Imka cupped her hands to her mouth. ‘Hello!’ she cried. ‘Can anyone hear me?’ Her own echo was the only reply. ‘Arnold! It’s Imka! We’re here, we’ve found you! Please, please answer me!’

Still no response. Eddie and Nina exchanged grim glances. After four months, the chances of the crew surviving were already slim, and now looked to be non-existent.

But they still had to be sure. The ship was here, but as yet there was no sign of people, alive or dead. Maybe they had found refuge deeper in the cave . . .

The drifting boat cleared the Dionysius to provide its passengers with an unobstructed view of what lay beyond. They all reacted with shock.

The research vessel was not the only thing trapped in the ice.

Startled gasps came from the explorers. ‘Bloody hell,’ said Eddie. ‘You know what I think that is?’

‘I do,’ Nina replied. ‘And the worst part is . . . I’m not sure you’re wrong.’

If it wasn’t a spaceship, she struggled to think of any alternative possibilities. The object was easily as big as the Dionysius, but it was hard to be certain of its exact dimensions; a large part of it was embedded in the cave wall, dimly visible through the stressed ice. The iceberg’s roll had also left it lying at a steep angle. What she could see of it was a flattened cone in shape, jagged strakes and fins on its skin sweeping back into the cliff. Unlike its fellow prisoner, which was coated in frost, the metal hull was clearly visible. The kind of metal was a mystery, though. It had an oily sheen that her gaze almost slid off.

She shivered, not just from the cold. The object had an animalistic quality, reminding her of the head of a snake – or more fancifully, a dragon. Two elongated slits in its upper surface formed eyes, staring menacingly back at her. Windows? A pair of long, spear-shaped protrusions beneath its nose took on the role of fangs, increasing the resemblance.

She saw as they drew nearer that it was damaged. The hull was split and crumpled where it had succumbed to the pressure of the ice during its long entrapment.

But what was it? Had they really found a UFO?

‘It does look like a UFO,’ Cheng said, as if reading Nina’s mind.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Vorster. ‘And it’s deep in the ice. How long has it been here?’

The astonishing sight had distracted even Imka. ‘We . . . we estimated the deepest ice at over a million years old,’ she said. ‘This cave was at sea level when the Dionysius found it, and nine-tenths of an iceberg is underwater, so it’s been buried for at least a hundred thousand years.’

‘Same age as the UFO in The Thing,’ Eddie noted with amusement.

Nina didn’t smile. ‘I was thinking more the same age as the Veteres,’ she whispered to him.