The Magnetic Anomaly
Chapter 2 - The Battle of the Tablelands
copyright Dale Olausen 2023
His thoughts were rudely interrupted, as the pilot quickly banked and dropped towards the landing pad below. The North Atlantic swells became obvious, and the rig began to take on a fantastic, alien look - a huge, looming metal structure that looked completely out of place in the vast ocean.
“Remember to keep your head down when you leave the helicopter,” the pilot yelled at him as they touched down on the landing pad. He gave Alex a sardonic smile.
“The rotors can be dangerous. And hold onto the safety rail when you get out. The winds can get pretty fierce out here. Combine them with the rotor backwash, and people can be lifted right off their feet and dumped into the ocean. That’s a long way down. I hate losing passengers on their first trip.” He grinned again, a little more wickedly now.
Helicopter pilots, thought Alex, as he exited the aircraft. They’re all either crazy or they think they’re comedians. He thought back to his last assignment, in the Northwest Territories. That chopper pilot had been a bit mad, or at least he flew that way. Ex-military, Alex was told, worried about drawing ground fire, as if he was still in Afghanistan.
Well, Alex thought, maybe the pilot hadn’t been so crazy, after all. People had died on that job, though the mining company had tried to convince Alex that it was just a tragic accident, nothing more. He didn’t believe it - he knew that he was sane and so was his colleague Mary, who had lived through the horror with him. But, who would ever believe his story or her’s? A bizarre magnetic anomaly, a hellish night under the northern lights, and an encounter with an alien spacecraft that left two men dead - four if you included the two who had died in mysterious circumstances before the night of the spacecraft. Throw in Mary’s claims about the native North American Wendigo creature and he had to admit that it did sound nuts.
He brushed the memories away, as he turned back to the pilot, crouched low and gave him the thumbs up. The pilot returned the gesture and lifted off almost immediately, heading back out to sea.
Strange that they went to so much trouble to get me out to the rig, thought Alex, sending a chopper with no other passengers. A freshly minted exploration geophysicist doesn’t usually rate that kind of treatment, especially to do routine well logging, on a rig off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Well, who can tell with oil companies, he thought. Sometimes they have more money than brains.
Alex was suddenly greeted by the rig manager, who had come up behind him unexpectedly and given him a hearty slap on the back, before smiling and asking Alex to walk with him.
“Ah, so you are the young geophysicist that the company has provided to us. Let us go to my office, and discuss your mission…pardon me, I should say assignment. I am afraid that English is not my first language, as you have probably already observed.”
Alex smiled. “Your English seems awfully good to me, so far.”
They began to walk towards the main part of the labyrinth that was the offshore rig. I will have to get used to this place, Alex thought idly, learn the lay of the land, so to speak. I could be here quite a while. The pay is good, anyway.
Suddenly a wild-eyed man appeared on the deck before them.
“Get away while you can!”, he hissed in Alex’s face. “There is danger here. Don’t look into things too deeply - leave it be!”
Alex stepped back, perplexed and a bit shaken. The rig manager nodded to one of the roughnecks and the man was escorted away. They walked on in silence, to the manager’s office.
“Take a seat,” he said, pointing the guest chair in the office. “I am sorry about that unpleasantness. That man is due to be rotated back to the mainland on the next trip out. Sometimes people get a bit peculiar, if they are out here too long without a break.”
“Like going bush crazy,” Alex suggested. “I’ve seen it before.”
“Yes, as you Canadians say, ‘bush crazy’, though we are on the sea. It is a sad thing to observe, but the company will see to it that he is taken care of.”
Alex shuddered inwardly at that phrase. He had his reasons.
The manager held out his hand to Alex.
“I am pleased to meet you, Alex. You may call me Sven.”
“Sven…?” Alex replied, inquiring for a last name, as he extended his hand.
“Just Sven will do. We are very informal out here, you know.”
Alex noted that the manager had a firm, but kindly hand shake, as he re-directed the conversation to his assignment.
“That’s nice. I don’t have a lot of well logging experience, just a summer job back west, so perhaps you can direct me to my workstation and equipment. Show me my computer station, that sort of thing. I imagine there are a lot of geophysical readings, already in the data processing pipeline, that I should review. Maybe I can check out some of the company’s background manuals and reference books. Sort of get my well logging sea legs.”
“Oh, yes,” Sven said, “there is a great deal of data. And you will have access to the company data that you need, to help you to do your job. It will all be in your office, which is small and snug, but quite comfortable. You understand, that out at sea, we must be economical with space.
“You should find the data most fascinating. I am told that the magnetic data is very unique.” Then he quickly added, “Of course all of the geophysical data will be of great interest to a professional such as yourself.”
“I am sure that it will all be very interesting. But I didn’t expect much in the way of magnetic work, in a well logging job.”
“There are some unique factors,” Sven replied. “But come, let us meet your professional colleague, the geologist who is doing the mud logging. I am sure that you will have plenty to discuss.” Alex thought that Sven gave just a hint of a wink when he said that.
