Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

She drew in two long puffs and caught her breath. When, finally, she was able to speak she looked at Riley, shook her head, and said, "They definitely don't have that at Sea World."

Schofield was still down in the pool. Two of the killer whales circled him ominously. He noticed that these two appeared to be smaller than the other killers. Juveniles, maybe.

He tilted his head upward and yelled, "Book! I need my Maghook!"

Up on the bridge, Riley immediately dropped to his belly and leaned out over the edge of the narrow metal platform. He reached out underneath the platform and tried to deactivate the magnet on Schofield's grappling hook.

"I need it now , Book!" Schofield's voice sailed up through the shaft of the ice station.

"I'm trying! I'm trying!" Riley said.

"Try faster! "

Riley stretched his arm out under the platform, tried to reach the switch marked M on the grip that activated and deactivated the Maghook's powerful magnet.

As he did so, however, a strange thing happened.

For a brief second, Riley could have sworn that he heard Kirsty speaking to someone on the bridge above him.

"Help the diver, Wendy. Help the diver ."

Riley blinked to himself. Must be hearing things.

Down in the pool, Schofield thought it was all over. The two killers on either side of him were closing in as they circled, shutting off any possible escape route.

Suddenly one of them seemed to break out of his circle and swing around. Schofield swallowed. He was coming round for the kill .

The killer turned in a slow, wide arc until he was pointing right at Schofield. His body was only a foot or so beneath the surface, and his high dorsal fin sliced easily through the waves in the pool. He was moving at such powerful speed that he created a rolling bow wave in front of his submerged black-and-white head.

The bow wave raced across the water, on a collision course with Shane Schofield.

Schofield looked around himself. There was nowhere to go this time, no weapon to use.

Out of sheer desperation he pulled out his Desert Eagle pistol, raised it above the water.

If it had to come to this , he thought, then it had to come to this .

The killer charged toward him.

And then suddenly a black missilelike object plunged into the water right in front of Schofield's face, right in between him and the killer whale.

Whatever it was, it was so sleek that it entered the water with barely even a splash, and once in, it zoomed away from him at phenomenal speed.

Both killers saw it instantly and immediately lost interest in Schofield. Even the one that had been charging at him only seconds before abruptly altered its path and raced off in pursuit of this new quarry.

Schofield was stunned. What had it been? It had looked almost like a... a seal of some sort.

And then, miraculously, a Maghook dropped into the water right in front of him.

Schofield grabbed it before it sank and immediately looked upward. Up on the bridge he saw Book Riley lying on his belly, with one arm stretched out underneath the bridge.

Schofield looked at the Maghook and suddenly felt a new lease on life come over him.

Just then, a small pointed black head popped up out of the water right in front of him and he fell backward in surprise.

It was Wendy. Kirsty's little Antarctic fur seal.

Her cute red collar glistened with wetness, and her soft black eyes looked right into his. If it was possible, Schofield could have sworn that the little seal was smiling? having a ball of a time swimming around in the pool, evading the less agile killer whales.

Then he realized. Wendy must have been the object that had dived into the pool in between him and the charging killer whale.

Suddenly Wendy's head snapped left.

She'd heard something, sensed something.

Then she gave what looked like a final happy nod to Schofield before she ducked back under the water and sped off down the length of the pool.

She swam fast. Speeding just underneath the surface of the water like a tiny black torpedo. Cutting left, ducking right, and then disappearing suddenly as she dropped into a steep vertical dive. No sooner had she moved than three black dorsal fins appeared behind her and immediately gave chase, before they themselves vanished beneath the surface in hot pursuit.

Schofield took the opportunity and swam for the nearest edge. He was three feet from the deck when a sudden surge of water rocked him and he rolled in the water as the giant body of one of the killers swept past him at a frightening speed. Schofield immediately tensed for another fight, but the whale just barreled past him, in search of the elusive Wendy.

Schofield breathed again, swam forward, and grabbed hold of the deck. He climbed up out of the water and saw the. battered ejection seat lying crumpled on its side on the deck in front of him. Then he turned around, surveyed the chaos around him.

Sarah and Abby were long out of the water and were now hurrying into the tunnels of E-deck. Not far from them were Rebound and Mother. Rebound was kneeling over Mother. He appeared to be applying pressure to a wound of some kind on Mother's leg.

On the other side of the pool Schofield saw the two surviving French commandos, also safely out of the water. Soaking wet, they were just getting to their feet on the deck. One of them saw Schofield and began to reach for his crossbow.

Just then, a sudden movement caught Schofield's eye and he turned and saw a familiar black shadow whipping down the length of the pool.

Wendy.

Three larger black-and-white shapes raced through the water behind her. The killers in pursuit.

Wendy was travelling at tremendous speed, just below the surface. Her flippers would occasionally sweep backward with a powerful stroke and then fall in by her sides so that her body remained as streamlined as possible. She looked like a bullet shooting through the pool, alternately appearing and disappearing in the murky red clouds that stained the icy water.

She was heading for the deck, for that part of the deck on which the two French commandos stood. And she wasn't slowing down.

In fact, it looked to Schofield like she was picking up speed as she sped toward the deck with the three black-and-white specters racing through the water behind her.

Schofield then watched in amazement as, within a meter of the deck, Wendy suddenly launched herself out of the water. It was a flat, graceful leap, and she landed smoothly on her belly on the deck and slid forward a full three meters.

She slid right past the two bewildered Frenchmen standing next to her.

But she didn't stop there. No sooner had she stopped sliding than she was up on her foreflippers and galloping as fast as she could, away from the water's edge.

For a fleeting instant Schofield wondered why she would do that. Surely once you were out of the water you were safe from the killers.

And then Schofield discovered why Wendy did what she did.

Like a demon rising from the depths, one of the pursuing killer whales roared out of the water and hurled its massive body up onto the deck, landing on the thick metal grating with an enormous crash. The huge whale slid fast across the deck, carried forward by the weight of its own inertia. It rolled smoothly onto its side as it moved, so that its jaws opened vertically, and then, with almost effortless grace, it caught one of the Frenchmen in its mouth and bit down hard.

The big animal's sliding movement stopped and it ground to a halt, with the French soldier?screaming madly, blood pouring from his mouth?held tightly within its jaws. The whale then began to shuffle its enormous frame awkwardly backward along the deck. After a few moments, it reached the edge and fell back into the water, taking the screaming Frenchman down with it.