Текст книги "Ice Hunt"

Автор книги: James Rollins

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

Lee pointed to the spread of tools on the grated metal floor. “That’s what I’m working on. Everyone’s complaining about the heat. We brought over some air pumps to circulate better, but we figured we’d better get this thermostat problem fixed or the base will start to melt down into the ice mountain.”

Amanda’s eyes widened. “Is that a danger?”

He chuckled again and tapped one of the steel-plate walls. “No. There is three feet of insulation beyond the physical structure of the station. We could turn this entire station into an Easy Bake oven, and it still wouldn’t significantly affect the ice beyond.” He glanced appreciatively around him. “Whoever designed and engineered this place knew their material sciences. The insulation is a series of interlocked layers of asbestos-impregnated cement and sponge blocks. The structural skeleton of the place is combinations of steel, aluminum, and crude ceramic composites. Lightweight, durable, and decades ahead of its time. I would say—”

Amanda cut him off. That was one thing about her fellow scientists. Once they got talking about their field of expertise, they could ramble on and on. And it was a strain reading lips when they slurred into techno-babble. “Lee, I have a meeting scheduled with Dr. Ogden. Do you happen to know where he might be?”

“Henry?” He scratched his head with a screwdriver. “Can’t say for sure, but I’d try the Crawl Space. He and the geology team got into quite a row this morning. You could hear them yelling all the way up here.”

Amanda nodded and continued past the NASA scientist. The base was constructed in five circular levels, connected by a narrow spiral staircase that ran down the center of the structure. Each level had roughly the same layout: a central communal space surrounded by a ring of rooms that opened into it. But each successive level was smaller than the one above it. As a whole, it appeared like a giant toy top drilled into the ice.

The uppermost tier was the widest, fifty yards across. It housed the old living quarters: barracks, kitchen, some offices. Amanda slipped down the hall and entered the central area of this tier. Tables and chairs were scattered about. It must have served as the base’s mess hall and meeting room.

She waved to a pair of scientists seated at one of the tables, then crossed to the central spiral staircase. The steps coursed around a ten-foot-wide open shaft. Heavy oiled cables dropped down into the depths. It connected to a crude barred cage, actually more a dumbwaiter than an elevator, used to haul material from one level to the next.

As she started down the stairs, the steel steps vibrated under her feet, in tune with the chugging generators and humming machinery below. It was strange, like the place was alive again, coming out of a long hibernation.

Amanda climbed down the stairs, winding around and around. She skipped past Levels Two and Three. They contained small research labs and the base’s engineering plant.

There were only two other levels. The bottommost was the smallest, sealed with a single watertight door. It contained the old docking station for the Russian sub, now half flooded and frozen. The conning tower of the sub could be seen through the ice, covered completely over.

But Amanda’s destination was the fourth level. This tier was unlike any of the others. There was no central communal workspace. The stairs here opened into a closed hall that radiated straight out across the level. To one side, a single door opened off this hall, the only access to this sealed floor.

She stepped into the steel-walled hall and spotted the two uniformed Navy guards posted at the door a few steps down the hall. They carried rifles on their shoulders.

The petty officer in charge nodded to her. “Dr. Reynolds.” The other, a seaman second grade, eyed her snug blue thermal suit, his gaze traveling up and down her form.

She acknowledged the petty officer. “Have you seen Dr. Ogden?”

“Yes, ma’am. He mentioned you’d be coming. He asked us to keep everyone out of the Crawl Space until you arrived.” The guard pointed down to the other end of the hall.

A door lay at that end, too, but it didn’t lead into the lab on this floor. It was an exit, a doorway into the heart of the ice island. Beyond lay a maze of natural caverns and man-made tunnels, cored from the ice itself, which the researchers of the station had nicknamed the Crawl Space.

This region had all the glaciologists and geologists walking around with drunken smiles. They had been boring out samples, taking temperatures, and performing other more arcane tests. She couldn’t blame them for their excitement. How many times did one get to explore the interior of an iceberg? She had heard that they’d found a cache of inclusions, a geologist’s term for boulders and other bits of terrestrial debris. As a result of the find, the entire geology team had relocated here from Omega.

Why the clash with the biologists, though? There was only one way to find out.

“Thank you,” she said to the guard.

As she crossed down the hall, she was happy to leave the sealed floor behind her. She’d had a hard time making eye contact with the guards. The guilt of her knowledge weighed on her, dulled her appreciation of the other discoveries here.

