Blue Cordon

by Dee Carter, Denis Hughes

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

When Lieutenant Thomas Savage of the Polar Warfare Research Section found the frozen corpse of a woman from another age, little did he know what fearful realms her supernatural influence would lead him into. By taking the Blue Cordon from her mummified body he opened the way to a journey through Fear and the Land of Eternal Dark . . .

Release date: October 27, 2016

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 98

Sample

They stood where they were, four small human figures against the ruthless background of Nature’s cruelty. A biting gale of wind raged on every side, hurling the powdered snow at their faces with such force that every particle burned like a red-hot needle. But they barely noticed its punishment.

Muller waved his fur-gloved hands in a strangely childish gesture of dismay. “Mother of God!” he breathed. “It’s gone! All gone, the camp and everything!”

Maynard shut his eyes for an instant, praying that when he opened them again the two long wooden huts would be there where they ought to be; that Peter and Gale and Mike Spenser and the rest would be stumbling to meet them through the snow. When he did open his eyes the scene was the same as before.

“Wiped out!” said Bury savagely. “God, how I hate this blasted snow! If it doesn’t kill you one way it’ll do it another. Poor devils, they bought it all right.”

“Yes, I’m afraid you’re right,” said the fourth man very quietly. “They bought it, Bury.” He stared at the great wall of snow and ice and rock that had roared and tumbled down from the mountainside hundreds of feet above. And there was pain in his chest when he realised what it meant. Did the others know so clearly? He’d have to tell them sooner or later.

Maynard said: “Tom, what the hell do we do?” Because they endured so much in common, these men did not call him “sir” or “skipper” or “boss”—just “Tom.” There were no brasshats in the frigid latitudes to care what they called him. And he was “Tom” because they liked and respected him. Lieutenant Thomas Savage of the Polar Warfare Research Section. A proud rank and title, but not a proud man; instead, a very ordinary man, humane, humorous, brave as a lion, undaunted by the snow and zero temperatures which in these regions were as much a menace as any mortal enemy.

“What do we do, boys?” he echoed slowly. “That’s just what I’m wondering. With the base camp wiped out you must know that strictly speaking we’re sunk. The Gropers are nearly out of fuel; we’ve enough food to last us a week at the outside; in a few days the winter will be on us, and I don’t have to tell you the nearest coastal base is a darned sight too far away to reach.” He turned his gaze from the horrifying sight of the tumbled snow and ice beneath which, hundreds of feet down, were men he had known, food and fuel he needed, the very means of survival in a land where man was at constant war with the bitter elements. He looked instead at the Gropers, queer vehicles in all truth, but vehicles which, in the last few days, had proved their worth a hundred times over. And now they were all that stood between himself and his three men and … death in this frozen realm of eternal cold. But he knew that their fuel would never carry them to the main camp where they had planned to winter in comfort.

Maynard followed his gaze. Maynard was a small man, as shrivelled as a walnut, tough as rawhide, sometimes gauche, unpleasant company, but always dependable.

“You can look at the perishers!” he grunted sourly. “What the hell’s the good of flying tanks when they run out of kerosene for the turbines? Tell me that, Tom, an’ you’ve solved a lot of problems!”

Savage forced a smile that was lacking in humour. “Can’t you be less pessimistic for once?” he said. “There are three Gropers, each with enough gas for one hundred miles at a pinch. If we ditch a couple and squeeze into the other one we might just make it.”

Maynard spat in the furrowed snow at his feet, furred figure hunched and bitter. “Blizzard comin’ up,” he said laconically. “We’d never make it, Tom, you know that.”

Bury shook his big shaggy head like a sorrowful bear. “I’m going to brew up some char,” he announced. “We don’t have a lot; might as well enjoy it while we have it to drink.”

They all muttered, trying to be cheerful, trying to feel that things weren’t as bad as they seemed, knowing that they were, if anything, worse. As if by mutual agreement they turned their backs on the chaos of the avalanche. The mass of snow and ice which had fallen and obliterated their camp and their comrades was a symbol of defeat, an omen of the surety of death in these barren wastes. Savage felt it deep in his heart, felt it with a deep-rooted certainty which nothing could dispel. They trudged back to the red and yellow Gropers. Overhead, the sky was a dull uniform grey merging into black; the icy wind whistled like a thousand demons, its tearing fingers throwing a fine powder of snow from the peaks. Here and there jagged outcrops of black glistening rock poked up through the snow, sheathed in ice, the snow whipped away by the force of the wind. Soon the long winter night would close down, shutting this prospect of barren wilderness from the eyes of man. For some, for the half dozen stiffened bodies beneath the avalanche, it was already blotted out. For the remaining four the future sustained but little more hope. They crowded round XO4, Savage’s Groper, leader of the Section.

“Let’s get inside out of this cursed wind!” grunted Bury. “I can’t even think straight.”

Savage nodded, huddling his furs more tightly around him. “At least it’s warm inside,” he admitted. “Come on, the rest of you; we’ll work out a plan presently.”

