Minor peril

Staggering off the company plane in Trondhiem, after 16 hours and two changes, is like being dropped into a freezing pond. The fierce, biting wind brings tears instantly to his eyes, which roll down his cheeks, freezing as they go. The hand holding his heavy aluminium work case goes numb almost instantly, the other dives for the scant cover of his jacket pocket like it has a mind and survival instinct all its own. Get into the terminal as fast as possible, before you freeze, idiot.

Ah, the luxury of comparative warmth as he hands over his passport and company ID to the bored immigration agent and answers the routine questions. Customs takes longer. His work case was bonded shut in Abuja, to allow him to keep it in the cabin of the commercial flight to London, but it still needs checking.

"No other luggage, Doctor, uh, Abrams?" the customs officer looks askance at his thin clothes. "You will not be comfortable dressed like that at this time of year."

"No, Air Nigeria managed to lose the hold luggage with my warm clothes. I have someone meeting me here who is bringing me some outdoor gear."

A grunt and a nod in reply. Not his problem. Pass into the concourse. A man, short, sweating and looking almost spherical in his bulky winter gear, waves and comes over, hauling a kit bag.

"Bel! Long time! It is a long way from Nigeria, I am afraid."

"Tom, it's been years," as they shake hands, "How are things treating you? And is it always so damned cold here?"

"Ha, winter has only just begun, lad, it will be colder soon enough." Tom says with a grim chuckle as he hands over the kitbag. "Had to phone Mary to get your sizes when I got the message, these should all fit your lanky ass. Boots are in there too."

Smile as he ducks into the Gents to get changed. Tom is good people, one of the best operations engineers in the business. And he was a great friend to a skinny, gangling chemist just out of University and on his first job. That was long ago now. Tom has gone from a mining engineer to chief of operations, Laponie Division. The nervous chemist is now the chief analyst for the entire company. Times change. Fortunately, friends don't, not often.

Shakes his head as he stamps to sit the boots comfortably. Look around, make sure everything is picked up and back in the kit bag. Think of the present, not the past.

The long drive was as painful as expected, even in snow gear. The Land Rover's heater, not the greatest engineering triumph the best of times, made not the slightest dent to the minus 30 air leaking into the cab. When it is that cold, you don't waste words. The trip was done, mostly in silence, until, one last rise and the Laponie Mine complex stretched out, sparsely illuminated by the exterior lights. Concentrations of light around the living quarters and processing plant emphasise the dark gulf of the minehead in the background.

"We enlarged an existing cave entrance for the minehead." Tom breaks the silence. "T'was easier than trying to blast a new one out of this horribly hard rock, and the cave is big enough to keep the haulers under cover and out of the weather. Goes back a fair way into the mountain too, leads right to the main ore lode."

The ore. The thing that made him, and the company, both respected in the field, and mega rich. The first stable transuranic ever found. Element 126, on the periodic table. A total bitch to extract. The metal itself works as easily as lead. More conductive than gold. Once shaped, a blast of chlorine gas fixes it into the hardest and most refractory substance known, making diamond look like putty. Always found with Thorium and Neodymium.
As discoverer, he had namers rights. A long, drunken night with the survey crew, full of good humor, bad jokes and puns, lead to the name. Odinium. The God metal. The one everyone wants. Found in only five places on Earth. Nigeria. A nameless South Pacific island. Under Ben Nevis in Scotland. Just south of Anchorage, Alaska. And the motherlode, here in Laponie, Norway.

Stamp into the main lab ahead of Tom, into the warmth. He really hates the cold. Just not built for it. No one here, but hot coffee in the pot, waiting, just like in every lab. Analysts are always caffiene junkies, it goes with the territory. He gratefully siezes a cup and starts to thaw out.

"So, what we got?" Tom sits and calls up the data.

"We ran a shot pattern on the mountain, looking for further veins. This is what we got back."

Look at the screen. Geo-radar science has improved in the last year. Still wavery and suggestive, more than a map, but clearer than the last generation of sensors.

Odd. The mine workings are clearly visible. The motherlode is a massive ring shape, three quarters mined out, with four side tunnels branching off.

"Those side tunnels ..." he starts.

"Go to the other four mines, within our limits of accuracy." Tom looks grave. "Two of our analysts took one look at this and simply left. No reason given, they just walked out."

Why. That is just stupid. Ore beds follow odd patterns. They can make shapes. Everyone knows this.

"What is this blackness in the center of the ore bed?" he gestures at the screen.

"Incredibly dense, that is all we know. Got a crew driving an adit now, to see what is there. Whatever it is, it is showing up as denser than Odinium. That's why I called you."

This could be spectacular. Another unknown metal. Another transuranic. Another Nobel. He stands and fastens his coat again.

"Lets go. I want to see this." The prospect of cold means nothing now. There is something new on the horizon.

The mine is warm, as they descend to the operating level and make their way to where the adit is being cut. Machinery shrieks in protest against the stubbornly hard rock, but slowly, steadily, makes progress. He watches, hungrily, looking for the subtle signs of a new ore. Color change in the rock, a change in smell as the drills spin, smoke and bite in again. Nothing yet, just the tough igneous rock forming the roots of the mountain.

A roar from the drill, as it suddenly encounters no resistance, rising rapidly to a scream, before the overrides kick in and it shuts off. A hollow. They happen. Annoying, this close to the lode, but one of those things you have to expect in mining.
An inrush of air through the 2 cm hole, strong, then slowing to a stop. Then an outrush, gathering force until it is almost a gale, before dying away. A wave of heat from the hole. The miners back away, dropping the drill. Inrush. Outrush.

That is not the tricks the air passages in a mountain plays. That is breathing.

An immense voice presses him down.

"It is time at last, is it?" And the top of the mountain crumbles away as Fenrir, free of his God forged chains at last, stands.

There are things moving out there in the ice and snow. Massive things.

I am so damned cold.