In the middle of the night, Eleanor had a disturbing dream. She dreamed of Penelope’s predicament, of her young friend being taken to the temple in the mountain, of her brain being removed from her body and placed in a glass jar. She awoke screaming, waking Iris, who tried to calm her down and find out what was causing her distress. Eleanor stumbled over her words, trying to explain the vivid nature of the dream. She was interrupted by Malcolm calling them from outside the tents that someone was coming.

Malcolm had caught sight of something strange – he saw what appeared to be a man on a motorcycle coming towards them. The group quickly decided that hiding was better than trying to ambush the rider, and covered up the tents with snow. They hid within the survival tents and waited for the man to pass. As he approached, they saw that he was indeed riding on a vehicle similar to a motorcycle, but instead of wheels it sported a tank tread. As he passed by, they saw he was wearing white and gray Nazi attire, a snow trooper of some sort.

Realizing this must be a scout, Malcolm ensured the team remained quiet as he passed by. Afterwards, the team looked at where the scout had come from and Malcolm could just make out tiny puffs of smoke on the northern horizon. The Nazis were on their way, and were using vehicles to reach the temple.

The group decided to follow the scout’s tracks until they turned off to the east. Eleanor, citing her dream, insisted they had to continue to the southwest. They did so, and after a few hours they found the point where the glacier had pulled away from the mountain, creating a massive, jagged crevasse. Archie looked down into this dark abyss and could just make out sharp ice spikes hundreds of feet below. The group found the ice trail leading down and carefully made their way through the canyon-like cleft.

After thirty minutes of travel the team found themselves at the bottom of the trail on the glacier side of a narrow bridge of ice. Across from them, carved into the face of the Everest itself, was the temple of the snake, a huge edifice that looked like a giant cobra hood surrounding thirty foot tall stone doors. Archie quickly made his way across the ice bridge, once again heedless of danger. He began sketching the strange carvings on the cyclopean doors.

Eleanor quickly found the doorway from her dream, causing both Malcolm and Iris to be very worried that her vision was, in fact, true. Iris took Malcolm’s flask and quickly downed the liquor, not wanting to face such horrors sober. Inside the door they found the discarded furs, just as Eleanor’s dream had shown.

The group quietly began to explore the temple, starting with the gigantic entry hall. They noticed that despite being a good fifty feet wide and twice that long, there were no supporting pillars. Considering the age of the temple, that alone was a marvel of engineering. Added to it was that the stone was a green marble that was not at all of local origin. The group was in awe, and Archie quickly went about trying to sketch out the reliefs carved into the walls. They seemed to show a giant snake like monster with a tentacled head being served by misshapen men. He also found strange dark crystals that seemed to radiate some sort of alien light that caused certain parts of his skin and clothing to glow.

Further into the temple the team heard a metallic tapping, and while bickering about where to go and why they were even there, they were surprised by a spider-like metallic device carrying a brain in a jar. Archie fired a shot at the creature, the bullet going far wide, and they were all shocked to hear the thing speak in a soft, male, British accent.

“Don’t shoot! I’m a friend. Please! I’m not dangerous!” the thing called out, its voice tinny, like it was coming through a radio. The group met “Sandy”, the remains of Andrew Irving, a climber who had been lost on Everest during the 1924 British Expedition. Sandy explained that the “masters” had saved him after he fell from the heights of the mountain, but they couldn’t quite put him back together, so they had placed his brain in the alien contraption, which also allowed him to travel with them to their “base” on another world. Sandy claimed the base was on the recently discovered Pluto, though he wouldn’t have had knowledge of that planet. He later explained that the masters took Penelope to learn about the world, and because she knew about Pluto, now he knew about it too.

It was at that point that the group realized Eleanor’s dream was true – Penelope had been “processed,” just like Sandy. They quickly followed the metallic monstrosity to their lost friend. He led them down hallways to strange triangular doors that opened like butterfly wings at the push of a button. The inside of the dark room was exactly like Eleanor’s dream and indeed they found a similar apparatus, with a human brain floating in fluid inside a clear glass jar atop a spider-like armature, huddled in the corner. Penelope’s voice came from the aberration, stuttering and disjointed, repeating the word “bubble” off and on.

The others were heartbroken, but Eleanor questioned Sandy to see if the masters, whomever they were, could fix Eleanor. Sandy believed they could, and Archie also claimed he could re-implant the brain, though no one particularly believed him. The team asked where Penelope’s body would be kept, and Sandy indicated it would likely be in Cold Storage. With a bit of prompting, and a covering up of Penelope’s new body (“I am naked!”), they made their way through the pitch black temple to another room.

