strand asked.

Norstad shook his head. "No... I'm pretty far from being alright."

"I mean are you injured?"

"No, no injuries, I'm cool... what the hell is it? What the hell are we dealing with?"

Strand held his poise. "I don't know what it is. But we can kill it with fire... Let's just get the hell out of here."
Part 4

The Thing

"Hans dragged Pederson away," Oyvind gasped. "I searched for him. I could hear him screaming, but I couldn't find him. It's a near white out." Oyvind leaned back against the wall, his chest heaving under the exertion of fighting a snow blizzard. He rammed his elbows against the wall. "I can't lose another friend to the snow," he said, imploring to the gods with his emotions.

"Oyvind," Strand said slowly but firmly. Oyvind's eyes moved to the commander. "We are in a survival situation. Focus on what is necessary... Did you move the tractor?"

Oyvind nodded, "It's outside, but we're going to need fuel drums lashing to a sled. At least six, but I would like ten for security."

"Alright, we need fuel. We get that and we roll out of here," Strand said. He paused for a moment with his mouth in a grimace, struggling with something. "I need to tell you about what happened to Norstad and I... When we turned on the power, we were attacked by Moller."

"Attacked?" MacCloud said with a gasp.

"Hans attacked Pederson," Oyvind reiterated. "They've gone crazy in there."

"No, this is worse... You need to hear what happened next."

\----- X \-----

Strand explained briefly the story of Moller. He spoke in facts. What he saw. What he and Norstad did in response. Although he pared the story down to its essentials he spared nothing, nor left out any horror, from shooting and impaling their friend, to setting him on fire, to what he became.

"Whatever that thing in the ice is, it's done something horrific to those men, something alien that we cannot understand. We cannot trust them and we will not stop to reason with them or help them should they ask. The six of us will go to McMurdo Sound in the tractor and raise the alarm. From there, a prepared rescue can be put in place. Our friends here will be alone for no more than one week and they have every chance of survival."

Oyvind hugged the rifle to his chest and stared at the ceiling. "Let's just get out of here."

MacCloud and Kleppa had three boxes of provisions. Strand looked over them. They seemed to have a good spread. They'd even remembered to include toilet paper. "Is this everything we need?" he asked. MacCloud nodded. "Alright. Load this into the tractor then you guys go with Oyvind to build a fuel tow. Leave the tractor here, I don't want the sound of the engine to bring them until we're ready to go. Build the fuel tow then come back. Norstad and I will try the radio again. If we can't get it working in five minutes we'll come and help with the fuel."

\----- X \-----

Oyvind opened the door to less wind but a thick Arctic mist. The snow was still falling and the visibility was cut even lower, but the wind had died and the howling weather had been replaced by a serene silence.

The men stepped outside. Strand hugged the shortwave set to his chest. "Alright, you guys go for the fuel, we'll be with you as soon as we know this works or not."

The teams separated and slowly vanished into the mist. The view in every direction was what life must be like when viewed through Tupperware. Oyvind searched side to side. "Keep me in your sight, you two," he said. It took a minute but eventually he spotted the green flag tied to a post. A guide rope to the fuel dump. Like the explosives, fuel was kept at least a hundred meters from camp, the drums stacked in pyramids of six barrels not less than twenty meters apart. The rule was, when one was required it was taken from the back, but the furthest fuel was over three hundred meters away. Today they would take the closest.

Oyvind looked behind to ensure Kleppa and MacCloud were still with him. They were, gripping the guide rope and fighting to raise their knees against the fresh snowfall. Oyvind looked to Kleppa who turned and looked to MacCloud. MacCloud, seeing the others look back instinctively turned his head also and caught sight of a fourth man in the mist.

"Hey, who is that?" the cook called out.

Oyvind turned again and also saw a figure moving through the mist. They were barely visible but another man was following them. Oyvind raised the rifle and stood his ground, beckoning MacCloud and Kleppa past so he could take the rear.

Who could it be? Could it be Hans? Or perhaps it was Pederson trying to find his way back... Oh, God. Pederson was lost out here and part of him wanted to call out, turning his voice into a beacon on which the man could follow; but after the insane story told by Norstad and Strand he was frightened enough to bite his tongue and keep moving.

Oyvind continued along the guide rope, walking backwards until he bumped into something. He turned sharply to find MacCloud and Kleppa standing still, frozen in place by the sight before them.

Something in the mist was moving... and it was huge.

