Abominable Page 5

  Shelby took in a deep breath, eyes riveted on the cylinder, and where the feet had been. “You do realize this is going to be big. I mean world big. I have a feeling those calling the shots will be bringing in more experienced experts than me. I’ll be out of the loop. In fact, I overheard Mendel requesting experts in metallurgy, physics, and structural engineering. NASA won’t be far behind.”

  John harrumphed. “But you’re the only zoology specialist on the base. You’re experienced, and affiliated with a prestigious institution and university. Shelby Hollister is the top primatologist in the Arctic right now. From my perspective, it’s not unlike ice climbing. Once you’re satisfied with your position on that glacier, you dig in the ice axes and don’t let go. You hang on to what you want.”

  She smiled. “Thanks. I’ll remember that. But in reality, it’s not about me, or you, or the base. It’s about science and finding the truth.” She pointed to the feet, though they were no longer visible in the powerful beams of the floodlights. “What material allows UV light to penetrate but not visible white light?”

  John shook his head. “Just another facet of this conundrum. Maybe that astrophysicist can elucidate on that point. I’d wager it has something to do with how the cylinder reacts with the different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.” He paused, staring where Shelby was looking. “Those feet—they weren’t just bones. No evidence of decay either.”

  “No.” Shelby walked toward the opposite end of the UCO. “Fully preserved from what I could see. Skin, even detected some shafts of hair.”

  “Like it was frozen.”

  Like it was alive, but instead she replied, “Exactly.” She nodded to the circular side that would have been the top if standing upright. “I was hoping to see more at this end under the black light, but there was nothing.”

  John didn’t miss the disappointment in her timbre. Everyone had been let down, in fact. Anticlimactic, to say the least. All personnel in the hangar had squeezed in at this end of the platform when the black light had been applied to the UCO. Most, he guessed, including himself, had been expecting to see more of what was inside the cylinder, even a head or scalp perhaps. Hands, limbs? But only a film of translucent indigo reflected back. Other than what appeared to be numerous infinitesimally thin filaments coursing randomly just under the surface, it was like they were peering into a container of opaque indigo water. Except for the soles of the giant feet at the opposite end.

  “You believe this thing is as old as the debris caked to it in the glacier?” Shelby was asking.

  “It’s not so different from what you do—fossils can be aged by the sediment they are dug from.”

  “That’s a yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Twenty-eight thousand years.”

  “Give or take a few hundred or thousand.”

  “You do know what that implies, right?”

  “Yeah, I do.” He watched how Shelby bit at her lower lip, saying aloud what he guessed by now everyone intimately involved with the discovery must be thinking.

  “If the UCO is as old as that sediment or bones intimates, it couldn’t have originated on earth!”

  John finished discussing a few points about Little Okpilak offshoot with Mendle before escorting Shelby back to the Jeep. Shelby noticed how the din of the conversation in the hangar had grown almost silent once the UCO had been positioned on its side and nothing found at the “head” end. The strange object dug from the glacier was no longer just a piece of unidentifiable detritus buried in ice, but a major discovery that was sure to rock the very foundation of man’s opinion of himself in the universe.

  Earth was not alone in the cosmos any longer!

  From Shelby’s perspective, what was inside the capsule, though, was an even bigger story. “Capsule.” She said the word aloud.

  She caught John glance her way before turning back to the dark highway. At half past ten, they were the only vehicle on the lonely expanse of road. “Capsule,” he repeated. “That’s the first time it’s been referred to as that.”

  “It fits.”

  He nodded in silence. She guessed he was thinking along similar lines as her. If it’s a capsule, what else would they find inside? She gazed at the sky, studying the stars in a different light. The days were over twenty hours long and this late she could barely pick out Capricorn and the North Star.

  “If you’re looking for the Northern Lights, you’ll need to wait about three months.”

  “Too much light.” She stretched, taking in the barren stretch of arctic tundra and rolling hills. The breeze was cool, but in the Jeep she felt comfortable. To the southwest she could make out a line of jagged peaks; one in particular stood out. “Denali?”

