Godzilla at World's End (16 page)

The camp was already in chaos when the tremors began anew. Men were moving quickly away from the abyss, and the edges of the pit were crumbling even more. Each section of ice that dropped into the hole widened the pit even more.

"I think we'd better move the camp!" Dr. Wendell cried as he watched the rope fence around the hole being swallowed - along with several cameras on tripods that had been positioned around the pit.

As the tremors continued, the American geologist grabbed Dr. Thorsen by the shoulder. "Come with me!" he cried, leading the Norwegian to another tent that was surrounded by a cluster of communications antennas.

Bursting into the tent, Dr. Thorsen saw a technician sitting at a control panel. Above the man was a bank of large color television monitors. They were all filled with static.

"Are the cameras still working?" Dr. Wendell demanded. The man nodded his head excitedly.

"The power line was temporarily cut," the technician answered. "I'm just getting the electronic system back on-line now."

A moment later, the monitors sprang to life.

The three men gasped in awe and shock when the cameras revealed what was moving deep inside the abyss.

"Get on the radio and call McMurdo," Dr. Wendell commanded the technician. "I've got to report this."

As the technician tried to raise their home base, Dr. Thorsen and Dr. Wendell gazed at the thing inside the abyss.

"It's like a nightmare come true," Dr. Thorsen muttered. "Such a thing should not be alive."

"And it came out of the same pit as the other creature," Dr. Wendell added.

"I've got McMurdo!" the technician cried, thrusting the microphone into Dr. Wendell's trembling hand. The scientist took the mike and began to speak in an even, professional tone.

"There is something inside the pit," he reported after identifying himself and ordering the technician to record the conversation.

"It is, as far as I can make out, a living creature," Dr. Wendell said into the microphone. "The thing is moving upward - I'm not sure how - but it looks as if it is flying. I estimate that in about ten seconds it will break the surface."

When the technician heard that, he paled, but remained at his control board.

"The creature is light blue in color, with golden scales running down its belly. It has a beak for a mouth, and that beak has metallic-looking spikes on either side of it.

"The creature has only one red eye, which runs across its entire face. It has curved claws on the end of its arms. There are wings, too, on the creature's back."

Outside the tent, Dr. Wendell could hear the panicked voices of the other men in the camp. The earth began to quake more violently. Suddenly, a shrill, almost mechanical cry cut through the Antarctic day.

Dr. Wendell stepped closer to the door, peering outside as he continued to file his radio report.

"The creature is making a terrible noise, like an electronic squawk. The sound is quite piercing."

The ground began to roll violently, and Dr. Thorsen was dashed to the floor of the tent. Dr. Wendell gripped the edge of the door and continued to speak in a cool, professional voice.

"The thing is near the surface. It's coming up now."

***

Back at McMurdo, a radio technician and two other men listened to the scientist's report with mounting anxiety. Secretly, Dr. Birchwood and Tobias Nelson felt that he and the rest of the men at the pit were doomed.

Fortunately, the conversation was being taped, and Dr. Max Birchwood was enough of a scientist not to interrupt the flow of information. As they listened, Dr. Wendell continued to speak.

"It is moving to the surface!" Dr. Wendell announced, his electronically distorted voice finally showing some sign of the tension he no doubt felt.

"The creature seems very large. The ground is trembling more violently now. I don't know how much longer I can maintain this radio link -"

Then the three men in the radio room heard the shrill cry of the creature Dr. Wendell was describing. The sound, even transmitted over hundreds of miles by radio, was truly terrifying and utterly unearthly.

"It is coming up now ... Almost to the surface ...
Oh, my God!"
Dr. Wendell cried as fear and horror overwhelmed him.

"It's ... it's gigan -"

Then Dr. Wendell's radio went dead.

