“Or maybe you’re afraid the Church is going to lose its place as the arbiter of Genesis,” he said, having heard enough of her hysterics. “Maybe it’s time to let go of ignorance and fear and make way for a new day of enlightenment.” Conrad looked at Yeats, who gestured to the obelisk.
“Just pick up the goddamn scepter, son. Because if you don’t, there are dozens of armed Russians outside this chamber who might, and God knows how many more UNACOMers on the ice.”
Conrad glanced at Serena and approached the Scepter of Osiris. He could feel her fear as he placed his hands on the obelisk. It felt smooth, as if the inscriptions were beneath its surface.
“You’re dreaming, Conrad, if you think your father is going to let you walk out of P4 with that scepter,” she said. “At least within the context of the United Nations, there’s a chance the rest of the world will know about your find.” Conrad hesitated. He felt a weird floating sensation inside, something he couldn’t explain. Reaching for the obelisk, he could feel tiny vibrations radiating from it. But then he pulled back.
“What in God’s name are you waiting for?” Yeats demanded.
Conrad wasn’t sure. This was a once-in-a-millennium chance to make his mark in the sands of time and turn history on its head with a spectacular discovery. It was his one shot at immortality.
“I’m telling you, Conrad, don’t rush into this,” Serena urged him. “You might unleash something you can’t undo.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Sister,” Yeats said. “Somebody is going to remove this obelisk, and it had better be Conrad. Because he’s the only one who can do it. If anybody is worthy, it’s him.” 119
“Allow me to be a character witness and tell you that you’re completely wrong,” Serena said. “Just because he’s your son doesn’t mean—”
“Conrad’s not my son.”
Conrad stopped cold. So did Serena. Even the Russian held his breath. A heavy silence filled the chamber.
“Fine, you’re his adoptive father,” Serena said quietly, apparently sympathetic to Conrad’s sensitivity to the subject.
“Not even that.” Yeats shed his supply pack and started to rummage through it.
Conrad stared at his father, wondering what sort of revelation he was about to produce. Why now, of all times? Conrad thought. Why here, of all places?
“He is.” Yeats held up a digital camera.
“You have his picture?” Conrad looked at the digital image in the viewing screen. It was a picture of the Seal of Osiris from the floor of the geothermal chamber.
“This is your father,” Yeats said.
Conrad stared at the figure of the bearded man inside the mechanical-looking throne and felt something stir deep inside him, from a place he never knew existed.
“What are you saying?”
“I found you in a capsule buried in the ice more than thirty-five years ago,” Yeats said in a grim voice that rattled Conrad to the bone. “You couldn’t have been more than four.”
Conrad was silent. Then he heard a giggle. It was Serena.
“My God, Yeats,” she said. “How dumb do you think we are?” But Yeats wasn’t laughing, and Conrad had never seen the look in his father’s eyes that he did right now.
“You don’t need anyone to tell you what’s true, son,” Yeats said. “You know it.” 120
Conrad’s mind was racing. Yeats had to be lying. After all, Conrad had his DNA tested in search of his parentage, and there was nothing that would suggest he wasn’t a red-blooded American male. On the other hand, setting aside its utter implausibility, it explained everything about his lost early years.
“If this is a lie, then you’re one sick son of a bitch,” Conrad told Yeats. “But if it’s the truth, then everything else is a lie, and I’ve never been anything more to you than a science project. I’m damned either way.”
“Then save yourself now, Conrad,” Yeats said. “I was the same age you are when Uncle Sam scrubbed the Mars mission and took my dream away from me.
I never had a choice. You do. Don’t be like me and regret losing this opportunity for the rest of your life.”
The dirty trick worked. As Conrad stared at Yeats, he could behold a cracked reflection of his future self should he fail now. It was a visage that made him shudder.
Serena seemed to sense she had lost the battle. “Conrad, please,” she begged.
“I’m sorry, Serena,” he said slowly as he began to twist the obelisk in its socket.
As he did, the curved walls of the geodesic chamber began to spin and the constellations above them changed. With a dull rumble, the floor itself began to rotate.
