Godzilla at World's End (11 page)

The airfield had yet to be rebuilt.

"Let us hope that, in the case of this phone line, the forces of progress won this round," Dr. Wendell suggested.

For a few minutes, both men continued to debate the relative distances and times involved in getting to either base. They knew that the trip would be dangerous no matter which destination was chosen.

If something were to go wrong with both of the Hagglunds, the passengers would be stranded with a jammed radio, miles from anywhere or anyone.

"Who are you sending?" Dr. Wendell asked curiously.

"Coselli volunteered to drive one vehicle," Dr. Meyer replied. "And Lansing and Dr. Ronson will take the other."

Dr. Wendell nodded. They were good teams. If anyone could lead the men to Concorde or to the Aussies, it was Coselli and Ronson.

In the end, after long debate, the two geologists felt it was best to try for Concorde Base. Though it was farther away, the terrain in that direction was easier to traverse, and the winds less severe.

It was the best choice. Even if the French were being jammed, too, they would still have active phone lines to the coast and the South Pacific.

"Come," Dr. Meyer announced when they had finished their discussion. "Help me gather up the maps and charts Coselli will need -"

But before he finished his sentence, the young graduate student Dr. Wendell had left behind to monitor the seismography machine burst into Dr. Meyer's hut.

Without knocking
, Dr. Wendell noted ruefully.

"Dr. Wendell! Dr. Meyer! Come quick!" the youth cried with obvious excitement. Before the two men could get to the open door, the grad student dashed out into the daylight once again. Exchanging puzzled glances, Dr. Wendell and Dr. Meyer quickly bundled up and followed him.

The kid was waiting for them outside. His excitement seemed contagious. The men circling the two Hagglunds watched the excited youth with rising curiosity.

As soon as Dr. Wendell emerged from the zucchini hut, the student began speaking rapidly. "The needle just started jumping, sir," the youth babbled. "The needle on the seismograph, I mean. It just started wiggling like crazy - like there was an earthquake under us...
right
under us!

"And there was this other noise, a weird noise ... It was coming from the sound buoys. I sort of listened on the headphones -"

Dr. Wendell cursed and was about to berate the student for using the sound device without asking permission first. Anticipating his colleague's territorial feelings about his equipment, Dr. Meyer raised his hand and silenced Dr. Wendell.

"What did you hear, son?" the portly scientist demanded. "Describe it to me
exactly!"

The youth halted in his tracks and turned to face the two geologists. He thought about his answer for a heartbeat.

"It was a high-pitched whine," he replied, struggling for the right words to characterize the unearthly tone. "It sounded like ... like a giant buzz saw," the young man said, adding, "or maybe a giant chain saw ..."

"A buzz saw? A giant chain saw! That's ridiculous -" But Dr. Wendell never finished that thought. He and the others suddenly felt the ice quake beneath their insulated boots.

***

Bert Coselli was behind the wheel of the second heavy Hagglunds tracked vehicle when the quake began. His colleague, George Lansing, had started the first vehicle and gone for some coffee - giving the vehicle time to warm up.

Coselli had just turned over the cold engine on the second Hagglunds, and the noise was so intense that at first he didn't notice the movement of the ground beneath the vehicle. What finally alerted him to danger was the sight of the massive microwave antenna next to the communications hut swaying back and forth violently.

Then Coselli saw some of his comrades - mostly the geologists and grad students - drop to the ground and hug the ice. Others - maintenance and support crew mostly - remained on their feet, uncertain of what they should do.

As he watched in shocked silence, the cables securing the microwave tower snapped loose from their moorings in the ice. One steel cable whipped through the air forcefully, striking a member of the maintenance crew.

The stunned man's body flew backward like a football that had been kicked. His left arm flew in a completely different direction.

It was then that Coselli noticed the shaking ground. He clutched the wheel of the Hagglunds, knowing he should get out and hug the ground with the others. But he was paralyzed and too frightened to move.

As he continued to stare through the windshield in mute horror, the microwave antenna finally fell over. Coselli's eyes widened when he saw the heavy microwave transmitters land right on top of Dr. Ronson, who had dropped to the ground for safety.

