The Deadliest Alien Artifacts (Story Collection) (12 page)

The time
traveler launched and vanished into the past leaving all the people
at the launch site gasping from the pure magnitude of the forces
and explosive exit, and it became clear to everyone that the
colossal expense, time and trouble, and vast dangers to the time
traveler would end time travel.

The world’s
first time machines were time probes and were original used to
probe the near future, where they were recovered within days, and
had their accuracy and recordings checked. Most vanished
completely, and the ones that were recovered showed why they were
only random lucky arrivals, and many that appeared were detected at
sites all over the world, with the majority damaged in
collisions.

The time
traveler and time machine mission had taken many years of work, and
a great deal of information also had to be accumulated as they had
been trying to discover a time disturbance that had been detected
in the past, where the use of a time machine had been proven to
have been used.

The other time
machine and its accuracy and power had clearly not been created by
any human! The technology behind it surpassed anything that they
had encountered!

They believed
it even surpassed anything in this universe and had been created by
something they could barely imagine, and the time traveler had his
mission carefully planned and been given technology that they
believed could capture the other time traveler, and what it used to
travel through time.

The time
traveler traveled further into the past than any other human before
had traveled, and his time machine swiftly blasted out of his
century into what resembled a constant explosion, which would have
destroyed his time machine if it had not been designed to withstand
virtually anything thrown at it.

The time
traveler considered following it to where it had come from, where
he believed it had vanished to after its mission, and after his
mission he intended to reappear approximately one minute after he
had vanished into the past, at the launch site.

The time
machine resembled some form of highly advanced missile, and he
constantly examined it and his mental controls searching for damage
and for signs of powerful forces acting upon it, and it was
undamaged and working properly, but when it entered a time zone,
and stopped traveling through time, the forces at its entrance
damaged the time machine, damaging many of its functions, and he
discovered the incredible speed he was traveling at through the
atmosphere, and at a far faster speed than he should have been, and
before he crashed into the ground something hit the time
machine.

Chapter 8

The Alien
Encounter

(From the novel
The Alien Artifact 6)

Out of the silent empty Antarctic night
high-powered rifle blasts were astonishing, especially in the fatal
blizzard engulfing Willis! The explosions sounded so powerful he
believed they were using some form of powerful explosive in the
bullets!

Whoever was after him had to be crazy and
out for the kill, and stupid for entering them into such a blizzard
and fury of snow! He could not realize who was there and just
accepted that they might be trying to kill him for being a leading
scientist at the ice station!

Ice Station X1 had to be located in the
coldest and most remote place on the planet! Even in the summer the
place had been deadly cold to him! As far as he was concerned there
was nothing there to kill for and nobody there that he thought
capable of doing so! It and the coldness made him cringe, and
blindly rush on through the blinding blizzard, lost.

A loud explosion blasted out and a bullet
thudded somewhere nearby and he had to run through the dark snow
landscape for his life! He dared not use his light and he could
barely see anything!

The men could be heard over to his side and
he realized that they could have infrared sights and he just dived
into a pile of snow, and buried himself deep. Surely they would not
find him!

Once he realized that nothing had happened
he started to enjoy the rest and being free from being attacked.
His mind raced through what had occurred! Yet he only realized that
the location that he strolled into had been a region that nobody at
the ice station went in, and he started to wonder what was
there.

Why would they go to such lengths to kill
him? What could possibly be there? What could be there in such a
desolate place?

When he finally left where he was and
started to return to the ice station, he started tracing where he
had been where they had appeared and started looking around, and
strolled around and found something buried beneath a region on flat
snow, which he wiped the snow and ice away from and revealed a
wooden cover.

Below it he found a vast hole going straight
down deep into the ice below, which had clearly been hollowed out
with some large powerful machine, which he had not seen there. Yet
the region was vast!

Who had dug such a hole? And he wondered if
it was by some foreign country that intended to destroy the secret
military station?

It was then that he discovered an old rope
and harness buried away in the snow, and knew he had a way to climb
down, and he decided to investigate it, while avoiding being killed
by them or the blizzard! He was sure it had been dug for a reason
and that something was just below him!

He swiftly attached the ropes and fitted the
harness around him and shifted in, and turned on his light, and
covered the top with the wooden cover.

Mind-bending sounds and echoes from the
haunting blizzard screamed down through the ice shaft with fury and
left him stunned at the dangers, and no matter how he tried to
shake it off and contemplate identities his thoughts never formed
stable recognitions of what was occurring in the blizzard
above!

The ice that the tunnel went through
fascinated him as it was different from the regular ice below the
ground there! It looked to him to have been formed from water that
had melted and had been frozen quickly afterwards!

Clouds of powdered snow and snowflakes
swirled down and through the beam from his light and he continued
to release the rope, edging him down, seeking to discover what was
below.

He realized that he had avoided being killed
after all and wondered if he was going to be killed later, when he
climbed back up and went outside.

He groaned as he moved down, realizing the
mistake he was making and the trouble he would have getting back to
the surface and trying to find the ice station in the dark.

He stopped and dangled about on his rope and
examined how the tunnel had been cut, while glimpsing parts of the
shaft above, and was surprised again at how large and expensive the
equipment used must have been.

