Work Text:
Willard was torn out of his thoughts by sharp beeping. He fished the source of the annoyance from his pocket, pressed a few buttons until it fell silent and put it back in. He refocused on his calculations, murmuring as he scribbled down the formulas. Taking a few steps forward with the pad in his hand, the beeping started again. A-gain!
That must have been at least the fifth time in the last half an hour!
He took the thing out once more, glaring at it accusingly. His research would go nowhere if he couldn’t concentrate on it!
“Do you ever shut up?” he told it unhappily, flicking a button, but it took only one step closer to the Tinnos ruins to make it start all over.
Willard’s nerves had had just about enough. T his was not an ideal working environment, not at all. With a flick of his hand, he dropped the device in the snow , continuing to the ruins and away from the noise.
“Sir!” one of the scientists on site called after him, and as Willard heard the nearing steps, so did he hear the noise getting louder and louder again. He groaned inwardly and then turned to the man who had just caught up to him, carrying the blasted thing.
“Sir, you dropped your Geiger counter!”
“Well it wouldn’t shut up,” Willard pointed his pen at the man, then looked back at his notes, a new thought occurring to him. Oh, that could work! Scribbling everything down quickly, it was the seventh “sir” that finally made him look up again, annoyed.
“What?”
“Sir… the counter is detecting extreme amounts or radiation! That’s why it wouldn’t, as you say, ‘shut up’.”
Willard stared at him blankly, wondering if he could fire employees in the middle of Antarctica. “I know wha’ it means!” he said finally, offended.
“But sir, then-”
“Of course there would be strong radiation, the amounts have been steadily growing since we breached the first tunnels. That is what was supposed to happen,” he explained to the clearly out-of-his-depth scientist, excitement growing just by speaking about it.
“But that is extremely dangerous!”
“That is extremely fascinatin’!” Willard corrected him. “Now get that thing away from me, I can’t concentrate.”
“But… but…” sounded behind Willard’s back as he was walking back towards the ruins, but no other words came. Maybe the man wasn’t completely hopeless as a scientist then, maybe he finally realized the importance of their find and silently rejoiced in the warm embrace of scientific discovery.