After a few moments, the panels were perpendicular and the column screeched to a halt. The terrible sound echoed endlessly around the bowels of the spire, and the silence that followed was perversely even louder in volume such was its power.
Huddling together, Konrad and the others cautiously craned to look inside the newly exposed chamber below them. Disappointingly for them, a combination of detritus from the operation and the now vertical floor-panels prevented a clear view.
Stahl was the first to venture forward. ‘Haas! Wolff! Come with me,’ he said.
Konrad and Ziegler motioned to move forward, but Stahl’s voice cut them off.
‘You prisoners stay there.’
They obeyed. And as Stahl and the soldiers carefully approached the large triangular panels, Ziegler turned to Konrad. ‘I thank the maker he said that.’
Konrad didn’t reply. Instead, frustrated and eager to see more, he inched forward to the new walls for a better look.
‘Are you brain-dead?!’ Ziegler cried. ‘You heard the Sturmbannführer, he wants us to stay right here.’
‘Do you really think I can sit up here and miss out on what those damned Nazis are going to find down there.’
‘They‘re welcome to whatever they find as far as I‘m concerned, Konrad,’ Ziegler hissed. ‘From what we‘ve seen inside this bloody tower so far, there was probably a good reason why it was locked away in there. Think about that before you do anything foolish.’
‘I need to know…’
Ziegler tried to restrain Konrad, but the prisoner squirmed free.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Stahl ventured down into the newly exposed chamber. He was followed by the two soldiers, whose carbines were drawn and ready. Their lamps were reflected in a dark pool of liquid that seemingly filled the new chamber. Stahl’s boots sloshed through the sticky, viscous liquid which was draining rapidly away before his eyes. As the liquid disappeared, more steps were exposed which Stahl descended, his pace matching the retreating liquid. Finally, the Nazi reached the final step, at which point, he spotted a series of holes in the chamber’s floor. It was down these that the liquid drained. Stahl stepped onto the honey-combed deck, sweeping his torch around. He spotted an indistinct shape in the middle of the chamber.
The shape was obviously organic in origin, but as the draining liquid exposed it, the spire’s toxic atmosphere started to affect the mass of flesh. The tissue bubbled and fell as a stream of bodily fluid flowed away and disappeared into the same drainage holes as the mysterious liquid. The amorphous mass, similar in size to a beached whale, hinted at a creature that was powerful, even god-like, but its true appearance was being erased by the rapid and unpleasant decomposition process. The decomposing body, the disappearing liquid, even the sealed nature of the chamber pointed to one conclusion in Stahl’s mind. He was standing inside a hibernation tank. Its scale was immense in comparison to the one that housed the Nazi colonists, but its design, its operation appeared to be exactly alike.
The soldiers joined Stahl before the body, which by now had collapsed and almost totally liquefied. This didn’t prevent Stahl from bending down and scooping up a handful of the decomposing flesh.
‘I wonder what it was?’ Wolff asked.
‘Was it another one of those monstrosities like back in that chamber of horrors?’ Haas then commented.
‘No,’ Stahl quietly said. ‘This one was different. It was hibernating.’
‘Hibernating? Like we were?’ Wolff said.
‘Yes, hibernating just like us,’ Stahl replied. ‘This new chamber is a hibernation tank. Bigger in scale, but just the same. This entire spire must be a vessel of some-kind!’
‘Well, it didn’t do it any good. It looks like it’s been dead as long as those other monsters,’ Hass sniggered.
Wolff nodded. ‘Centuries by the way it decomposed that quick when the air got at it.’ He prodded the disgusting pile of flesh with his gun’s muzzle. ‘Maybe the creature was travelling somewhere when the hibernation systems failed. Perhaps it was an explorer, like us.’
‘Perhaps it was another reason,’ Stahl quietly said as he gained a true insight to the enigmatic creature’s past. ‘Perhaps it was escaping…’
‘Escaping?’ Wolff asked, shaken by his commander’s theory. ‘Escaping from what?’
Stahl suddenly stood and shook the foul material from his glove as if he had suddenly awoken from a dream or a vision. ‘Who knows or cares,’ he said with a cold, disinterested tone.
But as he finished speaking, something was exposed within the putrefied flesh.
A bright red orb.
Like the luminescent lure of a deep-sea predator, the marble-sized orb was hugely tantalizing as it sat in the mound of discoloured flesh, its lustre enticing Stahl back to the body.
‘Wunderbar!’ Stahl gasped as the orb’s reflection loomed in his face-plate. ‘It’s just like finding a pearl inside an oyster.’ He excitedly turned to Haas next to him. ‘Pick it up.’
Haas obediently shouldered his carbine and with a slight look of apprehension he cupped his gauntlet around the orb and pulled. It remained stubbornly still and immobile in its coat of matter despite the soldier’s best efforts.
‘Try again,’ Stahl barked.
Again the soldier obeyed. This time he placed both hands around the object, and once again the orb refused to budge.
‘It’s no good,’ Haas wheezed. ‘You might as well try and move the tower above us with your bare hands.’
Next, Wolff attempted to extract the orb. He first cut away at the blubber-like meat and managed to pull a fleshy film that surrounded the orb away. But like Haas, he too couldn’t free the orb.
Stahl calmly stepped forward. ‘Let me try.’
‘Why bother, Sturmbannführer, you’ve no chance,’ Haas said.
Stahl pushed the soldier out of the way and grabbed the sphere. Strangely, even through his thick gauntlets, he could feel a tingling sensation; a hint of something latent within the little object. He pressed his closed fingers together tightly and pulled. The orb easily left its fleshy resting place and nestled in Stahl’s right palm.
‘Just like King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone!’ Wolff exclaimed.
Stahl smiled as he approved at the romantic description. He lifted the seemingly insignificant object to his face-plate for a closer look. Tiny details, previously unseen and hidden, appeared inside the orb. Ribbons of light – ribbons of energy – similar to the ones glimpsed briefly by Konrad in the spire’s corridor, rippled and swirled inside, and as Stahl watched, more and more appeared until they swarmed into a single mass, a glowing jewel within the ruby globe.
‘Its beautiful! Simply beautiful,’ he gasped.
The orb then flashed brilliantly.
The blinding flash threw each of the Nazis soldiers into the air, while Stahl remained on his feet. He stood transfixed within the brilliance, his features calm and still. But his calmness soon turned to terror. The glowing orb began to smoke and bubble like a ball of molten rock. It cut through the gauntlet and pierced his skin, burning and melting flesh and bone, and a hellish scream sounded from Stahl as he fell to the ground clutching his smoking hand.
Now that the orb was buried deep within Stahl’s hand, the blinding light subsided and the two soldiers staggered to their feet. They rushed towards the prone Nazi, who was now ominously quiet. At first, Haas inspected Stahl’s chest-pack. The gauges flashed wildly. He then looked inside the helmet and saw that Stahl appeared to be completely lifeless, his blood-shot eyes staring blankly into the distance.
‘Herr Sturmbannführer,’ Haas cried. ‘Can you hear me?’
Haas then noticed Stahl’s sizzling gauntlet and saw all that remained of the orb was a small, penny-sized hole, within which lay blackened flesh and bone.