They walked down towards the drilling platform deck, heading for the mud room, where the return mud from the drill string would be analyzed by the mud engineer, who was really a sort of geologist. Alex knew a little of this from summer jobs during his years at university, back in Alberta. It was pretty routine geology for the most part, basically describing and analysing rock cuttings and return mud that came up from the drill-head far under the surface of the Earth.
As they entered the mud room, Alex noted the silhouette of a young woman, peering intensely down a microscope. She looked up from the instrument, when she heard the door open and uttered a gasp of surprise.
“Alex! What the hell are you doing out here in the middle of the ocean?”
Alex smiled widely in recognition. “Mary! I never imagined…well, what I mean to say is…I might ask you the same question,” he said, recovering his wits.
“I suppose you might say that I am earning a living,” Mary replied. “What’s your excuse?”
“Same, I guess.” Alex continued to stare at her, a stupid grin on his face.
“Ah, so you two know each other,” Sven said. “What a happy coincidence. It should make for a very good collaboration.”
Mary snorted. “Yeah right.” She turned back to her microscope.
“Let me take Alex to his office,” Sven interjected hastily, realizing that he might have stepped into the middle of something quite personal. “I can show Alex the computers with the geophysical data, as well as the instrumentation that he will be using. Later you two can put your heads together, and see what we’ve got.”
* * * * *
Over the next several weeks, in his little cubicle, Alex pored over data, at least during those times when he wasn’t busy with the technical work of operating and maintaining the various well logging detectors. This particular day was a data analysis day - no worries about sondes getting stuck in the hole, no concerns about instrument breakdowns. It was mostly routine data that he was analysing, log data from the geophysical sondes that were carefully lowered down the drill hole, which then provided geophysical readings of different kinds, as they were drawn back up the hole.
Some measured the condition of the hole itself, whether it had caved for instance. Others measured the electrical properties of the rock, or its radioactive content. Still others measured such things as the porosity of the rock, using sound waves. These measures could be correlated with other geological results, and with known physical properties of various types of rock, to determine the formations that the drill was travelling through, with an eye to finding zones likely to yield hydrocarbons.
Alex noted that there were long stretches of sandstone, interspersed with shales and limestones - typical sedimentary formations that you would find in this region, deep beneath the ocean. Dull stuff, but of the utmost importance in petroleum geology, he recalled.
There was evidence of good porosity in some parts of the logs - petroleum would flow quite freely if it was there. He suspected that they were getting close to a pay-zone - the neutron logs were indicating that very clearly. His general reading about the offshore oil plays in this region, supplemented by the considerable background corporate literature that the company had provided for him, supported those ideas. I guess that’s why they went to all the trouble to fly him in by himself that day, he thought. They need this data interpreted quickly and efficiently, to help make some tough drilling decisions.
But try as he might, Alex couldn’t get his mind off of Mary for long. He sat back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk and closed his eyes, letting his memories have free reign for a few minutes. She was beautiful - dark brown eyes, straight dark hair, a finely featured face, a wicked grin when she wanted to use it, dancing eyes, and a lithe slim body. She was native, Alex knew, whether part or full he didn’t know and didn’t care. He hoped she didn’t care about his background, either, which was a typical mish-mash of Euro-Canadian DNA, including a dash of Laplander, or so he had been told. Supposedly, that accounted for his slightly Asian looking blue eyes.
And Mary was intelligent, of course, very intelligent. She knew her geology and could think fast on her feet. She could read people, too. She had realized that there was something wrong with the crew of the last job before Alex had. And she had known that there was something unnatural about the job - that their true purpose was not diamond exploration, but something deeper and more sinister.
After their brush with death, while on the diamond exploration job in Canada’s north, the two of them had shared something. She had called it a fling, he had called it a relationship. It didn’t last long, but it was intense, at least from his point of view.
After the “accident”, they had been assigned to a hospital ward, for precautionary observations, the company said. They claimed that they wanted to make sure that there were no long term effects from the extremely strong electromagnetic fields that Alex and Mary had been exposed to, during the event. The company doctors told them it was for their own good - Alex had had his doubts, but there wasn’t much he could do about it at the time.
Alex and Mary weren’t in the same hospital for long - just long enough for him to continue what he had started at the job site - falling head over heels in love with Mary. It was a blissful few weeks, the two of them sneaking off together for a tryst, or just to talk, whenever the opportunity presented itself. But one day she was gone, just like that.
He suspected that the company had separated them on purpose. He assumed that they had wanted to convince them both that they had witnessed nothing more than a tragic industrial accident, just two men being electrocuted by an errant discharge of a high voltage Induced Polarization current. That would be easier if they were separated, not able to reinforce each others' memories.
But Alex knew better and he was sure that Mary knew better, too. He had seen the alien spaceship with his own eyes and couldn’t deny it, especially given his childhood experiences. He had memories of other spaceships, from when he was a boy. He couldn’t doubt them now.
He also knew that Mary had a similar background. She had witnessed odd events as a child, though she had seen them through the eyes of a young northern native girl, and had interpreted them differently than Alex. She saw Wendigo, the insatiable cannibal spirit, he saw aliens. At some level, perhaps they were both right, he thought.