  “Correct.”

  She watched his profile in the twilight. “Did you ever climb Denali?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. It was about nine years ago, just after receiving my PhD.” He smiled at her. “You might say a sort of celebration.”

  Shelby winced. “Climbing a mountain? People die on Denali.”

  He pointed across a pasture bordering the Tanana River. “Caribou.”

  “I see them. Alaska really is an incredible state. So large, so desolate in places, such incredible geography.”

  “And dangerous if you let your guard down. And yes, people do die climbing mountains, but they also die driving to work on congested freeways.”

  Shelby took the bait, grinning. “Certainly you wouldn’t be alluding to some major city where I herald from.”

  He only smiled.

  “Do you still climb?” she asked.

  “Nope. Last peak was Mount Vinson in Antarctica. I had my summit high fulfilled. Denali was truly an incredible experience, but not for everyone. Since I busted my right ankle several years ago breaking through an ice bridge on Matanuska Glacier north of Anchorage, I’ve kept to hiking and an occasional ice climb when necessary.”

  “And studying rocks and glaciers.”

  “It’ll take more than a broken bone to keep me off the ice fields. To me, a glacier is almost like a living entity, and philosophically speaking, they do live. Glaciers breathe, grow, shrink…” He paused. “Die.”

  “Like people.”

  “Yeah, kind of like us.” She felt him look her way again. “It’s probably not much different with you and primates.”

  Shelby chuckled. “Except glaciers are quieter most of the time. And won’t steal food out of your backpack. But yes, ever since my older brother brought home a pet Capuchin monkey, I’ve been enthralled with primates. During college I worked with the primates at the LA Zoo. I especially find the great apes—gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans—enthralling. Then I gravitated to wondering where these unique creatures evolved from.”

  “The paleo part,” John commented.

  “Yes. And they are so much like us, yet different. The more we learn about primate evolution, the more it can tell us about where we came from.”

  John dropped her off at the university lab. “Get home okay?”

  “I’ll be fine. Only about five minutes. Pikes Waterfront Lodge.”

  “Nice. Beautiful view of the Chena River.” He put the Commander in gear. “Pick you up tomorrow?”

  She’d planned on driving her rental—the drive to Eielson was not daunting—but before even thinking, “Yes” was out of her mouth.

  “Good.” He started to release the brake, then paused. “You know, those feet…was wondering how big would whatever they belonged to be?”

  Shelby had already had that answer, not minutes after first seeing the monster plantar pads. “If it is of the primate family as I believe, and based on currently living species, we’re talking close to ten, possibly eleven feet tall and over fifteen hundred pounds.”

  Shelby waved, watching the Commander drive away. Fifteen hundred pounds. More than twice the size of the largest known gorilla. A veritable King Kong. A time capsule, she thought as she
bypassed her rented Toyota 4Runner. Yes, time capsule possibly, but another idea had begun to percolate as she and John returned from Eielson. Yet this thought would require that the UCO truly had originated someplace else other than earth. Which at this stage, there really didn’t seem to be another viable explanation. She couldn’t refute the facts, or rather lack of. What was the UCO constructed of—they didn’t know; how old was the UCO—they could estimate, but in reality, they didn’t know that either; what was inside—they didn’t know, other than a pair of huge feet. And some mysterious indigo substance with strange striations. Just too many damn unknowns.

  Shelby unlocked the lab. At least early next week she’d get a preliminary age estimate on the partial skeleton found with the UCO. And hopefully some DNA results from the well-preserved hair samples she’d sent. She remained confident in her assessment that the mysterious cylinder and prehistoric skeleton were connected in some thus far intangible way.

