Abominable Read online

  Mendle made the introductions brief. “Professor Sigmund Astor just arrived from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and will assist us in analyzing the UCO. His discipline is astrophysics, specializing in analyzing the origins of potential extraterrestrial objects. I’ve filled him in as best I could and he has a few ideas on how to analyze what the UCO is composed of.” The lieutenant checked his watch. “At noon, I’ve arranged for the rest of the committee to meet here and answer some questions.”

  “Questions?” John asked what Shelby was thinking.

  The lieutenant failed to mask any disdain. “Yes, not unexpected, I suppose. With this recent development”—he indicated the gargantuan figure locked in the cylinder—“the news has leaked. Vanessa Bayliss will arrive with some reporters. With his expertise in media relations, Dr. Astor will lead the press conference but I want you two here as well.” He motioned to Shelby. “What is that thing up there anyway? Much too large for a gorilla. Doesn’t even look like any ape I’ve ever seen photos of.”

  Shelby had an idea but Astor replied first. “Lieutenant, the far more important query should be how did that thing get inside that receptacle and how did the UCO, as you’ve aptly christened it, end up where it was found. Even more significant, who put it there? Unless of course he arrived in it!” He added, “I’m quite intrigued and I’m sure by the end of this investigation, that grotesque creature inside will be the least of this magnificent story,” unaware how wrong he would be.

  Shelby studied the name placards of the individuals seated at the table, five including John and herself. Lt. Mendle would remain standing at a podium set up beside the platform work station and emcee the ad hoc conference. Three rows of chairs had been placed on the concrete apron. The ultraviolet lights had been extinguished, leaving the star—at least in Shelby’s mind—hidden behind the UCO’s indigo façade. Overnight, the entire cylinder had transformed from the smooth alabaster gray sheen to the darker indigo color except for a few slivers of gray remaining at each end, mostly isolated around the rims.

  Shelby’s eyes lingered a few long moments more on where she imagined the huge primate’s head would have been visible, if black lighted, before swiveling back around. She caught Astor watching her curiously and turned her attention back to the placards, matching names with the faces on the panel. Other than John and Astor, no one else she recognized. One middle-aged man and a younger woman were in full military uniform and Shelby decided the colonel, Shaun Espinoza, was Mendle’s immediate superior, while the woman she wasn’t sure. Her name placard said Captain Jen Lisbon. Shelby wondered if she was a pilot. Seated off Astor’s left shoulder another civilian woman, Dr. Miko Lujno, appeared engrossed in some computer printouts, scanning them as she sipped at her water.

  By 12:15 the chairs were filled and though Shelby noticed many cameras in the audience, no pictures were being taken. A nervous anticipation filled the entire hangar and she couldn’t help notice how silent everyone had become. Wait until they turn the UV light back on. She couldn’t deny a mild case of nerves as well because she didn’t know what to expect. The last thing she’d anticipated that morning—besides actually seeing what was inside the UCO—was participating in a press conference. Last night she’d informed Dr. Reddic back in LA of the latest remarkable developments and promised to keep him updated. After today she figured he would hear about the find on the news. She looked at the others. John met her gaze and winked. Other than soft intermittent murmurs, the only other sounds were from outside. Shelby heard a plane take off and a few moments later what sounded like the thwack-thwack of a large chopper lifting off the tarmac.

  No sooner had the aircraft sounds faded and Lt. Mendle made the introductions than a statuesque woman stood and asked point-blank, “When do we get to see it, Frank?”

  Shelby figured this was the infamous Vanessa Bayliss.

  Mendle started to speak, but Astor replied first. “You are looking at it, Ms.…?”

  Her eyes darted from the lieutenant to the astrophysicist. “Vanessa Bayliss, Dr. Astor. This intriguing development must be quite astounding for the military to call in a civilian so soon. Especially the well-known Dr. Astor.”

  Shelby didn’t fail to notice the tinge of sarcasm at how she’d said “military.” She sensed some friction between Bayliss and the base, or perhaps anything military.