Coselli saw Dr. Wendell and Dr. Meyer running toward the two vehicles. Dr. Wendell was dragging a young graduate student by the scruff of his neck. He pushed the youth into the idling Hagglunds and got behind the wheel.

Then, in the very center of the Dyer base camp, the Antarctic ice began to crumble underneath the buildings and their inhabitants. Like a shattered glass table, the ice broke and fell into the Earth.

With a deafening rumble, the ground itself split. One by one, the red huts began to drop into the abyss. Even over the noise of the destruction and the roar of the Hagglunds' engine, Coselli could hear the screams of his hapless comrades as the very ground dropped away beneath them.

Then an explosion ripped through the far side of the camp. The cookhouse kitchen was instantly consumed in a ball of fire. A few men stumbled out of the ruins.

They were burning, too!

Suddenly, in the midst of the destruction, a dark figure leapt onto the hull of the Hagglunds. Coselli turned as Dr. Hiram Meyer pulled the side door open and scrambled inside.

"Back up!" he cried, shaking the driver's shoulders. "Back up!"

Coselli snapped out of his shocked paralysis. With smooth and practiced motions, he threw the machine into reverse and stepped on the gas. With a sliding, jerking leap, the powerful tracked vehicle sprang to life.

Far behind him, Coselli saw the other Hagglunds drive away from the destruction with Dr. Wendell at the wheel. Then Coselli gunned the engine on his own vehicle. Driving in reverse, he deftly steered the Hagglunds around the maintenance hut and farther back, away from the abyss that was widening and spreading, swallowing the entire camp.

The treads bit into the ice as the vehicle lurched backward. Dr. Meyer, on the passenger side of the cabin, clutched the handrails. The portly scientist started in surprise as Coselli rolled the Hagglunds over a battery-charging unit in his haste to escape the yawning mouth of the pit.

But even as the Hagglunds began to outrun the widening abyss, the ground underneath its steel treads started to crumble. Coselli pushed harder on the gas pedal, until he was practically standing on it. The treads kicked up ice shards as they spun. But inch by inch, the vehicle and its passengers were slowly being sucked into the pit.

Then Dr. Meyer screamed.

Coselli saw why. There was something inside the pit - something moving ... something
big.

Despite his fear, and the certainty that his own death was mere seconds away, Coselli gazed into the maw of the abyss with a fatal curiosity.

The first things he saw were long, curved metal claws thrashing in the air above the edge of the abyss. The silvery sheen of those massive, curved talons flashed in the brilliant Antarctic sun. The metal claws were digging at the pit wall, pulling chunks of ice away from the edge of the hole with each mighty gouge.

As the ground tilted and the Hagglunds slid inexorably toward the edge of the abyss, Coselli finally saw the whole creature - for
creature
it was.

Suddenly, Coselli heard Dr. Meyer scream again, and he felt a blast of icy air fill the cabin. In a desperate bid to escape, the scientist had pulled open the cabin door and jumped out of the Hagglunds. Coselli watched as the man tumbled, screaming, into the pit. A second later, a huge chunk of ice ripped the open door off its hinges. Coselli watched in fascination as it disappeared into the pit as well.

Then Coselli stared at the monster once again.

And it was looking back.

A single multifaceted red eye the size of a giant billboard seemed to lock with his own. With effort, Coselli tore his eyes away, trying to discern the nature of the beast he was facing.

The man couldn't believe that anything that big could be alive. With the crumbling ice falling all around it, details of the monster's form were difficult to make out, but Coselli saw blue and golden scales, snapping metal mandibles around a distinctive beak, and that single hypnotic red eye.

The curved metallic spikes on either side of the mouth opened, and so did the pointed beak. An unearthly electronic howl filled the man's ears. Coselli wanted to cover them, but couldn't let go of the steering wheel.

Then the red eye seemed to focus on the spinning treads of the Hagglunds. The silvery claws flashed once again, and the ground shuddered beneath the vehicle.

In a torrent of ice chunks the size of trucks, the Hagglunds dropped into the pit. Coselli's eyes were wide open as he plunged toward the waiting talons of the creature that had emerged from the very center of the Earth.