As big as a tree with dark spindly branches feeling through the air as it glided past ahead of them. Norstad took hold of the guide rope to steady himself and felt it tighten and strain as the mysterious walking thing broke across the line between them and the fuel.

It hadn't noticed them, but it was heading to their right; and if Oyvind had his bearings correct, it was heading straight for the dog shed.

\----- X \-----

In the dog shed the lights were back on. Strand positioned himself to help Norstad climb onto the beam above the dogs. The huskies were on their feet, prowling the enclosure, waiting to be let out for exercise and anxious for a run in the snow.

Norstad hoisted his body to the ledge and swung his legs across as last time to straddle the beam. Strand passed him the radio and ran back to shut off the lights. "You don't need to shut the power off," Norstad said. "The transformer is already hooked in."

The pilot plugged the shortwave set into the power transformer and began twisting the antenna leads to the radio when the whole building shook with a solid thud. It was as though someone had driven a car into the side of the building. Norstad and Strand looked to one another then suddenly the shortwave lifted into the air out of his hands and flew towards the ceiling, ripping out the power cable as it went. The set was dragged to the rafters by the antenna cable that was being pulled back through the roof of the shed until it hit the woodwork and the whole roof began to splinter and crash down.

Norstad threw himself to the side, falling awkwardly, but having the sense to throw his weight towards a pile of hay in the dog pen.

Strand unfastened the bolt to the pen to rescue Norstad as the entire roof was whipped aside as surely as it would have been in a hurricane. The force of action and sudden shock sending the dogs into a screeching and barking cacophony. Strand grabbed Norstad and both men looked up to see the dark descending shape of...

What in holy hell...

It was Bjorn. Twisted and mangled Bjorn. The doctor, his limbs now long and thin, his hands and feet claw like, his ribcage half the size of normal whilst his head had become bulbous and bald. He was floating, descending into the space. "Norstad..." he breathed as he lowered into the dog shed. There was something attached to him, or rather, something that Bjorn was attached to. A huge, tree like shape of biology, with writhing tentacles of sinew and arteries feeling through the air. From its largest bough hung Bjorn, suspended like a hanged man, connected from the back of his head to the mass of sinewed horror bending over and lowering itself into the dog shed.

The dogs were in panic as the biological feelers touched the walls and floor, feeling their way.

Then the feelers began shooting forth, impaling the dogs, touching the mutts and wrapping around them with shocking speed to suffocate them as the men ran for their lives. Strand paused only to slam the door closed behind him and saw Bjorn suspended a meter from the ground. The doctor was floating with his arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross, his biological feelers were holding up the melting and crying dogs to either side of him.

In the split second that Strand looked at the doctor's face, he would swear the man was smiling.

\----- X \-----

Kleppa, MacCloud and Pederson could hear the dogs barking, then crying. They'd heard the sound of wood splintering and crashing. Now all they could hear were the whines of tortured and helpless animals.

"Keep moving," Oyvind said. "We've got to keep moving."

Then MacCloud called out, "Look!" as a man barrelled in towards them. Out of the mist, the man was staggering. It was Pederson. Alive. Lost in the snowstorm but somehow alive. MacCloud stepped away from the guideline to hold his hands out as though to catch him. Pederson was in a bad way, stumbling forward, fighting against fatigue until almost upon the three men. Then Pederson reached forward with hands that looked as though they were turned inside out. Fleshy red muscles and arteries on the outside reached as hands onto MacCloud, gripping him and pushing him to the snow.

The cook screamed as he was set upon by the gruesome hands of Pederson. Oyvind raised the rifle and fired hitting Pederson in the head but the impact made no difference. The thing was wrapping veins of flesh around MacCloud's neck, flowing into his screaming mouth, threading into his ears.

Oyvind dropped the rifle and went to his pocket for a thermite charge, he pulled the pin and tossed it beside the grappling thing atop the cook, then picked up the rifle and ran. The heat came a few seconds later and even though wearing protective clothing he felt the scorching radiated heat of the thermite burning the skin of his back and legs.

From behind he heard the screaming of MacCloud change from the terrified wails of a man fighting for his life into an ungodly blast of alien pain.

He didn't turn to look. Nor did he think of Kleppa or where he had gone. He continued forward, faster, harder, running for the fuel dump and away from the burning thing behind and whatever was left of MacCloud that he'd just burned to death.

\----- X \-----

Kleppa ran away from the fuel, running the whole length of the guide rope faster than he ever imagined possible. As the base faded into view the relief of escaping the mist was given a new horror in that the tree thing was stalking the entrance way. There was no way into the base, not without getting too close to the mass of veins that was sweeping through the air.