  “Actually, Ms. Bayliss—” Astor began.

  “Vanessa, Doctor, please. All of us will be well acquainted by the time all this is over.”

  Shelby watched the astrophysicist glance at Mendle, who simply gave a single nod. You take this. Astor continued, “As I was saying, the UCO—Unidentified Cylindrical Object—has been where you see it for a day over two weeks. It’s been extensively analyzed and as of this point in time, to be quite honest, we cannot say with any sense of certainty what it is. I’ve reviewed the data thus far obtained and have reason to hypothesize statistically speaking that the UCO might not have been constructed here.”

  “Here? As in this country? Is it Russian? Chinese?” she asked.

  Astor seemed to pause as if searching for the words, or as it seemed to Shelby, to draw out the suspense, before replying, “As far as we know, it is not military. And when I say ‘here,’ I’m alluding to earth.”

  Murmurs exploded. “This planet?” “Alien?” “Why is it here?”

  Bayliss’s voice drowned out the others. “Dr. Astor, are you insinuating that huge cylindrical box up there is from outer space?”

  The astrophysicist turned and waved at the platform. “I’m saying that it is made of a material completely unknown here on earth.”

  The reaction was instantaneous. Everyone rose, calling out questions, making comments. Shelby could barely understand what they were saying, and she couldn’t help smiling a little inside—they reminded her of a wild troop of excited howler monkeys when a leopard was near.

  Astor raised a hand for order. “That statement comes with a corollary. The research has only begun. I can tell you it is quite old, quite hard, and—”

  A younger man holding aloft a recorder demanded, “That means what is in it is extraterrestrial.”

  The astrophysicist looked perturbed. “I didn’t declare it extraterrestrial. Not yet. But I will borrow from the philosophical principal, Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is usually the most accurate. Have you seen what is in it?”

  Bayliss took over. “We heard the rumors as we arrived.”

  More voices flew from the rows of chairs, almost in unison. “We want to see what is in it! Show us!”

  Shelby watched John, who was watching Mendle. The other civilian woman on the panel, Miko Lujno, reached over and tapped Shelby’s shoulder. “What is in it…” she read Shelby’s name, “Dr. Hollister?”

  “You haven’t seen?”

  Lujno shook her head. “My specialty is optic amplification.”

  Shelby hesitated replying because frankly she wasn’t sure what was in it, either—except what looked to be a very, very large primate. Before she could speak the lieutenant took over. Shelby mouthed to Lujno, “It’s big!”

  Mendle explained, “The UCO appears today as you see it under the visible light spectrum. An impenetrable indigo color. We will now turn out all the lights—the hangar will become dark so don’t be alarmed—and we will switch on the ultraviolet illumination.” He spoke into his radio.

  Just before the hangar fell in darkness, she could see every pair of eyes focused on the upright cylinder. She stole a brief glance at John. Oh boy…

  “Black lights!” Mendle called out.

  For an instant, nothing happened, then one UV light came on quickly followed by several more, and within seconds, the entire platform was bathed in deep purple.

  The shocked silence lasted less than a heartbeat. Then the cacophony of voices erupted.

  CHAPTER 7

  For the second time in as many hours, Shelby found herself staring at the incredible
creature locked in the cylinder. It reminded her of one of those prehistoric insects locked in amber, only on a far grander scale. Huge. Damn, the monstrous primate was bigger than huge. He’s a giant! She noticed the sagittal crest was actually binary, two crests running parallel over the top of his head. Her initial impression of it just being wide had been incorrectly influenced by the thickness of the primate’s scalp hair. So in all likelihood, the giant was of the same species as the juvenile.

  Questions from the audience rained around her but she tuned most of them out, concentrating on the magnificent animal bathed in ultraviolet light. She noted how the hair’s luster almost glowed under the black light spectrum. She was even more convinced now the ape was either gray or white when alive. But until the animal was actually examined, she had no way of really knowing, especially since no one even knew what the primate had been preserved in. Or how.

