He raced down a long curved artery and into a large vaulted chamber. In front of him stood a clear barrier, behind which lay a chamber filled with a translucent fluid of some sort. Feathery branches, like giant ferns, drifted slowly within the liquid. Empty globules budded along the branches. A phosphorescent green radiance permeated the water.
With his enhanced sense of smell, he detected a distinct saline odor.
Moving slowly now, he was taken aback by the chamber’s bizarre contents. He had no idea what he was looking at. A hydroponic garden?
Or something far more alien?
Words failed her.
Lois was a journalist. Prose was her profession, and over the course of her lifetime—first as an Army brat, then as a reporter—she thought she’d seen it all. That nothing could surprise her.
But at that moment she gaped in shock at what appeared to be an honest-to-goodness alien spaceship, hidden away in an underground ice grotto. It had to have been there since caveman days, at least.
This was more than just a scoop. This was the biggest story in human history.
An open airlock called out to her. She wasn’t sure how the ship had been thawed out, or what had happened to the guy named Joe, but no way was she going to pass up an opportunity like this.
So she stepped inside the buried UFO, hoping that somebody had turned on the heater.
Her footsteps echoed in the empty corridors. The flash from her camera lit up curved walls that were made of a smooth, pearly material she couldn’t begin to identify. She found herself wishing that Dr. Hamilton was around to give her a guided tour. Maybe he could make sense of all of this. Lois Lane was definitely out of her element.
Motors whirred behind her. Her brow furrowed.
Joe?
She turned around to see where the mechanical noise was coming from.
It wasn’t Joe.
An elevated platform overlooked the liquid-filled chamber. Cylinder-shaped consoles rose like coral from the floor of the deck, which looked as if it might be the bridge of the nameless ship. Cracked tiles and screens showed signs of damage. Clark inspected the controls, hesitant to touch anything. The robot sentry had proved that at least some of the ship’s systems were still active.
Four heavily padded couches were arranged in the center of the bridge. Clark guessed that the seats were intended to protect the crew from heavy gravitational forces or a crash landing. Three of the couches were occupied by humanoid skeletons wearing full-body suits of some unknown material. The fourth was empty.
Had there been a survivor?
The bearded stranger appeared again, beneath the arch of a doorway. He lingered just long enough for Clark to spot him before darting around a corner once again. It was as though he was deliberately leading him on.
Clark scowled. He wasn’t here to play games.
Once again he chased after the mystery man, this time into an armory of sorts. Sturdy hard-shell space suits, clearly meant to withstand hostile environments, were mounted in closet-sized niches. Further on he found form-fitting bodysuits of different sizes and hues. His fascinated gaze was drawn to one suit in particular—it was a deep steel-blue, and bore a familiar “S” emblem embossed upon the chest.
The “S” was rendered in red against a yellow shield. A matching red cape was attached to the collar. The emblem was identical to the one on his key.
He reached out to touch it.
Blaring alarms echoed throughout the ship. For a second, he was afraid that he had set them off somehow.
Then he heard Lois Lane screaming.
She ran madly through the alien ship, pursued by a freaking robot, of all things. Ear-piercing sirens let her know that she was trespassing. She raced for an open doorway, only to have it slam shut in front of her. She changed course, heading the other way, but a second door cut off her escape.
Cornered, she turned to face the robot, which zipped toward her. Glowing tentacles writhed beneath its mainframe. The circular monitor on its chest scanned her face, producing a three-dimensional replica on its display panel, like some kind of futuristic mug shot.
Lois decided that turnabout was fair play. She raised her camera and caught the hovering robot in the viewfinder. The flash went off.
Good, she thought. Now at least I have a record of what’s happening to me.
But apparently the robot didn’t like having its picture taken. One of its luminous tentacles lashed out, knocking her backward into a bulkhead. Agony burned across her ribs—it was like being whipped by liquid fire. She sagged against the wall, clutching her wounded side.
The robot approached menacingly, ready to finish her off. Its white-hot tentacles flicked through the air.
This is it, she realized. Perry had damn well better give me a good obit.
She was mentally composing her own eulogy when, all of a sudden, Joe came rushing in from nowhere. She started to call out a warning, but the husky baggage handler was already punching the robot. His bare knuckles slammed into the thing’s central display panel.
Sparks flared and the injured robot squawked electronically, but Joe kept right on pounding it. Holding onto it with one hand, he smashed it to pieces with his fist.
How strong is he?
But even that thought couldn’t distract her from the pain. She slid down the wall, holding her side. Blood seeped through her parka where the tentacle had sliced through it.
Joe tossed aside the pulped remains of the robot and turned toward her. She flinched at his approach, not quite sure whose side he was on, or how he’d managed to trash the alien robot with his bare hands.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I just want to help.”
She stared at him in confusion.
“Who are you?”
Kneeling beside her, he peeled back her scorched parka for a better look. His eyes narrowed in concentration, almost as though he was seeing past her skin to examine her from the inside out. Concern showed behind his scruffy beard.
“You’re hemorrhaging internally,” he said. “If I don’t cauterize the bleed, you’ll die.”
She didn’t understand. “How—?”
“I can do things other people can’t,” he said simply. His fingers found hers, squeezing gently. “Hold my hand. This is going to hurt.”
His eyes glowed like burning coals. Ruby beams shot from his pupils to penetrate her ribcage just above her liver. Lois cried out in pain. Her mysterious benefactor was right about one thing.
It did hurt… a lot.
The procedure was over in a second, though. His eyes dimmed back to normal. Shock caught up, though, and she felt herself passing out. The last thing she saw, before everything went dark, was him smiling down at her, like she was going to be okay.
She guessed his name wasn’t really “Joe.”
Staff Sergeant Sekowsky yawned and rubbed his eyes. Seated before his bank of monitors, he wondered what he’d done wrong in order to pull a double shift. Multiple screens provided thermal views of the generator and the mystery object that was embedded in the glacier. He’d been watching them for so long that he barely saw them anymore. He groped for his coffee cup, only to find it empty.
Figures, he thought.
All at once, the needle on the seismograph danced, signaling ground motion nearby. An alarm went off and he snapped alert. No longer needing caffeine, he stared in surprise at the thermal imaging monitors, which were suddenly registering massive amounts of activity. The entire glacier was cracking, venting record amounts of steam into the atmosphere. The meltdown generator began to topple as the ice around it broke apart. It swung into the side of the collapsing borehole.