the snow and ice similar to a ball rolled by a child to make a snowman.

Energy expended, her heat dissipated, she came to rest at the base of

an ice-covered mountain.

"WHAT HATH HELL wrought?" the man asked in Icelandic as he

poked an object with a staff.

The man was short but formed of layers of muscle that signaled

years of hard work and labor. The hair on his head and the thick beard

that grew from his cheeks was a brilliant red like the fires of Hades.

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8 CLIVE CUSSLER

Thick white furs covered his torso, while his leggings were constructed

of sealskin lined with sheep's wool. The man was prone to fits of rage,

and truth be told, he was not far removed from a barbarian. Banished

from Iceland for murder in the year 982, he had led a group across the

cold sea to the ice-shrouded island where they now resided. During the

past eighteen years he had built a settlement on the rocky coast and his

colony had survived by hunting and fishing. In time he had grown bored.

The man, Eric the Red, began longing to explore, to lead, to conquer new

lands.

In the year A.D. 1000 he set out to see what lay inland to the west.

Eleven men accompanied him at the start, but some five months into

the expedition, with spring coming, there were but five remaining. Two

had slipped into crevasses in the ice, their screams still coming to Eric as

he slept. One had slipped on ice and bashed his head on a rocky outcropping.

He had twitched in tormented pain for days, unable to see or

speak until he blissfully died one night. One had been taken by a large

white ursine when he ventured away from a campfire one evening in

search of a freshwater stream he swore he'd heard nearby.

Two had been taken by disease, suffering racking coughs and fevers

that convinced the remaining survivors that evil forces were lurking

nearby and stalking. As the expedition party thinned, the mood greatly

changed. The elation and sense of wonder that compelled the men at the

start had faded, replaced with a sense of doom and fatalism.

It was as if the expedition was cursed and the men were paying.

"Hoist the ball," Eric ordered the youngest man in the expedition,

the only one to have been born on island soil.

The teenager, Olaf the Fin, son of Olaf the Fisherman, was apprehensive.

The strange gray orb rested on a rocky outcropping as if placed

there by the hand of God. He had no way of knowing that the object

had descended from the sky some forty-eight thousand years before.

Olaf approached the orb cautiously. Everyone in the party knew of Eric's

penchant for violence; in fact, everyone on the icy island knew his legend.

Eric was not asking-he was demanding-so Olaf did not attempt

to disagree or argue. He merely swallowed hard and bent down.