Among the researchers, speculations and rumors as to what lay on Level Four were rampant: alien spaceships, nuclear technology, biological warfare experiments, even whispers closer to the truth.

Other bodies found.

The actual truth was far more horrific than any of the wildest speculations.

As she reached the end of the hall, the double set of doors swung open ahead of her. A figure in a heavy yellow parka shambled through. Amanda felt the cold exhalation flowing through the open door, a breath from the heart of the ice island.

The figure shook back his hood and revealed his frosted features. Dr. Henry Ogden, the fifty-year-old Harvard biologist, looked surprised to find her there. “Dr. Reynolds!”

“Henry.” She nodded to him.

“Dear God.” He pulled a glove off with his teeth and checked his watch. He then ran a hand over his bald pate. Besides his eyebrows, the only hair on the man’s head was a thin brown mustache and a tiny soul patch under his lower lip. He absentmindedly tugged at this little tuft of hair. “I’m sorry. I hoped to meet you upstairs.”

“What’s this all about?”

He glanced back to the door. “I…I found something…something amazing. You should—” As he turned away, she could no longer read his lips.

“Dr. Ogden?”

He turned back, his eyebrows raised quizzically.

She touched her lips with her fingers.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He now spoke in an unnaturally slow manner, as if speaking to someone with a mental defect. Amanda bit back her anger.

“You need to see this for yourself,” he continued. “That’s why I had you come.” He stared a moment at the Navy guards down the hall. “I couldn’t count on them keeping the rock hounds away for very long. The specimens…” His voice trailed off, distracted. He shook his head. “Let’s get you a parka, and I’ll take you.”

“I’ll stay warm enough in this,” she said impatiently, running a hand over her thermal suit. “Show me what you found.”

The biologist’s eyes were still on the guards, his brows crinkled. Amanda wagered he was speculating like all the others. His gaze eventually swung back to her. “What I found…I think it’s the reason the station was built here.”

It took a moment for his words to register. “What? What do you mean?”

“Come see.” He turned and headed back through the double doors.

Amanda followed, but she peered back to the guarded doorway. It’s the reason the station was built here.

She prayed the biologist was wrong.

3:40 P.M.

OVER BROOKS RANGE

Staring out the windshield of the Twin Otter, Matt tried to focus on the beauty of one of the great natural wonders of the world. This section of the Gates of the Arctic National Park was the goal of thousands of hikers, climbers, and adventurers each year.

Ahead rose the Arrigetch Peaks. The name – Arrigetch – came from the Nunamiut, meaning “upstretched fingers of the hand.” An apt description. The entire region was jammed with pinnacles and sheer spires of granite. It was a land of thousand-foot vertical walls, precarious overhangs, and glacial amphitheaters. Such terrain was a natural playground for climbers, while hikers enjoyed its verdant alpine meadows and ice-blue tarns.

But flying through Arrigetch was plain madness. And it wasn’t just the rocks. The winds were a hazard, too. The air currents flowed from the glacial heights like a swollen river through cataracts, carving the winds into a raging mix of sudden gusts, shears, and crosswinds.

“Get ready!” Jenny warned.

The plane climbed toward the jumbled landscape. To either side, mountains towered, their slopes bright with snow and ice floes. Between them rose Arrigetch. There appeared no way to pass through the area.

Matt craned around. Their pursuers had almost caught up with them again. The Cessna buzzed about a quarter mile back. Would they dare follow into this maze?

Below, a stream drained from the broken heights above. A sparse taiga-spruce forest finally succumbed to the altitude and faded away. They were now above the continent’s tree line.

Matt turned to Jenny, ready to try one last time to dissuade her from what she was about to attempt. But he saw the determined glint in her eye, the way her brows pinched together. There would be no talking her out of it.

Her father spoke from behind them. John had finished cinching Bane’s dog collar to one of the seat harnesses. “Ready back here.”

Beside the elder Inuit, Craig sat straight-backed in his seat. The reporter’s eyes were locked ahead. He had paled since coming in sight of Arrigetch. On the ground, the view was humbling, but from the air, it was sheer terror.

The Otter raced over the last of the rocky slopes, impossibly high and impassable.

“Here we go,” Jenny said.

“And here they come,” Matt echoed.

The chatter of gunfire cut through the whine of their motors. Loose shale on the slope danced with the impact of the slugs. But the line of fire was well to the side. The other plane was still too far off for an accurate shot. It was a desperate act before they lost their quarry to Arrigetch.

