The ground creaked and cracked under their feet. Puffs of heated air froze once it escaped their nostrils and reached the cooler outer air. They stopped every few feet to gaze back up into the air, making sure that the colors were still there. And they were.
“I just do not understand it,” Jillian said. “We are too far South for this to even be happening. So what is going on?” She dropped the backpack off her back and it hit the ground with a slight crushing sound. Jillian reached over to the front pocket and opened the velcro enclosure. She reached her hands inside the soft, but cold pocket and felt around for a small, smooth package. Finally her searching fingers found what she was looking for, a pair of binoculars.
“Hang on Steve! I want to get a closer look. You should get out the cameras and take a few pictures,” she called out to her cohort as he continued to trudge through the snow. Steve turned around, looked at Jillian and then shrugged.
“Okay, boss lady,” he retorted back to her. “Watch as the master photographer do his magic and take a few breath taking images that will finally earn him fame and fortune for the cover of the next National Geographic. Watch as I compete for top picture with the one guy who captured his own fame and fortune by taking a picture of that girl from Afghanistan.”
Jillian chucked at the antics of Steve as she scanned the sky with her binoculars. “Wow… this thing seems to be getting bigger. It is definitely getting more and more spread out as it reaches the lower atmosphere. I wonder if it is just because of the unusual cold weather that we have been having lately. Oh wait, hey… this is new.”
Jillian lowered the specks and turned back towards Steve and pointed to a location off to their right. “Steve, I think that we are close to where we need to be.”
“How do you figure that one out?” he said as he replaced the lens cap back on the camera.
She smiled and settled the backpack onto her back once more. “Well, while you were taking pictures and accepting tons of awards for it, I spotted something with the binoculars. It seems that our mystery lights may be appearing from over there.”
Steve squinted and shrugged, “I do not get it. I do not see anything. What the hell am I supposed to be looking at.”
“You need your glasses checked old man,” Jillian retorted. “Watch that spot very, very carefully. You will see exactly what I am talking about in a few moments. There… now… do you see that?”
Steve narrowed his eyes a bit more and finally he saw exactly what Jillian was trying to point out to him. A long wispy trail of what seemed like steam rose up and out into the air. “Well, I will be damned,” he said. “That is certainly something new. Come on, let us go check it out.”
They picked up their pace, as much as anyone could have done in the thick and steep snow, and about twenty meters away, they spotted the long crack in the snow.
“What IS that?” Jillian remarked as she set her backpack down on the snow once more.
“I have no idea,” Steve said again, “It looks as if St. Helens were here and left behind an open heat vent that decided to let off a little steam. We are not close enough to Rainier and there are no other known active volcanos around here. Could this be what it looks like to witness the beginning of a new volcano?”
Jillian pulled several tools out of her bag. “Wow, now that would be an amazing scientific feat, to be the witness of a new land volcano. But no volcano I know of has ever sent steam out into the air that could cause any atmospheric changes like the ones we are experiencing at this moment. In any case, I’ve got the K2 seismometer with me as well as a few other gadgets. Hopefully we can figure what is going on down there.”
As Jillian started setting up all the toys in their arsenal, Steve decided it was time to get an up close and personal view of the crack. He slowly inched his way forward, occasionally testing the stability of the land around the crack as he moved. He held his breath, and muttered a prayer, “The last thing I really need at this moment is for this thing to give way under my weight and drop me down into the core. I guess now is not the time to have been wishing that I did not eat so many donuts over the past year. I promise if I make it through this that I will attempt to hit the gym two, no three times a week and get my figure back.”
He finally made his way to the edge. He realized that it was not just a crack in the core but a complete and deep fissure that ran deep into the center of the planet. Another burst of heat and steam shot out from the crack pushing the air up around him like a gust of hot air from a hair dryer. Then the smell hit him. “Holy hell, that stuff is toxic. Wheeewww weeee, Jillian we have a live one here. I smell a ton of sulfur dioxide coming up and out of this thing. What is weird however is that it is completely dark down there. There seems to be no lava core or active magma activity at all. I can really say it now, that I have never seen anything like this in all my years of being with the forest service. What does the gizmos say?”
The seismometer whirled and beeped as it came to life. Jillian set it down on the ground and tried to not make any movements. The on board screen ran a diagnostic and then started spitting out data. An almost flat line crawled across the screen, showing bare minimal to no earth core movement across the surface.
