Ice Hunt

Amanda straightened. Positioned against the back wall were six giant ice blocks. Inside each were frozen examples of the creatures, all curled in the fetal-like position. But it was the sight in the chamber’s center that had Amanda falling back toward the exit.

Like a frog in a biology lab, one of the creatures lay stretched across the ice floor, legs staked spread-eagle. Its torso was cut from throat to pelvis, skin splayed back and pi

She hurried back out onto the open frozen lake. Dr. Ogden followed. He seemed oblivious to her shock. He touched her arm to draw her eyes.

“A discovery of this magnitude will change the face of biology,” Henry said, bending close to her in his insistence. “Now you can see why I had to stop the geologists from ruining this preserved ecosystem. A find like this…preserved like this—”

Amanda cut him off. Her voice brittle. “What the hell are those things?”

Henry blinked at her and waved a hand. “Oh, of course. You’re an engineer.”

Though she was deaf, she could almost hear his condescension. She rankled a bit, but held her tongue.

He motioned back to the cleft and spoke more slowly. “I studied the specimen back there all day. I have a background in paleobiology. Fossilized remains of such a species have been discovered in Pakistan and in China, but never such a preserved specimen.”

“A specimen of what, Henry?” Her eyes were hard on the biologist.

“Of Ambulocetus natans. What is commonly called ‘the walking whale.’ It is the evolutionary link between land-dwelling mammals and the modern whale.”

She simply gaped at him as he continued.

“It is estimated to have existed some forty-nine million years ago, then died out some thirty-six million years ago. But the splayed out legs, the pelvis fused into the backbone, the nasal drift…all clearly mark this as distinctly Ambulocetus.”

Amanda shook her head. “You can’t be claiming that these specimens are so old. Forty million years?”

“No.” His eyes widened. “That’s just it! MacFerran says the ice at this level is only fifty thousand years old, dating back to the last ice age. And these specimens bear some unique features. My initial supposition is that some pod of Ambulocetus whales must have migrated to the Arctic regions, like modern whales do today. Once here, they developed Arctic adaptations. The white skin, the gigantism, the thicker layer of fat. Similar to the polar bear or beluga whales.”

Amanda remembered her own earlier comparison to the beluga. “And these creatures somehow survived up here until the last ice age? Without any evidence ever being discovered?”

“Is it really so surprising? Anything that lived and died on the polar ice cap would have simply sunk to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, a region barely glimpsed at all. And on land, permafrost makes it nearly impossible to carry out digs above the Arctic Circle. So it is entirely possible for something to have existed for eons, then died out without leaving a trace. Even today we have barely any paleological record of this region.”

Amanda shook her head, but she could not dismiss what she had seen. And she couldn’t discount his argument. Only in the past decade, with the advent of modern technology and tools, was the Arctic region truly being explored. Her own team back at Omega was defining a new species every week. So far, the discoveries were just new, unclassified phytoplankton or algae, nothing on the level of these creatures.

Henry continued, “The Russians must have discovered these creatures when they dug out their base. Or maybe they built the base here because of them. Who knows?”

Amanda remembered Henry’s early claim: It’s the reason the station was built here. “What makes you think that?” She flashed back again to the discovery on Level Four. This new discovery, amazing as it was, seemed in no way co

Henry eyed her. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Amanda scrunched her brow.

“Ambulocetus fossils were only discovered in the past few years.” He pointed back to the cleft. “Back in World War Two, they knew nothing about them. So, of course, the Russians would come up with their own name for such a monster.”

Her eyes grew wide.

“They named their base after the creature,” Dr. Ogden explained needlessly. “A mascot of sorts, I imagine.”

Amanda stared down at the frozen lake, at the beast lunging up at her. She now knew what she was truly seeing. The monster of Nordic legend.

Grendel.

Act Two

Fire and Ice

5. Slippery Slope

Matt slumped in his seat. Snoring echoed throughout the cabin of the Twin Otter. It came not from the sleeping reporter nor from Je

Je

The ghost became a true smile. Bane had snored since he was a pup curled on the foot of their bed. It had been a source of amusement to both of them. Matt sat straighter. “The plastic surgeon out of Nome said it would require too extensive a nasal job. Too much trimming. He would end up looking like a bulldog.”

Je

Crossing his arms, Matt wondered if that was the best he could manage with her. For the moment, it was enough.

He gazed out the window. The moon was near to full, casting a silvery brilliance across the snowy plains. This far north, winter still gripped the land, but some signs of the spring thaw were visible: a trickle of misty stream, a sprinkling of meltwater lakes. A few caribou herds speckled the tundra, moving slowly through the night, following the snowmelt waterways, feeding on reindeer moss, sprigs of lingonberry, and munching through muskeg, the ubiquitous tussocks of balled-up grass, each the size of a ripe pumpkin, rooted in the thawing muck.

“We were lucky to have radioed Deadhorse when we did,” Je

“What do you mean?”

After clearing Arrigetch, they had managed to raise the airstrip at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope. They had alerted civil and military authorities to their chase through the Brooks Range. Helicopters would be dispatched in the morning to search for the debris of the Cessna. They should have answers on their pursuers shortly after that. Matt had also been able to reach Carol Jeffries, the bear researcher over in Bettles. She knew Je

But now what was wrong? Matt pulled himself up in his seat.

Je

Matt leaned forward. At first, he saw nothing unusual. The constellation Orion hung brightly. Polaris, the North Star, lay directly ahead. Then he spotted the shimmering bands and streamers rising from the horizon, flickers of greens, reds, and blues. The borealis was rising.