"Uh-huh."
"There's, ah... there's something else down here, Sarah."
Hensleigh looked at Abby and frowned. She keyed the intercom. "What is it, Ben?"
"Sarah..." There was a long pause. "Sarah, I think I'm looking at a spaceship."
It was half-buried in the ice wall behind it.
Austin stared at it, entranced.
Completely black, it had a wingspan of about ninety feet. Two sleek dorsal tail fins rose high into the air above the rear of the ship. Both fins, however, were completely embedded in the ice wall behind the ship?two shadowy blurs trapped within the clear, frozen wall. It stood on three powerful-looking landing struts, and it looked magnificent?the aerodynamics sleek to the extreme, exuding a sense of raw power that was almost tangible.
There came a loud splash from behind him and Austin spun.
He saw the other divers, treading water behind him, staring up at the spaceship. Beyond them, however, was a set of expanding ripples, the remnants, it seemed, of an object that had fallen into the water....
"What was that?" Austin said. "Hanson?"
"Ben, I don't know what it was, but something just went past my?"
Austin watched as, without warning, Hanson was wrenched underwater.
"Hanson!"
And then there was another scream. Harry Cox.
Austin turned, just in time to see the slicked back of a large animal rise above the surface and plow at tremendous speed into Cox's chest, driving him underwater.
Austin began to swim frantically for the water's edge. As he swam, his head dipped below the surface and suddenly his ears were assaulted by a cacophony of sound?loud, shrill whistles and hoarse, desperate barks.
The next time his head surfaced, he caught a glimpse of the ice walls surrounding the pool of water. He saw large holes set into the ice, just above the surface. They were exactly the same as the ones he'd seen down in the ice tunnel before.
Then Austin saw something come out of one of the holes.
"Holy Christ," he breathed.
Hideous screams burst across the intercom.
In the radio room of the ice station, Hensleigh stared in stunned silence at the blinking console in front of her. Beside her, Abby had her hand across her mouth. Terrified shouts rang out from the wall-mounted speakers:
"Raymonds! "
"He's gone!"
"Oh, shit, no?"
"Jesus, the walls! They're coming out of the fucking walls!"
And then suddenly Austin's voice. "Get out of the water! Get out of the water now! "
Another scream. Then another.
Sarah Hensleigh grabbed her mike. "Ben! Ben! Come in!" Austin's voice crackled over the intercom. He was speaking quickly, in between short, shallow breaths. "Sarah, shit, I... I can't see anybody else. I can't... They're all... they're all gone...." A pause, and then, "Oh, sweet Jesus... Sarah! Call for help! Call for anything you ca?"
And then a crash of breaking glass exploded across the intercom and the voice of Benjamin Austin was gone.
Abby was on the radio, yelling hysterically into the mike.
"For God's sake, somebody answer me! This is station four-zero-niner?I repeat, this is station four-zero-niner. We have just suffered heavy losses in an underwater cavern and request immediate assistance! Can anybody hear me? Somebody, please answer me! Our divers?oh, Jesus?our divers said they saw a spacecraft of some sort in this cavern, and now, now we've lost contact with them! The last we heard from them, they were under attack, under attack in the water. . . ."
Wilkes Ice Station received no response to their distress signal.
Despite the fact that it was picked up by at least three different radio installationss.
FIRST INCURSION
16 June 0630 hours
The hovercraft raced across the ice plain.
It was painted white, which was unusual. Most Antarctic vehicles are painted bright orange, for ease of visibility. And it sped across the vast expanse of snow with a surprising urgency. Nobody is ever in a hurry in Antarctica.
Inside the speeding white hovercraft, Lieutenant Shane Schofield peered out through reinforced fiberglass windows. About a hundred yards off his starboard bow he could see a second hovercraft?also white?whipping across the flat, icy landscape.