As Matt watched the Cessna, a puff of fire rolled from one of the side windows. Though he heard nothing, he imagined the whistle of the incoming grenade. A trail of smoke marked its rocketed path, arcing to within two yards of their wingtip, then vanishing ahead. The explosion erupted against one of the pinnacles, casting out a rain of stone. A section of cliff face broke free and slid earthward.

Jenny banked from the assaulted pillar and turned up on one wing. Matt had a momentary view of the ground below as the Otter shot between the two spires.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod,” Craig intoned behind him.

Once past the spires, Jenny leveled out. Surrounded on all sides by columns and towers, peaks and pinnacles, cliffs and walls. The heights were such that the tops could not be seen out the windows.

Winds buffeted the small plane, jostling it.

Matt clenched his armrests.

Jenny banked hard, tilting up on the other wing. Matt’s eyes stretched wide. He wanted to close them, but for some reason, he couldn’t. Instead, he cursed this firsthand view of Jenny’s flying. Economy seating suddenly did have its appeal.

The Otter shot between a cliff face and a tilted column. To his side, Jenny began to hum under her breath. Matt knew she did this whenever she was fully concentrating on something, but usually it was just the New York Timescrossword puzzle.

The plane skirted the pinnacle and leveled again – but only for a breath.

“Hang on,” Jenny muttered.

Matt simply glared. His forearms were already cramped from clutching his seat. What more did she want?

She rolled the Otter over on a wing and spun tight around a spire. For the next five minutes, she zigzagged and barnstormed through the rock maze. Back and forth, up on one wing, then the other.

His stomach lurching, Matt sought any sign of the Cessna in the skies, but it was like searching through a stone forest. He had lost sight of the plane as soon as they entered Arrigetch – which had been Jenny’s plan all along. There were a thousand exits from this region: passes, chutes, moraines, valleys, glacial flows. And with the lowering cloud cover, if the Cessna wanted to know where they were headed, it would have to follow, if it dared.

The plane entered a wide glacial cirque, a natural amphitheater carved from the side of one of the mountains. Jenny swung the Otter in a gentle glide along the edge of the steep-sided bowl. The lip of a glacier hung over the mountain’s edge in an icy cornice. Below, the floor was covered with boulders and glacial till, powdery rock and gravel that had been left behind as the ice retreated.

But in the center lay a perfectly still mountain lake. The blue surface of the tarn was a mirror, reflecting the Otter as it circled around the bowl. The walls of the cirque were too steep for a direct flight out. Jenny began a slow spiral, heading up, trying to clear the mountain cliffs.

Matt let out a slow sigh of relief. They had survived Arrigetch.

Then movement in the tarn’s reflection caught his eye.

Another plane.

The Cessna shot into the cirque, entering from an entirely different direction. From the way the plane bobbled for a moment, Matt guessed their pursuers were just as surprised to see them here.

“Jen?” Matt said.

“I don’t have enough altitude yet to clear the cliffs.” Her words for the first time sounded scared.

The two planes now circled the stone amphitheater, climbing higher, the tense pageant mirrored in the blue lake below. The door to the other plane shoved open. From seventy yards away, Matt spotted the now familiar parka-clad figure brace himself in place, shouldering the grenade launcher.

He turned back to Jenny. He knew he’d eventually regret his next words, but he also knew they would never clear the top of the cliffs before they were fired upon. “Get us back into Arrigetch!”

“There’s not enough time!”

“Just do it.” Matt unbuckled and climbed from the copilot seat. He scrambled over to the side window that faced the other plane.

Jenny banked toward the maze of rock, circling back toward Arrigetch.

Matt unhitched the window and slid it back. Winds blasted into the cabin. Bane barked excitedly from the backseat, tail wagging furiously. The wolf loved flying.

“What are you doing?” Jenny called to him.

“You fly,” he yelled, and cracked open the emergency box by the door. He needed a weapon, and he didn’t have time to free and load the shotgun. He grabbed the flare gun inside the emergency kit and jammed it out the window. He pointed it at the other plane. With the winds, prop wash, and shifting positions of the planes, it was a Hail Mary shot.

He aimed as best he could and pulled the trigger.

The fizzling trail of the flare arced across the cirque, reflected in the tarn below. He had been aiming for the parka-clad figure, but the winds carried the flare to the side. It exploded into brilliance as it sailed past the nose of the plane.