They squeezed into the Groper’s cabin, snow melting on their clothes as the warmth of the interior thawed it. The close, clammy atmosphere, redolent of kerosene and engine oil, was a paradise after the blast of the outer cold. Bury got the primus going; tea was welcome.

“I suppose,” said Muller slowly, “there’s no chance of digging down to the camp, is there? I don’t mean that we’d have any chance of finding the boys alive—the huts would be crushed flat, of course—but I was thinking of fuel and food. What about it, Tom?”

Savage cupped his mug of tea in both hands and frowned. “We’ll make a survey presently,” he said. He did not think it would be any use; but they must do something. The radio was unserviceable; there was little food left; hardly any fuel for the motors. And they were pretty nearly four hundred miles from the nearest base on the coast—with the Arctic winter close on them. Under circumstances such as these even the Gropers, latest and reputedly most powerful of all modern polar weapons, were at a distinct disadvantage. Unconsciously Savage echoed Maynard’s earlier words: “What the hell’s the good of flying tanks without fuel!”

Muller, squatting on the steel floor with his back against the bulkhead, pondered. At length: “Y’know, it strikes me we’re a bit lucky in a way. If we hadn’t run into all that bad weather and been held up we might have been in camp when the avalanche wiped it out.”

Maynard grinned like a monkey. “Always cheerful, that’s you!” he said. “Lot of ‘ifs’ in this business. If the radio hadn’t gone out on us in that blizzard we’d have been able to ask for help; if it hadn’t been for the blizzard we’d have had enough gas to make the coast easily. As it is.…” He gave a shrug that was eloquent.

“With the kerosene from XO5 and 6 we can get a long way towards it,” said Savage. He paused. “There’s another chance, too, but a thin one.”

They pricked up their ears, glancing at him quickly, hope and interest renewed by his words—the hope of men who knew themselves doomed.

“Go on,” said Maynard quietly.

Savage said: “Somewhere in this area there’s a party of Scandinavian scientists grubbing around on geological research. My idea is to fuel up XO4 from 5 and 6 and strike out to their probable location. It’s a chance we can’t overlook.”

They considered carefully. “If it doesn’t come off …” began Muller stolidly.

“If it doesn’t come off we shall be in the cart,” said Savage.

“But not much worse off than we are at the moment, Tom,” put in Maynard. “We’ll have to take the risk anyway.”

Savage nodded and straightened up. “In any event,” he said, “the line we shall take will be taking us closer to the coast and the base camp. We shan’t lose much by it.”

Bury said: “You plan to fly the Groper?”

Savage shook his head. “Uses too much gas that way. No, our only chance is to tank it along; but first of all we must tranship what fuel we have. You can go ahead with that part of it while I take a look at the avalanche fall and check on the possibility of digging down for more fuel. I don’t suppose there’s much chance, but you never know.”

They finished their mugs of tea, thick with condensed milk and syrupy sweet. Savage opened the cabin door and dropped to the frozen snow outside. The icy wind penetrated his heavy furs as if they were so much paper. Head down, he set off across the undulating stretch which separated the Gropers from the awful mass of the avalanche fall. Surely, he thought, there would be no chance of reaching anything under all that. But he had to make sure.

Driven snow powder plastered his furs and goggles, almost blinding him. He battled on, not halting till he reached the fringe of the fall. He wiped the snow from his goggles, looking upwards with instinctive anxiety. Thousands and thousands of tons of snow and ice must have been torn from the glacial face of the mountain, torn by weather rotting it and undermining the massive overhangs. In the grey gloom the scene was one of utter desolation, frightening in its very immensity. His eyes ranged upwards, scanning the barren face of rock and glassy ice, green and black and grey in the weird light. At one point the avalanche had stripped off and left a sheer wall of transparent ice, for all the world like an enormous window, blurred rock behind it. There was something small and pale coloured up there, too, but he could not be sure what it was.

Turning his attention to the camp site, he quickly realised that no amount of digging would benefit them. A hundred feet or more of chaotic fall had buried the hutments and the men who had been their friends and companions. Savage was on the point of turning away disconsolately when his eyes caught the little blob of pale coloured stuff high in the ice wall above him. Momentarily, the light improved, and it was then that he realised how like a human figure the pale blob was.

Curiosity as much as anything else compelled him to get a closer sight. The climb was laborious but not impossible. Part of the avalanche had formed a natural stair-way leading almost directly to the sheer glassy window through which he could see the intriguing blob. It appeared close to the bottom edge of the “window.” He lost sight of it when he was halfway up the steep ridged slope, but was confident of finding it there when he over-topped an intervening barrier of rock and tumbled snow blocks. When he did sight it again, only a few yards from him now, he halted so abruptly that he nearly overbalanced from shock.

That pale coloured blob was a human figure!

Savage pulled himself together, going forward again till he stood right against the sheer polished surface of the ice “window.” He rubbed his goggles clear, hardly daring to believe the truth of what he saw. This must be some strange mirage induced by the grim surroundings, he thought. . .