Before they entered, they all stared for a few moments through the large opening that led to a four-yard high by three-yard wide corridor. Their lights invaded the darkness that had for so long remained trapped behind the door, but failed to reach its end.
Jane, as astonished as the others by the size and unknown length of the revealed passage, said to no one in particular, “Just how big is this thing?”
The excited expression painted on Max’s features revealed his enthusiasm to find out. “From the little we’ve seen, I think it’s going to turn out to be a lot bigger than any of us can imagine.” He was first through the door.
Dwarfed by the large corridor, abnormally oversized by human standards, eight pairs of eyes roamed over its bizarre architecture. Light beams revealed ribs of dark metal with bone-like forms set at regular intervals along its walls, which gave the appearance of looking through a strange creature’s ribcage.
Henry stroked a hand over one of the shiny, black, skeletal struts. “Though a little weird, it’s amazing architecture.”
Theo wondered at the strange design. Why fashion the supports in such a weird form when a simpler straight or rounded design would have sufficed. It convinced him even further of its alien origin. “If there were any doubts before, there can’t be now. No way was this thing built by humans.”
Lucy was in total agreement. “Perhaps the size of the corridor reflects the size of the crew who used it?”
Heads turned to gaze at the high flat ceiling.
“Giants!” said Theo.
Lucy peered along the corridor and wondered what planet the craft had originated from and the species of its crew. If any were still aboard, perhaps preserved by the extreme cold, she would receive an answer to one of her questions. She felt both excited and apprehensive by the prospect of coming face to face with an alien species. All thoughts of the planktonic dinoflagellate that had caused her such excitement a short while ago had been forgotten.
Jack’s eyes roamed over the corridor. He’d never seen anything like this other than in science-fiction movies. The cave-like subterranean atmosphere reminded him of a tunnel system he’d explored in his youth. The difference between these two experiences was the cave had already been explored, while here in this ship there was only the unknown. Though he shared some of Henry’s concerns, this was a once in a lifetime experience he was more than willing to participate in.
“I suggest we head for the front of the ship,” said Max. “There must be a control room and it makes sense it would be at the front. Perhaps we’ll be able to power up the ship to turn on some lights, if that’s still possible.”
“Though it would be good to have some light,” said Henry, still not convinced exploring the ship was a sensible thing to do, “we must be careful of what we touch. Pressing buttons willy-nilly might prove dangerous.”
“Given the length of time this thing has been entombed beneath the ice, I very much doubt anything is working,” said Richard.
“The heat extruded from the exhaust and the functioning door we just passed through, indicates something is,” argued Theo.
“How about we move along?” said Richard. “Why speculate when we can find out for certain what is and isn’t working?”
Excited and a little apprehensive, the team moved through the strange alien vessel. The vast weight of the surrounding ice squeezed the hollow shell. The hull creaked, groaned and amplified every sound of the ice’s movement, like some immense, empty coffin crying out for corpses.
A short walk along the corridor brought them to a door set into the side wall. To find out what was behind it, Max pressed the nearby button to see if it would open. With a protesting groan of long misuse, the four door segments juddered, but refused to open more than a finger width. Stale, musty air tainted with the odour of wet metal whooshed from the gap with a screech, as if relived to be free from its long confinement. It rolled along the passage into the engine room and out through the hole.
“The room must have been pressurized,” said Eli.
Max hooked his fingers around one edge of a door segment. “Let’s try forcing it open.”
Theo, Jack and Eli each hooked their fingers around one of the two lower segments and pulled. With a grinding of metal, the doors moved a short distance, but then stuck fast.
Theo thrust his head and flashlight through the cross shaped opening. His eyes scanned the huge room. Something in the middle gave off a green glow. He squeezed through and the others followed.
When Lucy squeezed through, the door shuddered, releasing flakes of rust. Concern spurred her to move quickly through the gap.
Richard, the last one to enter, remained in the corridor with his eyes focused worriedly on the door. He imagined its edges slamming together while he was between its jaws. He pushed away the unpleasant thought and sidled quickly through the gap. He was barely halfway through when the door juddered and began to close. Someone gripped his arm and yanked him to safety. The door scraped the sole of his boot when it slammed shut with a resounding clash of metal that echoed through the cavernous chamber. He let out a relieved sigh.
Jack released his grip on Richard’s arm. “Are you okay?”
Richard nodded. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, but you still owe me a plane.”
Richard snorted.
“That’s strange,” said Max.
The whole ship was strange. With this in mind the others turned to see what Max had found particularly unusual. Their gazes followed his pointing finger. Four thin hollow tubes oozing a clear viscous liquid hung from a small oblong hole where the door button should have been attached. Unlike electrical wire, the tubes could not be reattached to open the door.
Theo bent down and picked up something from the floor. It was the missing door control. “It’s been deliberately ripped off!”
The scrape marks around the hole in the frame added credence to his words.
They each examined the twisted metal panel with a button in its center.
With a creased brow, Jack watched a drop of the thick fluid splatter to the floor. “It’s troubling that it seems to have been done recently.”
“But why and by whom?” asked Lucy, nervously.
Richard glanced anxiously around the gloom-filled room. “Probably to stop something from getting out, which now also includes us!”
Their gazes searched the darkest recesses of the room as a sense of foreboding swept over the group. They jumped in fright when the broken door control Theo dropped clattered noisily to the floor.
“As creepy as this place is, it’s only our imaginations making us nervous. Whatever once roamed through this ship is long dead,” Henry reassured them. “With luck we’ll find their preserved corpses so we can see what the crew of this ship looked like. At the very least we should find skeletal remains.”
Eli directed his torch around the huge space that was so large their flashlight beams failed to reach the far walls. His wandering light came to a halt on the high ceiling the beam only just managed to reach. “This room has the appearance of a cathedral.”
Thick arched ribs with the appearance of stone, but by the evidence of the rust streaks covering them, were in fact metal, towered from the floor to a round transparent feature in the roof that was segmented by metal, rust-covered frames, some of which were broken and hung down at twisted angles. Ice-formed stalagmites poked through areas that were missing the transparent panes. Melted water dripped onto the floor or dribbled down the sloped walls leaving trails of rust wherever they wandered. Between the rib-like supports the walls were fashioned to resemble rough, dark rock. A high balcony, whose balustrade was formed of short, twisted, tree-like columns, ran almost the entire circumference of the room. The floor wasn’t smooth metal like the others they’d thus far encountered. To match the walls it too was sculptured to mimic rock, though this was a lot smoother. Bridge paths with edges of rough rock led out from the central green glowing feature, one of which led to the door they’d just passed through.