The other pilot, clearly tense from his transit through the jagged clutches of Arrigetch, veered off, pitching the plane suddenly to the side. The parka-clad figure at the plane’s door lost his footing and tumbled out, arms cartwheeling. But a couple yards down, he snagged, tethered in place to the frame of the door. He swung back and forth under the belly of the Cessna.

It had to be distraction enough.

“Go!” Matt yelled, and slammed the window shut. He crawled back to the front seat.

Jenny’s father patted him on the shoulder as he passed. “Good shot.”

Matt nodded to Craig. “It was his idea.” He remembered the reporter pulling the flare gun on him when he came to his rescue a couple days ago. It had reminded him of a lesson taught to him by his old sergeant: Use whatever you have on hand…never give up the fight.

Feeling better, Matt buckled into place.

Jenny was already diving back into the maze. “They’re coming after us,” she said.

Matt jerked around, surprised. He turned in time to see the flailing man cut free. His form tumbled through the air and splashed into the blue tarn.

Stunned, Matt sat back around. They had sacrificed their own man to continue the pursuit.

Jenny swung the plane over on one wing and sped away among the cliffs. But this time, they couldn’t shake the other plane.

And Jenny was tiring. Matt saw how her hands had begun to tremble. Her eyes had lost their steady determination and shone with desperation. A single mistake and they were dead.

As he thought it, it happened.

Jenny banked hard around a craggy column.

Ahead a solid wall of stone filled the world.

A dead end.

They could not turn away in time. Matt braced himself, expecting Jenny to try, but instead she throttled up.

Matt’s throat closed tight. He suddenly realized where they were and what she was about to attempt. “No, no, no…”

“Oh yes,” she answered him. The nose of the plane dropped sickeningly. She spiraled out a bit and back around.

At the base of the cliff, a river flowed out. Eons ago, an earthquake had rattled Arrigetch, toppling one peak against another. This created a Devil’s Pass, a breach left under the two tumbled peaks.

It was one of the exits from Arrigetch.

Jenny dove toward the river, aiming for the opening in the rock. Her angle was too steep. But at the last moment, she pulled hard on the wheel and throttled down, almost stalling the props. The Otter leveled out a foot above the stream, then shot into the Devil’s Pass.

Instantly the world went dark, and the dull roar of their engines trebled – but daylight lay directly ahead. It was a straight passage, no longer than forty yards. But it was also tight, leaving only a yard to either side.

Jenny was humming again.

“They’re still behind us!” Craig called out.

Matt turned as the Cessna ducked into the tunnel. The other pilot was determined not to lose his target.

Matt clenched a fist. Their last desperate maneuver had been for nothing. The other pilot matched Jenny trick for trick. It was hopeless. Beyond the tunnel lay the open mountains. There would be nowhere to hide.

“Hold tight, folks,” Jenny warned as they neared the far end of the tunnel.

“What are you—?”

Jenny shoved the wheel. The plane dipped. The floats struck the stream hard and skidded over its surface, casting a flume of water behind them. As the plane bounced back up, they were out of the tunnel and sailing high into the air.

Matt searched behind them as Jenny banked away.

From the tunnel mouth, the Cessna appeared, tumbling out, rolling end over end, wings broken. One of the propellers bounced free and spun up the snowy slope.

Matt turned back to his ex-wife with awe. The sudden backwash from her bounce against the stream had struck the other plane’s props and wings, causing the Cessna to bobble and brush against one of the tunnel walls.

A fatal mistake.

Jenny’s voice trembled. “I hate tailgaters.”

4:55 P.M.

ICE STATION GRENDEL

It was like stepping into a different world. The Crawl Space outside the Russian ice station was a natural warren of ice caverns and chutes. As Amanda passed over the threshold, she left not only the warmth of the station behind, but also all man-made structures.

Just outside the double doors to the base lay rusty piles of plate steel, bags of old concrete, stacks of conduit, and spools of wire. When it was first discovered, it was assumed the natural space in the ice was used as a storage annex, hence its nickname.

A structural engineer with the NASA group hypothesized that the station may have been constructed within a natural cavern inside the ice island, requiring less excavation. He suggested the Crawl Space might be the tiny remnant of the larger cavern system.

But outside such idle speculation, the Crawl Space held little fascination for most of Omega’s scientists. To them, it was just the janitor’s closet of the base. Only the geologists and glaciologists seemed truly fascinated by these back rooms and ice chutes.

