Джон Кэмпбелл - Frozen Hell

Like a knapsack made of flattened coffee-tins, with dangling cloth straps and leather belts, the mechanism clung to the ceiling. A tiny, glaring heart of supernal flame burned in it, yet burned through the ceiling’s wood without scorching it. Barclay walked over to it, grasped two of the dangling straps in his hands, and pulled it down by an effort. He strapped it about his body. A slight jump carried him in a weirdly slow arc across the room.

“Anti-gravity,” said Powell softly.”

“Anti-gravity,” Barclay nodded. “Yeah, we had ’em stopped, with no planes, and no birds. The birds hadn’t come—but they had coffee-tins and radio parts, and glass and the machine shop at night. And a week—a whole week all to itself. America in a single jump—with anti-gravity powered by the atomic energy of matter.

“We had ’em stopped. Another half hour—it was just tightening these straps on the device so it could wear it—another half hour, and we’d have stayed in Antarctica, and shot down any moving thing that came from the rest of the world.”

“The Albatross—” Powell said softly. “Do you suppose—”

“With this thing almost finished—with that death weapon it held in its hand?”

“No, by the grace of God, who evidently does hear very well, even down here, and the margin of half an hour, we keep our world, and the planets of the system too. Anti-gravity, you know, and atomic power. Because They came from another sun, a star beyond the stars, They came from a world with a bluer sun.”

What follows is a preview of the next work to feature the Thing (or, in this case, Things ). It’s a novel-length book with a tentative working title of The Things from Another World (assuming we can get the rights to use it!) which is, of course, a nod to the Howard Hawks film, The Thing from Another World . It is an attempt to build upon John W. Campbell’s world and creations, while remaining 100% true to the source material—in this case, both the novella “Who Goes There?” and Frozen Hell .

I hope you enjoy the beginning of the story and will return when the full work is finished.

—John Gregory Betancourt

Author of the sequel

The Pentagon

Arlington, Virginia

General Artemis Wu bellowed for his secretary. But instead of Lieutenant Kirby, Colonel Bloch entered his office, shut the door, and quietly approached his desk. Bloch, with his beak of a nose and watery brown eyes that seemed to look through rather than at you, had never impressed the general as anything more than a pencil-pusher, the tiniest of cogs in the U.S. military machine. He was the sort of bland little career officer who rose slowly but steadily through the ranks, competent at every level but no more than that.

“Sir,” Bloch said. His face remained stony.

“I assume from your presence here,” said Wu, gazing at him over the black frames of his glasses, “that you are responsible for this ?” He thumped a stack of papers with a blunt index finger.

Typed on thin, age-yellowed paper, with a rusting staple in one corner, the report—dated October 29, 1938, and bearing the faded rubber-stamp marks of a dozen government agencies, plus a bright red CLASSIFIED across the top—clearly had been written by someone either crazy, on drugs, or both. A UFO buried in the ice in Antarctica…conveniently blown up, so no evidence remained? A telepathic monster that could absorb—and assume the shape of—any creature it encountered…also conveniently destroyed? Ridiculous.

“If you will allow me to explain—”

“Explain what? How LSD made it to a military base in Antarctica? How some wise-ass wannabe sci-fi writer put his wet dreams down in a report for a lark? I’m less than a year from retirement, Colonel. I don’t have time for games.” He threw the report at Bloch, who caught it. “Get out.”

“They found a second one, sir.”

Wu paused. “A second what ?”

“Spaceship. In Antarctica. In the ice.” Col. Bloch stepped forward and held out a manilla folder. “The details are in here. I wanted you to see the original report first, to prepare you for this one.”

The general snorted, but accepted the new folder. Could it be real? Bloch had never struck him as the least bit imaginative. And his secretary, Kirby, didn’t have the balls to prank him.

Wu adjusted his glasses, opened the folder, and studied the satellite photograph on top. Antarctica, clearly. It had a geological map overlay, and an area two hundred miles east of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station had been circled in red. He flipped forward. More photographs. A dark shape deep in the ice, estimated—according to notations in the corner—at 148 feet long and 51 feet at its widest. Sonar imaging showed a featureless oval. Thermal imaging showed nothing—the object was as cold as the surrounding glacier. Then came charts with technical calculations that he couldn’t follow. A report on a core sample of the ice around the vessel finished up, dating it back almost 19 million years.

“If this is some kind of joke—” Wu began.

“No, sir. Never .” Bloch actually sounded offended.

General Wu took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. A year from retirement, and this had to fall into his lap. For now, he had to assume the report was true. And if it wasn’t, God help Bloch, Kirby, and everyone else involved.

“How many people have seen this new report?” he asked.

“Eight, sir. Three on my staff, four on the survey team. I am the eighth. You make nine.”

Eight. Too many to keep a secret for long.

“Has anything leaked out?”

“Not yet, sir. The survey team first reported it as a meteorite. Now they’re not so sure. They are requesting confirmation from CalTech and NASA.”

“A meteorite,” Wu said. That sounded plausible. “Get NASA to confirm it. Just a freak of nature.”

“Yes, sir.”

The general held out his hand. “Give me that 1938 report again.”

Bloch returned it to him, and Wu stuck it in the manilla folder with the new report. He’d go through them both again after lunch.

“Why haven’t I seen that 1938 report before?” he asked. It should have been in the officers’ “funny file,” which got passed around at meetings and parties.

“It was…misfiled, sir. Only came to light six months ago, during a records sweep under the Freedom of Information Act. It was a week short of being released…” His voice trailed off.

The general snorted. It figured. Damned reporters were all trying to release everything under the Freedom of Information Act. Good thing it hadn’t gotten out. What a field day UFO nuts would have had. For once, luck was on their side.

“How long does it take to get to Antarctica from here?” he mused.

“I’m…not sure, sir. Three or four days, I would imagine. It’s high summer in Antarctica, so conditions are optimal for travel.”

“Find out.” Wu studied his fingernails. “Arrange whatever transportation we need. I want to see this thing for myself. You will join me, along with every member of your staff who knows about it. This must be contained. And lock down that survey team. Get them on our payroll. I don’t want them communicating with anyone other than you and me…as a matter of national security. There should be enough money left in the discretionary expense fund to cover whatever it takes to buy their services.”

“Sir.” Bloch saluted and hurried out.

Antarctica.… Wu sighed and picked up the 1938 report. His wife would not be happy.