  Shelby removed the nearly complete cranium from the drawer and placed it on the counter. Her eyes settled on the one-centimeter perfectly circumscribed hole one inch above the right orbit. She placed the tip of her pinky finger in the rent, appreciating the bony smoothness, exquisite symmetry. More than ever she decided this defect was a wound of some type—it was far too round to have been caused postmortem by natural events; e.g., random trauma from moving rocks or shifting ice. No, this child primate thousands of years old had been wounded by something, and possibly fatally. With intent? If so, that would make it murder. And because there was so little preserved soft tissue, the corpse would have been exposed to the elements many months, allowing everything—muscles, fat, tendons, organs—to decompose completely, before Little Okpilak rolled over it, entombing the bones and sparse hair—as well as the preternatural cylinder—in a massive blanket of ice.

  She continued staring at the skull. And this occurred twenty-eight thousand years ago?

  It was way too much to extrapolate with such a dearth of facts.

  That night before falling asleep, Shelby decided there was something else she would need to do in researching the prehistoric primate remains. She did it in all other locations where she’d dug fossils from the earth.

  She would visit Little Okpilak and see for herself where the bones were collected.

  John arrived at the Waterfront Lodge early the following morning. He’d called and Shelby was ready, standing outside in the morning dawn. A light mist floated above the Chena and the water appeared as blue as the brittle sky. Cool out, but she felt buzzed with anticipation. The Jeep Commander braked to a stop in the drive-through. Instantly she could read the electricity in John’s expression. “Mendle called. It’s all there!” he blurted out.

  Shelby climbed in. “What’s all there?”

  “It!”

  She looked at him, her pulse ratcheting. “It?”

  Shelby barely remembered racing through the small towns of North Pole and Moose Creek. John tried to explain what Mendle had relayed to him, but she found it exceedingly difficult to accept.

  John completed the twenty-five-mile drive in what felt like record time to Shelby. The hangar lot was far fuller than the previous night. The brass must have arrived.

  John practically broke into a jog as they neared the large sliding hangar doors. Shelby noticed they were secured tight and some kind of reflective material had been placed over all the windows along the roofline. John took her arm. “Mendle said to enter through here,” leading her to a side door.

  The clamoring echoed in the huge structure and that was not all Shelby noticed. The entire hangar was pitch dark except for small lights illuminating the exits. A guard escorted them past some vacant offices and into the main holding area.

  She heard the young airman say to John, “You ain’t gonna believe this shit.”

  John broke around a partition and lurched to a stop.

  Shelby quickly stepped beside him. She saw the entire platform bathed in blue ultraviolet light—the only illumination. The shadow of the crane stood nearby resembling a huge extinct dinosaur. Shelby’s eyes shot to the UCO. It was upright, no longer lying on its side. Multiple black lights hung at every angle over the apron.

  She felt her face flush when she zeroed in on the cylinder.

  John found his voice first. “Son of a bitch! What the hell do you call that?”

  For a long moment, Shelby stood frozen. When she finally found her words, she said, “Goliath. I would call that a Goliath.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “The lieutenant requests no personal photos,” a security airman instructed. “There will be a session later for that.”

  Shelby only nodded, replacing her cell phone in her purse. She knew it was only a matter of time before what was encased in the UCO would be plastered on the front page of every newspaper and occupy the opening story of every media outlet in the nation, and in all likelihood the world.

  She stole a glance at John and he returned the look. Can you fucking believe this? She only grinned awkwardly and shook her head. She could practically read his mind. Of course, the same thought was probably reverberating in the head of every individual standing in the hangar. She moved past a row of chairs set up around a long table near the front of the platform. She neither looked at the occupants nor let the cacophony of voices interrupt her attention. It would have been impossible to look away from the gargantuan figure frozen in the UCO even if ordered to do so.

  The primate—if she’d had any doubts by only examining the feet, those were obliterated now—stood upright on a pair of powerful-appearing legs that appeared to be affected by a mild varus deformity at the knees. The giant ape was bowlegged. She couldn’t believe the muscularity defined in its upper extremities, even more so than the tree-trunk-like thighs. And long—though they were held at its sides with a slight flexion at the elbows, she would guess the fingertips would still touch nearly mid-calf if extended fully. The arm span had to be over twelve feet. The top of its huge head was close to a foot below the superior rim of the UCO, making the creature well over ten feet tall and probably closer to eleven, even bowlegged.