Alex had tried to get in touch with her, after their “recovery”. He had even located an email address for her once. But Mary had discouraged further contact - had said that “it wasn’t meant to be, not for people like them.” He wasn’t sure if she thought their backgrounds were too different, or too similar. And now, here they were again, together on a job. Fate is strange, he thought.
Reluctantly, he took his feet off of the desk and turned back to his work, trying to concentrate on the geophysical logs. There was no use dwelling in the past. From what he could see, Mary had made her mind up to discontinue the relationship. Her behaviour in the mud logging room seemed to make that clear. It was over.
It was getting late - time for some shut-eye. With a yawn, he had one last look at the gamma log from the past day. It was quite a simple detector, just measuring the natural background radiation of the rock. If it read high, that would generally mean a shale zone, in these sedimentary beds. It might also mean an igneous intrusion down there somewhere, though that seemed unlikely.
He startled and looked again. The instrument’s calibration must be wrong, he thought. These readings were off the chart. He checked the calibration curves - he had just done a refresh the day before. Everything was fine with them. The instrument seemed to be in perfect working order.
Nothing should read this high, he thought. Even in a high grade uranium play, you wouldn’t get readings like this. The numbers didn’t make sense. It’s not natural, he though grimly. These are levels you might expect from radioactive waste from a reactor, not from a natural source.
He ran his fingers through his hair, and furrowed his brow, as he stared at the readout, and considered how to proceed.
I will have to talk to Mary about this, he decided. As a geologist, she might know of some natural way that an anomaly like this could occur. A radioactive anomaly, he thought. Last time was a magnetic anomaly, now a radioactive anomaly. I’ve got to stop finding anomalies, he mused. It’s not healthy.
Then he smiled. At least it was an excuse to see Mary again.
* * * * *
He knocked on the door gingerly.
“Come in.”
He opened the door tentatively and stepped across the threshold.
“Alex! What are you doing here?”. Her eyes flashed, but not with anger. She looked as beautiful as ever.
“Um, well it is work related. I mean, we are colleagues, aren’t we?”. Alex stepped a little further into the room.
“Yes, of course we are. Well, come on in then. Don’t stand there like a frightened puppy.” Mary looked away anxiously, then looked back at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just a bit nervous, I guess, meeting you, out here on the rig.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex replied. “I didn’t know you were out here. I needed the job. I’m not stalking you, or anything like that.”
“Oh, I know,” Mary said smiling now. “You couldn’t stalk a kitten, even if you are a puppy.”
Alex laughed at that, a relieved laugh. It was the pet name she had sometimes referred to him with, during their happier times. Strange that she should use it.
The tension seemed to lift, at least between them. But there were other causes of tension now.
“Mary, I need your geological advice. I need you to look at these readings I got from the gamma log and tell me what you think.”
He set his laptop down and opened it, bringing up the necessary file. She looked at the log. She scowled softly, and looked again.
“These can’t be right. Your sonde is screwed.”
“That’s what I thought, too! But I checked the calibrations, ran some specs on the instrument.” He held up the gamma tester. “Everything is working perfectly. Everything is ship-shape, you might say, considering where we are. The instrument reads a known radioactive source perfectly.”
“Well, come to think of it, now that you’re here, I want you to look at something.” She pointed to the microscope. “Take a look at that slide and tell me what you think.”
He walked over to the microscope and readjusted the focus a bit. He turned back at her in surprise.
“It looks like there is worked metal in there. Your mud must be contaminated or something. There shouldn’t be worked metal coming back up the hole. Maybe a few flakes from the drill pipe or something, but those looked way too big and not at all the right shape. Those looked like little ball bearings or something.”
“That’s what they look like, all right,” Mary replied. “I checked a fresh sample of the mud under the microscope. It’s clean - nothing strange in it. Whatever they are, they came up from below. Deep below.”
She looked up thoughtfully for a moment.
“I just had a crazy thought. Let’s try that gamma-ray tester against my dirty sample.”
They brought it close to the sample under the microscope. The instrument’s readout began to flash numbers much bigger than it should have, were it a sample of normal drilling mud.
Alex whistled. “That stuff’s hot. Very hot.”
“Dangerously so?” asked Mary.
“Probably not, but it is substantially above background levels. Whatever it is, it seems to have been cooling off for quite a while. It isn’t immediately deadly to be near, or anything like that. But it is hot enough to be considered nuclear waste, in my books.”
“Impossible. There is no way nuclear waste can get down a fresh drill hole, hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic Ocean,” Mary said.
“Unless the company is dumping it out here,” Alex replied. “And that would be an awfully expensive way to get rid of nuclear waste.”
“I think we can scratch a Montgomery Burns gambit off the list of possible answers to the mystery. What else could produce that sort of result?”
Alex shrugged. “Maybe a radioactive meteorite, millennia in the past?”
“I doubt that,” Mary replied. “There would be all kinds of geological evidence, unless it happened a very long time ago.”
“Maybe a nuclear explosion, millennia in the past?”
“I doubt that even more,” Mary said. “But who knows - you have a talent for getting mixed up in crazy, unbelievable stuff.”
