Part 19 (1/2)

Hayes didn't interfere because she wasn't just wasting their time. If she was bothering to look through those heaping stacks then she was hot on the trail of something. Something relevant.

Hayes leaned against the doorway, thinking about the cold.

They were each wearing an easy thirty-odd pounds of cold weather gear: long underwear, sweaters, wool socks, insulated nylon overalls, Gore Tex down parkas, mittens, ski gloves, and bunny boots . . . those big white moon boots that were inflated with air to provide insulation. But even so, prolonged exposure to the Antarctic winter night was not recommended. The trough of glacial air was sweeping over the top of the valley and screaming across the ice-plain at an easy seventy miles an hour . . . driving a temperature of eighty below zero somewhere into the range of 120 below. They were protected from that here, but it was still d.a.m.nably cold. The sooner they could wind this up the better. Hayes was keeping an eye on both Cutchen and Sharkey, as well as himself. Looking for the signs that they needed to get out of the cold right away . . . stupor, fatigue, disorientation. So far, so good.

But it would happen out here.

Sooner or later.

”Nothing,” Sharkey said. ”Nothing at all.”

”What were you looking for?” Cutchen asked her.

”I don't know . . . something belonging to Gates. A personal journal or something. Maybe it's in the 'Cat.”

Outside again, the cold seemed worse . . . bitter, unrelenting. They could hear the distant sounds of the glaciers cracking and snapping, the crackling sound their own breath made as the moisture in it froze and drifted down as they walked.

They stopped by the Polar Haven and there wasn't much of interest in there either. Just the usual: shovels and ice-axes, sledge hammers and ice drills, spare parts for the coring rig, cots and tarps. Sharkey steered them back towards Gates' SnoCat. There was nothing in it either. Nothing resembling a journal, at any rate.

Sharkey found something beneath the seat, though. It looked like a TV remote. ”What's this?”

”Detonator,” Cutchen said.

Hayes took it away from her, studied it in his light. ”Yeah . . . it's armed, too.”

They were all looking around now. The proximity of high explosives was the sort of immediate threat that could make you forget very quickly about aliens that could suck your mind away. Hayes set the detonator on the seat.

”Are we in danger here?” Sharkey asked him.

”No . . . I don't think so.” Hayes looked around. ”My guess is somebody has a charge rigged around here somewhere, maybe doing some seismic echo work. Maybe.”

But that wasn't what he was thinking at all. Given what must have happened here, Hayes would not have been surprised to learn that the entire camp was rigged to blow-up.

They moved back down beyond the snow-block walls, away from the structures and to a wall of black sandstone that rose up maybe two-hundred feet. Situated at the base of it was Gates' corer, a portable shot-hole drilling system. The drill tripod, compressor, and hose spool were sled-mounted and had been pulled away from a yawning black fissure that led down into the earth. It was roughly elliptical in shape, maybe twenty feet at its widest point. A winch was set up near it so supplies could be lowered and specimens could be brought up and swung out.

”The famous chasm,” Cutchen said. You could hear the bitterness in his voice and n.o.body blamed him for it. ”If they would have drilled somewhere else, we might not be in this fix now.”

”Oh, yes we would,” Hayes said. ”What's happening down here has been meant to happen.”

39.

Gates' team had set up an emergency ladder for people to climb down with. Using his light, Hayes saw that the drop was maybe twenty feet. But it was just as black as a mineshaft down there and the idea of descending made something seize up in his chest. But there was no real choice. He went down first and it was no easy bit in his ballooned-out bunny boots, like walking a tight rope in hip waders. He went down slowly, while Sharkey kept her flashlight beam on him. Tiny crystals of ice floated in it, clouds of his steaming breath.

Finally, he made it.

The floor was uneven, rocky, veined with frost and ice. Hayes played his light around and saw that he was in a pa.s.sage that gradually sloped deeper into that frozen earth. ”Okay,” he called out. ”Next.”

Sharkey's turn. She moved fairly quickly down the ladder. Cutchen followed, b.i.t.c.hing the entire way that the last time he'd followed them down into a hole he'd had to squeeze out his long johns when they'd gotten back to the station. But, finally, he was down, too.

