a gargantuan, deep-sea jellyfish, floating in midair. And it seemed to be rotating, ever so slowly, giving it a real sense of depth.
And, oddly, she thought, a sense of being somehow . . . alive.
She stared at it, resisting all kinds of competing, outlandish thoughts, and focused her mind on getting a handle on its size. As big as a large hot air balloon, she first thought, then adjusted her thinking upward. Bigger. Maybe as big as a fireball in a fireworks display. It was huge. It was hard to judge without a point of reference for scale. She ran a visual comparison to the height of the cliff face below, which she knew to be roughly a hundred and fifty feet tall. It seemed to be around the same size, maybe a hundred and fifty feet in diameter, maybe more.
Dalton looked up from behind the camera and asked, “You think it’s some freaky aurora borealis thing?”
She’d been thinking the same thing, wondering if it was a trick of the light, an illusion caused by a reflection off the ice. In Antarctica, the sun never set during the austral summer. It just circled around at the horizon, a little higher during the “day,” a little lower—almost a sunset—during the “night.” It had taken some getting used to and it played tricks on you, but somehow Gracie didn’t think it explained what she was seeing. The sighting seemed more substantial than that.
“Maybe,” she replied, almost to herself, lost in her thoughts, “but I don’t think it’s the time of year for them . . . and I’m pretty sure they only appear when it’s dark.”
“Gracie?” Roxberry again, waiting for an answer. Reminding her that she was going out live.
To a world audience.
Christ almighty.
She tried to relax and put on a genial smile for the camera, despite the tiny alarms buzzing through her. “This is just . . . It’s pretty amazing, Jack. I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe someone else on this ship knows what it is, we’ve got quite a few experts on board.”
Dalton lifted his tripod and tracked along with Gracie as she edged over to the scientists and crew members on deck with her, keeping the apparition in frame.
The others were discussing it in excited, heated tones, but something about their body language worried Gracie. If it was a rare, but natural, phenomenon, they’d be reacting differently. Somehow, she got the impression that they weren’t comfortable with what they were seeing. Not just uncomfortable, but . . . rattled.
They don’t know what it is.
One of them, who’d been watching it through binoculars, turned and met her gaze. He was an older man, a paleoclimatologist she’d met on arrival named Jeb Simmons. She read the same confusion, the same unease, on his face that had to be radiating from hers. It only confirmed her feeling.
She was about to speak up when another wave of gasps broke out across the deck. She turned in time to see the shimmering shape suddenly pulse, brightening up to a blazing radiance for a heartbeat before dimming back to its original pearlescent glare.
Gracie glanced at Simmons as Roxberry’s excited voice crackled back. “Did it just flare up?”
She knew the image on the screen he was looking at would be grainy, maybe even a bit jumpy. The live video uplink back to the studio was always compromised, nowhere near as clear as the original, high-definition footage on Dalton’s cameras.
“Jack, I don’t know how clearly it’s coming through to you, but from out here, I can tell you, it’s not like anything I’ve seen before.” She tried hard to hang onto her unflustered expression, but her heart was racing now. This didn’t feel right.
She suddenly remembered something, and turned to Finch and Dalton. “How quickly can you get the bird up?”
Finch nodded and turned to Dalton. “Let’s do it.”
“We’re sending the skycam up for a closer look,” Gracie confirmed into her mike, then turned to Simmons, breathless, and clicked her mike off. “Tell me you know what this is,” she said with a tense smile.
Simmons shook his head. “I wish I could. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You’ve been here before, right?”
“Oh yes. This is my fourth winter out here.”
“And your specialty’s paleoclimatology, right?”
“I’m flattered,” he smiled, “yes.”
“And yet . . .”
He shook his head again. “I’m stumped.”
Gracie frowned, her mind spinning, and pointed at his binoculars. “May I?”
“Sure.” He handed them over.
She looked through them. It didn’t add anything to what she’d already observed.