“I could say the same about you,” Alex said with a conspiratorial grin.
She nodded and gave him a small smile.
“But that’s not all that’s weird around here,” she continued. “We took some core samples a while back. The company had me do some magnetic testing on them. For some reason, they were interested in remnant magnetism.”
“Paleomagnetism? That’s a funny thing for an oil company to care about,” noted Alex.
“Isn’t it though,” Mary replied. “And the results don’t make sense. Here, have a look.”
She pulled up a screen on her computer, showing the magnetic strengths and orientations of a sequence of core samples. Alex walked over and stared at it in fascination.
“The residual magnetization in some of those lower cores samples is all wrong. The vectors don’t point the same way as the other, higher core samples. It’s like some of the rock down there has been displaced, or something.”
“Yeah,” Mary replied. “The inclinations and declinations are off. They are pointing the wrong way, that’s for sure. Here’s a vertical profile I plotted, out of curiosity. It’s just a teaser - I haven’t had time to examine the complete dataset thoroughly.”
Alex stared in rapt fascination, as Mary moved the computer mouse cursor along the profile. Near the bottom, the magnetic vectors suddenly shifted direction and grew longer. There was no mistaking it.
He thought for a long moment, then looked at Mary carefully. She returned his look with a steady gaze of her own. He wasn’t sure what fascinated him more - the odd magnetic profile or her mesmerizing face. Finally he spoke.
“Judging from the profile you plotted, that rock was melted and solidified under an intense local magnetic field. A local field much stronger than the Earth’s normal field.”
“And from the way those vectors are pointing, it looks like the source is on the mainland,” Mary said.
“Yep”, Alex replied. “Another magnetic anomaly. I think we better have a closer look at the rest of that data.”
* * * * *
It was only a few days later when Sven called them into his office.
“I am certainly glad to see that our young scientists are working so well together. Alex tells me that his geophysical logs indicate that we must be approaching a pay zone. And Mary’s examinations of the cuttings support that, based on the rock types and micro-fossils that she is finding. Very fine work, by the both of you.”
“And the magnetics?” Alex asked innocently. “Mary did some interesting magnetic analysis of core samples. I wasn’t expecting that, on an oil rig.”
“Yes, the company has developed some new ideas about remnant Paleomagnetism, and how it can help in the search for petroleum. Something about magnetized iron particles in sandstone pointing to ancient reef structures, I think. It is far from my area of expertise, as you can well imagine.”
Alex raised his eyebrows slightly as he looked sideways at Mary. She returned the gesture. Sven’s explanation didn’t add up.
“At any rate, we are very glad to see that you could help Mary out with the analysis, Alex. You two make an excellent team.”
“The pleasure is all ours,” Alex said with a grin. “We love team work.”
Mary made a face at him, but it was not an unfriendly face.
“Unfortunately, however, we must take a break from these geophysical and geological studies,” Sven said. “With the recent unpleasantness in the Gulf of Mexico, the company has decided to carefully examine the rig’s blowout preventer. One can never be too careful. We can’t afford any more expensive mistakes. So, the drilling program will be put on hold for about six weeks, I believe.”
Mary’s response was practical.
“Will we be paid during the downtime?”
“Oh, yes,” Sven replied. “We will put you up in St. John’s at full pay. Once the repairs have been effected, you will be called back to work. But don’t stray too far from St. John’s. We will want you to be available within a day or so.”
“Then St. John’s it is,” Mary said.
“A little touring around the island will be alright, though, will it?” Alex asked.
“That would be fine,” Sven replied. “Newfoundland is quite a fascinating place, especially for those interested in the Earth Sciences. Go ahead and tour, but make sure you are within email or texting range, and that you can make it to St. John’s within a day or so. We will let you know when the rig is ready.”
* * * * *
The next morning, Sven and a man in a dark blue suit watched the closed circuit monitor, as Alex and Mary climbed aboard the helicopter.
“Do you think they will head for the anomaly, Sven?” the man in the blue suit asked.
“Oh, I am sure of it,” Sven replied. “We made certain that they had access to all the required data, especially the remnant magnetic analyses. As one of your English writers once said, ‘the game’s afoot’”.
* * * * *
The company had put Alex and Mary up in separate rooms at a nearby hotel. It had a bit of a nautical theme going on, with round ship cabin style windows in the rooms, which looked over the quaint old downtown streets of St. John’s.
Those streets were lined with colourful old salt box style homes, a distinctive feature of the local architecture. The hotel wasn’t far from the harbour, so the streets were hilly, often with scenic views down to the sea. The trees lining the streets were changing to golds and reds, as it was now early autumn. It was a very pretty effect.
The local restaurants were of good quality, with fresh local seafood being a specialty. Alex especially liked the cod, which was jigged daily, by fishers out beyond the harbour. Mary was partial to the wild game that was often available, particularly moose, which was plentiful on the island.
There were many interesting tourist sites in the area, to help pass the time. This was, after all, one of the first places in the New World to be discovered by the fishers and explorers of the Old World. Cape Spear, the most easterly point in North America was a favourite, with its wild winds and waves. The walk up to Signal Hill always drew them back. In fact, there were many hiking trails in the area that they explored, all part of the East Coast Trail.
