Ice Station

approached the cave. The elephant seals' caves. He was inside the underwater ice tunnel that led up to the spacecraft's cavern.

Schofield breathed a sigh of relief. Yes!

They swam out into the underwater ice tunnel. Beside him, Schofield saw Kirsty let go of Wendy's harness, saw the little seal dart off toward the surface. Schofield, Kirsty, and Renshaw followed, swimming quickly upward, eying the holes in the ice walls around them nervously.

Although the sight of the holes in the walls made him uneasy, Schofield felt fairly certain that the elephant seals would not attack them. He had a theory about that. So far, the only group of divers to have approached the underwater ice cave unharmed had been Gant's group?and they had all been wearing LABA tanks, low-audibility breathing gear. The other groups to have gone down?the scientists from Wilkes and the British?hadn't. And they had been attacked. The way Schofield figured it, the elephant seals hadn't been able to hear Gant and her team when they had approached the cavern. And so they hadn't been attacked.

At that moment, Schofield caught sight of the surface and his thoughts about the elephant seals were forgotten.

He looked at his depth gauge: 1490 feet.

Then he looked at his watch. It had taken them all of eighteen minutes to get here. Very quick time.

And then suddenly a low whistle cut through the water.

Schofield heard it, tensed.

He saw Wendy hovering in the water above him, saw her body whip around suddenly. She had sensed it, too.

Suddenly a second whistle answered the first and Schofield felt his heart sink.

The seals knew they were there....

 'Go!' Schofield said to Renshaw and Kirsty. 'Go!'

Schofield and Renshaw broke out into swift strokes, heading for the surface. Renshaw was closest to Kirsty, so he just pushed up against her LABA tanks, pushing her up through the water, forcing her to swim faster.

Schofield looked at the surface above him. It looked beautiful, glassy, calm. Like a smooth glass lens.

The whistles around them became more intense, and then suddenly he heard a hoarse bark cut across the underwater spectrum.

Schofield spun in the water, looked about himself, then snapped up to look at the lens-like surface again.

And at that moment, the lens shattered.

Elephant seals plunged into the water from every side. Others roared out of the submerged holes in the walls and charged at Schofield and the others. Their shrieks and barks and whistles filled the water.

Kirsty and Renshaw broke the surface first, right near the edge of the pool. Renshaw?still in the water? pushed hard against the underside of Kirsty's tanks, forcing her out of the water.

Kirsty stumbled frantically up onto dry land, slipped and fell, flat onto her face, and turned just in time to see Renshaw get one arm out of the water and begin to haul himself out when?yank? Renshaw was suddenly wrenched violently under the churning surface.

Kirsty screamed but cut herself off when she saw an enormous shape rise up out of the water in front of her.

She dived away from the water's edge just as one of the elephant seals launched itself out of the water and crashed down onto the ice in front of her. Kirsty staggered and stumbled away from the edge, turned, and saw that the giant seal was loping across the flat floor of the cavern, chasing her!

Kirsty clawed at the icy ground, lost her footing, slipped, and fell.

The elephant seal charged. Kirsty lay sprawled on the floor of the cavern, totally exposed, staring up at the gigantic demon bearing on her and?

And then suddenly boom! the elephant seal's face exploded in a fountain of blood and the big seal went crashing headfirst to the ground.

Kirsty stared in awe as the elephant seal dropped to the floor, revealing behind it: Schofield, hovering in the pool thirty feet away, with his pistol extended.

He had just shot the seal through the back of the head!

 Kirsty almost fainted.

Under the surface, James Renshaw was absolutely panic-stricken.

One of the seals had pulled him under and now it had him, had his foot in its mouth!

Renshaw looked down in desperation, and then suddenly he frowned. The seal that had him looked smaller than the others, and it had those distinctive lower fangs that he had seen on the larger male before.

A juvenile male? Renshaw thought.

And then another thought hit him.

If it's young, you might have a chance to get out of this.

 So, with his spare foot, Renshaw kicked the small seal hard in the snout.

The seal instantly squealed with pain and released his foot, and Renshaw bolted for the surface.

He burst up out of the water a second later and saw the edge of the pool right in front of him. Then he grabbed the nearest rock and hauled himself out of the water just as another, much larger seal, probably the juvenile's mother, swept through the water behind him and narrowly missed biting his feet clean off.

Schofield was swimming madly for the edge of the pool.

As he swam, he caught fleeting glimpses of the cave around him?he saw Kirsty over on one side of the pool, saw Renshaw over on the other. And then he saw the the ship, the big black ship, standing like an enormous, silent bird of prey in the middle of the massive subterranean cavern.

And then suddenly his view of the big black ship was obliterated by the sight of the big bull seal rising up out of the water right in front of him!

The big seal was already moving fast and it plowed into Schofield at phenomenal speed and Schofield gasped as he felt the wind get knocked out of him and he went under.

The bull seal had rammed into his chest with its long lower fangs. Ordinarily, Schofield guessed, this would have been enough to kill any would-be victim, since the big seal's fangs would pierce the victim's chest

But not with Schofield.

He was still wearing his body armor, and the bull seal's fangs had lodged in his Kevlar breastplate.

The elephant seal drove him downward, pushing against his chest. Schofield struggled, but it was no use. By virtue of his breastplate he was practically impaled on the big animal's fangs.

The seal took Schofield down. Down and down, on the end of its nose. Bubbles shot out from its heaving mouth as it expelled vast quantities of air in its exertion.

Schofield had to do something.

He reached into his pocket, searched for whatever lay in there.

He pulled out a British nitrogen charge, looked at it for a second.

Oh, what the hell, he thought

Schofield quickly pulled the pin on the nitrogen charge and ammed the live grenade into the open jaws of the big elephant seal.

Then he pushed himself off the big animal's fangs and the seal shot past him in the water. It quickly realized that it had lost Schofield, and when it did, the big seal began to turn around.

It was then that the nitrogen charge went off.

The bull seal's head exploded. Then it imploded. And then most shocking thing of all happened. A wave of ice shot out from the dead seal's body. At first Schofield didn't know what it was, and then suddenly he realized.

It was the liquid nitrogen from the charge, expanding through the water, freezing