Friday, December 1, 2000, 4:05 P.M.
Bridge of the
Destiny Explorer
2,700 feet over the Atlantic Ocean
Off the coast of Georgia

"Number One, take the helm," Captain Jack D. Dolan commanded, stepping away from the main control console in the front of the Plexiglas-lined high-tech bridge of the
Destiny Explorer
.

With an excited nod, Shelly Townsend stepped around Captain Dolan to take the steering wheel, which was mounted on the control column. With that single wheel, she now had the massive airship at her command.

"On station," she announced, gripping the steering wheel and scanning the instruments, mentally recording every aspect of the aircraft's present condition.

Then Shelly peered out of the huge windows at the horizon, one eye monitoring the ship's radar screen. Far ahead in the distance, a United Airlines jumbo jet took off from Savannah International Airport and headed out over the ocean. The plane's running lights were blinking, and as it gained height, rays from the setting sun flashed off its wings.

Cargo ships and pleasure craft dotted the blue-green waters far below. Though the day had been bright, the first shadows of early evening were already touching the ocean waves.

Sunset would come much later at 3,000 feet.

The
Destiny Explorer
had departed Savannah airspace and had just completed a wide turn around the tip of Tybee Island, a course that put the Georgia coast on their starboard and the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean to their port.

"Take her up to thirty-five hundred feet," Dolan commanded.

"Aye, aye, sir."

Shelly spread her legs wide and dug the heels of her boots into the rubber matting of the deck. She wiped her hands on her Levi's and took a second grip on the steering wheel. Then she slowly tested the control column, watching the altitude indicators on the heads-up display edge upward. The HUD was nothing more than a clear plastic screen mounted above the control column. Fiberoptic lights flashed stats on this screen. The information displayed there could be projected on several other computer monitors aboard the
Explorer
, including one in the captain's cabin.

The HUD also displayed the airship's precise latitude and longitude, a land map of the region, the wind direction - as well as the craft's lift, engine thrust, and angle of ascent.

Shelly was soon satisfied that everything looked good. It was a simple, textbook course and speed.

And I should know
, Shelly thought with pride.
I helped write that textbook.

When she was sure everything was ready, Shelly pulled back on the control column, raising the nose of the aircraft. Because of its size, the aircraft responded slowly, but soon it began to climb. The teenager could hear the whine of the
Destiny Explorer
's forward turbofan engines as they pulled the ship forward and upward.

To Shelly, their high-pitched throbbing sounded like music played on a finely tuned instrument.

"Thirty-five hundred feet," she announced a few minutes later. She leveled the ship smoothly and glanced at the navigational and meteorological readouts. Then Shelly informed her captain of the airship's present course and speed.

"Very well," Captain Dolan replied when she'd completed her report. He had studied the teenager's every move and was more than satisfied that she could handle the con.

"I'm heading for a shower and a meal," the captain announced, stretching his tired muscles.

"Aye, aye, sir!" Shelly replied. She punctuated her words with a crisp salute. "And might I add that you've earned them both, sir!"

Captain Dolan chuckled and stroked his curly beard with his hand. He knew Shelly Townsend meant no disrespect. She genuinely appreciated the difficulty he'd had, taking off in a stubborn headwind.

"Call me if anything goes wrong," Dolan said over his shoulder as he stepped through the hatch.

Then he was gone, and Shelly was alone on the bridge.

"At last!" she exclaimed.

For the first few days of the voyage, Shelly had practically been barred from the bridge. Her father had been on board, running constant tests on all the systems. He had important tasks for her all over the interior of the gigantic airship - but never on the bridge. She spent hours among the huge gas cells filled with helium. She spent more hours in the airship's hangar, prepping the Messerschmitt-XYB with Ned Landson - not to mention a whole evening working on the interior lights with the onboard electrician, Michael Sullivan, and the self-styled Queen of Computers, Leena Sims.

I shouldn't dislike the girl so much; I hardly know her
, Shelly thought, recalling the thoroughly unpleasant evening when they had worked together.