The workshop was the other entrance, but that seemed too risky. He had to. He had to get back inside.

Oh, God... Pederson. He had... his hands were... oh, God in heaven, this alien thing was turning people into monsters. It was melting people. Absorbing them and growing in size. Driving people into madness.

Kleppa could barely breathe as he swung his little fat body in through the open workshop door. He saw the block of ice, hollowed out where they had gotten the thing from, but there were no men in there.

The door... the door from workshop to corridor was open.

Kleppa rushed back into the base and spotted Hans and Rolland at the far end of the corridor. They turned towards him. Hans was holding a fire axe. The men looked at him with dispassionate eyes and spoke no words before beginning their walk towards him.

Kleppa pushed into the science laboratory and slammed the door. He pushed a desk as hard as he could to get it over the entrance and by providence realised he could tip a bookcase into the intervening space that would wedge the desk in place and make access impossible. He pushed it hard, squeezing his hand behind the furniture, fighting with all his strength to get leverage until the unit swayed forward and toppled, emptying its contents on the floor as it went.

That door was sealed. It opened only a few centimetres as the two men outside pushed against it. Rolland looked through the gap with a single eye.

"Leave me alone!" Kleppa screamed.

The other door. There was a second door to the laboratory but nothing else he could move against it. A chair. There was a chair to wedge under the handle to stop them opening. He did it just in time as he heard the boots pounding the boards towards it. The handle moved as the men outside tried to lever it, but the chair brace held. He'd done it. He'd locked himself in... Then came the crash of an axe against the wood. The force was so strong the whole room shook. Experiments in test tubes shook, the noticeboard fell from the wall. A weapon, he needed a weapon. Kleppa rushed to his cutting tools and found a scalpel, too small... he found his cut throat razor, non-scientific but the best tool for peeling layers of ice cores.

The axe crashed against the door again... and again... and again.

He was trapped. Locked in a room with an axe man coming through the door. Was Hans insane? Did he want to kill him? Probably not, he probably wanted to do to him what Pederson had done to MacCloud. He probably wanted to melt him down and absorb his body.

Oh, God... Oh, God... Oh, God

The axe smashed against the door.

There was no escape.

Kleppa sat in the chair with the cut throat razor in his hands. Was there another option? They say suicide is the coward's way out, but any right minded person would be a coward in the face of this horror.

The axe smashed against the door.

He would wait. Strand would come. Yes. The commander would come and rescue him and they would all go to McMurdo together and...

Suddenly the building shook with a fiercer hit than any axe. Holes punched in the walls and the whole structure skewed as though it was being sat on by a giant. Kleppa looked up to the ceiling skylight and saw the tentacle shapes from the huge tree creature as it felt across the roof. A tentacle smashed down on the rooftop and slithered away, then again, this time finding the skylight and smashing the glass.

Men at the doors. One smashing his way in with an axe. A monster crashing against the ceiling... But Strand would come. Surely Strand would come.

Then Kleppa looked up to see the bulbous bald head of Bjorn grinning at him through the broken skylight, "Kleppa..." it hissed. Then as though imbued with the power of levitation, the figure of Bjorn lifted upright above the skylight and began descending into the room feet first, suspended by the head from the tree and lowered through a hole in the roof.

There was no time. Kleppa held the blade in his left hand and slashed at his right wrist with the cut throat. "I'm not going to become one of those things," he whispered. "I'm not going to become one of those things. I'm not going to become one of those things."

There wasn't any pain, only a slow shock of light headedness; but it wasn't fast enough. Kleppa moved the cut throat to his right hand and fighting against severed tendons he managed to hold the blade sure enough that he could press his left wrist against it.

The Bjorn creature descended fully into the laboratory and stretched out its spindly fingers towards Kleppa. For a moment they made eye contact and for the briefest instant the man who used to be a doctor seemed to understand the situation. Kleppa was killing himself. Driven to suicide by fear. Bjorn's body jerked back and his talon like hands turned inwards as the doctor looked to his alien palms and contemplated what was happening.

With a roar of anguish, Bjorn cried out in horror. Amongst the mess of cells that he had become there was one last moment of humanity. A final and fleeting touch of remorse.

Kleppa was bleeding out, terrified and unable to be saved. The doctor, in his last thought as a human being looked at his friend and recalled his deepest desire to help people, then did the only thing he could. With a single swipe from the back of his hand, he slashed Kleppa's throat with a protruding claw that spilled so much blood it sent the peaceful biologist into unconsciousness within seconds.