“This way,” Dr. Ogden said, zipping his jacket up to his chin and pulling the fur-lined hood over his bald head. The biologist grabbed a flashlight from a stack near the door, flicked it on, and aimed past the cluttered entrance hall to the dark passages beyond. When he stood a moment longer, Amanda thought he might be speaking to her, but with his back turned, she couldn’t tell for sure. Before she could ask, he set off down toward the warren of tunnels.

Amanda followed. At least the geologists had spread sand on the ice floor for better footing. As she continued, leaving the lighted entrance behind, the air grew much colder. For some reason the motionless air seemed icier than on the surface. She lifted her warming mask from the belt of her thermal suit and flicked on the switch.

Henry Ogden continued, winding his way, passing side caverns, some empty, some stacked with gear. One alcove even contained butcher-wrapped packages and crates marked in Russian. Perishables, Amanda imagined. No need for freezers here.

As they continued deeper, she noted evidence of the scientists’ handiwork here: walls pocked with bore holes, some survey stakes with little flags, some pieces of modern equipment, even an empty Hostess Ding Dong box. She kicked this last aside as she passed. The new inhabitants of Ice Station Grendel were certainly leaving their unique footprints here.

Distracted by her surroundings, Amanda quickly became lost. Passages crisscrossed in all different directions. Dr. Ogden stopped at one of the intersections and searched the walls with his flashlight.

Amanda noted small spray-painted marks on the ice. They seemed freshly painted and varied in colors and shapes: red arrows, blue squiggles, and orange triangles. They were clearly signposts left behind by the scientists.

Henry touched a green dot, nodded to himself, and continued in that direction.

By now, the tunnels had narrowed and lowered overhead. Amanda had to hunch as she followed after the determined biologist. In the strangely still air, sparkles of ice crystals shone in the flashlight’s glow. Here the walls were so glassy that she spotted air bubbles trapped in the ice, glinting like pearls.

She ran gloved fingers along the wall. Silky smooth. Such tunnels and caves were formed as the surface ice melted in the summer’s heat, and the warm water leaked through cracks and fissures, flowing downward and melting out these shafts and pockets. Eventually the surface froze again, sealing and preserving the cavern system below.

Amanda gazed at the blue glass walls. There was a beauty here that warmed the cold. As she craned around, her heel slipped. Only a frantic grab for a spar halted her tumble.

Dr. Ogden glanced back to her. “Careful. It’s pretty slippery from here on.”

Now you tell me,she thought, and pulled herself back to her feet. She realized the spar she had grabbed was not ice. It was a chunk of rock protruding from the ice. She stared at it a moment as Dr. Ogden continued. It was one of the many inclusions, she realized, described by the geologists. She touched it with a bit of reverence. Here was a rock from whatever landmass this glacial chunk had broken away from eons ago.

Gloom settled around her as the biologist rounded a bend with his flashlight. Amanda hurried after him, regretting that she hadn’t collected one of the flashlights herself. She watched her footing now. Here the passages were not sanded. The geologists must not have ventured into this section of the Crawl Space yet.

Henry glanced back to her. “It’s just ahead.”

Amanda stared around her as the tunnel began to widen again. Within the glassy walls, boulders hung, an avalanche frozen in place. Deeper in the ice, other shadows darkened the upper reaches. They must be entering a cluster of inclusions.

Rounding a bend, the tunnel emptied into a large cave. Amanda lost her footing again and skated out of the tunnel. With her arms out for balance, she managed to stop herself.

She stood for a moment, stunned. The floor of the cavern was as large as an Olympic ice rink. But she quickly forgot the floor as she gaped at the chamber’s breadth and width. Arched over and around her was a huge natural cathedral: half ice and half stone.

She stood, surrounded by ice, but the back half of the chamber was solid rock. A bowl of stone encompassed the far wall and overhung the ceiling.

Something touched her elbow, startling her. It was only Dr. Ogden. He drew her eyes back to him, his lips moving.

“It’s the remnant of an ancient cliff face. At least according to MacFerran,” Henry said, naming the head of the geology team. “He says it must have broken from the landmass as the glacier calved and formed this ice island. It dates back to the last ice age. He immediately wanted to blast away sections and core out samples, but I had to stop him.”

Amanda was still too stunned to speak.

