Discovery

By David Tallach

The year is 1903. The pioneering expedition led by Commander Robert Falcon Scott, captaining the Discovery to the South Pole, is already well-documented. For the first time, this narrative also reveals that for two men aboard the ship, Dr Edward Wilson and Louis Bernacchi, it becomes a voyage of self-discovery in their encounters with aliens and possible futures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9780244609351

Book preview

Discovery

Discovery

A Science-Fiction Novella

By David Tallach

Copyright

Copyright © 2017 by David Tallach

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the

express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2017

ISBN 978-0-244-60935-1

East Highland Gothic Press

87 Alltan Place

Inverness, IV2  7TA

For Heather, on her Birthday

Author’s Note

Dr Edward Wilson, Chief Petty Officer Edgar Evans and Louis Bernacchi were real people, who sailed with Commander (later Captain) Scott on the Royal Research Ship (RRS) Discovery in the year 1901 to the Antarctic, the first time anyone had travelled so far south, and charted its outlying territory. The Discovery became locked in the ice until 1904, and her crew eventually returned home. Wilson and Evans also accompanied Scott on the more well-known return voyage of 1910-12 aboard the Terra Nova, were selected for the final British expedition of five who were beaten by Amundsen to the South Pole, and they died on the way back to the base camp. The thylacine, a striped marsupial resembling a wolf, exclusive to Tasmania, died out in 1936.

Chapter One

Darkness oozed beneath the ice, like an insidious cancer. It quivered, sensing, patrolling its own stream of immortality. Antarctic winds howled around the rigging of the ice-locked ship towards which the throbbing black presence was inching. The strange pulsing creature revelled in the climate of the coldest place on Earth. 

***

Dr Edward Adrian Wilson was finishing a sketch of some seals he had started the day before. Sitting at a desk, he yawned and rubbed his forehead as his companion, resting on the upper bunk bed in their sparse quarters, stared up at the roof. The deck felt odd below them, the motion of the sea subdued by the ice around. Louis Bernacchi, the expedition physicist, grimaced. ‘Still at it, doctor?’ he asked in his Tasmanian accent. ‘Even after you got snow blindness from looking at them?’

‘They fascinate me, like most animals,’ said Wilson, without looking up. Evidently his sight was better than it had been. Wilson held up the finished work against the light as if he were already displaying it in a slide-show. He nearly dropped his master-work as the dogs tethered up on deck began to bark. He stood up as Bernacchi groped for his boots. They hurried out of their cabin, up to the deck, where the armed ratings on duty were aiming their weapons at a diminutive figure below, shielding his eyes from reflections off the snow but waiting purposefully.

‘Ahoy!’ came his voice, to Wilson’s ears faint yet still authoritative.

‘Get the Commander,’ Chief Petty Officer Edgar Evans instructed one of the ratings, who nodded and hurried to the for’ard cabin. Wilson folded his arms and watched his own breath fogging out like steam. Bernacchi had gone over to calm the dogs, some still unsettled by the stranger’s presence. A tall figure came striding along the deck, and came up next to Wilson. Evans’ humorous face straightened as he saluted. ‘Sir, there’s a man out who wants to come aboard.’

Commander Robert Falcon Scott, RN, looked over the side at the figure, now tapping the side of the ship with a black furled umbrella. He opened his mouth, seemed to hesitate, then said, ‘Bring him aboard.’

‘Ahoy!’ Evans called down to the man. He straightened and shielded his eyes again, looking up. ‘There’s a rope coming down!’ Wilson watched it snake down to the stranger, who wound it around under his arms, and jerked it once. He was hauled aboard presently by the ratings, pulled quickly over the port side. He undid the rope and stood up, pulling out his umbrella from a cavernous inner pocket.

‘Doctor Wilson, I presume,’ he said in a southern Scottish accent, his light manner belying a slight sadness in his eyes as he stepped forward to grip Wilson’s hand. ‘May I introduce myself?’ he continued. ‘Captain Angus Lennie Martin, late of the Black Watch. We were recently engaged against the Boers in southern Africa, and lost our way.’

Evans laughed. ‘I’ll say you have!’

Martin was short in height, with black hair a little long for a military man. Little could be seen of him beneath the thick army greatcoat he wore. He continued to look at Wilson, as if he were the key to an argument. ‘My travelling companions have been lost down a crevasse, but I hope there is still time to save them.’ He laid a curious emphasis on the word ‘time’.

Wilson had actually turned to go to his cabin and fetch his medical kit before he caught the expression on Scott’s face. Martin had anticipated the other, and said, ‘Commander. If you please. I need your help to find my friends.’

‘Take him below,’ said Scott tersely. An indignant Martin was immediately escorted below decks to a vacant cabin. Scott walked heavily into the room, and closed the door behind them. A solitary rating stood inside, at the door. ‘Now, how did you come to be here?’ asked Scott calmly.

‘Our craft was beached some miles away,’ said Martin. He leaned over the table between them, as if he were in charge of the questioning. ‘My friends are out there. They need help.’ He looked reserved and anxious, clearly hiding something. Scott stared at him for a little, then came to a decision.

‘Very well, Captain, we will search for your friends. There will be more questioning later. I must have all the information you have.’ Martin’s face brightened a little, though still qualified by a dark and knowing crease on his brow. He stood up and left the cabin with Scott, still closely watched by the rating. The Commander gave orders to prepare for the brief expedition, and within the hour he, Martin, Bernacchi, Wilson and two ratings, named Williams and McQueen, were trekking slowly across the ice, the ship, the Discovery, a solid frosted ghost behind them.

They arrived after two hours on what would become the summer-time shore of the Ross Ice Shelf. ‘This is where it happened,’ said Martin quietly, pointing with his umbrella towards an incongruous black mass over a portion of the ice. Somehow the snow did not lie on it. On the surface, it seemed very firm.

‘What is it?’ asked Wilson, reaching out and tapping it with a shovel. It made a dull noise, somehow both resistant and receptive at once. ‘Its composition is like no ice I’ve ever seen.’

‘That is because it is alien,’ said Martin deliberately. The others all stared at him.

‘A meteorite?’ asked Wilson.

‘It was meant to be,’ said Scott slowly. Martin looked at him sharply.