At thirty-two, Schofield was young to be in command of a Recon Unit. But he had experience that belied his age. At five-ten, he was lean and muscular, with a handsome creased face and closely cropped black hair. At the moment, his black hair was covered by a camouflaged Kevlar helmet. A gray turtleneck collar protruded from beneath his shoulder plates, covering his neck. Fitted inside the folds of the turtleneck collar was a lightweight Kevlar plate. Sniper protection.
It was rumored that Shane Schofield had deep blue eyes, but this was a rumor that had never been confirmed. In fact, it was folklore at Parris Island?the legendary training camp for the United States Marine Corps?that no one below the rank of General had ever actually seen Schofield's eyes. He always kept them hidden behind a pair of reflective silver antiflash glasses.
His call sign added to the mystery, since it was common knowledge that it had been Brigadier General Norman W. McLean himself who had given Schofield his operational nickname?a nickname that many assumed had something to do with the young Lieutenant's hidden eyes.
"Whistler One, do you copy?"
Schofield picked up his radio. "Whistler Two, this is Whistler One. What is it?"
"Sir?" The deep voice of Staff Sergeant Buck "Book" Riley was suddenly cut off by a wash of static. Over the past twenty-four hours, ionospheric conditions over continental Antarctica had rapidly deteriorated. The full force of a solar flare had kicked in, disrupting the entire electromagnetic spectrum and limiting radio contact to short-range UHF transmissions. Contact between hovercrafts one hundred yards apart was difficult. Contact with Wilkes Ice Station?their destination?was impossible.
The static faded and Riley's voice came over the speaker again. "Sir, do you remember that moving contact we picked up about an hour ago?"
"Uh-huh," Schofield said.
For the past hour, Whistler Two had been picking up emissions from the electronic equipment on board a moving vehicle heading in the opposite direction, back down the coast toward the French research station, Dumont d'Urville.
"What about it?"
"Sir, I can't find it anymore."
Schofield looked down at the radio. "Are you sure?"
"We have no reading on our scopes. Either they shut down or they just disappeared."
Schofield frowned in thought; then he looked back at the cramped personnel compartment behind him. Seated there, two to each side, were four Marines, all dressed in snow fatigues. White-gray Kevlar helmets sat in their laps. White-gray body armor covered their chests. White-gray automatic rifles sat by their sides.
It had been two days since the distress signal from Wilkes Ice Station had been picked up by the U.S. Navy landing ship, Shreveport, while it had been in port in Sydney. As luck would have it, only a week earlier it had been decided that the Shreveport?a rapid deployment vessel used to transport Marine Force Reconnaissance Units?would stay in Sydney for some urgent repairs while the rest of her group returned to Pearl Harbor. That being the case, within an hour of the receipt of Abby Sinclair's distress signal, the Shreveport? now up and ready to go?was at sea, carrying a squad of Marines due south, heading toward the Ross Sea.
Now Schofield and his unit were approaching Wilkes Ice Station from McMurdo Station, another, larger, U.S. research facility about nine hundred miles from Wilkes. McMurdo was situated on the edge of the Ross Sea and was manned by a standing staff of 104 all year round. Despite the lasting stigma associated with the U.S. Navy's disastrous nuclear power experiment there in 1972, it remained the U.S. gateway to the South Pole.
Wilkes, on the other hand, was as remote a station as one would find in Antarctica. Six hundred miles from its nearest neighbor, it was a small American outpost, sit
uated right on top of the coastal ice shelf not far from the Dalton Iceberg Tongue. It was bounded on the landward side by a hundred miles of barren, windswept ice plains and to seaward by towering three-hundred-foot cliffs that were pounded all year round by mountainous sixty-foot waves.
Access by air had been out of the question. It was early winter, and a minus-thirty-degree blizzard had been assailing the camp for three weeks now. It was expected to last another four. In such weather, exposed helicopter rotors and jet engines were known to freeze in midair.
And access by sea meant taking on the cliffs. The U.S. Navy had a word for such a mission: suicide.
Which left access by land. By hovercraft. The twelve-man Marine Recon Unit would make the eleven-hour trip from McMurdo to Wilkes in two enclosed-fan military hovercrafts.