Cold Storage was exactly that, a painfully cold room filled with alien containers. Two were large enough for a whole body, so the team opened them. One contained the mangled body of George Mallory, Sandy’s climbing partner. Sandy was glad to see him, even if he was quite dead. The second tube contained a frozen adult male Tcho-Tcho, a weird, deformed human. Iris, in a somewhat drunken stupor, opened a much smaller cylinder, revealing an ancient, fossilized skull. Archie quickly inferred that this was the skull that the tablets had referred to – the crown hidden in the serpent. He snatched the skull and put it in his bag.

Eleanor convinced Sandy to take them to an examination room, where they hoped to find Penelope’s body. He agreed and led the group to another room with a triangular door. Inside on a metal slab was Penelope’s naked body, her scalp removed. Archie rushed over and checked to see if the body was dead – it was not, the heart still beating, the lungs still working. Wires and tubes run into the empty skull were keeping the flesh alive.

As Archie began preparing for surgery, the masters finally arrived – two insect like creatures with featureless heads, bat-like wings, and pincer claw hands. With a buzzing sound the two spoke passable English. They claimed to not be a threat and wanted to know why the group was there. Penelope implored them to fix her, to put her back in her body. Her words were so heartfelt that even the two alien beings could not deny her request. They agreed, so long as the group would provide a replacement. They also offered to “fix” Eleanor, but didn’t explain what they meant, only to say she was not “complete”.

The masters activated a flat panel monitor, showing the Nazi forces had arrived at the head of the ice trail. Leading the caravan of vehicles was an armored personnel carrier. Standing in the open hatch of the APC was a strikingly beautiful blonde woman that Archie immediately recognized. He identified her as Victoria Niesennkraft, a former classmate of his at Miskatonic University, a fellow pre-med student. He had attempted to date her once, but she was always more interested in her studies than men. Malcolm quickly offered her to the creatures, who seemed to accept. While the group watched the Nazis’ progress on the monitor, the two beings quickly began working on Penelope.

While the surgery was being performed on Penelope, Archie hovered around the creatures, trying to learn from them and their advanced techniques. The beings tested Penelope’s body’s nerve endings, causing her to scream. Everyone looked over, and in that moment Eleanor felt a pinch in the back of her neck. She turned to see a third member of the creatures scuttling away. She rubbed her neck, but felt nothing unusual.

As the Nazis continued toward the temple, the creatures finished their work on Penelope, sealing her scalp back to her skull so perfectly there wasn’t so much as a scar. She opened her eyes, happy to be back in her body, but still sounding and acting a bit dissociated. Her obsession with the word “bubble” continued as well, causing concern among her friends.

The group asked if there was another way out of the temple, and the creatures informed them that Sandy would show them an alternate means of escape. The beings themselves decided to retreat after seeing that the Nazis, numbering in the dozens, were heavily armed. The group bade their strange acquaintances farewell as Sandy led them deeper into the mysterious temple.

Along the way, Archie stopped and broke off a softball sized chunk of the black glowing crystal. As he put it in his bag, he noticed that the alien light given off by the crystal caused glyphs to appear on the skull. Archie immediately recognized the curious symbols – they were Atlantean, just like the ones they found on the Aztec tablets. The top of the skull also bore the same all-seeing eye emblem that the group had seen before. Archie quickly jotted down the cipher and followed the others.

Sandy showed the group to a cleft in a wall of the temple, a split that ancient tectonic activity had created. Here he parted ways with them, wishing them well, and wishing he could come with them. It was a tearful goodbye, with Iris especially saddened for the poor man’s fate. As their new friend scrambled off to join his masters, the crew climbed up the rocky passage to the surface.

At the top they found themselves about a half-mile from the Nazi vehicles. Malcolm used his binoculars to determine there were only six guards left protecting the treaded transports, and most of them weren’t paying much attention to their surroundings. Leaving the team at the temple exit, he carefully crept over to the Nazi caravan.

Using his knife, Malcolm dispatched two of the guards quickly and quietly. He then crawled under the large trucks, using torn bits of uniform from the two guards to tuck into the gas tanks of the two middle vehicles. He lit his two “fuses” and slipped into the cab of the rear truck. He deftly hot-wired the truck and began to pull away. The remaining Nazi guards brought up their weapons to fire, but the first of the two sabotaged trucks exploded in a ball of fire as the burning rag reached the gas tank. Malcolm reversed his stolen transport and gunned it toward his friends as the second truck exploded. No bullets followed him, and he assumed he had put the guards out of commission.

A few moments later, the headlights of the truck peered through the darkening sky. The others clambered aboard the truck, turning northward to make the trek back to the monastery and the Cygnus…