“I think we are safe, at least for the moment,” she called out. ” There does not seem to be any current activity for the moment. But I will leave our little friend here for awhile and maybe that will give us a better picture of what we are dealing with.”
She picked the seismometer off the ground and brushed the wet and snow from it. She fiddled with some dials and buttons on the device. A few minutes later the device beeped in affirmation that the little device was ready to accept the new job. She looked to her left and then to her right in an attempt to locate the perfect location for the seismometer. “Ah yes,” she said as she found a spot that seemed to open up near a grove of trees. “That will work perfectly for me.” She cautiously made her way over to the tree and then set the device in the snow next to the fissure. She took out a few pins and thrust them through snow and down into the frozen ground. “There ya go little buddy, hopefully you will give us a better glimpse into what is going on up and out there. Have fun with it.”
Jillian patted the K2 before returning back to her original location. “Okay Steve, I have set the seismo. Thinking of pulling out the laptop and seeing what the spectrometer has to say now.”
While she had been busy with the K2, Steve had been busy taking measurements of the fissure as well as pictures with his camera. They had brought with them a 1000 meter tape measure and he had found out that even that was not enough to determine the depth of the hole. He shook his head, “We are definitely going to need to come back and bring better equipment with us Jill. The tape measure does not cut it. It goes well beyond the max depth.”
Jillian nodded as she made her way over to near where Steve was standing. While they were risking a collapse of the ground beneath them she knew that the spectrometer would yield better results if it were nearest to the center of the fissure. And that is where Steve had been standing. Her knees creaked and cracked as she moved to sit on the ground. “Man I feel so much older than I look today. When I get back to Devon I am definitely taking the afternoon off to curl up with a nice hot mug of chai and a good book next to the station fire.”
Her companion chuckled at the statement as he pulled out a pair of gloves from his backpack. He slipped them on over his fingerless gloves and bent down over the side of the fissure. Carefully he used his fingers to scrape loose some of the frozen earth from the side of the fissure. He then took a moment to examine his prize in the growing daylight. “It does not look like anything special,” he muttered. Then he unceremoniously dropped the chunk into a plastic bag that his other hand had pulled out of a pocket. “This will give the lab monkeys something to toy with.”
He looked down at Jillian who by now had pulled out the Panasonic Toughbook that she had been given for her work. The silver colored machine whirled awake and soon reflected the soft white skin tone of Jillian with the glow of the screen. Once the computer finished with the start up routines, Jillian connected a long metal wand to one of the external ports. Then she pulled up a Terminal screen on the system and loaded in the spectrometer program that her department used to collect data on what chemicals and elements composed gaseous content. She crept towards the edge of the fissure and waved the wand deep down into the core.
Almost immediately the wand started streaming data back to the Toughbook. Jillian expected the mixture to look and have the statistical data similar to that of vog, which is normally what volcanos produce when they are emitting fumes. She also expected to see the standard culprits that helped to produce various aurora borealis, such as hydrogen, helium and dust particles. But the read out told a much different story. The gas seemed to contain elements of sulfur dioxide, which was totally expected. Same held true for the helium, dust particles, and hydrogen. But what she did not expect were the high figures of nitrogen, silver, and iron. Even more startling were the trace amounts of tetrachloride, and mercury. She also did not notice or recognize the largest elemental composition being emitted from the hole. She had never seen anything like it before.
“Damn, this is news,” she said standing up. Jillian showed the on screen data to Steve. “I really think we have something here Steve.”
“Huh. That composition really is crazy looking. I have never seen anything like that. It looks as if the spectro had just thrown a lot of random numbers up on the screen and made the wave look somewhat palatable. Nothing on that screen makes any real sense to me. I think you should run the numbers again after doing another reboot and systems diagnostic.”
Jillian shrugged and nodded, “Alright. If you say so. I still gotta run a second set from this spot as well as get some readings from above this up in the air. We should advise Washington to send a jet over to this area to collect even more data. I have the feeling that this will give the lab monkeys and scientists around the world a whole new playground to examine for awhile.”
“Okay, fine. Go ahead and finish up here. I am going to wander around and attempt to figure out how to contain and corral this area so that visitors who come here can remain safe and do not expose themselves to the dangerous gasses coming out of here.” Steve said as he picked up his backpack. “I am going to see if I can move all around this thing. Holler on the walkie if you need anything.”
“Roger that,” she said, “same goes to you too. Holler if you need me.”