”Looks like the set from an old B-movie,” he said, holding his lantern high. ”A natural cavern, I'd say. I don't see any signs of chipping or toolwork on the walls.”

Hayes didn't either. ”Limestone,” he said, studying the striations, the layers pressing down upon one another.

”Sure, a natural limestone cavern. Probably hollowed out by ground water over millions of years,” Cutchen said.

Sharkey chortled. ”Now who's talking Geo one-oh-one?”

The pa.s.sage was about eight or nine feet in height, maybe five in width. Hayes leading, they started down its sloping path. It would angle to the left, then to the right, had more twists and turns to it than a water snake. And they were going deeper into the mountain with each step. Ten minutes into it, Hayes began to notice that things were warming up. It still wasn't time for a bikini wax and a thong, but it was certainly warmer. Cutchen noticed it, too, saying that it had to be due to a volcanic vent or geothermal action.

”Least we won't freeze down here,” Sharkey said.

Cutchen nodded. ”You know, I was wondering how Gates and the boys were handling this so well. Being down here hour after hour. If it wasn't for the warmth they would have froze their b.a.l.l.s off - ”

Sharkey put a gloved finger to her lips. ”Quiet.”

”What?”

”Shut the h.e.l.l up,” she whispered.

Hayes was listening with her now, too.

He didn't know what for and part of him honestly did not want to know, but he listened nonetheless. Then he heard an echo from somewhere below . . . just a quick, furtive scratching sound that disappeared so quickly he wasn't sure he had heard it at all. Then he heard it again not five seconds later . . . like a stick being scratched along a subterranean wall.

And down there in that underworld, going to a place that was as storied and terrible in their imaginations as some vampire's castle, it was probably the worse possible thing to be hearing. For a scratching implied motion and motion implied something alive . . .

Hayes was thinking: Could be a man, could be one of the team... and it could be something else entirely.

They stood there, looking at each other and at those limestone walls, an ice-mist tangling through their legs like groundfog. In the glow of Cutchen's lantern, there was only their frosting breath, suspended ice crystals and drifting motes of dust. And shadows. Because down in that creeping murk, the lights were casting huge and distorted shadows.

Hayes took a few more steps, his belly feeling hollow and feathery. He played his light farther down into the stygian depths of that channel which, from where he was sitting, might as well have led right down to the lower regions of h.e.l.l itself.

He heard the sound again and started.

A distant sc.r.a.ping that seemed to be moving up the pa.s.sage at them and then a few seconds later, sounded impossibly far-off. It would pause for a moment or two, then start up again . . . closer then farther, that same scratching, dragging sound. Hayes felt a trickle of sweat run down his spine. Something in his bowels tensed. He could hear his own breathing in his ears and it seemed impossibly loud. Then, suddenly, the scratching was much closer, so very close in fact that Hayes almost turned and ran. Because it seemed that whatever was making it would show itself at any moment, something spidery with sc.r.a.ping twigs for fingers.

Then it abruptly ceased.

”What in Christ was that?” Sharkey said behind him, edging closer to him now.

And he was going to tell her that it was probably nothing. Sound would carry funny down in the hollowed earth. That's all it was. Nothing to get excited about. But he never did say that, for less than a minute after the scratching stopped, something else took its place . . . a strident, squeaky piping like an out-of-tune recording of a church organ played on an old Victrola. It rose up high and shrieking, gaining volume and insistence. No wind blowing through no underground pa.s.sage could have created something like that. The sound of it was eerie and disturbing, the auditory equivalent of a knife blade pressed against your spine and slowly drawn upwards.

Hayes suddenly felt very numb, rubbery and uncoordinated.

So much so that if he moved, he figured he would have fallen flat on his face. So he didn't move. He stood there like a statue in a park waiting for a pigeon to s.h.i.+t on him. That still, that motionless. His tongue felt like it was glued to the roof of his mouth. The sound died out for maybe a second or two. But then it came again, shrill and piercing and somehow malevolent. It was reedy and cacophonous and something about it made you want to scream. But what really was bothering Hayes about it was that it was not neutral in the least . . . it sounded almost hysterical or demented.

And then it died out for good, ending it mid-squeal, shattering into a dozen resounding and tinny echoes that bounced around through caves and hollows and openings. But the memory of it was still there.