She looked around, then lowered her voice, “Hubbs is acting weird, Chief. I don’t like it. Last night, I found him staring out the viewport into the lake. I asked him what he was doing and he just smiled at me. And the way he smiled gave me the creeps. And today out at the city, he stuck real close to me. We’re supposed to stay in VR, you know, Visual Range and all that…but he was acting like a scared schoolboy. I think he saw something, only he won’t say what.”

“Maybe it’s what he saw in the viewport yesterday,” Murphy said.

But that was still open to debate—they didn’t know if he had seen anything. Hubbs had let out a cry and everyone came running. He was scared white, backing away from the port like something out there was going to get him. Again, he wouldn’t say what it was.

“He saw something,” Murphy said. “I mean, c’mon, you know the guy. He’s like iron. Shit, before yesterday, I didn’t even know he could be afraid.”

Javonivic said, “This place is getting to all of us. I’m getting the spooks myself. But it’s worse with him. I just can’t get past the idea that he saw something in the city.”

Murphy studied his hands. “Maybe he did. And worse, maybe it saw him, too.”

7
ENCOUNTER

Orr said nothing to Anderson.

He let him occupy himself with the battery of technology at the console. He walked out of the comm room quietly, calmly, drawing no attention to himself. They usually spent five hours on and five hours off at the console. Of course, both of them were pretty much on all the time because they couldn’t sleep worth a damn and what sleep they did get was not exactly restful.

Orr pulled on his parka and gloves, walked outside and stood there, staring at the decks and the lights holding back the gloom and mist. There was no sound. Nothing but an occasional drip of water or a distant cracking of the ice. Like some great soundless, black vacuum where everything was shifted into neutral. Without even starlight or weather, only that oppressive mist gathering to all sides, even time didn’t seem to exist. The world, as it were, was a stygian void.

Orr thought: Well, you gonna stand here like a wallflower waiting for a dance or are you gonna do this thing?

Sighing, he stepped out on deck, scanning his eyes back and forth. His footsteps were loud on the metal deck plates. Tensing, he moved out near the ROV which sat yellow and bulbous on its platform, the winch cables securing it wet and glistening from the moist air. He looked up and could only see darkness, but he knew that somewhere up there was the borehole leading up to the drill tower a mile above.