“We need more time to figure this out,” Serena screamed, lunging for him. “You just can’t make a decision for the rest of the world. You’ve got to wait.” But Yeats stopped her cold with the barrel of a Glock in her face. “Like Eisenhower stopping on the banks of the Elbe when he should have beat the Russians to Berlin in 1945?” he said. “Or Nixon pulling the plug on the Mars mission in 1969? I don’t think so. Decisive force was required then, and it is now.
I’m not stopping anywhere short of my mission’s objective.” Conrad glanced at Serena trying to squirm out of Yeats’s arms. “Don’t do it, Conrad. I swear—”
“Stop swearing, Serena,” he told her. “You’ll only break another vow.” Reaching for the obelisk with both hands, he told himself that this opportunity was simply too irresistible to pass up. And if he let this moment go, then he might as well count his life as over.
“Please, Conrad…”
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Conrad could feel the obelisk easing away from the altar as he lifted it free and clear. He smiled in triumph at Serena.
“There,” he said with a trace of relief. “That wasn’t so—” But the rest of his sentence was cut off by an ear-splitting crack.
“Oh, my God,” Serena breathed as a great rumbling overhead grew deafening.
The domed walls of the chamber spun at fantastic speeds like some cosmic coil ready to snap. Then, suddenly, the spinning stopped. The constellations locked, and an explosive shock wave rocked the pyramid.
19
Descent Hour Nine
Ice Base Orion
INSIDEICEBASEORION ON THE SURFACE,Colonel O’Dell was playing poker with Vlad Lenin and two other Russians in the mess hall module when their plastic cups of vodka began to shake and the Klaxon sounded.
O’Dell looked at the puzzled Vlad. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the Russians. He darted out of the mess module, Vlad right behind him.
A group of Americans and Russians were already huddled around the main monitor screen inside the command center when O’Dell ran in. The display was blinkingSOLAR EVENT.
“That can’t be right,” said O’Dell, stepping into the circle of concerned faces.
A lieutenant called up the computer display for CELSS, the Controlled Environmental Life Support System that kept the crew alive in space and in Antarctica. He located the sensor that was giving the abnormal reading.
“The readings are coming from below, sir,” he said, holding on to the console as the shaking intensified. “The only other explanation I can think of is the SP-100.” O’Dell cast an involuntary, nervous glance at Vlad, who did not seem to comprehend what the lieutenant had said. The SP-100 was Ice Base Orion’s compact nuclear power plant, a hundred-kilowatt system buried a hundred yards away behind a snow dune.
122
“My God.” O’Dell took a deep breath. “Dosimeter readings?”
“I’ve got penetration of the outer wardrooms at two hundred seventy rems, sir.
I’m recording sixty-five rems here in the command center, with each of the crew absorbing fifteen rems. We’re still below the safety threshold.” But it was the shaking that was scaring the daylights out of O’Dell and the Russians. “Now what?”
“No choice, sir,” the lieutenant said. “We’ve got to retreat to the doghouse.” The doghouse was an Earth capture vehic
le under the command center and supply tanks, shielded from the SP-100’s high-energy protons by the command center’s aeroshell.
“Get as many of the crew inside as possible,” he ordered.
The American crew quickly obeyed and ditched the command center in orderly fashion. The Russians, however, looked around the empty command center, then dashed in the opposite direction to the outer air lock and their Kharkovchankas.
“Wait!” O’Dell called as he ran after them.
But they had cracked open the inner and outer doors and escaped by the time he reached the air lock. A blast of snow slapped O’Dell’s face as he grabbed a freezer suit, goggles, and gloves from the nearest storage compartment and ran outside.
The Russians were starting up their Kharkovchankas. O’Dell raced toward the row of Hagglunds transports and grabbed the door of the nearest forward cab.
“Where the hell do they think they’re going?” he said out loud, intending to hail them from the Hagglunds. The last thing he needed was Yeats or Kovich or the U.N. blaming him for more Russian deaths.