All in all, it was shaping up to be a nice break from the offshore oil rig, in an interesting city that neither of them had visited before. Perhaps it was even a place where an old romance could be rekindled, Alex thought wistfully.
* * * * *
They had now been there the better part of a week. It was a Friday night and the pubs of George Street were crowded, as the fall university session had just started a few weeks earlier. The late September night was warm, and people, young and old, were taking advantage of that fact.
Alex and Mary were ensconced in a cozy corner of a crowded old pub, surrounded by groups of students, who appeared to have not a care in the world. The students chatted eagerly, laughing and flirting with abandon. Alex and Mary were enjoying each other’s company - we really have no troubles, either, Alex thought, except perhaps some strange and troubling geological results. If only I could forget about that.
Alex drummed his fingers lightly on the table and cleared his throat. He took a sip of his locally brewed beer and looked at Mary tentatively. It was good beer, he thought. Maybe too good. They had each had a few more than was wise, strictly speaking. Oh well, best to plunge straight into it.
“Mary, I’ve been thinking of renting a car and taking a little trip across the island. I won’t be gone long - just for a few days, maybe a week.”
“Are you really,” Mary replied, her voice rising a bit, her eyes giving off warning signals. “And where might you be planning to go?”
“Well, you know, the Tablelands have always fascinated me. As you know, the mantle of the Earth outcrops there, on the other side of the island. I have always wanted to see that for myself.”
Mary set her beer glass down angrily, some beer sloshing out as she did so.
“And you were planning to abandon me and go tour the Goddamn Tablelands! Christ, I should have known!.”
With that, she got up quickly from the table and stormed out of the bar.
What the hell?, Alex thought. He slapped two twenties on the table to cover the bill and ran after her.
She was fast on her feet, much faster than Alex expected. It took him several blocks to catch up, at the crest of a hill, and even at that, he assumed that she had slowed up on purpose. He reached out for her.
“Mary, I’m sorry…I mean…what’s the matter? All I said was that I wanted to take a little trip.”
She spun around, angrily, staring at him with her penetrating dark eyes. She was a bit unsteady on her feet - they had both had a bit too much to drink. Then, she fell into his arms. She kissed him on the lips, suddenly, tenderly. Her body felt warm against his, in the now cool night air.
“I know what your little trip is about, Alex,” she whispered tearfully, as she broke off the kiss, but remained in his arms. “It’s that stupid damned magnetic anomaly. You want to go and investigate it. I don’t want you to do it. I’m scared. The last time…you could have died. We both could have died. I probably would have frozen to death, if you hadn’t carried me out of that anomaly area, up north.”
She pulled back and looked at him firmly, though her eyes were still moist. “This has been a nice break. We’re getting to know each other again…there are possibilities. Let’s just stay here in the city, where we’re safe.”
That kiss. He’d longed for that kiss. That warmth. He’d longed for that too. And now he was risking it all.
“I have to go, Mary. I have to see what’s there. I have to know what it is.”
Mary drew back a little more, her arms on her hips now.
“Why can’t we just call the police, or the Air Force or something. Tell them about the anomaly. They can investigate. It should be their problem, not ours.”
“You know they’d laugh at us, or worse,” Alex replied. “They would say we were crazy, seeing signs of aliens in every geological map and every geophysical log that we can get our hands on. They might even bring up your Wendigo experiences.”
Mary laughed softly, while wiping a tear away.
“Well, you have to admit, we are a pretty different sort of crazy. Most crazies probably can’t even read a geological map.
“Ok, Alex, you can go to your stupid anomaly. But I’m going with you. I’m not letting you of my sight again. You’re mine now, and I’m not giving you up to any damn aliens - not without a fight. Let’s go back to the hotel - together.”
And with that, she slipped her arm into his, and they walked off into the night.
* * * * *
“Man, this backpack is heavy,” Alex noted, as he tossed it into the trunk of the rental car, a couple of days later. “What have you got in there?”
“Oh, you know us geologists,” Mary replied. “We can’t go anywhere without our rock hammers and such. Besides, I made sure both of our packs were properly supplied. You can’t go exploring without being well provisioned, so I dropped by a camping supply store. There’s food, water, survival gear, some hiking gear, the works. By the way, the backpack that I packed for you is pretty heavy too.”
“It is at that,” Alex grunted, as he heaved it into the trunk as well.
“You’re the man, so you get to carry most of the heavy stuff,” she said with a grin.
“I thought I was a puppy,” Alex replied.
“Where I’m from, Alex, puppies pull sleds.” She smiled one of her radiant smiles and Alex grinned back, with a happy shrug.
* * * * *
It was a good eight hour drive across the province, and they had started fairly late, so Alex figured they would be lucky to make Rocky Harbour by mid-evening. He thought that would be a good jumping off point for their reconnoitre of the Tablelands. They were nearing Gros Morne National Park, now, and the sun had already set. A more deserted road, neither of them could easily recall, and they had both driven some deserted roads in their day.
