Steve Alten - Vostok

Aided by night-vision binoculars, I located the Tethys. The nuclear submarine was anchored offshore, only the shoreline, like everything else about the island, was undergoing a rapid transformation.

Teams of men dressed in ECW gear and wearing chemical tanks strapped to their backs were using flamethrowers to melt the ice and snow, exposing sections of what appeared to be a metallic, saucer-shaped vessel, whose diameter rivaled that of an aircraft carrier. While most of the crew focused on clearing fifteen million years of packed snow from the floating alien landscape, a dozen men had forged a path to the base of the mountain, their wall of flame focused on the summit. The intense heat caused great swaths of ice to fall away from a four-story dorsal-shaped mast, partially concealed behind swirling curtains of steam and fog.

Jonas stared slack-jawed through his binoculars, the sight of the E.T.’s vessel no doubt changing his attitude about our mission and energizing his hope to alter his son’s fate. “It’s real. Everything you told me is real. But how the hell are we going to get you inside that thing without being seen?”

“Dive the sub. There may be an entrance near the saucer’s belly.”

Jonas banked the Manta into a deep descent, giving the Tethys a wide berth as he approached the submerged alien hull. The superstructure materialized out of our olive-green night vision, its disk-shaped keel plunging ninety-six feet below the surface and its dark mass hovering above us like an enormous thundercloud.

Jonas powered on an exterior light in the Manta’s prow. Aiming the beacon, he illuminated a smooth expanse of dull-gray metal, its surface devoid of ice, rust, or barnacles.

As we passed beneath the vessel’s teardrop center, a blue ring of light sixty or seventy feet across materialized overhead, its luminescence bathing us in its aura even as it held us within its grip. A moment later a dark pupil opened in the center of the circle, its widening orifice slowly drawing us in.

The Manta levitated into the vortex until we were enveloped by a darkness so dense that even our exterior light couldn’t penetrate it. We registered the hull resealing beneath us and the pressure differential changing as water was vented from the docking chamber, leaving our submersible to settle on an unseen surface.

For several long minutes we simply sat there in the dark and waited. Then white recessed lighting flickered on like a swarm of fireflies, illuminating an auditorium-sized chamber. Our sub was situated in the center of a circular ring that resembled one of my Vostok energy generators, only this one was twelve feet high and large enough in circumference to corral a Miocene sperm whale.

The device looked like it hadn’t been operated since Antarctica was free of ice.

Jonas was busy running an analysis of our surroundings. Determining the air fit to breathe, he popped open the Manta’s cockpit and stood up on his leather bucket seat, groaning in pain from having been stuck in such a cramped space for more than thirty-six hours.

I followed suit, my leg muscles burning as I stretched. Attempting to increase the circulation in my knees, I performed a slow squat and recovery — shocked to find myself levitating away from the cockpit!

“Zach?”

“We’re in some kind of anti-gravity well. Try it.”

Jonas jumped — only way too hard — and shot straight toward the dark recess above our heads.

“J.T.?” Hovering in mid-air a foot above my seat, I stared up at the void. “Jonas, are you okay? Can you hear me? Jonas!”

Nothing.

Damn .

Placing my right foot on my headrest, I launched my weightless body into the air like Superman, the sensation of flying causing me to grin from ear to ear despite concern for my colleague. Within seconds I was high above the Manta, looking down at the triple-ringed generator, the interior rollers of which were either rotating very slowly or at a speed so fast their velocity rendered them an optical illusion.

Looking up, I realized a polished metal ceiling loomed less than twenty feet overhead and there was no way for me to slow down. Covering my head, I braced for an impact that was going to hurt — only to feel a bizarre, titillating sensation from my hands down through my skull, neck, upper torso, and legs as the atoms of my body passed through the surface.

Opening my eyes, I found myself on the opposite side of the permeable barrier, standing in a dimly lit circular chamber on a polished metal floor, my body once more weighed down by gravity. The circular walls and twelve-foot-high ceiling were made of the same metallic substance that seemed to radiate its own blue-white light.

Ten feet to my left was Jonas. He was on his hands and knees, a dark figure standing over him.

The surface of the circular floor beneath us brightened, revealing Colonel Vacendak—

— The barrel of his Beretta 9mm pistol pressed firmly against the back of Jonas’s skull.

“Nice to see you again, Dr. Wallace. You’re looking well for a dead man.” The Colonel nodded to two armed men, who stepped from out of the shadows to guard Jonas.

The Colonel approached me, one hand reaching out to grip my right arm above the elbow, the other poking the gun barrel against my temple. “You look surprised to see me. Did you think we lacked the knowledge to access this ship? MAJESTIC uses a neutrino light detector to track E.T. vessels as they enter our dimension. Then we bring ’em down and reverse-engineer them. Been doing it since your father started making young girls cry.

“You didn’t really think his ploy would fool us, did you? We practically invented disinformation and misdirection tactics.” He leaned in. “If I had a dollar for every time one of our guys kidnapped some dumb hick farmer and put him through an alien abduction… Of course, I’m sure a few of them actually enjoyed the anal probes.”

Without warning, he struck me on the top of my skull with the butt-end of the Beretta’s magazine.

I dropped to one knee, warm blood pooling around the wound.

Then I lost it.

With a primal yell, I drove my right shoulder into the Colonel’s gut as if he was a blitzing linebacker, slamming the older man flat on his back. The guards stayed with Jonas, allowing me a few seconds to pummel Vacendak’s face into a bloody pulp before one of them dragged me off him.

Furious, the Colonel regained his feet and aimed the gun’s barrel between my eyes, his body trembling. For a moment I was convinced my life was over — but I’ve been there before.

Spinning around to face Jonas, the Colonel fired.

The force of the gun blast startled me, the sound echoing in my ears. I saw a puff of smoke leave the barrel as it burped a slowly spinning lead projectile through gelid air, which appeared to ripple outward from the Beretta.

The bullet made it a third of the way to Jonas’s brain before it stopped. In fact, everything stopped except for yours truly and Joe Tkalec, who now stood beside me, observing the frozen scene.

“Joe, is he going to die?”

“Yes. But he served a greater good. He brought you here.”

“To the portal?”

“To a state of universal consciousness known as Da’at; a place of infinite light, energy, and perfection, where all ten dimensions are united as one. Physical beings who are giving, like your friend, are able to draw from its energy. Those who receive for themselves alone cannot access it. One who has awakened Da’at is able to perform the miraculous. Are you ready to perform the miraculous, Zachary?”

“What miracle, Alien Joe? What are you asking me to do?”

“I cannot say without jeopardizing your free will. However, if you choose to bring your consciousness into Da’at, then the multiverse you entered seven years ago and everything hence forward shall become the reality.”