Ark of Darkness

The great ship twisted in the storm.  Weeks of battering had taken a toll.  The vessel’s wooden back broken, this Ark and its’ crew were shortly doomed. 

The forward deck hatch opened.  Out climbed a young woman in heavy gray armor.   Struggling to the front of the ship, she steadied herself beside the slippery railing and began to sing in a long lost tongue.  Tears welled up in her dark brown eyes.  Shivering, she persisted her melancholy lament into the face of the unrelenting gale. 

The woman’s lovely voice began to harmonize back from the onslaught, the storm vastly magnifying her song’s range. 

Suddenly ahead, like a shovel-full of sand, rose the top of a gigantic island-mountain. With a tremendous blast of energy, the typhoon drove them upon the rocks. 

The wreck ground to a stop, in a steep valley, just below the peak.  The weather quickly dropped to subzero, burying the Ark in an ice age.

Several thousand years later

The Reverend took a long hard look at the computer print out.  “You can get us up there and back with some relics?” Betram questioned. 

“Without a doubt,” Dr. Stender replied.  “This is the latest keyhole satellite image of the site; Kirgizstan, Russian Republic, right on the border with China.  I’ve got the local approvals, helicopters, supplies and ground support, but if we don’t move right now, somebody else will.”

Reverend Betram was already aware of several inquiries.  This was hot but it would use the last of his operating capital.  ‘The damn Russians are so money hungry now!’ he thought. 

The Doctor continued:  “The ship’s over nine hundred feet long.  It’s frozen in this glacier 17 thousand feet up on Kanda Feng.  The last seven years of drought have brought the end section to the top of the ice cliff.” 

“How close?” 

“Within a dozen feet of the surface.  We dig down and show Earth the 8th wonder of the biblical world.  If you’ve suddenly got cold feet, I’m on my way to the competition.”