He had always wanted to investigate some
great mystery and it had even helped lead him into becoming a
scientist, at such a far out desolate location, and he wanted to
explore more. He had wanted to explore and discover new things of
value and greatness, and perhaps even be remembered in history
somewhere!

What interested was why they had gone to
such lengths to kill him, and why he had not known about the
tunnel! Surely they had a way of examining below the ice and would
have done it while constructing the underground ice station,
especially with it being of so confidential and belonging to the
military.

What treasures could be hidden away in such
a region, with it being one of the last not properly explored
regions?

What was he dealing with though? Why were
they trying to kill him? Were they protecting something that they
had hidden there?

Something of unfathomable unidentifiable
nature could be under him and he had to explore it!

As he lowered himself progressively he
started to realize the depth of it and that there could be
something there!

Something could be secretively built there
with the help of the Russian spies in the ice station, and to be
used to destroy the entire ice station in an atomic war!

He realized the implications of the find and
that he would have to check what was there, no matter what! He
could not let it go, and he had to survive and give the information
to someone.

Willis was blinded by the black abyss below
him as he lowered himself down through the cold tunnel, uniquely
drilled with an incredible precision.

He gripped the rope hard, but spun round,
and fixed his foot against the tunnel wall to stop it, and looked
up to the top of the tunnel and just saw darkness there now, and
looked and listened to what was there, and realized that if he was
caught there they could cut the rope and let him fall to his death
at the bottom. If he never died he would starve to death there!

So far he had been unchallenged with his
insistence in going down and he realized that he best increase his
speed!

A silent thud echoed down from the top and
eventually a cloud of snow came down making him gasp and search for
anything, and consider putting his light out, but he saw that it
was a freak gust of wind blowing into the cover.

He wondered why he was lowering himself so
slowly down when they could easily fall down by freeing the rope
and using his hand to slow and stop it, but it could be
dangerous!

The dangers of being caught were greater and
he did it, and raced down the shaft, with him continuously having
to slow down, while also using his legs and boots against the ice
to slow himself.

When the bottom appeared he stopped and
stared in wonder, and considered what was in the blackness there,
and considered the incredible trouble he would have climbing back
up.

He was mainly confused as to what was there
to be discovered as he made his way there slowly. The ebbing
radiance of the light clearly was increasing and he realized how
tired he had become, and he decided it was best sleeping at the
bottom! Surely the men with the guns above would not come down at
night? They would know the trouble it would be to get back up!

The coldness entering his throat gave him
cough sensations, so he speeded up and unleashed the rope allowing
him to fall faster.

What would the outcome of it be? Would he
even find anything? What could be there? It could have belonged to
earlier scientists, checking for something? The ice station was
old, and a great deal of research had been done there!

Hazy echoes off his deep breathing broke the
extraordinary silence and he examined the ice as he shifted
downwards, and he started to find the cold air was damaging his
throat and was harder to inhale, and he frequently stopped to gasp
for air, while dangling with hideous expectations of plunging into
something dangerous.

A distant upper rumble of wind
eventually released chunks of ice and he realized how dangerous the
place might become if solid ice came crashing down, and that the
place the rope was attached to might not be able to support such
weight after all, of him and the immense rope,
and he considered how he could survive at
the bottom if he fell down there!

In an instant the rope jerked and wildly
oscillated and he spun uncontrollably around and a surge of
blackness engulfed him, and he realized the light had been banged
against the ice and had been turned off, and he realized what he
had missed and what it would be like if he got stuck there in
complete blackness, with him trying to climb back up!

He searched for the light switch while
straining his eyes to see further down to the bottom and thought he
saw something there, but there were no particular features.

When he had turned the dim light on the
tunnel vanished into the darkness at the bottom, and when he
arrived there the light was so faint that he was too busy focusing
on the ice ground to properly see anything, and he only vaguely saw
an immense dark cavity open out!

He hit the ground with a thud and in the
turmoil he slipped over sideways into something heavy!

In the dim light he then saw a large
artificial black object resting in the central region of the
cavity, which went out and vanished in the distance, into darkness,
and he examined what he could properly see, and tried to see the
cavity roof fifty feet above, and it going higher further in, and
he gasped and wondered what hell he was looking at!

He wondered how they had managed to get the
equipment down to build such a structure and if it was safe!

They clearly had another way into the cavity
to bring it in and he realized that he could get out more easily
than he had entered!

He explored over to his side and discovered
equipment and small vehicles and a colossal generator and examined
the controls and realized how new it was, and he traced cables from
it to more equipment and massive lights!

He activated the generator and it swiftly
started, and when the lights brightened he gasped, slipped, and
collapsed onto the slippery icy ground!

The cavity was immense and went into the
distance, but what really staggered him was the black object at its
center! It was immense and bigger than any manmade object that he
had seen! It was circular and he estimated it went out for at least
quarter of a mile in every direction!

He was staggered and exhausted and could not
understand any of it! They surely could not have put it there? The
construction of it there would have taken vast resources! They
would have had to have vast amounts of men and vehicles being
brought in!

How could anyone have been able to hide and
carry out such an operation without being noticed?

Even if they had worked on it at night
lights and sounds would be visible, and vehicles and airplanes
taking in supplies would have left signs of activity
everywhere.