Erich swallowed hard as his mouth had turned instantly dry. Just gazing at this hideous apparition filled him with what could only be described as the most atavistic fear he ever experienced. As if he knew the thing in front of him was a true and terrible representation of a real horror beyond imagining.
And it had wings.
Fanned out beyond its broad shoulders, as if grafted from a gigantic bat or pteranodon. They looked both absurd and terrifying, because the thought of this leviathan being able to fly just didn’t compute. Was it possible such a massive behemoth could actually lift itself skyward?
But it was the bulbous, tilting head that kept the men mute and immobile. Erich knew they all shared the same thoughts searching for a means to refuse the basic existence of such a creature. Such a thing, thought Erich, simply could not be. Beneath a baleful pair of huge, blistered, amphibian eyes there swarmed a swollen tangle of tentacles curled and spread as though probing in constant search of prey.
Suddenly nauseous, he staggered back, dizzy and disoriented. Unprepared for what he had seen, Erich felt stunned into silence as though stricken by the hand of God.
Erich had often imagined the awe and the sense of insignificance men must have felt when they first gazed upon the unearthed bones of the dinosaurs. What kind of wonder and terror crossed their minds when they realized what horrific beasts once walked the earth?
Now, Erich had an answer to that question… but others leapt to mind.
Was this sculpted nightmare the vision of a tortured artist, or the fearful icon of a lost religion? Or was it something far, far worse?
Erich could not escape the notion, rooted deep within him, that they all stared at something of an age unknown and uncountable. What race of beings had created such a thing?
Manny, standing next to him, squeezed off several shots with the Leica.
Erich was not certain if the other men understood fully what they were looking at, but the troublemaker Liebling was clearly disturbed as he backed away from the statuary and began to sob.
“We have entered the gates to Hell,” he said.
Liebling was an embarrassment, but on second thought, maybe Erich had not given the man enough credit.
At least he had the good sense to be terrified.
Regardless, a distinction must be made between feelings and actions. Liebling’s behavior was not befitting of a kriegsmariner. When Manny angrily reprimanded him, ordering him to attention, the man ignored the command, and began to wail. So loud, his voice echoed off the distant walls.
Erich was incensed. There was no time for such distraction.
“Stirtz, get him out of my sight.”
As Stirtz reached for Liebling, the man wrenched Stirtz’s pistol from him and ran full speed out of the domed building, back toward the quay. Before anyone could react, he had gained enough distance to dodge down an adjacent intersecting avenue. He waved the Sauer sidearm wildly as he ran, firing off several rounds into the air.
“We cannot have this,” said Erich. “We have a job to do.”
Stirtz spit contemptuously before speaking. “I’ll get him, Captain.”
As the gunner ran off in quick pursuit, Erich, Manny and Bischoff followed more slowly. Liebling had no way of orienting himself. He could become hopelessly lost in the labyrinth, but he made no effort to hide himself as he rushed headlong away from them.
Angrily, Erich wished he had listened more sincerely to Herr Kress, who had warned of the man’s instability. All the more reason to keep him under watch, but now Liebling had become more than merely a problem. He was a dangerous problem.
Gradually they closed the gap and caught up with Liebling. His frantic pace had exhausted him. Stirtz ran him down outside a large building flanked by supply wagons and several mangled corpses. But Liebling complicated things. Instead of accepting the end-game, he emptied his stolen weapon at everyone.
But wildly, with no effect.
Erich grinned ironically, thanking the fugitive for making things easier.
“He is out of shots,” said Erich. “Stirtz, take him out.”
The gunner raised his Schmeisser, shot Liebling once — through the heart. Turning away, they left him slumped against a wall where he dropped. No one wanted to bring him back.
“Very well,” said Erich. “Let us finish this job.”
But as they walked away, embraced by the cold, ancient spaces, Erich experienced a strange guilt. Not for killing — because his business had been killing. Rather, he feared he had, in some way, violated this place.
They moved quickly after that, until they reached what was obviously their target objective — what had been a series of stepped terraced buildings now violated by a large crater and huge mounds of debris. Following Bischoff’s instruction via radio contact, they located Jaeger and four other survivors trapped behind a wall of rubble that had been part of their laboratory.
Requiring a slow, methodical approach, the rescue took several hours to clear a passage through the debris. A thin man with small wire-rimmed glasses and a thick shock of blond hair emerged first.
“Thank you! Thank you, gentlemen. We have two people back there hurt quite badly.”
Stirtz helped an older gray-haired man in a white lab coat out of the hole in the wreckage, then joined Bischoff and Manny, who went inside to assess the situation.
Erich, however, wanted answers. He remained with the two survivors and introduced himself.
“I am Dr. Bernhard Jaeger.” The blond man reciprocated and gestured at the older lab-coated man. “This is one of our engineers, Hervie Waechter.”
“What happened here, Doctor?”
He shook his head, held up his hands. “An experiment… an explosion. We were in a shielded area when it happened. But we were trapped as you found us. We thought other station personnel would be coming to our aid, but… something happened to them, they were… attacked.”
“Attacked? By who?” said Erich.
“I have no idea. All we could do was try to piece things together from what we heard by radio.”
“Where we have been. We have seen no survivors,” said Manny.
Jaeger did not react to this news. “From what we could hear, that is not surprising. It was utter chaos.”
“Mein Gott,” said Waechter the engineer. “The radiation must have been more than we imagined.”
The remark bothered Erich. He would need more information, but first he wanted another question settled. “You notified Berlin. How could you get a signal out of here?”
Jaeger looked up at him. “We had a team construct a special antenna buoy attached by undersea cable.”
“Ingenious,” said Erich. “Can we use it to inform Berlin of your rescue?”
“Certainly.”
Erich was pleased to know he was not totally isolated in this very strange place. He looked at Waechter. “Now, tell me about the radiation.”
“Similar to what you would call X-rays,” said Waechter. “But more… ah, potent. We call them ‘Tau’ radiation.”
Erich did not want to know what kind of terrible power had been unleashed here. No sense immersing himself in detail and situations he could not control. But he did want to know the timeframe. “When did this happen?”
Jaeger looked around, obviously haggard from the ordeal. “Three days ago.”
Erich had suspected something like this. The High Command had declined to tell him about the rescue mission until he had gotten underway, and he could surmise the reason. If there proved to be no survivors, there would be no reason to reveal the existence of this top secret base to an entire U-boat crew. When Jaeger’s radio messages persisted, Doenitz must have agreed to attempt a rescue.