Jon Merz - Prey

Julia frowned. “What about it?”

“Those panels up there, they’re individually locked into place. What if one of the is loose?”

“You think there might be?”

Wilkins shrugged. “Never know until we check it out.”

Mick shrugged. “Do we have a ladder?”

“In the corner when we came in. Oughta be a magnesium ladder. Nice and light.”

Mick got the ladder and opened it up. Julia braced it again the wall. “How will you be able to check all the panels?”

“There’s a gridwork up there I can maneuver around on,” said Mick. He glanced at Wilkins. “You stay close in case I fall?”

Wilkins grinned. “I’m touched you want me to catch you.”

“I was thinking you’d break my fall.”

“Get up there.”

It wasn’t that far to climb. The roof itself was only twenty feet high with the gridwork underneath it by four feet. Mick reached the gridwork and left the ladder behind, easing onto the gridwork in a sort-of crawl. Julia watched him move around, slowly checking each panel.

From her vantagepoint, she couldn’t help but appreciate the outline of his body. There was obviously a lot of muscle underneath his clothing. A quick image flashed through her mind and she cleared her throat quickly, chasing it away. Stay focused, she thought.

Maybe there’d be time for that later.

Mick had covered half of the greenhouse roof when he stopped suddenly.

Wilkins exhaled. “What’s wrong?”

Mick looked down. “Panel up here. It’s open.”

“You mean it’s unlocked?”

“Yeah. It’s closed but it’s unlocked.”

Julia frowned. “Can you lock it?”

Mick peered at the panel. It must have been tough contorting his body to examine the panel’s edging. But he never complained. Julia thought it marked him as a real professional but didn’t say anything.

“Lock’s gone,” said Mick. “Looks like it’s been torn off.”

“Torn off?”

“I’m coming down,” said Mick. He eased himself back toward the ladder. His feet reappeared first and then the rest of his body followed.

Julia saw a sheen of sweat coating his face. “Hot up there?”

“Heat rises.” Mick thumbed skyward. “That’s a real funny piece of work up there.”

Wilkins started for the ladder. Mick stopped him. “Hang on. If we’re going back up there, we ought to at least have something we can lock it down with.

Julia looked at him. “You think Vikorsky might have climbed out of the window? That doesn’t make any sense. He could have simply walked out the front door. Besides, even if he did get out on to the roof, he’d have to get down to the ground somehow and that doesn’t make any sense at all — “

“Julia.” Mick stopped her.

“Yes?”

“I don’t think he climbed out.”

“No?”

Mick shot a glance at Wilkins who frowned and looked back at the roof. Mick looked back at Julia. “I think something might have come into the station through the open panel up there.”

“And what — grabbed Vikorsky? While the rest of us slept nearby?”

Mick shrugged. “I’m open to alternate theories.”

“But that would mean someone would have had to climb on to the roof, pry open the roof panel, and then shimmy in through that opening, open the door to the greenhouse and make their way through the station to where Vikorsky was sleeping.” She looked at Mick. “Doesn’t that strike you as an awful lot of work?”

“Sure does.”

“Do you know anyone who could do that sort of thing and not be heard?”

Mick looked away.

Wilkins cleared his throat. “We might be looking at another possibility here.”

“That being?”

“What if it’s not a ‘who’ at all?”

Mick nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”

“What if,” said Wilkins, “it’s a ‘what’?”

“You mean some sort of…creature?”

“I don’t know anyone who would have done something like this,” said Wilkins.

“Yeah, but do you know of any animals that could?” said Julia.

“No.”

“And besides,” said Julia, “the indigenous animal population of Antarctica is limited to penguins and a few seabirds.”

“Those are the animals we know about,” said Mick.

Julia cocked an eyebrow. “You think there might be a few species we don’t know about?”

“What I’m saying,” said Mick, “is at this point, it looks like something or someone came in through that skylight and snatched Vikorsky last night. Whether they killed him or not remains to be seen. But considering the fact that we’ve found nothing, I’d say we need to stay open to certain possibilities about the nature of this disappearance.”

Julia sighed. “Wonderful.”

“Something else,” said Wilkins.

“What?”

“Since we’re being so open to possibilities, we might also consider the idea that whatever took Vikorsky will come back again.”

“So what you’re telling us is that we’re being…invaded?”

Julia sighed. “Kendall, no one’s saying anything right yet. The fact remains we haven’t located Vikorsky yet-”

“You mean his body.”

“No.” She glared at him. The way he tried to command the room by seating himself at the head of the table in the mess hall, it annoyed her. “What I’m saying is we haven’t found him yet.”

Kendall looked about ready to argue with her again when Mick’s voice cut through the air, a welcome edge to it. “This back-and-forth arguing gets us nowhere fast. Vikorsky is gone. We think we may have found the opening through which he either left on his own or was taken.”

Nung glanced up from the microcircuitry he was working on. “Where’s the opening?”

Julia glanced at Mick. He tried to smile, but it didn’t really work. She took a deep breath. “The roof of the greenhouse.”

Nung almost dropped the soldering iron he had. “The roof? That’s almost thirty feet off the ground.”

“It’s twenty,” said Mick. “I was up there today.”

“The roof it was open?” Havel’s eyes conveyed the fear Julia felt building in her own stomach.

“One of the panels was. Yes. The lock had been jimmied open. I don’t know how.”

Wilkins cleared his throat. “Julia, what do you want us to do?”

“We can’t do anything else for right now. We’ve got more bad weather coming in. Tomorrow, we can search outside.”

“Won’t do any good,” said Kendall. “The fresh snow will have erased any of the signs of Vikorsky’s passage.”

“If we can’t find him, then we’ll go on with our primary tasking.” Julia looked at Wilkins. “That sound okay to you?”

“Yep.”

“We’ve still got another night to get through,” said Darren. “I’m not exactly interested in sleeping alone.”

Wilkins grinned. “Be the first you ever did anyway, you dog.”

Darren grinned. “I slept alone last night.”

Mick took a sip from his big blue ceramic mug and then set the cup down. “We’ll post a watch. Two of us on every two hours.”

“A watch?” Kendall laughed. “You must be joking. This isn’t the army, you know.”

Mick said nothing.

Kendall continued. “And what, pray tell, would you suggest we use to fend off whatever might be paying us nocturnal visits? We don’t have any weapons in this station. In case you forgot, we’re a research facility, not a military one.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” said Mick. His eyes blazed momentarily at Kendall who looked away. “You’re right, we have no weapons, per se.”

“Per se?”

“We can improvise.”

“With what?”

Mick shrugged. “Is it too much to reason that whatever might have taken Vikorsky might not like bright lights?”