“Give me the new bearing,” Leighton commanded.
Gordon sat down at the radar console and punched in data on the keypad. It seemed to take forever for the navigational computer to spit out an answer. When it did, Gordon looked up at Captain Leighton, anxiety clouding his face.
“The object is less than thirty miles away and closing,” he said. “And it’s headed straight for us.”
Captain Leighton bolted for the hatch, his XO on his heels. Outside, the captain squinted into the twilight sky, trying to pierce the falling snow. Crewmen on deck sensed something was up and followed the skipper’s gaze.
“I don’t see anything,” Leighton shouted over the wind.
“It should be right on top of us—”
“Look!” one of the sailors cried, pointing.
There
Captain Leighton gripped the rail with both hands. “Hang on!” he cried a split second before the unidentified flying object reached their position.
The crew heard a strange, electronic shriek as the thing approached. When it roared over their heads, the object was accompanied by a powerful sonic boom that shattered windows and shook ice and snow loose from the superstructure. Swept up in the powerful wake, the
In the chaos that followed, cries of shock and pain and calls of “Man overboard” echoed across the deck.
“What the hell was that?” shouted a crewman.
Gordon did not reply. Instead, he carefully scanned the sky, trying to pick up any sign of the near-invisible intruder. Finally his sharp eyes spied a swath cut through the low-hanging storm clouds.
“It’s headed for the station,” he called.
Leighton struggled to his feet and stared into the distance.
“Get Quinn on the horn.”
Katabatic winds rolled down the mountain and hit the whaling station with lethal impact. Quinn struggled against the punishing blows of the brutal gusts and the stinging pins of driving snow, barking orders at his men until he was hoarse.
A blast struck a Hagglunds with such tremendous power that it nearly toppled the heavy vehicle onto its side.
Quinn slapped a man’s head. “I told you to get that vehicle tied down!”
He threw rope into the roughneck’s hands and sent him scurrying. Reichel appeared at Quinn’s side and thrust a transceiver into his face.
“Radio for you, sir! I think it’s the
“You think?”
“It’s coming through pretty garbled.”
Quinn gave his partner a “What now?” look and seized the transceiver.
“This is Quinn,” he shouted, pressing the communicator to his ear. He heard a voice and it sounded urgent, but the message was broken and unintelligible.
“Repeat!” Quinn cried. “I can’t hear you… I can’t… ah, the hell with it!” Quinn thrust the radio back at Reichel. “Get this kit inside.”
“Should I try and raise the
“Don’t waste your time. Just get everybody under cover. We’ll hunker down and wait this monster out. Should die down in about a week.”
Quinn scanned the snow-blasted area. His men had secured the vehicles and the equipment. The mobile drilling platforms were secure, too, and the tripod over the mouth of the tunnel had a tent thrown over it and was lashed tight.
The expedition’s bright red tents were mostly in tatters, so Quinn directed his men to the only shelter available—the stout wooden structures that had protected generations of whalers a century ago.
“To the buildings. Everybody inside!” he bellowed, clapping his gloved hands. “Come on, people! Move it, move it…”
The crew scurried to find shelter in the century-old buildings while Quinn took one last look at the mouth of the pit. For a moment, he wondered how Weyland and Stafford were doing down there.
Then, as Quinn turned his back on the storm to follow his roughnecks into the mess hall, an impossibly large object passed overhead, silently cutting a swath through clouds and pelting snow….
CHAPTER 13
Impervious to the winds that battered it, the near-invisible spacecraft hovered several hundred feet above the whaling station. Saint Elmo’s fire danced along the hull as the cloaking device disengaged.
With a series of dull thumps, five gleaming metal missiles fired from the belly of the Predator craft. Like gigantic bullets, they slammed into the ground, each punching a deep crater into the solid pack ice. A field of energy rippled, then as quickly as the vessel had appeared, it transformed into an optical blur again. Its task complete, the starship silently wheeled into the sky and sped away.
At the bottom of one of the newly formed craters, one of the shimmering steel projectiles began to hum. Although the katabatic winds raged around the missile, it was still possible to hear the loud hiss of escaping gases.
A hairline crack appeared on the smooth surface of the missile where there had been no joint before. More smoky phosphorescent green gas vented into Earth’s atmosphere as the crack widened.
Finally, the projectile opened. Inside, something stirred—something alive.
Suddenly, the air was pierced by the savage howl of a predatory beast. Its cry drowned out even the clamor of the wind and the rush of the driving snow….
CHAPTER 14
In contrast to the hurricane force winds on the surface, all was silent as the explorers reached the bottom of the shaft. All sounds—voices, even footsteps—seemed muffled, subdued by their echo rather than amplified. Lex had always found this to be a curious phenomenon, unique to the Earth’s deepest caverns.
Weyland sat on his backpack, his head hung low, resting.
Meanwhile Connors and a big fellow called Dane—with the help of several Weyland technicians in their ubiquitous ice-blue parkas—unpacked banks of portable halogen lamps and began setting them up.
Stepping away from the others, Lex crouched low and ran her hand along the floor. Like the walls and ceiling, it was made of ice. Ancient ice, glacial in origin—probably frozen a million years ago. Which meant they were inside an ice cave and not under the Earth’s crust.
Lex rose and drew a flare from her belt. A moment later a cool, flickering blue glow illuminated a scene of ethereal beauty. They were not in a cave, but in a grotto. The vast chamber was lined with stalactites and