He was about to scramble aboard his Hagglunds when he felt a jolt. He looked down as a crack in the ice shot past his feet. His mouth opened in horror, and then he felt something sharp clamp down on his glove. It was Nimrod, Yeats’s dog, frantically pulling him with his teeth.
“Get out of here!” he yelled as he opened the door, but Nimrod jumped into the cab.
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O’Dell heard what sounded like a series of thunderous explosions and looked back to see the base break away like an iceberg. Then he felt a rumble and watched in horror as the ice beneath him began to spiderweb.
The ice was melting!
He jumped into the cab with Nimrod. As soon as he closed the door, the Hagglunds lurched forward and back. Cracks radiated out on the ice below. My life is over, he thought, when the fiberglass cab dropped into the swirling, freezing water and was washed away. Then, feeling the transport bob up and down, he nearly choked with elation. “Goddamn, it does float!” he screamed to Nimrod, who was leaping from seat to seat in a frenzy.
The Russian Kharkovchankas, however, were dropping like stones beneath the bubbling surface of the icy waters.
O’Dell frantically switched on the windshield wipers. As the sheets of water were temporarily whisked away, he glimpsed a churning landscape. There was no Ice Base Orion, only what looked like a mushroom cloud forming in the air. For a wild moment he thought the reactor had blown, but the SP-100 didn’t possess the destructive power he was witnessing.
Another shock wave sent his head to the floor beneath the dashboard. He heard his skull crack against something sharp as the cab spun wildly away, Nimrod barking incessantly.
20
Descent Hour Nine
THE RUMBLING INSIDEP4’s obelisk chamber grew so loud that Serena could barely hear herself shouting at Conrad, who stood frozen like a statue, the Scepter of Osiris tightly gripped in his hand.
“Put it back!” she screamed.
Conrad stepped toward the altar when suddenly the floor beneath his feet split open and a blazing pillar of fire shot up and turned Colonel Kovich into embers.
Conrad leapt back from the gaping hole as the altar disappeared down a fiery shaft. What was left of the Russian exploded in a cloud of dust. The obelisk fell to the floor.
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Serena reached down to grab it but lunged too far and teetered over the edge.
For a horrific few seconds she hovered above the hell hole and could feel its searing heat burning her cheeks. Then Conrad, coming up from behind, yanked her back from the brink.
For a moment she was safe in his arms, looking up into his concerned eyes with gratitude. But before she could catch her breath a shock wave rocked the chamber and threw them off their feet. The obelisk slid across the floor.
“The scepter!” she shouted.
Yeats dashed to retrieve it. But as the vibrations grew more violent, his right leg gave way, and he tumbled back into the floor shaft. He managed to catch the ledge at the last second. Serena could see his fingers sticking up above the shaft, clawing at the stone floor.
Conrad picked up the obelisk from the floor and grabbed Serena. “See if you can reach him!”
With Conrad firmly clasping her hand, she peered over the edge of the shaft and was surprised to see Yeats swinging above the infernal abyss.
She knew she didn’t have the strength to pull him up, but she shouted to Conrad, “I think I can give him a tug and he can climb out himself.” She stretched out her hand when another jolt hit, sending Leonid’s corpse sliding into the shaft. The corpse struck Yeats on the way down. Yeats’s fingers disappeared and Serena heard Conrad cry out.
“Dad!” Conrad shouted.
Then she felt Conrad pulling her away so he could look down into the shaft. He stood there, paralyzed, trying to comprehend that his father was really gone.
Serena looked around the chamber as everything shook. She didn’t want to leave. But she didn’t want to stay behind and melt either. So she put her hand on Conrad’s shoulder and said, “There’s no time to mourn for those we’re about to follow.”
Her words were enough to bring Conrad back.
“This chamber is going to turn into a furnace in a few seconds,” he said, picking up the pack Yeats had left behind and slinging it over his shoulder. “Back to the gallery!”
125
They ran to the outer corridor. The rumbling wasn’t so loud here, she thought, following Conrad down the long tunnel. But when they emerged into the Great Gallery, Conrad stopped and looked up.
