The distant pulse of the Black Hawk’s engines broke through the silence of the long Antarctic day. As the helicopter approached the Lansing Research Station, the sound built to a thrumming scream. The beetle-shaped machine settled onto the landing pad, and a thick cloud of ice and snow rose to meet and engulf it. Henry Bedford watched from the station’s observation platform as the same updraft of ice blew against the window, obscuring his view. The window became a mirror, reflecting his face, aged and lined beyond his forty-four years. Silver and white had replaced the brown hair of his younger days. The lines and dark gibbous moons beneath his eyes gave him a look of profound sadness.

“There’s your ride, General.” Bedford felt rather than heard Martin approach behind him over the din of the helicopter’s engines. Martin was younger than Bedford by only two years, but he could have been mistaken for Bedford’s son. The colonel stood just over six feet tall, slightly shorter than Bedford. Unlike his superior, he still had an athletic vigor in his step. His brown hair and searching steel-blue eyes contrasted Bedford’s apparent age and sadness.

“They’ll have to refuel,” Bedford sighed. He knew the precautions and security enclosing the station like a silent, frozen cloud would prolong the refueling.

“I envy you going back to the states,” Martin said in an almost wistful tone. “You going to visit with Alex?”

Alex, Bedford thought. My beautiful, strange little girl, growing up too fast.

“Yes, I’ll see her,” he replied.

Outside, the white cloud kicked up by the Black Hawk’s landing began to dissipate in the breeze. As the helicopter’s rotors spun down and came to a stop, three men wrapped in heavy jackets and balaclavas made their way out onto the pad. One man carried a thick fuel hose. Bedford set his metal briefcase on the floor and then turned from the window and looked around the room. A framed photograph depicting the aboveground sections of Lansing Station hung on the wall.

The Lansing Research Center was ostensibly engaged in upper atmospheric and magnetic research. The facility consisted of three blue and white buildings supported twenty meters off the snow and ice by interlocking grids of steel girders. Short, enclosed passageways connected each of the three buildings. The southernmost building, furthest from the helipad, housed the station’s generators and much of the equipment and supplies necessary for supporting life in the hostile Antarctic climate. The structure adjacent to the helipad accommodated the thirty men and women who ran the station, and the final, central building served as a research laboratory and the station’s main communications center. Underneath the central building, and disguised as a simple support column, was an elevator shaft that seemed to anchor the complex to the frozen earth. Invisible from above and connected to the elevator shaft below was a subterranean complex where dozens of scientists performed the actual research of the station. The data from six months of study hid locked away in the titanium briefcase at Bedford’s feet.

Martin cautiously cleared his throat as he watched his friend’s lined and worried face. “Are you okay with all this, General?” Although they had been friends their entire careers, Martin still regarded Bedford first as his superior.

Bedford’s worried frown deepened. “Orders, John.”

“But what about Novaya Zemlya?” Martin asked. “Could something like that happen here?”

Bedford glanced around the room. They were alone. “We won’t make the same mistakes as the Russians,” he said, but his voice was unconvincing.

There was an awkward silence. Everything the two men knew hung in the air between them. Martin wanted to gauge the general’s state of mind, beyond the official military line. Bedford seemed equally anxious to conceal it. However, his eyes and expression gave it away. He isn’t sure, Martin thought. But then, who can be sure? Everyone associated with Novaya Zemlya was dead or in a Russian insane asylum. No one was talking.

“I know that’s the official line,” Martin said, “but what do you think?”

Bedford pondered Martin’s question. A vision of the object two hundred meters beneath his feet flashed through his memory. Inwardly, he recoiled at the image, but his face remained woefully contemplative. He said slowly, “What I think doesn’t matter. The research will continue no matter what we do.”

“And when that happens, if it happens…”

Bedford sighed. Martin wasn’t about to let him off the hook. In a few hours, he would be safe and warm back in D.C., but Martin was stuck here for another four months.

Martin continued, “Who else knows about this? Does the president?”

Bedford’s gaze focused on Martin. “The president doesn’t know anything about this. I went against orders even showing you these files.” He nodded at the briefcase on the floor.