Schofield thought about the moving signal again. On a map, McMurdo, d'Urville, and Wilkes stations formed something like an isosceles triangle. D'Urville and Wilkes on the coast, forming the base of the triangle. McMurdo?farther inland, on the edge of the enormous bay formed by the Ross Sea?the point.
The signal that Whistler Two had picked up heading back along the coast toward Dumont d'Urville had been maintaining a steady speed of about forty miles an hour. At that speed, it was probably a conventional hovercraft. Maybe the French had had people at d'Urville who'd picked up the distress signal from Wilkes, sent help, and were now on their way back....
Schofield keyed his radio again. "Book, when was the last time you held that signal?"
The radio crackled. "Signal last held eight minutes ago. Range finder contact. Identical to previously held electronic signature. Heading consistent with previous vector. It was the same signal, sir, and as of eight minutes ago it was right where it should have been."
In this weather?howling eighty-knot winds that hurled snow so fast that it fell horizontally?regular radar scanning was hopeless. Just as the solar flare in the ionosphere put paid to radio communications, the low-pressure system on the ground caused havoc with their radar.
Prepared for such an eventuality, each hovercraft was equipped with roof-mounted units called range finders. Mounted on a revolving turret, each range finder swung back and forth in a slow 180-degree arc, emitting a constant high-powered focal beam known as a "needle." Unlike radar, whose straight-line reach has always been limited by the curvature of the Earth, needles can hug the Earth's surface and bend over the horizon for at least another fifty miles. As soon as any "live" object?any object with chemical, animal, or electronic properties?crosses the path of a needle, it is recorded. Or, as the unit's range finder operator, Private José "Santa" Cruz, liked to put it, "if it boils, breathes, or beeps, the range finder'll nail the fucker."
Schofield keyed his radio. "Book, the point where the signal disappeared. How far away is it?"
"About ninety miles from here, sir," Riley's voice answered.
Schofield stared out over the seamless expanse of white that stretched all the way to the horizon.
At last he said, "All right. Check it out."
"Roger that," Riley responded immediately. Schofield had a lot of time for Book Riley. The two men had been friends for several years. Solid and fit, Riley had a boxer's face?a flat nose that had been broken too many times, sunken eyes, and thick black eyebrows. He was popular in the unit?serious when he had to be, but relaxed and funny when the pressure was off. He had been the Staff Sergeant responsible for Schofield when Schofield had been a young and stupid Second Lieutenant. Then, when Schofield had been given command of a Recon Unit, Book?then a forty-year-old, highly respected Staff Sergeant who could have had his choice of assignment within the Marine Corps establishment? had stayed with him.
"We'll continue on to Wilkes," Schofield said. "You find out what happened to that signal, and then you meet us at the station."
"Got it."
"Follow-up time is two hours. Don't be late. And set your range finder arc from your tail. If there's anybody out there behind us, I want to know."
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, and, Book, one more thing," Schofield said.
"What?"
"You play nice with the other kids, you hear."
"Yes, sir."
"One, out," Schofield said.
"Whistler Two, out."
And with that, the second hovercraft peeled away to the right and sped off into the snowstorm.
An hour later, the coastline came into view, and through a set of high-powered field glasses Schofield saw Wilkes Ice Station for the first time.
From the surface, it hardly looked like a "station" at all? more like a motley collection of squat, domelike structures, half-buried in the snow.
In the middle of the complex stood the main building. It was little more than an enormous round dome mounted on a wide square base. Above the surface, the whole structure was about a hundred feet across, but it couldn't have been more than ten feet high.
On top of one of the smaller buildings gathered around the main dome stood the remains of a radio antenna. The upper half of the antenna was folded downward, a couple of taut cables the only things holding it to the upright lower half. Ice crusts hung off everything. The only light, a soft white glow burning from within the main dome.
Schofield ordered the hovercraft to a halt half a mile from the station. No sooner had it stopped than the port-side door slid open, and the six Marines leaped down from the hover-craft's inflated skirt and landed with muffled whumps on the hard-packed snow.
