Steve Alten - Vostok

The alien craft high overhead broke formation and dispersed.

Having flown beyond the anomaly’s reach, the pilot increased our altitude and adjusted our course to the northeast, heading back toward Prydz Bay.

Round One was over, and it was a clear victory for the Colonel.

We touched down on the rock runway at Davis Station ninety minutes later, everyone on board relieved to be on the ground, their fears now focused on a possible retaliatory response.

It never came. Ground radar indicated that the surviving E.T. vessels had moved into the stratosphere. After another hour of waiting, the Colonel gave the order to unload the Tethys , a process that would take two days. Then the submarine would be wet docked by her surface ship, which was still en route. In fact, the only vessel visible in Prydz Bay was a 319-foot-long hopper dredge that was slowly working its way toward the Amery Ice Shelf.

It was November 2, spring in Antarctica. The sun hung low in a hazy gray sky when I stepped off the plane, the sub-zero continent welcoming me back with a blast of minus-seventeen-degree wind. Dressed in full ECW gear, I followed my keeper across the tarmac like a penguin waddling after its mother, only I purposely lagged behind just to piss him off.

I was assigned a room at Davis Station and released on my own recognizance. With a biochip circulating in my bloodstream, I was hardly a flight risk. Besides, where was I going to go?

Yet, I did have a plan.

The E.T. vessels had disappeared into the ether once we’d begun our initial descent over East Antarctica. Assuming they had been there to escort yours truly to Vostok, perhaps a few of the more sociable aliens might wish to communicate with me in what the Colonel had called a lucid dream state.

Reaching out to communicate with an extraterrestrial is defined as a close encounter of the fifth kind, or CE-5 initiative. Developed and practiced by Dr. Steven Greer and his supporters, the protocol uses vedic-style meditation to initiate telepathic communication between humans and extraterrestrials, in order to forge a mutually beneficial, sustainable, and cooperative relationship between our species. According to Dr. Greer, once an E.T. exceeds lightspeed it enters a state of cosmic mind. Humans can therefore use coherent thought sequencing to interface with an extraterrestrial, causing the craft to actually vector in on the group’s location through their collective consciousness, culminating in some incredible experiences. Not only have lights appeared out of the ether to signal to CE-5 practitioners, messages of peace have been downloaded to the human participants.

Greer found that there was a universal readiness among extraterrestrials to engage in peaceful communications with the common man rather than our appointed leaders, who have downed dozens of crafts using EMP weapons over the last five decades. There are no secrets when communicating through the conscious mind, so if a human participant possesses a dark agenda, contact is cut off. CE-5 participants believe warfare and the use of nuclear weapons have led to Earth’s isolation, our visiting E.T. ambassadors seeing humanity as an aggressive, divided civilization armed with knowledge that could lead to self-destruction. As such, these entities are hesitant to share advanced technologies until a lasting world unity and peace is achieved.

The fact that one of them had chosen to share its knowledge with me gave me hope that I could use Greer’s CE-5 protocols to communicate outside of Lake Vostok.

What was I hoping to accomplish? In truth, I didn’t know. I felt desperate and alone, and Susan’s murder had rattled my nerves. With my son’s life hanging in the balance, I needed something — anything — that might give me an edge, be it information or a weapon… or an alien ally whom I could convince to free my family.

After consuming a mug of clam chowder in the Davis cafeteria, I returned to my room to change into my extreme weather gear. I was pulling on my boots when I heard a phone playing the Rolling Stone’s Gimme Shelter , one of my favorite songs. Searching the room, I traced the sound to a cell phone stuffed inside my pillowcase.

A text had been sent.

Dragonslayer: FOLLOW THE SHORELINE NORTH AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

My pulse raced. Only one person had ever called me Dragonslayer — my father.

I quickly finished dressing. Slipping the phone inside my jacket pocket, I left my room and headed out of the nearest exit, my face cloaked behind goggles and a ski mask.

It was dusk and curtains of green light were already forming in the eastern sky by the time I made my way down to the frozen surface waters of Prydz Bay. I followed the shoreline north as instructed, abused by a twenty-knot wind carrying a wind chill of minus thirty-five.

I heard someone trudging through the snow behind me. It was my guard. He was following me on a parallel course farther inland, trying to stay out of sight.

The cell phone vibrated in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out, using my body to conceal its light from my shadow.

WALK OUT ONTO THE BAY 200 PACES AND STOP.

The bay? They must be sending a helicopter . I glanced overhead, listening for rotary blades. Would MJ-12 shoot it down? Did my intended rescuers know I had a tracking device circulating through my bloodstream?

I hesitated, then turned and walked out onto the frozen bay. The ice seemed plenty thick, the spring thaw having gained little traction. Counting my strides, and trembling from the cold, I continued to scan the star-filled sky for my ride.

Two hundred paces brought me some distance from shore. The surface remained solid beneath my boots, but there was still no sign of a chopper.

The wind howled in my wool-covered ears, sweeping snow particles across the barren ice. Tugging my jacket over my buttocks, I sat down and closed my eyes to attempt a CE-5 communication.

When it comes to meditation, I’m strictly an amateur. Hunkering down in the bone-chilling cold, I ducked my hooded head and closed my eyes, attempting to imagine the Milky Way galaxy and the spiral arm that harbored our blue speck of a planet. When that seemed silly — the E.T.s knew where I was, having just followed me halfway across the world — I shifted my internal eye to the patch of ice beneath me.

I don’t know how long I remained in this position. I may have fallen asleep, but at some point I felt another presence.

Opening my eyes, I found myself surrounded by mist. Directly overhead, a triangle of light seemed to be materializing out of another dimension, along with the flat metallic bottom of an extraterrestrial vehicle. It had to be hovering incredibly close, for it blotted out the stars.

I registered a brief fleeting moment of elation, then sudden panic as the ice beneath me evaporated and I went under, my lung-collapsing yelp stymied by a mouthful of salt water. Rational thought left me as unseen tentacles dragged me deeper into water so frigid it curdled my blood into jelly and strangled my circulation. It was Loch Ness all over again; the darkness, the paralysis of cold, the mind-snapping terror. I caught a glimpse of an immense, dark object moving beneath me as a pink fluorescent light sparked to life before me, revealing a scuba diver.

He shoved a regulator into my mouth, the device attached to a small container of air.

Pinching my nose, I inhaled a dozen quick breaths, struggling to get them into my failing lungs. The diver motioned below to a bullet-shaped canister the size of a double-wide coffin. Grabbing my left wrist, he dragged me to it, the dark container yawning open like a clam as we approached. He laid me inside as another wave of anxiety hit.

He squeezed in next to me and sealed the canister by pressing a device attached to his buoyancy control vest. The moment the pod sealed, a blue light activated.