kitchen, then turned down a corridor into an area of the base they’d never used: a warren of equipment rooms and monitoring posts. He paused. In the distance, he could just make out the faintest strains of music: someone’s CD player, he assumed; there were very few radio stations within five hundred miles, and even those tended to concern themselves with the price of diesel oil and the state of the annual moose rut.
Hands in pockets, he wandered deeper into the maze of listening posts. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to shake an oppressive sense of foreboding. If anything, it seemed to increase: a perverse conviction-given the excitement of the coming day-that something terrible was going to happen.
He paused again. The claustrophobic base, shrouded in watchful silence, just exacerbated his gloom. On impulse, he turned, threaded his way back, climbed a stairway to the topmost level. He walked to the entrance plaza, walked by the sentry post, then passed through the staging area, donning his parka as he did so. It was only eight hours since he’d last been out, but in his current frame of mind nothing was going to keep him inside this shadow-haunted base another minute. Grabbing a flashlight and zipping the parka, he opened the outer doors and stepped outside.
He noticed with surprise that the display of northern lights had grown even more intense: a deep, unguent red, throbbing and pulsating. It transformed the entire apron-with its temporary shacks and Quonset huts, tents and supply caches-into a monochromatic, otherworldly landscape. He put the flashlight in a pocket. The wind had picked up sharply, worrying at loose tarps and indifferently tied ropes, but even it could not explain the eerie cracklings and moanings he could have sworn came from the lights themselves.
There was something else that seemed odd, but it took him a moment to realize what it was. The wind was almost warm on his cheek. It felt as if a false spring had abruptly come to the Zone. He unzipped his parka slowly; he should have checked the thermometer on the way out.
He moved through the low structures, half of them backlit blood red, the other half sunken into shadow. As he did so, a low creak sounded from the small forest of outbuildings ahead.
He paused in the crimson half-light. Was somebody out here with him?
Everybody-scientists, documentary crew, and the mysterious new arrival, Logan -were bunking inside the base. The only exceptions were Davis, in her mega-trailer, and Carradine, the trucker. He glanced in the direction of Davis ’s trailer: it was dark, all lights out.
“Carradine?” he called softly.
The creaking noise came again.
Marshall took a step forward, emerging from between two supply tents. Now the bulk of Carradine’s semi came into view. He glanced toward the rear of the cab, where the “sleeper” was. Its windows were dark, as well.
He remained still, listening intently. He heard the mournful howl of the wind, the low rumble of the diesels in the powerhouse, the purr of the backup generator affixed to Davis’s trailer, and-now and then-the eerie murmurings and moanings that appeared to come from the northern lights themselves. But that was all.
He shook his head, smiling despite himself. Here he was, on the eve of what promised to be one of the most memorable days of his life…and he was working himself into a lather over a bad dream. He’d walk to the perimeter fence, take a turn along its length, then head back to his lab. Even if he couldn’t put in useful work, at least he’d try. He squared his shoulders, took another step forward.
The creak came again. And from where he now stood, Marshall got a bearing. It was coming from the direction of the vault.
He moved toward it slowly. The vault stood alone, one wall haloed in the unnatural light, the rest in darkness. Even without his flashlight, Marshall could make out the sheen of water beneath it: clearly, the automated thawing process was well under way. Tomorrow this steel container-and its contents-would be the star of the show. Tugging the flashlight from his pocket, Marshall aimed it at the silver structure.
Then he heard the creak yet again, louder. Armed with the flashlight, Marshall identified its source: a piece of lumber, hanging down loosely into the three-foot crawl space beneath the vault.
Marshall frowned.
But there was something else wrong here. It wasn’t so much a puddle he was looking at but a lake. A lake full of chunks of dirty ice.
He moved closer, crouched, shone his light at the pool of meltwater. Frowning, he raised the beam to the loose piece of lumber. It creaked again as the wind played with it, the lower end badly splintered. Slowly, he let the flashlight beam travel up the lumber to the vault’s underside.
A hole-large, circular, and rough-had been cut into the wooden floor. And even in the shifting beam of his flashlight, Marshall could clearly see that the vault was empty.
16
In thirty minutes, somnolent Fear Base was completely awake. Now, Marshall -along with practically every other person on-site-sat in ancient folding chairs in the Operations Center on B Level. It was the only room large enough to hold so many people. He looked around at the assembled faces. Some, like Sully and Ekberg, seemed stunned. Others were openly red-eyed. Fortnum, the DP, sat with his head bowed, hands alternately clenching and unclenching.
They had assembled at the request of Wolff, the channel rep. Actually, Marshall reflected, it hadn’t really sounded like a request. It was more like an order.
When first confronted with the news, Emilio Conti had been dazed, almost paralyzed, by the sudden turn of fortune. But now, as Marshall watched the director move back and forth before the rough semicircle of chairs, he saw a different emotion on the small man’s face-desperate rage.
“First,” Conti snapped as he paced, “the facts. Sometime between midnight and five, the vault was broken into and the
He stopped for a moment, glared at the assembly, then continued his pacing. “Those are the facts. Next: conjecture. There’s a mole among us. Someone in the pay of a rival network. Or perhaps someone working for a ‘handler’-a dealer in exotic goods with connections to museums or wealthy collectors overseas.”
Beside Marshall, Penny Barbour scoffed under her breath. “Bloody daft,” she murmured.
“Daft?” Conti rounded on her. “It’s happened before. This isn’t just an artifact-it’s a commodity.”
“A commodity?” Barbour said. “What are you talking about?”
“We’re talking about a commodity.” It was Wolff who answered. The network liaison was standing in the back of the room beside Sergeant Gonzalez, arms crossed, a plastic swizzle stick in his mouth. “More than just an evening’s entertainment. An indefinitely exploitable network resource. Something that could be repurposed many times-touring on exhibition to museums, loaned to universities and research institutions, used in follow-up broadcasts. Maybe even a future icon for the network. Or-perhaps-its mascot.”
As Wolff stepped to the front, Conti stopped pacing and joined him. “As a network, Terra Prime is part of a very small community,” Wolff went on. “Despite the pains we took to keep things quiet, we knew word of this project might leak out. But we were confident that our vetting process would weed out anyone not one hundred percent reliable.” He raised a hand to his lips, plucked out the swizzle stick. “Apparently our confidence was misplaced.”
Marshall noticed most of the network staff was listening, heads bowed. Only his fellow scientists seemed surprised by this cloak-and-dagger talk.