Steve waved his walkie high in the air and set off to his right. He muttered the paces he took as he made his way slowly around the fissure. Occasionally a small hiss emitted from the pit, alerting him and his senses to the danger that seemed to slowly come from the deep down inside the planet. Soon he was back to wandering the landscape with only the swaying trees, the slight breeze and the crunching of the ground beneath his feet to keep him company.
He reached the end of the fissure about twenty two yards out but something inside him told him to keep moving. So he kept wandering further out past the land. Five hundred yards later he spotted the stones. They were jutting out at an odd slant from the ground and pushed into the air about ten feet. In total, there were about five of them and from where Steve stood it appeared as if they were situated in a circle.
“Well I be damned,” Steve said making his way towards the strange feature. “Either someone decided to play a prank on us or this is something that we have never seen before.” He pulled the walkie out from his pocket, “Hey Jillian you are not going to believe this but I think we have a practical joker on our hands. How are you doing with the spectral analysis? Over.”
All he heard in response from the black box in his hand was static and fuzz. He continued to move closer to the stones, just as the walkie sprang to life once again, “Sorry Steve. Was trying to finish things up here at the site. What did you find and do you want me to come over? Over.”
“Yeah. You are one of those geological nuts, and you are totally going to love what I have for you. I am about five hundred or so yards east of your location. Will wait here. Over,” Steve replied.
“Okay, I am on my way.”
Ten minutes later Jillian arrived at the stones. “Wow. This is incredible. You did not do this, right? They were here all along?”
Steve looked over his shoulder at her and rolled his eyes, “Yeah, Jillian. I set the whole thing up just to impress you. Seriously, I am not that childish. Besides, I have already tested the stones and they are solidly stuck deep into the ground. There is no moving them at all. ”
Jillian looked to her left and right and stared at the stones. In total, there appeared to be about seven of them. Two jutted right up at almost a ninety degree angle, while three of them sat placed in the ground at oblique lines, their shadows casting wide squares in the snow. The remaining two slabs sat as if they had been set on top of the snow and the land. She also confirmed that they appeared to be arranged in an almost perfect three hundred and sixty degree circle.
She ran her hand along the side of the closest oblique standing stone. The surface felt smooth, as if the stone had come from a river where the outside had washed it for a few hundred years or more. There were no sharp edges or ridges to the stone at all. In fact, all the other stones also featured the same smooth surfaces. Even the ones that sat on top of the snow gleamed smooth. No tracks appeared nearby. Jillian moved to another stone and noticed that a glyph had been carved into the top of it.
“Hey Steve, come here and check this out.”
They both traced the slight indention outlining the glyph with their hands. The image appeared like some little child had etched a spiral pattern with a straight line from the outside through the middle and then back to the other side with another smaller stone. And somehow the patterned burned itself into the stone.
“Well would you look at that,” Steve commented. “Guess I will be taking a few more shots for the folks back home now will I.”
Jillian chuckled and grabbed the tape measure out of his bag. She also grabbed her Rhodia water resistant notebook and pencil. The carving measured about three inches across and she marked the dimensions down on the current page. The carving was also small enough to fit lengthwise in her notebook, so she was also able to capture a rubbing of it on the page as well. Curiosity got the better of her and while Steve was off taking pictures, she decided that she needed to see if there were other markings on the remaining six stones.
Her hunch paid off, she found that two other stones, both of the right angle stones also had carvings engraved into their surfaces near the top of the stone.
“Steve, can you come here and get some close ups of those carvings. I might also want you to hoist me up there so I can get size measurements and rubbings.”
“Sure thing my queen, sheez… can you give me a few minutes to finish up what I am doing here?”
They spent a total of fifteen more minutes cataloging the stones and glyphs. They had two of the strange spiral line drawings and a third with three dots and a circle around it. The sun now shone brightly over their heads and the strange colored mist above them continued to spiral and spin and display brightly colors. By mid-afternoon they had gathered a few gigabytes worth of information. They left behind a few more stations of equipment to capture more real time data about the phenomena. They also set up cautionary signs and tape around the gaping hole in the ground. This, they both hoped, would curb the enthusiasm of the public to be careful and avoid injuries while spending the short, cold days with their eyes staring up into the heavens above. A Jeep and a truck sped away from the scene loaded with samples and data back to Devon, their drivers unknowing about the danger they and the rest of the world faced in the coming months.
That night, another, smaller fissure opened on the northern most side of Greenland and a second dance of gas and color freed itself from being captive under the ground.