“On just cursory examination, I found dead lichen and frozen mosses. Searching the cliff pockets more thoroughly, I discovered three bird’s nests, one with eggs!” He began to speak more rapidly with his excitement. Amanda had to concentrate on his lips. “There were also a pack of rodents and a snake trapped in ice. It’s a treasure trove of life from that age, a whole frozen biosphere.” He led the way across the cavern toward the stone wall. “But that’s not all! Come see!”

She followed, staring ahead. The wall was not as solid as it had first appeared. It was pocked with cubbies and alcoves. Some sections seemed broken and half tumbled out. Deep clefts also delved into the rock face, but they were too dark to discern how far they penetrated.

Amanda crossed under the arch of stone and eyed with trepidation the slabs precariously balanced overhead. None of it seemed as solid as it had been a moment ago.

Dr. Ogden grabbed her elbow, squeezing hard, stopping her. “Careful,” he said, drawing her eye, then pointing to the floor.

A few steps ahead lay an open well in the ice-rink floor. It was too perfectly oval to be natural, and the edges were scored coarsely.

“They dug one of them out from here.”

Amanda frowned. “One of what?” She spotted other pits in the ice now.

Henry tugged her to the side. “Over here.” He slipped a canteen of water from his belt. He motioned her down on a knee on the ice. They were now only a few yards from the shattered stone cliff. Hunched down, it was almost like they were on a frozen lake with the shore only a few steps away.

The biologist whisked the ice with his gloved hand. Then placed his flashlight facedown onto the frozen lake. Lit from on top, the section of ice under them glowed. But details were murky because of the frost on the ice’s surface. Still, Amanda could make out the dark shadow of something a few feet under the ice.

Henry sat back and opened his canteen. “Watch,” he mouthed to her.

Leaning over, he poured a wash of water over the surface, melting the frost rime and turning the ice to glass under them. The light shone clearly, limning what lay below in perfect detail.

Amanda gasped, leaning away.

The creature looked as if it were lunging up through the ice at her, caught for a moment in a camera’s flash. Its body was pale white and smooth-skinned, like the beluga whales that frequented the Arctic, and almost their same size, half a ton at least. But unlike the beluga, this creature bore short forelimbs that ended in raking claws and large webbed hind limbs, spread now, ready to sweep upward at her. Its body also seemed more supple than a whale’s, with a longer torso, curving like an otter. It looked built for speed.

But it was the elongated maw, stretched wide to strike, lined by daggered teeth, that chilled her to the bone. It gaped wide enough to swallow a whole pig. Its black eyes were half rolled to white, like a great white lunging after prey.

Amanda sat back and took a few puffs from her air warmer as her limbs tremored from the cold and shock. “What the hell is it?”

The biologist ignored her question. “There are more specimens!” He slid on his knees across the ice and revealed another of the creatures lurking just at the cliff face. This beast was curled in the ice as if in slumber, its body wrapped in a tight spiral, jaws tucked in the center, tail around the whole, not unlike a dog in slumber.

Henry quickly gained his feet. “That’s not all.”

Before she could ask a question, he crossed and entered a wide cleft in the rock face. Amanda followed, chasing after the light, still picturing the jaws of the monster, wide and hungry.

The cleft cut a few yards into the rock face and ended at a cave the size of a two-car garage.

Amanda straightened. Positioned against the back wall were six giant ice blocks. Inside each were frozen examples of the creatures, all curled in the fetal-like position. But it was the sight in the chamber’s center that had Amanda falling back toward the exit.

Like a frog in a biology lab, one of the creatures lay stretched across the ice floor, legs staked spread-eagle. Its torso was cut from throat to pelvis, skin splayed back and pinned to the ice. From the frozen state of the dissection, it was clearly an old project. But she caught only a glimpse of bone and organs and had to turn away.

She hurried back out onto the open frozen lake. Dr. Ogden followed. He seemed oblivious to her shock. He touched her arm to draw her eyes.

“A discovery of this magnitude will change the face of biology,” Henry said, bending close to her in his insistence. “Now you can see why I had to stop the geologists from ruining this preserved ecosystem. A find like this…preserved like this—”

Amanda cut him off. Her voice brittle. “What the hell are those things?”

Henry blinked at her and waved a hand. “Oh, of course. You’re an engineer.”

Though she was deaf, she could almost hear his condescension. She rankled a bit, but held her tongue.

He motioned back to the cleft and spoke more slowly. “I studied the specimen back there all day. I have a background in paleobiology. Fossilized remains of such a species have been discovered in Pakistan and in China, but never such a preserved specimen.”