He looked to the west, where the rapidly darkening sky featured Arcturus and above that Vega and the Summer Triangle. To the northwest, every child’s favourite asterism, The Big Dipper, was prominent. It was all very familiar and comforting.
“Alex, should there be any bright stars behind us?”, Mary inquired, a touch of worry in her voice. “Not far off the horizon, I mean.”
“Not really,” Alex replied “just the rising moon, I suppose.”
“Well, I see a light,” Mary said, “and it’s been following us for a while. And it sure as hell isn’t the moon.”
Alex looked back in the mirror, but he didn’t have a good angle to see whatever it was that Mary was seeing. He began to slow the car and pull over to the side of the road, to check things out. As he slowed down, he noticed something else acting strangely, on the dashboard.
“That’s funny,” Alex said, pointing to the dash. It was one of those rental cars with a built in compass. “The car’s compass is going nuts. The damn thing won’t settle down to point to magnetic north.”
Mary reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a compass.
“Mine too,” Mary noted, after studying it for a few moments.
Alex gave her a slightly quizzical look.
Mary rolled her eyes in reply.
“I’m a geologist on a field trip. Of course I have a compass in my pocket”.
Alex smiled and shrugged as he parked the car on the shoulder of the road. “Makes sense. I say we get out and have a look, stretch our legs a bit.”
They exited the car. The road was still deserted for as far as they could see. It was quite dark in the east now, and they could make out a bright light in the sky, as they looked in that direction. It was bright enough to be Venus, Alex thought, but it was the wrong time of day. It would have to be early morning, for Venus to appear in the eastern sky. It must be something else. Weird that it would be that bright, though.
“Look Alex, there are some dim lights, moving.” Mary whispered as she nudged his arm. “And something big and dark just went across the road.”
Alex saw the lights, too, close to the ground, bobbing up and down, as they crossed the highway. The lights were followed by a shadowy form.
At that, they heard a sort of moaning sound.
“You’re right”, he replied. “There is something or someone there. And it didn’t sound healthy, either. Maybe someone’s hurt or lost. We’d better have a look.”
He took off at a brisk walk, to his right, crossing the highway. He made his way into the bush just off the road, assuming that Mary would be right behind him. But once he was in the dark foliage, the lights had disappeared. He turned to talk to Mary, but she wasn’t there.
There was a scream. It had to be Mary. He raced back across the road in a panic, following her voice.
There was a clearing, a sort of natural pasture beyond the trees that lined the road. He could just make out Mary in the dim light, standing there, shivering in fright. He ran to her, and held her in his arms.
“I followed another light, Alex,” she whispered, barely audible. She pointed across the clearing, at a tree that was about 100 feet away.
“It’s Wendigo. He’s so bloody, he must have killed someone. Right there beside that tree. Can’t you see him?”
Alex looked at the tree, but he could see nothing. He had good night vision, if Wendigo or any other creature was there, he would have known, he thought. With that, he scanned all around.
“It’s just an illusion, Mary,” he said, holding her closer now. “There’s nothing beside that tree. Not Wendigo, not anything.”
Mary’s head began to clear. She looked hard at the tree.
“You’re right,” she said. “There’s nothing there. I could have sworn…maybe it’s got to do with magnetic fields again, making us see things.”
“That must be it, the magnetic fields” Alex replied. He looked into the woods as he said this; two sets of glowing green eyes looked back at him as he spoke. But he didn’t tell Mary.
“Let’s get back into the car and go.”
* * * * *
The next morning, in the motel in Rocky Harbour, Alex admired Mary’s lithe form as she dressed. So beautiful, he thought.
Mary noted his interest and smiled. “Sorry, Alex, not right now. I just can’t get last night’s vision out of my head.” She moved to the bed and sat beside him. “What do you think happened?”
“I think there was something there - I mean we saw something, but it wasn’t necessarily what we thought we saw.”
Mary looked at him questioningly.
“Yeah, I saw something too. Not what you saw, but something.”
“Do you think we’re being followed?”
“That could be. I don’t know who it might be, though.”
“Aliens?”, Mary asked with a smile.
“Wendigo?”, Alex replied, with his own smile, though it was a little forced.
“Touche. Anyway, whoever it was, they sure like playing with magnets.”
“I still don’t trust the company”, Alex said. “And who knows, maybe the government or the military is involved.”
“Well, if they are, I hope they’re on our side”, Mary replied. “We better get a move on, if we are going to explore the Tablelands.”
* * * * *
They drove out to a trailhead and parked the car. It seemed like the easiest place to access the Tablelands, and one can never gainsay the advantages of a good safe parking spot, when on a long hike. They were the only ones there, on a weekday this late in the season. The wind had picked up considerably, and the temperature had dropped substantially. But that was routine, for an early October day in Newfoundland.
Mary heaved a backpack out the trunk and gave it to Alex.
“This one’s yours - it’s the heavy one. I’ll take the other pack.”
“Well, as I recall they were both pretty heavy, but that’s fine with me. Let’s hit the trail. Oh, and let’s not forget the walking sticks you picked up at the camping store. The boulder hopping can be treacherous, I have read.”
