'Yes?'
'I don't think he climbed out.'
'No?'
Mick shot a glance at Wilkins who frowned and looked back at the roof. Mick looked back at Julia. 'I think something might have come into the station through the open panel up there.'
'And what — grabbed Vikorsky? While the rest of us slept nearby?'
Mick shrugged. 'I'm open to alternate theories.'
'But that would mean someone would have had to climb on to the roof, pry open the roof panel, and then shimmy in through that opening, open the door to the greenhouse and make their way through the station to where Vikorsky was sleeping.' She looked at Mick. 'Doesn't that strike you as an awful lot of work?'
'Sure does.'
'Do you know anyone who could do that sort of thing and not be heard?'
Mick looked away.
Wilkins cleared his throat. 'We might be looking at another possibility here.'
'That being?'
'What if it's not a 'who' at all?'
Mick nodded. 'That's what I was thinking.'
'What if,' said Wilkins, 'it's a 'what'?'
'You mean some sort of…creature?'
'I don't know anyone who would have done something like this,' said Wilkins.
'Yeah, but do you know of any animals that could?' said Julia.
'No.'
'And besides,' said Julia, 'the indigenous animal population of Antarctica is limited to penguins and a few seabirds.'
'Those are the animals we know about,' said Mick.
Julia cocked an eyebrow. 'You think there might be a few species we don't know about?'
'What I'm saying,' said Mick, 'is at this point, it looks like something or someone came in through that skylight and snatched Vikorsky last night. Whether they killed him or not remains to be seen. But considering the fact that we've found nothing, I'd say we need to stay open to certain possibilities about the nature of this disappearance.'
Julia sighed. 'Wonderful.'
'Something else,' said Wilkins.
'What?'
'Since we're being so open to possibilities, we might also consider the idea that whatever took Vikorsky will come back again.'
5
'So what you're telling us is that we're being…invaded?'
Julia sighed. 'Kendall, no one's saying anything right yet. The fact remains we haven't located Vikorsky yet-'
'You mean his body.'
'No.' She glared at him. The way he tried to command the room by seating himself at the head of the table in the mess hall, it annoyed her. 'What I'm saying is we haven't found him yet.'
Kendall looked about ready to argue with her again when Mick's voice cut through the air, a welcome edge to it. 'This back-and-forth arguing gets us nowhere fast. Vikorsky is gone. We think we may have found the opening through which he either left on his own or was taken.'
Nung glanced up from the microcircuitry he was working on. 'Where's the opening?'
Julia glanced at Mick. He tried to smile, but it didn't really work. She took a deep breath. 'The roof of the greenhouse.'
Nung almost dropped the soldering iron he had. 'The roof? That's almost thirty feet off the ground.'
'It's twenty,' said Mick. 'I was up there today.'
'The roof it was open?' Havel's eyes conveyed the fear Julia felt building in her own stomach.
'One of the panels was. Yes. The lock had been jimmied open. I don't know how.'
Wilkins cleared his throat. 'Julia, what do you want us to do?'
'We can't do anything else for right now. We've got more bad weather coming in. Tomorrow, we can search outside.'
'Won't do any good,' said Kendall. 'The fresh snow will have erased any of the signs of Vikorsky's passage.'
'If we can't find him, then we'll go on with our primary tasking.' Julia looked at Wilkins. 'That sound okay to you?'
'Yep.'
'We've still got another night to get through,' said Darren. 'I'm not exactly interested in sleeping alone.'
Wilkins grinned. 'Be the first you ever did anyway, you dog.'
Darren grinned. 'I slept alone last night.'
Mick took a sip from his big blue ceramic mug and then set the cup down. 'We'll post a watch. Two of us on every two hours.'
'A watch?' Kendall laughed. 'You must be joking. This isn't the army, you know.'
Mick said nothing.
Kendall continued. 'And what, pray tell, would you suggest we use to fend off whatever might be paying us nocturnal visits? We don't have any weapons in this station. In case you forgot, we're a research facility, not a military one.'
'Thanks for the reminder,' said Mick. His eyes blazed momentarily at Kendall who looked away. 'You're right, we have no weapons, per se.'
'Per se?'
'We can improvise.'
'With what?'
Mick shrugged. 'Is it too much to reason that whatever might have taken Vikorsky might not like bright lights?'
'Why?' asked Julia. 'Because it comes at night?'
'Yeah.'
'I think this whole thing is a stretch,' said Kendall. 'I'm going to bed.'
'Sit down.'
The tone in which Mick uttered the simple command made everyone freeze in the room. Julia looked at him and saw something else there. Something brewing under the surface of his calm demeanor. Some kind of intensity unlike any she'd ever witnessed before. When he said it, there was no refuting it.
And Kendall sat back down.
Mick looked at them all. 'Going anywhere alone right now is not a safe thing to do. We don't know what we're dealing with…yet. We move around here in pairs. Stay in contact by radio. We post two guards every two hours tonight while the rest of us sleep.' He looked at Kendall. 'You're right, this isn't a military facility, but if you're dealing with something unknown that appears to be taking people, then I'd suggest we adopt a bit more of a soldierly outlook toward dealing with it. Okay?'
Everyone nodded.
Mick suddenly seemed to remember something and the blazing intensity vanished. He held up a hand. 'I mean, that is if Julia thinks we should do this.'
She raised her eyebrows. What was she going to do, contradict him? Not a chance. Especially since his ideas