\----- X \-----

Oyvind had continued towards the fuel until he saw a figure emerging from the mist towards him. There was a man already there, waiting. The fuel was an obvious target. They needed fuel to escape and it was the perfect place for an ambush. Whoever the man was, he began moving forward. Oyvind fired one shot directly at him which either missed or had no effect.

Oyvind turned and ran. He let go of the guide rope but kept it within view to his left. He didn't look back. He ran as fast and hard as he could. He passed the charred remains of MacCloud and Pederson, burned to black charcoal in the snow, their bodies somehow fused to a contorted non-human shape and locked into place as a dark statue.

He saw the base emerging from the mist much earlier than he felt he should have. The weather was lifting. There was no wind, the snow was lighter and the mist was thinning.

"Identify yourself," came the voice of Strand.

Oyvind looked around him but couldn't see anyone.

"I said identify yourself."

"Oyvind. It's Oyvind," he replied. "There's someone behind me, I can't see you."

From below the station, literally underneath the structure, Strand and Norstad emerged. "Who is behind you?" Norstad asked.

"I don't know. They were waiting at the fuel dump. MacCloud is gone... we got attacked by Pederson. Kleppa is gone too. He ran away when we got attacked. I didn't see what happened."

"DON'T MOVE!" Norstad yelled, pointing his pistol out past Oyvind to the figure emerging from the mist. It was Ingvar, the dog wrangler. Ingvar continued forward, ignoring Norstad's command. "Stop where you are. This is your last warning!"

Ingvar continued but slowed, raising his hands. "Strand?" He called.

"Yes. I'm here."

"Don't shoot. Please, don't shoot."

"I shot at him," Oyvind said. "He was out there waiting. In this weather. He was at the fuel waiting for us. I shot at him but he didn't stop chasing."

Ingvar continued walking. Oyvind raised his rifle. "That's far enough, Ingvar." The dog wrangler took a few more steps, but slowed with each one. "What were you doing out there?"

"I was looking for you guys. I wanted to..."

Oyvind opened fire. Two shots right in the chest. He passed the rifle to Strand and went to his pocket for his second thermite grenade. Ingvar was flat on his back, his eyes open, blood coming from his chest. Oyvind tossed the thermite right onto his body and began running.

The heat burned as fiercely as ever and threw out a golden light as bright as looking into the sun.

"You killed him," Norstad whispered.

"Trust me..." Oyvind said. "Trust me over trusting him."

As the men turned their attention back to the burning body a strange and eerie sound began whistling through the mist as a looming shadow blocked the sun.

Coming towards them was the walking tree of nerves and tendons. Seemingly now even bigger. At its roots stood Hans and Rolland and floating above them and seemingly part of the mass was Bjorn.

\----- X \-----

"Split up," cried Strand as he ran towards the tractor. "I'll take on the creature."

Norstad and Oyvind needed no extra instruction. Both men readied their weapons and fired at the two men walking towards them. Hans fell forward into the snow, seemingly hit, but a moment later and he was back on his feet.

"Thermite, I've got more thermite inside," Oyvind said.

Both men turned and ran hard, chased down all the way to the exit.

They burst in through the door and Oyvind went for the case of grenades he'd left there. He passed the rifle to Norstad who checked the clip. About twenty rounds left. Oyvind lifted the case and ran back along the corridor, trailing Norstad. He heard the exit door pulled open and knew it was Hans and Rolland. He dropped the crate and grabbed a thermite charge, pulled the pin and tossed it backwards down the corridor. It hit close to the bottom and rolled. Hans and Rolland saw it and ducked aside but the charge erupted with a flash of intense light and a blast of heat that burned from even as far back as they were.

Hans and Rolland appeared from the blast with their clothes on fire, but both of them still pushed forward. Norstad fired a few shots to hold them in place. He definitely hit Rolland but the bullets had no effect other than making the men stand still for a few seconds.

Decanite. Oyvind pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it, then pulled the pin on a second grenade and tossed that too, then a thermite round, pulled the pin... and the first decanite exploded throwing a blast of air to pop the eardrums and burst the edge of the roof off the corridor as the seam of the building burst. The decanite cans were made of foil. They had huge power, but little shrapnel.

The thermite... Oyvind saw the canister rolling away, the pin was pulled, too close to them, rolling away too slowly. Norstad saw it too and kicked it hard, raising it into the air and into the face of Hans and Rolland. The second decanite charge blew, lifting the roof clean off on one side. Then the thermite popped sending blinding shards of light from behind the burning men. Hans fell forward onto hands and knees and his limbs extended, raising him up like a man sized spider.