  Vanessa Bayliss and her entourage of reporters finished up on the platform. They’d been granted ten minutes for a close-up view. The photo session was brief. Mendle watched closely alongside the two other military personnel on the panel—the colonel and the woman with him—speaking in low tones.

  Shelby decided to wait until the conference ended before walking up for a closer inspection. Miko Lujno stepped past her on her way down, saying, “You weren’t embellishing. That thing is huge!”

  Earlier, when Astor began discussing the UCO, she’d watched how animated he became. He really did enjoy the spotlight, and his favored interest in the receptacle versus what was inside came across easily to anyone listening.

  “I mentioned the UCO was hard,” he discoursed. “Quartzite boron and lonsdaleite are the hardest materials known to man, yet the surface of the cylinder is at least a magnitude fifty harder. Thus far we have been unable to scratch it, burn it, break it, deform it…”

  John leaned close to Shelby. “He loves to hear himself talk.”

  Shelby once again tuned the astrophysicist out. “He does.” But the hardness factor did concern her. How were they ever going to get the creature out if they couldn’t even penetrate the UCO’s surface?

  Someone was asking, “And you believe this ‘cylinder’ is twenty-eight thousand years old?”

  Astor indicated he did. “That is based on the age of the organic material found in the rocks surrounding the receptacle.”

  Shelby nudged John. “He’s stealing your fire.”

  “Hey, I’m just an ordinary geologist who hikes on glaciers. And my findings are only preliminary.” He listened to Astor a moment before saying, “You get the impression he’s more interested in the UCO than what is inside it?”

  Shelby couldn’t resist a sly grin. “So it wasn’t just me.”

  “Nope.”

  The next question caught even the space celebrity off guard. Bayliss asked, “Who named him Goliath?”

  Astor feigned a chuckle. “I wasn’t aware that thing had a name.”

  Bayliss zeroed in on Shelby. “Dr. Hollister”—she glanced at her notes briefly—“your specialty is monkeys, correct?”

  Shelby felt all eyes rivet on her, even Astor’s. “Actually, my specialty is primates—the great apes—with an emphasis on paleoprimatology.”

  “Paleo means primitive or prehistoric, I believe.”

  “You are correct.”

  “So your specialty is the study of ancient primates.”

  “Yes.”

  “From where I stand, anything twenty-eight thousand years old is prehistoric,” adding, “most definitely older than me,” which brought a few laughs.

  “I would agree.”

  Bayliss’s eyes roved from Shelby to the UCO and back to Shelby. “It was you, wasn’t it? You named him Goliath.”

  Shelby missed the significance of who named him—there were far more pressing research questions to be answered—but she went along with the Bayliss’s assertion. “I might have said he looks like a Goliath, but…”

  Bayliss cut her off. “Dr. Hollister, if Dr. Astor’s assumption is accurate concerning the extraterrestrial origin of the UCO, and early indications suggest it is, do you believe Goliath came from outer space?”

  A bated hush spread over the hangar.

  Hm. Shelby hadn’t really considered that. For one thing, no one knew for sure where the UCO came from. She could feel the stares of the audience as well as the military airmen. She cast a long look at the huge ape. “No,” she said.

  “No?”

  Shelby thought a moment. “As you’re aware, Dr. Stevens removed some bones found with the UCO. Dug right out of the glacier in virtual contact with the cylinder. I believe those bones are a younger version of what we see here.”

  Another man commented, “A young Goliath then.”

  “Yes.” Shelby sensed a hypothesis forming but it fizzled when Bayliss said, “Why would that creature be so well preserved and the bones be only…well, bones?”

  Shelby smiled because suddenly an earlier idea flashed so strongly in her mind she knew she was correct. Something had put Goliath in that container. “The UCO is a huge specimen jar,” she said. “Goliath was collected like a butterfly in a jar.”

  Murmurs erupted. A woman reporter asked, “Who would collect such a hideous beast?”

  Shelby shrugged. “I guess you could say hideousness is in the eye of the beholder.” This brought more chuckles.

