SECRETS OF THE ICE
A WORLD OF PULP TALE
The Antarctic wind howled around the buildings of Mirny Station. A team of sled dogs huddled together beneath an awning made of corrugated steel, occasionally rising to snap at one another as they fought to get under shelter, to find the place furthest from the biting wind. Those on the outside had their fur frosted with white, powdery snow, and drifts were beginning to pile up around the walls of the station's single building.
Within the insulated walls were three rooms. In the long common room, bunks, chests, and a camp stove were crowded together; off to the left side was the room with the scientific equipment, while off to the right was the Commander's quarters, one of the few perks afforded to his command.
Three men sat on camp stools around a chest being used as a makeshift table, drinking and playing cards. Mikhail Mikhailovich Vladimirov swore and threw down his hand.
"I fold," he said in disgust. He pulled a swig from the shared bottle of vodka and jogged the elbow of the man next to him. "Here, drink up, my Jewish friend."
Lev Godowsky, the Expedition's doctor, gave Mikhail a suspicious look, but accepted the bottle. He was a purely secular Jew, and his family had assimilated well into the general Soviet culture despite their Polish extraction. They were considered a well-respected family of the USSR's technical class, and yet all his life the people around him had never quite allowed Leon to forget that he was Jewish.
The third man, Deputy Kazimir Tsiolkovsky, twitched his moustache and looked up from his cards.
"It's alright, Lev, he's trying to lighten the mood," Kazimir said. He was the other Polish member of the team.
"Lighten? Lighten?" asked Leon, "I'm perfectly at ease."
Kazimir smiled inwardly as he noted the corner of Leon's mouth curling into a sneer. The Polish Jew was, unfortunately, terrible at bluffing, and that was why Kazimir was about to clean him out.
"I'm talking about him," the Polish man said, nodding at Mikhail, who seemed to be pretending to ignore the conversation but may have actually been distracted as he nursed the bottle of vodka.
Kazimir raised, pushing a small pile of rocks into the center of the playing area. Since they naturally didn't have much cash on hand in an expedition into Antarctica, they were using the geological samples as chips. Also, they would be playing for bragging rights, which Kazimir intended to use.
Leon's fingers twitched as he checked his cards, and Kazimir smiled inwardly again. He knew the other men – how could he not, after three weeks in close quarters? It was like reading a pair of open books.
Leon snorted in disgust and threw his cards down.
"I fold. Kazimir wins again."
Kazimir allowed himself a chuckle and collected the pebbles as Mikhail rolled his eyes and marked a tally in the logbook.
"My friends, you have to learn how to
lie," Kazimir said.
"Only if you want to win at silly card games," said an authoritative voice. The three men stood up suddenly, Mikhail knocking over his camp chair in his hurry. The Expedition's Commander, Vladimir Afanasyevich Dralkin, had emerged from the room with the scientific equipment, papers in hand.
"Apologies, comrade!" Kazimir said, "It's just with the storm we can't exactly-"
Vladimir frowned and waved his papers.
"Just because there's a storm doesn't mean we aren't still a
research expedition. I have the latest readings from the meteorological instruments here with me. What have you been doing?"
The three men were silent. They knew it was a rhetorical question. Vladimir sighed.
"Kazimir, I want you in my quarters. You other two, put those samples back and feed the dogs."
"Yes, comrade," muttered Kazimir, as the Commander walked past them and into his quarters.
"Mikhailovich, since you folded first, you feed the dogs," Lev said. The Russian put down the bottle of vodka and got to his feet.
"Fine, fine, but don't say I never did anything for you."
After Mikhail left, Kazimir stood up and cocked an eyebrow at Lev.
"I don't think he actually has a problem with you. He's just trying to let you know he doesn't care, which of course means he does care but knows he shouldn't."
"Right, that makes me feel better," the doctor said, rolling his eyes as he collected his things.
"Hey, I don't expect anyone to get along when they're trapped together in Antarctica, but he is trying."
"He's trying me," Lev snapped, but he threw up his hands, "Alright, so he's only an idiot. If I thought he was worse than that I'd have hit him already."
"Hey, we're all good Soviet men here, aren't we, comrade?" Kazimir said before following the Commander into the other room.
***
Commander Vladimir Dralkin sat in a camp chair and began filing the weather reports. He looked over at Kazimir coolly.
"Is something bothering you, comrade?"
"I am…worried about the goal of our mission, Commander."
"You mean the ruins. What could bother you about a few tumbled, weathered stones, Kazimir?"
"It's just that the
Miskatonic Report-"
Vladimir Dralkin held up his hand.
"I am familiar with the Miskatonic Report," he said sternly, "I am
also familiar with the fact that one of the scientists who came back from that expedition was raving mad, and the other was not in much better shape.