Rolland's hands exploded into mushy streamers of flesh that swung forward like a whip, searching out for another living thing to grasp whilst Hans scurried forward in his flaming spider form. Norstad dropped to one knee and aimed the rifle well. He fired again and again into Hans' face as the climatologists mouth spread wide and opened like his head was cleaved in two.

\----- X \-----

Strand got into the tractor and powered at the swirling tree of flesh, pushing the vehicle to its limit. He hit the base and saw that it had root like appendages that moved across the snow in a ripple effect like a sidewinder snake. The tractor pinned the roots and began rolling up the trunk, tipping the vehicle back.

Through the windscreen he watched as the tree monster swung around to position what was left of Bjorn to the front. The doctor, it seemed, were the creature's eyes. Its flailing limbs and tentacles of veins and arteries blind feelers.

The entire mass came crashing down onto the tractor, wrapping itself around the vehicle. Bjorn's leering face and spindly body passed in front of the windshield as the tentacles of flesh began working the glass, smashing against the sides of the tractor as the mass of the creature pushed back and upended the vehicle, tipping it vertical until it rested almost on its back doors.

Strand saw one of the bigger boughs reach back in anticipation of punching forward onto the window and dove back over the seat to fall into the rear compartment as the window imploded. The vehicle rolled over, tipping the contents against him. He rolled like he was in a tin can, tossed around by the monster.

Then he saw Bjorn, climbing across the nose of the vehicle, his claw like hands pulling him inside, his leering face smiling at the destruction he was about to do.

There was no option for Strand, this was the end. He held his face stoic as the alien claws of the former doctor wrapped around him. He felt its acid like secretions begin burning into his flesh and he was brought face-to-face with his old friend the camp doctor.

Bjorn, whatever was left of him, smiled.

Strand brought his fists ahead of him and smiled wider, then opened his palms to show the grenade ring pulls to the decanite that had been left in the tractor since yesterday.

\----- X \-----

Oyvind tossed another decanite grenade as he pulled the box backwards. Norstad was still on his knee but every few seconds he shuffled backwards.

Hans and Rolland had slowed, but they weren't stopping.

Then came the boom.

In an instant they were flailing through mid-air and back outside as the walls of the building came away, the entire corridor blowing apart into its component boards and sheeting. Norstad saw a caterpillar track fly by his face in the moment before he hit the snow. He felt heat. He heard a screaming, ungodly painful sound and looked up to see the monster, at least ten meters tall, completely engulfed in flames like a tree stripped of its leaves and burning. The fireball rose up its trunk along with an acrid cloud of dense black smoke.

The creature fell towards him, collapsing on top of the base. Crashing through what was left of the rec room.

A second screaming sound came from lower down. Norstad looked around him and found the rifle. He picked it up. Checked it. Checked himself and walked forward. The screaming came from spider Hans, half trapped beneath the bulk of the flaming monster which was now beginning to set fire to the rest of the base. Moments later and Hans was engulfed in flames.

From the distance came a faint voice. "Norstad," it called. "Norstad?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

He scoured the debris field. Burnt biology, hunks of metal, pieces of the base. Smoke and flames rose from the ruins. The whole base was virtually destroyed. All the living quarters and rec room were gone. The only part left standing was the science lab and workshop.

Oyvind emerged from the snow. "Is it dead?"

"No, something is still moving underneath it, over there."

Oyvind staggered up to Norstad and saw what he was looking at. The final movements of flesh trying to crawl away. They watched it for a few minutes as it withered and died. Then took stock of their situation. The creature was dead. Hans and Rolland were presumably crushed and burnt in the fire.

There was no sign of Strand and, considering the tractor was in pieces, they didn't expect to find him.

"Hello," Norstad yelled across the debris field. "Is anyone else alive?"

There was no response.

"I say we walk the perimeter. Check everything to make sure there are no other survivors," Norstad said. "Weather is clearing. We can take the chopper to McMurdo."

Oyvind scanned the debris field. He said nothing.

\----- X \-----

The men walked the perimeter, keeping warm from the burning remains of Fafnir Station until coming to the science laboratory where they were shocked by a sudden human scream. Both men raised their weapons as they rounded the corner to make a horrifying discovery.

The monster was still alive, partially.

