“To continue, the first image you are seeing is the collision point. The plane that struck the ground was a seventy-foot turbofan Challenger jet. Its maintenance records showed it had been fully serviced and was only a few months out of the box. Owned and flown by Mr. John Banyon, who was accompanied by several members of his corporate executive team on a business team-building and sightseeing flight over the Antarctic. For reasons undetermined, it dropped out of the air and collided with the ground at approximately 1907 hours Eastern Standard Time Saturday.” The image displayed on the screen was an aerial shot of a giant hole in the white ice—no debris or engine oil, just a black gash against the blinding white.

“You can see from the entry point that this is no collision crater, what seems to have occurred is the impact has punched straight through the ice and rock crust and opened access to an underground cavern. Next slide please, Mr. Beadman.” Hammerson continued his clinical briefing. “This image shows initial cavern insertion by the Hendsen party and the wreckage of the Challenger jet.” The picture this time showed a large team of men and women inside the mouth of an enormous cave system. Using them as scale this must have been a gigantic hole—it had to be over a hundred feet from where the people were standing to the roof of the cavern. Several members of the rescue team were working among fragments of a completely destroyed plane and holding up pieces of torn and empty clothing. In the background, Aimee could see Tom standing there in his favourite bright orange cold weather parka examining something intently, as was his usual style. Tears sprang into her eyes and she became angry, with both Tom and herself. With Tom for getting himself caught up in this mystery—she wanted to grab him by the collar of that stupid big parka and drag him home like a schoolboy who was late home from the ballpark. But she was even more angry with herself for letting him go alone; she should have pushed harder to go with him. She balled her hand into a fist and punched her thigh under the table.

Major Hammerson picked up the narration once again. “The debris was closely centred with a slightly eastward elliptical spread indicating that the plane came in at an approximate eighty-five degree angle at more than five hundred miles per hour. This accounts for the small fragment sizes. No survivors were expected; what was expected was bodies, body parts, at least significant blood patterning.”

The next slide appeared, showing some of the rescue team heading further down into one darkened end of the cave. Hammerson continued. “Nothing was found other than several strange semi-liquid residues. This is where you and Dr. Silex come in, Dr. Weir.”

Hearing her name brought Aimee back from the Antarctic ice and once again into the boardroom.

“Sorry, ‘Dr. Silex’?” Aimee asked.