Thursday, December 7, 2000, 0900 hours
NORAD Space Command Center
Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

"We have a launch alert!" Airman Sandy Stilson cried, her bright blue eyes wide with shock and surprise as she stared at her "bandit board." Airman Stilson barely got the words out before the Air Force Intelligence officer on night watch, a twenty-year veteran named Colonel Roger Wistendahl, was at the young woman's shoulder.

"Are you certain, Stilson?" the colonel demanded, staring over her blond head at the monitor. The question was moot. Wistendahl could see the pip flashing on her screen.

"It launched thirty-six seconds ago," Airman Stilson insisted, noting the readout on the digital clock and tapping the keys on her board in an effort to trace the object's point of origin. Already its course and speed and attitude and apogee were being displayed on her monitor.

The object was climbing steadily into orbit from somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere.

"We've got a definite confirmation from Teal Sapphire," Airman Ted Rodofsky announced from his command station opposite the young woman's. It was Rodofsky's job to monitor the data coming from Teal Sapphire. The sophisticated satellite was designed to alert NORAD's Space Command Center of the launch of a ballistic missile or rocket anywhere in the world within seconds.

The three U.S. Air Force personnel exchanged uneasy glances. This wasn't supposed to be happening.

It was the end of the graveyard shift at the joint United States and Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command - NORAD for short. The Cold War was over, no monsters were roaming the fruited plains, and very few hostile powers were aiming nuclear weapons at the U.S. of A.

In fact, to Colonel Wistendahl, NORAD itself sometimes seemed obsolete.

The huge technological facility was cut into the very heart of the Cheyenne Mountain range. The base was built on gigantic coil springs designed to absorb the impact of a hydrogen bomb - not that anybody was aiming those things at NORAD anymore. For decades, NORAD had monitored North American airspace from hundreds of radar sites all over the world.

The entire facility and the philosophy behind it was a holdover from the Cold War of the previous century. Built to survive a Russian nuclear attack, the Cheyenne Mountain radar center was the backbone of air defense for the American continent. Twenty-four hours a day, each and every aircraft flying in or near American airspace was constantly monitored.

But NORAD monitored activity not only over the United States and Canada. The entire Northern Hemisphere - including the north polar region and Russian Republic airspace - was covered by the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, made up of radar stations scattered across the tundra of Alaska.

Missile launches in the Southern Hemisphere were covered by Pave Paws, a pyramid-shaped radar station operating in West Texas. All the information from these various sources was relayed to Cheyenne Mountain.

It was the Pave Paws radar system, built in the desert of Texas, that was the source of this particular launch alert.

Until a point of origin could be established, NORAD would remain on alert as a precaution. By international law, countries launching rockets or missiles into space had to notify all other space-faring nations through normal diplomatic channels.

It was a prudent safeguard against starting an accidental nuclear war.

Only this time somebody forgot to tell us
, Wistendahl thought angrily.

According to the Space Command Center day-timer, no launch was scheduled for this date or time. As Airman Stilson tried to determine the launch point and Airman Rodofsky continued to monitor the object's course and trajectory, Colonel Wistendahl ran a check on the launches scheduled for the next three weeks, which had been previously logged in their computer calendar - just in case he'd missed any new information.

But, as Wistendahl suspected, there were no rocket tests or launches scheduled for tonight, anywhere in the world. The liftoff of the first Russian space shuttle from Baikonur Cosmodrome was not going to happen until next week, and the Europeans had no launches scheduled from the European Rocket Testing Range in Australia until January.

There
was
a launch of a French Ariane rocket scheduled for Saturday. That rocket was carrying a U.S. communications satellite built for the Independent News Network. If everything went according to plan, the Ariane would blast off from Khorou, French Guiana - but not for thirty-five more hours.

Colonel Wistendahl knew from experience that rockets were often launched late, but never
early.

"Come on, Stilson," Wistendahl said, irritation in his voice. "Let's have that point of origin. ASAP, please ..."

Airman Stilson, at her command console, had already calculated a launch-origin solution. But the answer was so ridiculously impossible that she ran the mathematical model through the computer one more time, sure that some data had been flawed.