Previous Soviet Antarctic Expeditions have independently verified many facts about the 'Last Continent' as some with a more poetic mind have called it, and the existence of these ruins is no different.
No expedition has uncovered evidence of exotic lifeforms here, and I do not expect the 5
th Soviet Antarctic Expedition will be any different."
"Yes, but I have read it, and some of the phenomena seem strangely likely. The anatomy of these aliens, the Elder Race, the descriptions are simply too detailed and coherent to be discounted entirely."
Vladimir Dralkin was not a superstitious man. The immortal science of Marxist-Leninism had superseded such a worldview; religion was an antiquated concept, condemned to wither away under the communist society the USSR was building. As for magic, he was well aware of certain studies made by the Institute of Brain Research. Psychic powers were a scientific phenomenon, easily studied and controlled under laboratory conditions, all the better for such "Exotic Science" to be harnessed for the greater good of the worker's state.
He rubbed his moustache thoughtfully and nodded.
"Yes, perhaps the Miskatonic Expedition did unearth some specimens of a previously unknown life-form, ones which regrettably did not survive, but these reports of
shoggoths-"
He was cut off suddenly by the door of the station slamming open, accompanied by Mikhail's voice.
"Commander! Commander, there's something out there!"
Vladimir and Kazimir exchanged looks – Vladimir's suspicious, Kazimir's rather pointed, and both stood to their feet and opened the door to the common room.
Mikhail had shut the door behind him and was speaking to Lev.
"I saw it! In the snow! It looked like a man, but-"
He froze when he saw Vladimir and Kazimir enter, and threw the Commander a salute.
"Comrade! State what it is you think you saw," Vladimir snapped. He was a skeptical man, and mirages in the Antarctic conditions were not unknown.
"Commander, I had gone outside to feed the dogs, on your orders. I had just finished doing so when I looked out into the snow and saw a shape. It looked to be about man-sized, a silhouette more than anything, if you take my meaning. The snow was still coming down in flurries so it's impossible to say, Commander."
"He's drunk," said Lev, and Mikhail rubbed a hand across his mouth.
"No," said Vladimir quietly, "I think he saw something. I am not certain it was a man, but the facts will out. Gentlemen, get suited up. We're going out there."
***
The dogs had found tracks. They were half-covered in snow, but the flurries had stopped entirely by the time the Expedition had gotten outside, and the shallow depressions in the snow, half-smoothed by the snowfall, led off in one direction.
Vladimir Dralkin ordered the men to set off on foot, taking two dogs with them, and they followed them as they snuffled around for the scent.
"Impossible to tell what they are, Commander," grunted Kazimir as he wrestled with the dogs' leads.
"I think they are penguin," said Lev.
"Such a pessimist," said Vladimir quietly, voice muffled by his scarf, "Have you noticed the tracks are too widely spaced? No, I think we have found a man."
It wasn't long before they came upon the graves.
A massive pit had been dug in the pack ice, at least thirty feet wide on each side and ten feet deep. Piles of snow, some of it still compacted, lay scattered around, with a fresh dusting of powder layered over everything, showing that the digging was recent, perhaps less than a day. A ramp of sorts led down into the pit, and the level bottom of the working had six additional holes in it, fairly shallow. Each was about five feet long and roughly human-sized. They resembled nothing so much as open graves.
The dogs refused to go anywhere near it.
"Come on, you dogs," Kazimir cursed, and he aimed a kick at one of the dogs, but it snapped its jaws at his boot rather than go closer to the edge.
"Leave them," Vladimir commanded, and while Kazimir kept a hold of their leashes, he also edged closer to the pit, hoping to get a look inside.
Vladimir was first to move, walking down the ramp into the pit. The sides and bottom were made of compacted snow, the sort that made up most of the landscape in this part of Antarctica.
"They must have been digging for quite some time," he mused. Mikhail and Lev followed him, looking at the graves with trepidation.
"What do you think they were digging for?" Mikhail asked.
Vladimir recalled the Miskatonic Report.
"I can think of some things," he said to himself.
"What other groups could be digging here?" Mikhail asked.
"American, British, French…perhaps the Chinese?" Lev mused. Vladimir was looking at the graves thoughtfully when they heard Kazimir whistle.
"Commander! The dogs found something!"
The men rushed back to the surface and found where Kazimir was standing with the dogs over some sort of furrow in the ground.
"Tracks," Mikhail said with a glance, "Runners, I mean, from a sled. Several of them…"
Vladimir's gaze followed the tracks until they were lost in the distance, but he kept looking until his eyes met the horizon…and the mountain range that dominated them.
He looked at Kazimir.
"I think it's time to activate the contingency," he said, "Better get your keys."
***
To be continued!