The first kilometre or two was a fairly easy walk along a trail wide enough for the two of them to walk side by side. The peaks of the Tablelands rose up to the right of the trail, stark and lifeless, but strangely appealing. There were streams here and there, cutting channels down the sides. Were it not for this, Alex thought, one might easily think they were in a Martian landscape, given the reddish brown rock and the steep relief.
They stopped for a short rest and impromptu breakfast, while sitting on a large boulder, shielding themselves from the wind. “So, Ms. Geologist Extraordinaire, what’s the scoop about this place? Give me your best lecture hall spiel.”
Mary frowned into her thermos cup. “You would. Well, let’s see…The Tablelands are a region where the Earth’s mantle essentially outcrops to the surface. Ancient tectonic activity, raised the sea floor to the surface, high above the rocks in the surrounding area. It took intense folding and faulting to produce this effect.”
Alex looked at Mary, with rapt attention. He knew most of this, but he liked to hear Mary talk geology. I wonder what a shrink would say about that, he mused. “Ve have discovered a new fetish, Mr Alex.” Then he looked down at the ground - the 430 million year old sea floor was at their feet. That was a strange thing to think about, too.
She picked up a rock and continued.
“The rock is a light brown, with perhaps a hint of red. It is very hard peridotite, so it erodes slowly. The vegetation is sparse - some krummholtz at lower elevations, and nothing but a bit of lichen now and then as you go up.”
Alex gave her his most innocent look. “I love how you say hard peridotite.”
She gave him a playful backhand on the shoulder. “You would. Come on, let’s get going.”
As they got to their feet, Mary hesitated. She raised her right hand above her eyebrows, and peered into the distance.
“I could swear that I saw something move way up there, ahead of us, when I looked up after grabbing my pack. But it was just a momentary flash of reflected light. I wonder who would be out here on a day like this?”
Alex looked down the trail, but couldn’t see anything.
“If there’s someone up there, I can’t see them,” he said with a shrug. “There was no other car at the parking lot, but I suppose someone could have been dropped off to be picked up later. Anyway, there’s no law against tourists going for a walk, even on a cool, windy day. Besides, if there is anyone there, they might just as well be wondering about us, being out on a day like this.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Mary said. “No sense being paranoid.”
But her eyes betrayed her, Alex thought. She looked worried.
The trail eventually took a sweeping right hand turn, following one of the water courses into a huge natural amphitheatre, with peridotite mountains rising above on three sides. They made their way along a talus or scree slope on the right hand side.
As they went along, they noted cairns, which marked the “trail”. By now, the trail just amounted to improvised boulder hopping, with cairns every few hundred meters to give an indication of the intended routes. Alex programmed in waypoints every now and then, on his GPS. Likewise, Mary took some compass readings and kept notes in a field book. She also updated a topographical map periodically, as they walked. Some might think this was overdoing things, but by this stage in their adventures, the phrase “an abundance of caution” made perfect sense.
The boulders got bigger and bigger and the cairns began to be more and more difficult to spot. Eventually, they got to what they considered to be “the last cairn”. From here on in, they would have to make their own way to where they had pinpointed the apparent source of the anomaly, back on the offshore oil rig. Alex had that programmed into his GPS as well, and Mary had the location on her topo map. They would be bushwhacking now, though there was no actual bush in the harsh environment. Only a few lichens had evolved to survive up here.
They walked for hours, careful not to turn an ankle during the trickier bits of boulder hopping. The walking sticks were indispensible for that. The wind was blowing very hard now. Even with several layers of clothing, they had to be mindful of exposure, as it was only a few degrees above freezing. Fortunately there was no rain or drizzle on this day, so the wind didn’t rob them of their body heat too much. But the wind made walking difficult, sometimes nearly blowing them off their feet on the most exposed parts of the talus slope.
Mary continued to check her compass periodically, as did Alex with the GPS.
“That’s funny,” she said at one point. “The compass is going haywire again. And I thought I heard something, way off in the distance. It might have been miles away, though. Sound can sometimes carry a long way on the wind, if you happen to be in just the right spot, downwind from the source.”
Alex stopped and cocked his head, trying to pick up any odd sounds. He dropped his pack, as did Mary, to take advantage of the listening break, for a short rest. He listened for a full minute, but all he could hear was the wind.
“We must be getting close to the anomaly,” he said finally. “That would account for the compass interference. I didn’t hear anything, but let’s go slow and keep our senses sharp.”
“Agreed,” Mary replied. She gave one pocket of her pack a reassuring pat, before lifting it up to her shoulders. Then they walked on, for at least another hour.
Finally, they came to a sort of a small canyon and followed it for several hundred meters. Steep reddish-brown rock walls rose up on either side. According to their maps, the centre of the anomaly was not far away. Alex spotted a dark spot in the rocks ahead.
“I’m going to check that out, Mary”, he said. “You wait here and rest, I should only be a few minutes.”
Mary nodded wearily and gratefully. It was nice here, out of the wind. This had been quite the exhausting hike and she could use a rest. She thought Alex was weary too, but he must have received a burst of energy from being so close to his great white whale, the magnetic anomaly. She smiled at herself. Alex as Captain Ahab was too funny to imagine. But his walking stick did remind her of a peg leg, just a bit.