As they ran across the snow-covered ground, they could hear, above the roar of the wind, the crashing of the waves against the cliffs on the far side of the station.
"Gentlemen, you know what to do," was all Schofield said into his helmet mike as he ran.
Wrapped in the blanket of the blizzard, the white-clad squad fanned out, making its way toward the station complex.
Buck Riley saw the hole in the ice before he saw the battered hovercraft in it.
The crevasse looked like a scar on the icescape?a deep crescent-shaped gash about forty meters wide.
Riley's hovercraft came to rest a hundred yards from the rim of the enormous chasm. The six Marines climbed out, lowered themselves gently to the ground, and cautiously made their way across the snow, toward the edge of the crevasse.
PFC Robert "Rebound" Simmons was their climber, so they harnessed him up first. A small man, Rebound was as nimble as a cat and weighed about the same. He was young, too, just twenty-three, and like most men his age, he responded to praise. He had beamed with pride when he'd overheard his lieutenant once say to another platoon commander that his climber was so good, he could scale the inside of the Capitol Building without a rope. His nickname was another story, a good-natured jibe bestowed upon him by his unit in reference to his less than impressive success rate with women.
Once the rope was secured to his harness, Simmons lay down on his stomach and began to shimmy his way forward, through the snow, toward the edge of the scar.
He reached the edge and peered out over the rim, down into the crevasse.
"Oh, shit...."
Ten meters behind him, Buck Riley spoke into his helmet mike. "What's the story, Rebound?"
"They're here, sir." Simmons's voice was almost resigned. "Conventional craft. Got somethin' in French written on the side. Thin ice scattered all about underneath it. Looks like they tried to cross a snow bridge that didn't hold."
He turned to face Riley, his face grim, his voice tinny over the short-range radio frequency. "And, sir, they's pretty fucked up."
The hovercraft lay forty feet below the surface, its rounded nose crumpled inward by the downward impact, every one of its windows either shattered or cracked into distorted spider-webs. A thin layer of snow had already embarked upon the task of erasing the battered vehicle from history.
Two of the hovercraft's occupants had been catapulted by the impact right through the forward windshield. Both lay against the forward wall of the crevasse, their necks bent backward at obsc
ene angles, their bodies resting in pools of their own frozen blood.
Rebound Simmons stared at the grisly scene.
There were other bodies inside the hovercraft. He could see their shadows inside it and could see star-shaped splatters of blood on the cracked windows of the hovercraft.
"Rebound?" Riley's voice came in over his helmet intercom. "Anybody alive down there?"
"Don't look like it, sir," Rebound said.
"Do an infrared," Riley instructed. "We got twenty minutes before we gotta hit the road, and 1 wouldn 't want to leave and find out later that there were some survivors down there."
Rebound snapped his infrared visor into place. It hung down from the brow of his helmet, covering both of his eyes like a fighter pilot's visor.
Now he saw the crashed hovercraft through a wash of electronic blue imagery. The cold had taken effect quickly. The whole crash site was depicted as a blue-on-black outline. Not even the engine glowed yellow, the color of objects with minimal heat intensity.
More important, however, there were no blobs of orange or yellow within the image of the vehicle. Any bodies that were still inside the hovercraft were ice cold. Everyone on board was most certainly dead.
Rebound said, "Sir, infrared reading is nega?"
The ground gave way beneath him.
There was no warning. No preemptive cracking of the ice. No sense of it weakening.
Rebound Simmons dropped like a stone into the crevasse.
It happened so fast that Buck Riley almost missed it. One second, he was watching Rebound as he peered out over the edge of the crevasse. The next second, Rebound simply dropped out of sight.
The black rope slithered out over the edge after the young private, uncoiling at a rapid rate, shooting out over the rim.
"Hold fast!" Riley yelled to the two Marines anchoring the rope. They held the rope tightly, taking the strain, waiting for the jolt.
The rope continued to splay out over the edge until whack!, it went instantly taut.
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