NORAD's Space Command Center was home to some of the most sophisticated equipment in the world. SCC not only monitored launches but also maintained watch on the 8,000 or so pieces of space junk - including active and nonfunctioning satellites, spent boosters, debris from the
Atlantis
and
Mir
, and other debris that floated in Earth's orbit.

When the computer finished its second tabulation, Stilson's speaker beeped. For the second time, her computer had come up with a point of origin based on the object's current trajectory.

The answer this time was the same as the first.

"Sir," she said, bewildered, "I think you should see this."

Colonel Wistendahl crossed the command center and stood at the airman's shoulder. He peered at the monitor for a moment. Then Colonel Wistendahl whistled.

"This can't be right," he stated.

"I think it
is
correct, sir," Stilson replied. "I ran it through the computer twice."

Wistendahl turned to Rodofsky, who was watching the action from his station.

"Get me the commander in chief of NORAD," Wistendahl said. "We have a probable launch. Point of origin, the Antarctic ..."

Friday, December 8, 2000, 3:00 A.M.
International Seismographic Agency
Sydney, Australia

On the other side of the International Date Line, Dr. Ryan Whittle, the chairman of the United Nations newest scientific research institution, the International Seismographic Agency, was puzzled.

Since taking the job as the agency's first chairman six months before, Dr. Whittle - a native of the Bahamas - had seen his share of confusing and contradictory data.

But he had never seen anything like this.

What he was seeing now defied common sense and all previous geologic theories. But the facts, as presented to him in the past few hours, had been checked and double-checked by a number of reliable and respected sources.

According to the report faxed to him from ANARE 2000 - the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition for the current calendar year - a large object had tunneled deep under the Earth's crust from a point in the middle of Wilkes Land, East Antarctica. The object bored under the South Pole and out under the bottom of the Bellingshausen Sea. The object had subsequently been tracked as it moved beneath the South American continent.

If that wasn't puzzling enough, a second report filed by seismologists at the Australian Antarctic base in Mawson suggested that a
second
large object had moved underground from that same position in Wilkes Land at about the same time.

But this second mysterious object moved toward the coast of Kemp Land - in the opposite direction from the first object. According to the scientists on-station in Mawson, this second object actually moved under the base, many kilometers beneath the crust of the Antarctic continent.

Eventually, the thing broke through the Earth's crust deep under the Pacific Ocean, about 150 kilometers from the Antarctic coast. Its last course had the object heading up the coast of East Africa, around Madagascar, then east again - to the Indian Ocean.

Moving ... or swimming?
Dr. Whittle puzzled.

He wondered if he should alert the United Nations Security Council, or perhaps G-Force, or G-Force USA. But he wasn't sure that the objects posed any immediate danger - he wasn't even sure if they were living things, or some sort of previously undiscovered tectonic activity.

And not one object
, Dr. Whittle thought,
but
two -
and both originating in Wilkes Land.

The scientist had little doubt that something was happening under the crust of the East Antarctic. Only one question remained.

What?

Thursday, December 7, 2000, 0919 hours
NORAD Space Command Center

Colonel Wistendahl and his technicians continued to monitor the object as it rose from the south polar region into Earth's orbit. NORAD's delicate instruments determined the size, shape, altitude, and speed of the object.

But no one knew what it was.

The thing achieved orbit and now circled the planet, moving toward the equator with each rotation. An hour ago the object had taken its first hostile action - it destroyed a European satellite. Since then the object had destroyed or disabled six more objects in space. The UFO was showing no partiality toward nationalities.

First a European satellite was killed, then one belonging to the Japanese. Then a Russian satellite, a French satellite - and six minutes ago the object had taken out a Pentagon spy satellite in orbit above China.

Already U.S. Space Command was moving any satellite it could out of the object's path. Unfortunately, the Pentagon had moved its nearest satellite, but the object went out of its way to destroy the satellite anyway.