The bulk of the monster, the trunk had collapsed onto the buildings and was burning into dust, but one end looked active and was growing into a yellow sack of fluid almost as big as a man. It wasn't the yolk sack that had screamed though. It was Bjorn. The withered body of the doctor had detached from its host and lay in the snow with spindly stick thin arms and legs and a face that had been cleaved into two.

"Help me," it whispered. "Please, help me." Beside the science lab was a drum of kerosene. Heating oil for emergencies. Norstad unscrewed the cap and pushed it on its side. The kerosene glug, glug, glugged out of the drum and pooled around the spindly doctor. Bjorn's eyes rolled in his bulbous head, watching him. "Help me, Norstad," it said. "Help me."

Norstad went to his pocket for the lighter, flipped the lid, made a flame and touched it to the pooling fluid. A sudden rush of heat erupted with a fireball as Bjorn waved his withered limbs for a few seconds within the flames.

Oyvind and Norstad didn't examine the remains after the fire. They stepped away as their former friend and doctor burned alive and continued their walk of the perimeter.

"Oh, God," Oyvind said looking in through a hole in the science lab. He walked away and sat in the snow, cupping his hands together and hiding his face in them. Norstad didn't ask what it was. He looked in himself to see Kleppa sitting in a chair with his throat cut.

Norstad rested his back to the shed and looked out into the Antarctic wilderness. The sun was shining and the mist had almost lifted. It was going to be clear. The typical extremes of zero visibility to perfect weather in the space of a few hours. "We can get the chopper up," he said. "We can fly to McMurdo."

Then came the bursting.

It was a strange sound, like a rush of water from a stream. It was odd enough that both men perked up and looked back to where it had come from. It was around the corner of the lab where they had set fire to Bjorn.

Norstad readied the rifle and began leading with the gun, letting its barrel point his direction. He rounded the corner to see the smouldering remains of the doctor where they should be. Then he noticed the egg sack on the end of the trunk had burst. Yellow goo was mixed with the snow... that dragged away to the right... that culminated in tracks...

"There's a dog," Oyvind yelled as he pointed. "A damned huskie."

"It's made itself into a dog," Norstad yelled. He aimed the rifle and looked through the scope, but the huskie was leaping in the snow, vanishing periodically and already at a greater distance than his trembling hands could aim at.

"I know where it's heading," Oyvind said. "If it keeps going in that direction it's going to Outpost #31. We've got to stop it."

\----- X \-----

It took fifteen minutes to get the helicopter airborne. To hell with safety checks. A quick spray of de-icer and a hope that the warmth of the burning Fafnir Station had warmed the machine. Oyvind demanded they circle the camp first looking for the remains of the explosives shack. They landed briefly that he could grab a new case of decanite and thermite from the ruined shed.

"We've got to get that thing. If it makes it to #31 this whole thing starts again," Oyvind said.

"Don't worry, the Gods are on our side now. Odin has cleared the skies. We know where it was, we know where it's heading. We'll find it."

Within minutes they had the dog spied. Oyvind leaned out with the rifle as Norstad flew in closer. He fired... missed. He dropped decanite... missed.

The looming structures of Outpost #31 appeared and the stress of seeing the alien dog nearing more humans was causing more stress than anything. It would get there. It would absorb more people and turn itself huge again. They had to... they must...

He fired. He fired again... Every time he missed.

The dog made it to the camp.

The Americans were emerging from their huts. Oh Jeepers, the dog was running to them.

"I'm going to land," Norstad said.

He touched the helicopter down as Oyvind grabbed a decanite charge. He had to throw it before the dog was too close to the Americans. He pulled the pin and reached back to throw but the grenade slipped from his grasp and buried itself in the snow by the helicopter.

"RUN!" he yelled; but Norstad got to his hands and knees digging through the drift to find the grenade.

It was too late. The canister exploded with ferocious force, the metal cap blasting through the fuel tank of the Bell Jetranger and turning the helicopter into a blazing inferno in seconds. Norstad... Norstad was lost.

The dog ran up to an American, it jumped at his chest, its paws up.

Oyvind raised his rifle. "Get the hell outta there. That's not a dog, it's some sort of thing! It's imitating a dog, it isn't real! Get away, you idiots!" He fired, hitting the American in his leg. His colleagues dove to the side, clearing a path. The dog ran further in, heading for an open door. It was a frame. It was going for the door. An aperture on which to train his sights. Oyvind raised the rifle to his shoulder, steadied the sights. He heard breaking glass to his left. The dog was going for the door, he had it marked, he would shoot, he would kill it and this whole thing would be ov.................................................................
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Books by Lee McGeorge

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