Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

He turned his attention back to the pool and the American Marine hanging helplessly above it.

"Gives us a little time for some R and R," Barnaby said.

"Jesus, can't this thing go any faster?" Schofield said as he stared at the depth counter. It ticked slowly downward as they rose through the water. They were still 190 feet from the surface. Still at least seven minutes away.

Schofield watched the image of Book on the screen.

"Shit!" he said. " Shit !"

"Mr. Nero," Barnaby said.

Nero pressed a button on the Maghook's launcher, and suddenly the Maghook began to play out its rope and Book began to descend toward the pool, headfirst.

The water beneath him was choppy. Killer whales sliced through it in every direction. Suddenly one of them rose above the surface beneath Book and blew a spray of water out of its blowhole.

Book's head descended toward the water. He was one foot above it when he jolted to a sudden halt.

"Mr. Riley!" Barnaby called from the safety of the deck.

"What?"

"Rule Britannia, Mr. Riley!"

Nero hit the button again and Book's head and upper body plunged underwater.

No sooner was Book underwater than a line of sharp white teeth whooshed past his face.

Book's eyes went wide.

There were so many of them! Killer whales all around him. A slow-moving forest of black and white. The whales seemed to prowl around the water.

And then suddenly Book saw one of them spot him, saw it turn suddenly in the water and come at him?at speed.

Book hung there, upside down in the water, totally exposed, unable to move.

The killer charged at him.

The SAS commandos cheered when they saw the enormous dorsal fin of the killer make a beeline for the submerged Marine.

In the diving bell, Schofield was glued to the monitor.

"Come on, Book," he said. 'Tell me you've got something up your sleeve."

Book shook his hands behind his back. The cuffs wouldn't budge.

The killer came at him.

Fast.

It opened its jaws and rolled onto its side and?

?slid past him, brushing roughly against the side of Book's body.

The SAS commandos booed.

In the diving bell, Schofield breathed a sigh of relief.

Behind him, Renshaw said softly, "It's over."

"What do you mean, it's over?"

"Remember what I told you before. They stake their claim with the first pass. Then they eat you."

Book screamed with frustration under the water.

He couldn't get his hands free.

Couldn't... get.. .his... hands... free ....

And then he saw the killer whale again.

It was coming at him a second time. The same whale.

The killer whale powered through the water, faster this time, moving with purpose, its high dorsal fin cutting hard through the chop.

Book saw its jaws open again, and this time he saw the white teeth and the pink tongue and as it came closer and closer his terror became extreme.

The killer whale didn't roll sideways this time.

It didn't brush past him this time.

No, this time, the seven-ton killer whale plowed into Book with pulverizing force, and before Book even knew what had hit him the big whale's jaws came crashing down around his head.

Inside the diving bell, Schofield stared at the monitor in silence.

"Holy Christ ," Renshaw breathed from behind him.

The image on the screen was absolutely horrifying.

A fountain of blood spewed out from the water. The whale had crunched into Book's suspended body and consumed his entire upper half. Now it was shaking the corpse violently, trying to wrench it free from the rope?like a great white shark grappling with a piece of meat hung out over the side of a boat.

Schofield didn't say anything.

He swallowed back the vomit welling in his throat.

Down in the cavern, Montana and Sarah Hensleigh stared at the screen above the keypad. Gant had left them. She had gone back over to the fissure she had found at the other end of the cavern.

Hensleigh stared at the screen.

24157817 _________________________

ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE

"It's a way in," she said.

Eight digits were already displayed on the screen. 24157817. Then there were sixteen blank spaces to be filled in with the entry code.

"Sixteen gaps to fill," Montana said. "But what's the entry code?"

"More numbers," Hensleigh said thoughtfully. "It's got to be some kind of numerical code, a code that follows on from the eight numbers already on the screen."

"But even if we could figure out the code, how do we insert it into the spaces?" Montana said.

Hensleigh leaned forward and pressed the first black button on the keypad.

A number "1" appeared instantly on the screen?in the first blank space.

Montana frowned. "How did you know that?"

Hensleigh shrugged. "If this thing has instructions written in English, then it's man-made. Which means this keypad is also man-made. Which means it's probably just a regular keypad, with numbers set out on it like on a calculator or a telephone. Who knows, maybe the guys who built it just didn't get round to putting numbers on it."

She hit the second button.

A "2" sprang up in the next blank space. Hensleigh smiled, vindicated.

Then she began to whisper to herself. "Sixteen-digit code, ten digits to choose from. Shit. We're talking trillions of possible combinations."

"Do you think you can crack it?" Montana said.

"I don't know," Hensleigh said. "It depends on what the first eight digits are supposed to mean, and whether I can figure that out."

At that moment, Montana leaned forward and pressed the first button fourteen times. On the screen, the blank spaces filled up quickly.

The screen beeped suddenly. And then a new prompt appeared at the bottom:

24157817 12 11111111111111

INCORRECT CODE ENTERED -

ENTRY DENIED ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE

The screen then reverted back to the original screen, with the original eight numbers and the sixteen blank spaces.

Hensleigh looked at Montana, perplexed. "How did you know that?"

Montana smiled. "It gives you a second chance if you enter the wrong code. Like most military entry-code systems."

At the other end of the cavern, Gant was crouched down on the ground over by the fissure she had found at the base of the ice wall. She pointed her flashlight inside the horizontal fissure.

She wanted to know more about this cavern. There was something about the cavern itself and the man-made "spaceship" they had found in it that made her wonder....

Gant peered in through the fissure. In the beam of her flashlight she saw a cave. A round, ice-walled cave that seemed to stretch away to the right. The floor of the cave was about five feet beneath her.

Gant lay down on her back and shimmied through the fissure, and began to lower herself down to the floor of this new cave.

And then suddenly, without warning, the ice beneath her gave way and she fell clumsily to the floor of the cave.

Clangggggg?!

The sound of her landing on the floor of the cave reverberated all around her. It had sounded like someone hitting a piece of steel with a sledgehammer.

Gant froze.

Steel?

And then slowly?very slowly?she gazed down at the floor beneath her.

The floor was covered with a thin layer of frost, but Gant saw it clearly. Her eyes widened.

She saw the rivets first?small, round domes on a dark gray background.

It was metal.

Thick, reinforced metal.

Gant panned her flashlight around the small cave. It was cylindrical in shape?like a train tunnel?with a high, round ceiling that rose above the horizontal fissure through which she had come. The horizontal fissure was about halfway up the wall. In fact, Gant could almost see back through the thick ice wall above the fissure, as if it were translucent glass.