She pulled out her compass, field notes and topo map, to record some readings. Dammit, she thought, the compass is acting funny again. It wouldn’t settle down to give a proper reading. She looked around nervously, but couldn’t see or hear anything.
“Mary, I think I found something,” Alex yelled from the spot up in the rocks, a few hundred meters away. He waved at her as he shouted. “There’s a hole in the rocks and…oh God, there are bodies here!”
Suddenly, some sort of flash of light hit the rocks behind Alex and rubble exploded from the blast site. Alex ducked down and yelled, “What the hell is going on!?”
Mary looked up the small box canyon, in which they were now trapped. Something was hovering there - a machine of some sort. It fired another bolt of energy, that hit the rocks near Alex again, and sent more rubble flying. Mary saw Alex go prostrate, as if he had been hit.
Oh hell, Mary thought, as she reached into her backpack, which lay on the ground beside her. She opened the pocket she had patted earlier, and pulled out the heavy object she had been carrying all this time - a high calibre pistol. It was illegal, but sometimes a woman in her position needed a little extra reassurance, especially when she was tortured by thoughts and memories of a Wendigo, real or not. She knew Alex would have objected, so she had never mentioned what it was - the rock hammer explanation had been a good cover story.
It seemed like the machine hadn’t seen her, but she had a good bead on it. She flicked off the safety and took careful aim - it was a fairly long shot, but she had spent many hours shooting, in her far north upbringing, during her young life.
Ping! Ping! She was sure that could make out bullets hitting the levitating machine, even as the sound of the pistol reverberated throughout the canyon. One seemed to have hit something critical, as the machine seemed to tip, before righting itself again.
Alex wasn’t sure what surprised him more - a murderous machine firing a mysterious weapon at him, or Mary firing a pistol back at it. Be that as it may, it seemed to be working. The machine drew off, as if in confusion and retreat. It seemed like it wasn’t expecting them to be armed. Alex felt a bit stunned by it all - he must have been grazed by some of the machine’s energy pulse. He rose slowly from the prostrate position he had assumed when the firing started, into a crouch, keeping his head low.
Mary ran across the open ground to where Alex was, and ducked behind some rocks with him. She bent down low, her face only inches from his, and touched him gently.
“Are you hurt?”
“Not too bad”, he said. “Kind of dizzy. Maybe the concussion from that machine’s energy blasts. Maybe something else.”
“We have to get out of here, Alex. That machine will probably come back, sooner or later.”
“Later I hope. Look down there, behind the rocks.”
Mary looked. There were two bodies, horribly mangled. There were rifles next to them. They looked like hunting rifles, rather than military issue. Whoever it was, they were armed and they must have been looking for the anomaly too. It appeared that the machine had gotten to them, before they could react. By the look of the bodies, it hadn’t been long ago.
“That must have been what I heard earlier - it looks like the machine ambushed them,” she said, grimacing. “Horrible. Let’s get their guns, Alex, and get the hell out of here. Can you shoot?”
“In a pinch. I’m not a bad shot. I have done some target shooting, with survival guns in exploration camps. Nothing serious, though. I don’t think I could shoot like you obviously can.”
“One of my uncles was a Canadian Ranger up north - you know, the natives that are in the Armed Forces Reserves, guarding the north with Lee Enfields. He taught me to shoot when I was just a teenager. I never thought I would need to shoot at alien machines, though.”
They scrambled behind the rocks and retrieved the rifles, careful to avoid the dead men, as best they could. Alex was reminded of the things that they had seen in the Northwest Territories diamond exploration camp. One of those bodies had suffered similar damage to what these men had experienced. Mary thought so too.
They had just retrieved the rifles and ammunition and had put their packs on when they heard a low hum. Mary took out her compass. Sure enough, it was going crazy. The machine must be returning. They crouched behind what cover they could find and loaded the rifles.
Two machines appeared at the end of the canyon and slowly came forward. Mary took aim - so did Alex. They got off several shots - one of the machines seemed to implode or something. It just seemed to be sucked into a sudden vortex and disappeared. But the other kept coming and got off a clear shot.
The energy beam seemed to surround them. Mary fell first - she was hurt, but Alex was sure that she was still alive. He had taken another grazing shot, but wasn’t badly hurt. He could still load, aim and fire, which he did. The second machine did that special implosion thing, like the first had.
It looked like they might get away. He hoisted Mary on his back, dead man style and took one of the rifles. If only he could get out of this canyon and hole up somewhere, until Mary came to. Assuming she would come to, but he couldn’t bear to think of the alternative, so he shoved it from his mind.
But as he looked down the canyon, two more machines appeared. He felt utterly defeated, but at least he would die with the one he loved.
“Give me the woman”, a voice said from the opening in the rocks behind them, the one that he had first gone to explore. “Then follow me.”
He handed Mary over to someone just inside the dark cave, who seemed to have glowing green eyes. Then he followed, as the six fingered hand beckoned to him.
End of Part 2
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