“Now might be a good time for you to say a brief prayer,” he said.
“Conrad, what’s happening?”
“I think P4 is releasing a burst of heat through the shafts, melting the ice outside,” he said. “And the water is being processed through this machinery.” She followed Conrad’s gaze up the gallery and squinted her eyes. There was a shadow swirling in the distance at the top. Then she felt the first droplets of water splash against her cheek and realized what was coming.
“Oh, my God!” she screamed as the cascades of a gigantic waterfall began to tumble down the gallery behind them. “We’ve got to take cover!” Now she was pulling him back to the chamber.
“Not yet,” he told her, “or we’ll fry.”
Already the water was knee-deep in the tunnel. By the time they were halfway back to the chamber, it was up to their waists. In seconds the current swelled to a torrent and swept them off their feet.
Serena reached for Conrad but couldn’t feel him anymore. She panicked and splashed desperately, taking in water, gasping for breath. She was going to drown, she realized. They were going to be flushed away and drown. Surely this is not what God intended for her life, she thought. But then she remembered the little girl in the ice and realized she had seen too many faces just like hers around the world to know for sure what God intended for her. All she knew was that she wanted to live, and she wanted Conrad to live too.
Oh, God, she prayed, help us.
A shadow fell across her, and she looked up to see Conrad standing in the entry of the tunnel to the star chamber, water swirling around his knees. He held the obelisk in one hand.
“Grab the other end!” he yelled above the rushing waters.
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She reached up and clasped the obelisk and let Conrad pull her up. But she felt a tug at her ankle and looked down to see a bloody face emerge from the water.
It screamed something unintelligible, and she tried to shake it off. But it pulled still harder. Suddenly she recognized the disfigured face of one of Kovich’s men from the upper chamber.
“Hold on!” Serena yelled and let Conrad pull her up.
Once over the ledge, she turned to help the Russian. The soldier’s burned legs had barely cleared the ledge when Serena heard Conrad’s shout.
“Hurry!”
Then she saw the door to the star chamber closing down behind Conra
d, a great granite slab dropping from the ceiling. Conrad, obelisk in hand, ducked into the chamber, which had apparently cooled back down, and started waving them in.
Serena was still dragging the Russian across the entrance to the chamber when a massive crash behind her rocked the tunnel. She glanced back to see that the door had closed, sealing off the water. Pausing to catch her breath, she heard Conrad cry out her name. He was pointing to the ceiling. Three more great doors were dropping, the second one right over her head.
She lurched forward, her soaked parka weighing her down like a cement tomb as she struggled to drag the Russian, whose limbs had stopped moving.
“Serena!” Conrad shouted.
The third door was dropping.
She fell to her hands and knees and dragged the Russian across the floor. Then she felt Conrad’s hands clasp her ankles like leg irons and start to pull. Her knees slipped and she fell flat on her stomach.
“Let him go!” he shouted.
“No!” Serena gripped the Russian’s cold hands tightly, even as Conrad towed her inside.
The Russian was halfway through when the slab door sliced him in two.
Suddenly Serena realized she was dragging only half a body. And still she found it hard to let go, to accept that there was nobody left for her to save.
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With a massive scraping sound, the fourth and final door started to drop. She struggled to free herself from the cold grip of the legless corpse. Finally, the hand fell away, and at the last moment something whisked her inside as the final granite slab sank with a sickening thud.
Serena turned to thank Conrad but saw him sprawled on the floor, his hair matted with blood. He must have struck the back of his head against the falling door when he pulled her in.
“Conrad!” she called. “Conrad!”
She scrambled to his limp body. But there was no movement. And the chamber was shaking too violently for her to take a pulse. She saw the obelisk on the floor next to his pack—Yeats’s pack—and picked it up.
Another temblor hit, and she backed herself up against the shaking walls until they began to burn with tremendous heat. She moved away, stumbling across the floor, her body shaking uncontrollably as she tried to keep her balance.
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