Ice Station

The surface.

Gant keyed her intercom. 'Scarecrow. This is Fox,' she said. 'Scarecrow. This is Fox. Scarecrow, are you out there?'

There was no reply.

'Scarecrow, I repeat, this is Fox. Come in.'

Still no reply.

That was strange, Gant thought. Why would Scarecrow not answer her? She had spoken to him only a few minutes ago.

Suddenly a voice crackled over her earpiece.

It wasn't Schofield.

'Fox, this is Rebound!' He seemed to be shouting above some wind. He must have been outside the station. 'I read you. What's up?'

'We're approaching the surface now,' Gant said. 'Where's Scarecrow?' she added a little too quickly.

'He's inside the station somewhere. Down with Mother, I think. Must have taken his helmet off or something.'

 Gant said, 'Well, it might be a good idea to go find him and tell him what's going on down here. We're about to surface inside the cavern.'

'Got it, Fox.'

 Gant clicked off her radio and resumed her swim upward.

The water's surface looked strange from below.

It was glassy. Still. It looked like a warped glass lens of some sort, completely distorting the image of whatever it was that lay beyond it.

Gant swam toward it. The others rose slowly in the water beside her.

They all broke the surface together.

In an instant, the world around Gant changed and she found herself treading water in the center of an enormous pool situated at one end of a massive underground cavern. She saw Montana and Santa Cruz hovering in the water beside her, with Sarah Hensleigh behind them.

The cavern was absolutely huge. Its ceiling was easily a hundred feet high, and its walls stretched so far into the distance that the farthest reaches of the cavern were cloaked in darkness, evading the fiarsh luminescent glare of the Marines' high-powered halogen lanterns.

And then Gant saw it.

'I'll be damned ...,' she heard Santa Cruz say.

For a full minute, Gant could do nothing but stare. Slowly, she began to make her wav toward the edge of the pool. When she finally stepped up onto solid ground, she was totally entranced. She couldn't take her eyes off it.

It looked like nothing she had ever seen before. Like something out of a movie. The mere sight of it took her breath away.

It was a ship of some sort.

A black ship?completely black from nose to tail?about the same size as a fighter jet. Gant saw that its two enormous tail fins were embedded in the ice wall behind it. It looked as if they had been consumed by the ice as it had crept slowly forward through the ages.

The huge black spacecraft just stood there?in stark contrast to the cold white cavern around it?standing high on three powerful-looking hydraulic landing struts.

It looked fantastic, otherworldly.

And it looked mean.

Black and pointed, sleek and sharp, to Gant it looked like a huge praying mantis. Its two black wings swooped down on either side of its fuselage so that it looked like a bird in flight with its wings at the lowest extremity.

The most striking feature of all, however, was the nose.

The ship had a hooked nose, a nose that pointed sharply downward, like the nose on the Concorde. The cockpit?a rectangular reinforced tinted-glass canopy?was situated right above the hooked nose.

A huge praying mantis, Gant thought. The sleekest, fastest?biggest?praying mantis that anyone has ever seen.

Gant realized that the others were also out of the water now, standing beside her on the frost-covered floor of the cavem, also staring up at the magnificent spacecraft.

Gant looked at her companions' faces.

Santa Cruz's mouth hung open.

Montana's eyes were wide.

Sarah Hensleigh's reaction, however, struck Gant as strange. Hensleigh's eyes had narrowed and she stared at the spacecraft in an unusual way. Despite herself, Gant felt a sudden chill. Sarah Hensleigh's eyes glowed with what looked dangerously like ambition.

Gant shook the thought off. and with the initial spell of the spacecraft broken, her eyes began to take in the rest of the gigantic cavern.

It took all of ten seconds for her to see them.

She froze instantly.

'Oh, God ...,' she said, her voice low. 'Oh, God....'

There were nine of them.

Bodies.

Human bodies, although at first it was hard to tell.

They were laid out on the floor on the far side of the pool?some lay flat on their backs; others lay draped over large rocks by the edge of the pool. Blood was everywhere. Puddled on the floor, splashed against the walls, lathered all over the bodies themselves.

It was carnage.

Limbs had been torn from their sockets. Heads had been wrenched from shoulders. Circular chunks of flesh had been ripped from the chests of some of the bodies. Exposed bones lay all over the floor, some of them splintered, others with ragged pieces of flesh still clinging to them.

Gant swallowed hard, tried desperately to keep herself from throwing up.

The divers from the station, she thought.

Santa Cruz stepped up alongside her and stared at the mutilated bodies on the far side of the pool.

'What the hell happened down here?' he said.

Schofield dreamed.

At first there was nothing. Nothing but black. It was like floating in outer space.

And then all of a sudden?whack?a glaring white light shattered Schofield's very existence, jarred him like an electric shock, and he felt searing pain like he had never felt before.

And then, just as suddenly as it had come, the shock vanished and Schofield found himself lying on a floor somewhere?cold and alone, asleep but awake.

It was dark. There were no walls.

He felt a wetness against his cheek.

It was a dog. A large dog. Schofield couldn't tell what type. He could only tell that it was big. Very, very big.

The dog nuzzled against his cheek, sniffed inquisitively. Its cold wet nose brushed against the side of his face. Its whiskers tickled his nose.

It seemed curious, not at all threatening?

And then suddenly the dog barked. Loud as hell.

Schofield jumped. The dog was barking madly now at some unseen foe. It seemed impossibly angry?frenzied, furious?baring its teeth at this new enemy.