Brian Lumley - The Source

For that central area was a ball of light some thirty feet across, and it was apparently suspended there, mid-way between the domed ceiling and the upward curving floor. A sphere of brilliance hanging motionless within a sphere of air, and the whole trick neatly buried under the foot of a mountain!

Narrowing his eyes against the glare, which was powerful even through the tinted lenses of his spectacles. Jazz slowly became aware that the spherical cavern contained other things. A spidery web of scaffolding had been built half-way up the wall and all around the central blaze. The scaffolding supported a platform of timbers which circled the weird light source, reminding Jazz vaguely of the ring system round Saturn. Leading inwards from the ring, a walkway proceeded right to the edge of the sphere of light.

Externally, backed up against the black, wormhole-riddled walls — evenly spaced around the perimeter and massively supported on a framework of stanchions — three twin-mounted Katushev cannons pointed their muzzles point-blank at the blinding centre. Crews were in position, their sights aligned on the sphere, their faces white and alien-looking with headset antennae and insect goggle-eyes trained on the dazzling target.

Between the guns and the sphere stood a ten-foot-high electrified fence, with a gate where the timber walkway spanned the gap between the Saturn's rings and the centre. There was some motion down there, nervous and jumpy, but not much; the stench of fear was so thick in the supposedly conditioned air that Jazz could almost feel it like slime on his skin.

He gripped the wooden rail, let the entire scene print itself indelibly on his brain, said: 'What in the name of all that's…?' He turned his head to stare at Khuv. 'I saw the arrival of those guns that night you caught me. The electrified fence, too. I thought they were meant to defend Perchorsk against attack from the outside, which struck me as making no sense. But from the inside? Christ, that doesn't make much sense either! I mean, what is that thing? And why are those men down there so desperately afraid of it?'

And suddenly, without any prompting, he knew the answer before it came. Not all of the answer but enough. Suddenly everything fitted: all he'd seen, and all Khuv had told him. And especially the flying monstrosity that the American fighters had burned to hell and sent crashing to earth in a ball of flame from high over the west coast of the Hudson Bay. And speaking of flames, wasn't that a four-man flame-thrower squad down there on the Saturn's-rings platform? Yes, it was.

Vyotsky had come up quietly behind Jazz and Khuv where they stood at the rail. He put a huge hand on Jazz's shoulder, causing him to start. 'As to what it is, British,' he said, 'it's some sort of gate or door. And as such we're not frightened of it.' But Jazz noted how for once Vyotksy's tone was muted, perhaps even a little awed.

'Karl is right,' said Khuv. 'No, we're not frightened of the Gate itself — but I defy any sane person not to fear the things that sometimes come through it!'

They started down the final flight of wooden stairs to the Saturn's rings or spider web platform, then moved round the central sphere until they approached the walkway leading to its coldly incandescent heart. Ten feet away from the gate in the electric fence Khuv halted, turned to Jazz and said: 'Well, what do you make of it?' He could only be talking about the glaring yet enigmatic globe which stood on the other side of the gate, maybe seven paces away. It was quite motionless, it made no sound, and yet it was menacing.

'You said that this was where the atomic pile stood,' Jazz answered. 'What, in mid-air? No, OK, I'm being facetious. So what you mean is that after the blow-back everything within sixty-five feet or so of the centre of that… that — whatever it is — was vaporized out of existence, right?'

"That would have been my explanation, too,' Khuv nodded, 'but incorrectly. As I've already pointed out, conversion is the word. According to Viktor Luchov, the energy of the trapped beam was attracted by the latent energy — or the energy in action — in the pile. You could compare it to the way a nail is drawn to a magnet. In the final fusing there was no explosion. Perhaps there was an implosion, I don't know any more about that than Luchov himself. But the matter which had formed the floor of this place, and the pile itself along with its fuel — yes, and all the machinery; too, which had filled this area — all of these things, outwards from the centre to the spherical wall which now you see, were eaten, transformed, converted. Men, too. Seventeen nuclear physicists and technicians died instantly, leaving no trace.'

Jazz was impressed, if not by Khuv's telling of the story, certainly by its content. 'And radiation?' he said. 'There must have been a massive release of — '

Khuv shook his head, bringing Jazz to a halt. 'In relation to what was available, there was very little in the way of escaped radiation. The tips of those wormholes, fifteen to twenty feet into the rock, some of those were hotspots. We did what we could, then sealed them off. In the levels above there are dangerous places still, but again mainly sealed off. And in any case those levels are no longer in use and will never be used again. You have seen something of the magmass, but you have not seen all of it. Metal and plastic and rock were not the only materials which flowed together inseparably in that blast of alien energy, Michael. But rock and metal and plastic do not rot! You understand my meaning, I'm sure…'

Jazz grimaced, said: 'How did they… clean the place up? It must have been a nightmare.'

'It still is,' Khuv told him. That's why the lighting is muted up there. Acid was used. It was the only way. But it left moulds in the magmass which are utterly hideous to look upon. Pompeii must be something similar, but there at least the figures are still recognizably human. Not elongated or twisted or… reversed.'

Jazz thought about it, enquired no further as to Khuv's exact meaning.

Vyotsky had been growing restless for some little time. 'Do we have to stand here like this?' he suddenly growled. 'Why must we make targets of ourselves?'

Jazz's dislike for the man was intense, amounting to hatred. He'd hated him from the moment he first laid eyes on him, and couldn't resist jibes whenever the opportunity for such surfaced. Now he sneered at the huge Russian. 'You think their fingers are likely to slip?' he nodded in the direction of the crew manning the closest Katushev. 'Or maybe they've a grudge against you, too, eh?'

'British,' said Vyotsky, taking a threatening pace closer, 'I could happily toss you on that fence there and watch you fry! You've been advised to mind your mouth. But me? — I hope you go on pushing your luck till you push yourself right over the edge!'

'Calm yourself, Karl,' Khuv told him. 'He's looking for your measure, that's all.' And to Jazz: 'He doesn't mean that sort of target,' he said. 'Or rather he does, but not in the way you think. It's simply that if anything — anything at all strange — comes out of that ball of light there, those crews have orders to open fire immediately and destroy, or try to destroy it. And those orders take absolutely no account of the fact that we happen to be standing here, right in the arc of fire.'

'But if it did happen,' Vyotsky added, 'and if what could come through did, then I personally would be glad to stop a bullet!'

Khuv gave a little shiver, said, 'Let's get out of here. Karl is quite right: we are stupid to stand here tempting fate. It has happened five times before, and there's no guarantee it won't happen again.'

As they turned away and headed back toward the stairs, Jazz asked, 'Do you have it on film? I mean, if it's a regular occurrence — '