  “Seriously, Dr. Hollister,” Bayliss persisted, “following Dr. Astor’s alien scenario, you’re suggesting some beings arrived on earth, bringing their ‘specimen jar,’ and captured that giant ape…why?”

  Shelby caught Astor watching her. John and Mendle, too. “Why do we capture insects, reptiles, any creature for that matter?” she asked rhetorically. “Keep as pets, to study…to eat,” she said with a wince.

  Bayliss added, “To take home.”

  “Yes, possibly,” Shelby started, then facing the gargantuan primate, she commented, “But if that were the case, why did they leave Goliath here?”

  Shelby watched Bayliss and her press corps file out toward the exit. Most of them continued staring back even as they left the hangar, some with mouths agape. It really was an unbelievable sight. She knew Goliath and the UCO would be on the front page of every paper in the country by tomorrow morning. She reminded herself to call Dr. Reddic to prepare him for what would surely precipitate an avalanche of inquiries to the Center of Primatology.

  Momentarily she wondered if she’d overstepped her professional degree by suggesting the UCO was nothing more than a collection receptacle. Well, she’d already said it and who was out there to declare her wrong? Something momentous had happened 28,000 years ago during the last arctic Ice Age and the truth would probably always be nothing more than conjecture.

  She climbed the platform steps and approached the huge cylinder that seemed to shimmer under the UV lights. She waited for John to catch up. After the lieutenant ended the questioning, she’d seen him talking to Astor and Mendle. Under the black light she read aloud the temperature sensor applied to the cylinder’s surface over the primate’s right knee. Still 95.9.

  “Damn, Goliath is huge.” John moved around so that he stood directly in front, facing the giant primate.

  “Just don’t call him hideous,” Shelby quipped.

  “Sounds like a relationship is blooming.”

  Shelby smiled, staring up at the immense angry face. “Never in a million years would I have envisioned getting this near a fully preserved prehistoric primate. This is better than the mastodons dug from the frozen tundra in Siberia.”

  John walked a few paces around the cylinder, just gazing and shaking his head in awe. “And you’re the girl who named him Goliath.”

  “It fits.”

  “You’ll be a celebrity like Astor.”

  Shelby shook her head. “Not my bag.”

  “Might not have a choice.” John touched the smooth veneer. “It is intriguing to consider that this could be from an ali
en solar system, though. If the UCO turns out to be extraterrestrial, and that depends on if we can identify what the damn thing is made of. A lot of ifs.”

  “And if we can get Goliath out.”

  Astor must have overheard Shelby’s last statement while joining them on the platform because he commented, “Might not be as difficult as the military has proposed.” The astrophysicist confidently tapped the rounded surface. “Definitely durable. Would have to be to have survived tens of thousands of years buried in a glacier. Hell, you could drop this baby twenty thousand feet from the summit of Denali and it wouldn’t crack.” He glanced at the glacier geologist. “No chance those rocks found with this thing were meteorites?”

  John indicated no. “Common shale, dolomite, some quartzite, and granite, all indigenous to the bedrock under and around Okpilak,” adding, “You’re welcome to examine what I’ve collected.”

  Astor continued moving his hand in various spots, tapping. “You’re the geologist.” He paused at the temperature gauge. “The lieutenant says since last night the surface temp has not shifted even a fraction of a degree. Interesting.” He peered close inside. “Must be some type of nano circuitry at work. The physical transformation has been remarkable. Gray to what we have here.” Holding both hands up beside his eyes, he rested his forehead against the UCO. “Anyone offered an explanation for those tiny filaments dispersed throughout the interior?”

  Shelby leaned close beside him but instead of gazing at the fine indigo filaments, she studied the areas of the giant around the trunk devoid of hair. She’d never seen skin this so well preserved. Almost like she could reach out and feel the vitality. One hand—his right—was clenched in a tight fist, while the left hung open. God, his thick fingers could grip a basketball like she held a tennis ball. Incredible. “Circuitry is as good a guess as any,” she offered.