“What if these are just scientists checking on the station?” Mark asked. It was a reasonable question.

“Then they would have shown up here a week ago like our government had asked. Now, go!”

The trio split up. Linda returned to Andy Gangle’s room. The ceiling was acoustical tile made of a cardboardlike material hanging from metal support tracks. As limber as a monkey, she hoisted herself onto a dresser and lifted one of the tiles with the barrel of her gun. There was a three-foot crawl space between the ceiling and the dome’s insulated roof. She set her gun onto the ceiling and boosted herself up. Her heavy clothing made it an almost impossible job, but by twisting her hips and kicking her legs she managed to lever her upper body through the opening.

She heard the front door crash open and someone calling out in Spanish. To her ears, it sounded like shouted commands rather than inquiring hails.

She slithered her legs up into the crawl space and carefully set the thin tile back to its original position. There was an insulated Flexi-tube nearby connected to a ceiling grate that was used to feed warm air into the room. Linda pulled the silvery tube off the grate and peered downward. She had a pretty good bird’s-eye view.

The adrenaline that shot through her system when she heard Linc’s shouted warning was wearing off fast, and she became aware of the cold again. She didn’t have to contend with any wind, but the crawl space was the ambient thirty-plus degrees below zero. Her face was numb, and her fingertips were starting to lose sensation despite the heavy mittens. Keeping still was the worst thing possible for her body right now, but it was exactly what she had to do.

More bursts of guttural Spanish sounded below. She closed her eyes, imagining soldiers scouting the base as she and her team had just done. What would they make of the massacre? Would they even care?

A man wearing a white arctic uniform and carrying a large pistol suddenly entered the bedroom. He wore a mask much like the one Linda had sported, so she could not see his features. Like Mark, he stared at the bloody writing on the wall.

It happened so fast, there was nothing Linda could do to stop it. A drop of clear fluid dripped from her nose and pattered against the man’s shoulder. He brushed at it without turning his head and made to leave and continue his search.

As soon as he stepped out of the room, Linda was in motion. Like a spider keeping to its web, she moved hand and foot along the tile ceiling’s support rails. They weren’t meant to take the weight of a fully grown person, and she was afraid the wires that kept them in place would snap.