Breaking the Ice

The hidden thing inside the pipe twisted, thrusting deeper, spewing waxy slivers of ice in its wake – a fixed point around which their world revolved.

“It can’t be stopped,” he stated.

“How much further?” asked Srinin.

“A few hundred metres; a few more days."

“And then?”

The place throbbed. Hywell allowed the vibration to enter him and felt the world around recede. He was a point on a line - darkness behind, darkness before, sliding helplessly onward. How vain, he thought, to imagine the future evitable.

“Sir?” The world resolved; he saw Srinin looking at him expectantly.

“Logically, it's not possible," he replied. "We must disregard the evidence of our senses.”

“But you heard it?”

“Oh yes.”

“The song, from below. From three miles beneath the ice.”

Hywell looked beyond her, beyond the walls of the control room, beyond the huddle of flimsy buildings around the drilling rig, out onto the frozen plateau.

“I heard it,” he muttered. “And long before I ever came to this place.”