  She moved around two men chatting excitedly, one speaking into a recorder as he talked, for a better look at its torso. This was a true barrel chest if she’d ever seen one and was almost as thick in depth as it was in width. The abdominal musculature was less defined, mostly because of the mammal’s thick coat of hair, but also there appeared to be a good layer of fatty tissue which would have supplied the primate not only with energy stores for the lean times in foraging for food but also insulation during the last Ice Age. This mammal was designed for the cold. That was assuming he actually lived during the period the age estimations indicated—if they were accurate. Which was anybody’s guess now.

  John leaned close to her ear so he could be heard and commented, “I can’t tell whether his fur is light or dark colored.”

  “Hair,” Shelby corrected him with a grin. “Primates are like us, they have hair. Bears and caribou have fur.”

  “I stand corrected.” He slowly shook his head. “If that thing were alive, his head would hit a basketball rim.”

  “At least,” Shelby agreed, noticing John’s use of the masculine pronoun. Goliath was a robust male ape evidenced by visible male genitalia. “You have to realize it’s not only the ultraviolet light that makes determining his hair and skin color difficult, but also whatever the medium the creature is insulated in.” She guessed he was light gray or even white like a polar bear.

  John gave her a quizzical look. “Insulated? Surely you aren’t insinuating he’s…”

  “I meant preserved. Dead but like in formaldehyde.” Though she couldn’t resist wondering what it would be like to see one of these primates alive and roaming the Arctic north. Scary as hell, for sure.

  John looked around him, saying, “Mendle’s assembled quite an entourage.”

  “Yes.” Shelby moved up to where a rope barred entrance to the
steps up to the platform. This was as close as she was going to get for the time being. She studied the monstrously large face and closely spaced eyes, lids shut tight—handsome in a primitively majestic way—surrounded by thick hair growing from just above his wide prominent sagittal crest up over his scalp and down over his ears, far more than on a present day gorilla. If he was of the same species as the juvenile skull she had back at her lab in Fairbanks, she realized, the crest was wide because it actually consisted of double bony ridges. “He looks angry,” she said.

  “Goliath looks asleep,” John added.

  Shelby smiled. “The name fits, yes?”

  “I’d say you’ve christened him perfectly. The press will eat that up.” John tried to feign mad, scrunching his expression. “Angry, you say.”

  Shelby nodded with a grin. “Yes, like that. Pretend his eyes were open though…See how”—she pointed—“his lips are pursed and appear tense? In chimpanzees, that’s called the ‘bulging-lip display’ and indicates anger.”

  “Wonder what pissed him off.”

  A tenuous idea began to form, but Shelby’s thoughts were interrupted when Mendle approached with a man in tow. From the man’s expression, Shelby immediately sensed an arrogance she’d seen in other individuals who were accustomed to being in charge. And took it. Looking at his civilian slacks and shirt with a loose tie, she also knew who he was. She’d watched him on television expostulating about everything having to do with outer space—planets, comets, and the million-dollar question relating to alien life forms: Are we alone in the universe?

  She heard John mumble, “So that’s the military’s chief consultant.”

  Shelby recognized him from media appearances. She watched Dr. Sigmund Astor say something to the lieutenant and Mendle nod. He was taller than he appeared in front of the cameras, perhaps an inch or two over six feet. With his long face and prominent beaked nose, he always reminded Shelby of a parrot for some reason. The black light illumination only enhanced this image, she thought. The gray goatee matched his full head of hair and was new since she’d last seen him participating in an interview on the evening news about meteor showers. She couldn’t help but notice he wore his pants too short; she could see his Vicuna plaid socks. Yes, being a “cosmos” celebrity paid well.