“You sound just like Sully,” Faraday replied.

“There might have been polar bears wandering around.”

“I went along,” Chen said. “With one of the rifles.”

Marshall sighed, leaned back against one of the tables. “Okay. Mind telling me why?”

Faraday blinked at him. “It’s like we discussed at the meeting. Something’s just not right about this.”

“I’ll say. We’ve got a thief in our midst.”

“That’s not what I mean. Things aren’t adding up. The sudden thawing, the creature going missing, the kerf marks…” He pointed at the plastic bin beside the microscope. “I took some samples from around the edges of the vault hole and examined them at 40x. There’s no question about it: those marks were made from the inside out, not from somebody sawing in from underneath.”

Marshall nodded. “A minute ago you said I sounded like Sully. What did you mean by that?”

“When he heard I went up to the cave, Sully went ballistic. He said it was a waste of time, that I might as well throw the samples away.”

Marshall didn’t reply immediately. He recalled how dismissive Sully had been about this theory-and about the photographs in general. While Faraday might have been foolhardy to collect the samples in the first place, it seemed a scientific given that, once obtained, they should be analyzed. He thought again of what Conti had said about Sully.

Chen glanced at Faraday, then nodded toward the wood samples. “Tell him the other thing.”

Faraday smoothed the front of his lab coat. “When we examined the chips under the microscope, we also found samples of matted hair and a good amount of dried, dark matter caked to the sharper edges.”

“Caked?” Marshall repeated. “Was it blood?”

“I haven’t analyzed it yet,” Faraday said. He opened his mouth, then shut it again, as if thinking better of the idea.

“Go ahead,” Marshall said. “Tell me the rest.”

Faraday swallowed. “Those kerf marks…” he began. “I don’t know. Under the scope they don’t look like they were made by a saw.”

“What, then?”

“They appear to have been more…natural in origin.”

Marshall looked from Faraday to Chen and back again. “Natural? I’m not following.”

This time it was Chen who spoke. “Not sawed through. More like chewed through.”

The silence that followed this was much longer.

“How on earth can you expect me to believe that, Wright?” Marshall asked at last, trying to keep his voice from betraying his deep skepticism.

Faraday cleared his throat again. “Listen,” he said, his voice lower. “When I know something for a fact-if I know something-I’ll tell you. I won’t hold it back. I just don’t want any more flak from Sully.”

“Sully,” Marshall repeated thoughtfully. “You know where he is?”

“Haven’t seen him for hours.”

“Okay.” Marshall eased himself away from the table. “If you learn anything, you’ll let me know?”

Faraday nodded. With a final, searching look at the two men, Marshall turned and slowly made his way out of the lab.

22

Jeremy Logan ventured carefully along the narrow corridors of E Level. It had taken him almost ninety minutes of exploring to reach this, the lowest level of Fear Base’s central section. As he’d penetrated deeper into the base, he’d found the passages cluttered with increasing amounts of shadowy detritus: desks piled atop one another, tools, pieces of ancient electrical equipment, decaying boxes filled with vacuum tubes. It was as if all the unused clutter of the base had literally sunk to the bottom over the years.

C Level had been primarily comprised of support services for the men originally stationed at the base: food-preparation areas, laundry, tailoring. D Level held the quartermaster’s office and countless storage spaces, along with several repair bays. Unlike the suffocatingly warm upper levels, the chill down here was pronounced. The unpleasant smell of the base-inescapable even on the upper levels-was significantly worse. Logan wrinkled his nose at the musky odor.

E Level was a jumbled mélange of secondary spaces and mechanical systems. The ceilings were even lower here than elsewhere, and heavily veined with pipes and cabling. Most lightbulbs had been removed from their fixtures, and those that remained no longer worked. Logan moved slowly from room to room, his flashlight licking right and left, right and left. Many of the objects were covered with old tarps, well preserved in the cold dry air. He wondered when someone had last been this deep inside the base. It was like stepping into a time capsule.

He stopped in what appeared to be an auxiliary control room, a fallback in case the primary systems upstairs became inoperative. The black screens of the monitors and oscilloscopes winked back as his light passed over them. The silence was complete. On a whim, he switched off the flashlight. Instantly, unrelieved blackness engulfed him. He hurriedly switched the light back on. He moved out of the control room and down the corridor, wishing he’d brought along some spare batteries, or preferably a spare flashlight: it wouldn’t do for the one he was using to fail.

He passed several more cramped rooms, their doorways yawning rectangles of black, before the corridor ended at a T intersection. He stopped, trying to get his bearings in this confusing military labyrinth. If he was correct, the passageway to his left was headed more or less south. He turned right and continued on.

Within twenty yards the passage ended in a heavy metal door-hatch, really-windowless and dogged shut by thick cleats. A red bulb in a narrow cage was set into the ceiling above it-unlit, like the rest on E Level-and a sign screwed into the adjacent wall: WARNING. AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY. F-29 CLEARANCE REQUIRED.

Logan read the sign once, then again. Then he let his light play over the metal hatch. Taking a step forward, he put a hand on the nearest cleat, gave it an exploratory tug. It held fast. Looking closer, he saw that even if he could undog the cleats it would make little difference: a heavy padlock had been snugged through a hasp on one side of the hatch.

Suddenly, Logan turned. Back to the hatch, he stabbed his light down the corridor. The base was deathly still. He hadn’t seen anybody for nearly an hour and a half. And yet he was sure-completely and utterly sure-he had just heard something.

“Who’s there?” he called out.

No response.

He stood there, motionless save for the hand probing with the flashlight. Was it one of the film crew, searching for the missing carcass? Nobody would be foolish enough to drag it all the way down here-or to extend the search this far.

“Who is it?” he called. Again, silence.

He might as well head back. He’d found what he’d been searching for, yet could go no farther. The hatch was sealed. Taking a deep breath, he started forward, then stopped again, uncomfortably aware that he was in a dead end. There was no other way to get back to the surface except down this corridor. Where the sound had come from.

Then he heard it again: a tread, the sound of a footfall. Then another. And then a form stepped out into the intersection. Logan ’s light swiveled to it like a magnet. It was Gonzalez, the sergeant in charge of the base detachment.

Logan swallowed, felt limbs that had suddenly grown tense now relax a little. He composed his face into a neutral mask.

Gonzalez came toward him slowly, his own Maglite held loose in a burly hand. “Out for a morning constitutional,” he asked as he approached.

Logan smiled.

Gonzalez let his light drift over Logan ’s features. “You’re Dr. Logan, right?”

“That’s right.”

“What are you doing down here, Doctor? Are you looking for the creature, too?”

“No. Were you following me?”

“Let’s say I was curious why anybody would be down here.”