“Whose orders?”

Bedford started Martin with an unexpected smile. “John, if I told you that, I would have to kill you.”

They chuckled. The joke was old but perhaps close to the truth.

“General,” Martin said, encouraged by the joke, “you saw something when you looked at it, didn’t you? That first time they brought us down there.”

Bedford’s smile disappeared. During his nights in the station’s cramped, prefabricated quarters, he had experienced nightmares that faded to hazy memories when he woke with his heart pounding and his skin covered in cold, clammy sweat. He had looked into his reflection upon first seeing the swirling, oily black mass that composed the Anomaly’s crystal smooth surface. Then a flash of something caused him to recoil and turn away. He had not been near the object since.

“Yes,” Bedford said, “I saw something.”

“What was it?”

“It was her, John. Kate.”

“Kate?”

“It was Kate. I saw her standing right behind me in that damn thing’s reflection. It was only for an instant, but I know it was her.”

“But Kate… Why Kate? She’s been gone…”

Bedford shook his head in an attempt to cast away the image. “It wasn’t real, I know. Maybe it’s what I wanted to see. I’ve been thinking a lot about her lately.”

“I’m sorry,” Martin said.

“No, it’s okay,” Bedford replied. “Just don’t tell anyone. It’s not something that’s going into any report.”

Martin considered this. He had many other questions, and once Bedford was gone, there would be no answers. “When you were in the excavation room, you looked… well, you looked a little scared.”

Bedford closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. The memories – talking about them brought everything back. “She wasn’t at all like I try to remember her. When I saw her standing behind me, she looked like she did when she died. The moment she died. When all the life and color left her. She wasn’t Kate anymore.”

“Good God,” Martin whispered. He had seen the effects of the disease and the chemotherapy on Kate’s body. Her hair had fallen out, her smooth, tanned complexion had turned a waxy, pale white, and her skin had become drawn back tight over her facial bones. The lively and beautiful woman they had both known had turned into little more than a living skeleton.

For Martin, the mention of Kate ended his questions. He had also been thinking about her. Again, the silence arose like a phantom between them. Then one of the entranceway’s main doors opened, and an icy gust blew through the room. An officer in a flight suit entered and saluted. “Bird’s ready,” he said through his protective mask.

“Okay,” Bedford said, absent-mindedly forgetting the salute. He and Martin followed the man through the doors. The lacerating wind and the subzero temperature cut into their bare skin like razors. They paused at the sliding door into the Black Hawk’s passenger compartment.

“Best of luck.” For an unknown reason Martin wanted to reach out and hug Bedford. They had been friends so long, and now… what? He had that sense of foreboding, too. There was something else separating them, maybe that reflection in the Anomaly.

Bedford nodded and pulled the lapels of his heavy coat around his face.

Martin started to salute, but Bedford grabbed his right hand instead and shook it. The strength of Bedford’s grip surprised him.

“Goodbye, John. Maybe when we’re both back in the states we can sit down and have a few drinks.”

“I look forward to it,” Martin replied and then turned and made his way back into the station. Bedford got into helicopter. He sat in one of the passenger seats and strapped the safety harness over his chest. He placed the briefcase on an adjacent seat. One of the ground crew checked the harness and handed him a headset before stepping out of the passenger compartment and slamming the sliding door shut. Bedford placed the headset over his ears and leaned back in the seat as the Black Hawk’s engines roared to life.

“Welcome back on board, sir,” a voice said over the headset. Bedford noticed the helicopter’s copilot offering him a thumbs-up. He recognized the man as the same copilot who had flown him to the station the week before.

Bedford smiled. “Good to be back. We’re expecting a smooth flight again, I hope?”

The copilot chuckled. Heavy winds had buffeted the aircraft on the flight in, and they were about to leave the same way. “Just the usual instability.”

Bedford nodded. The roar of the engines shook the Black Hawk as the icy cloud again enveloped the aircraft. There was a lurch as the wheels left the platform and then a slight dip as the helicopter veered off to the north. The frozen white earth dropped away as they gained altitude and rose into the sky.