"Pure madness," Rivas said desperately.  "The President will never

listen to such absurd demands."

"He will not believe what I say?"

"No sane man would."

Rivas in his uneasiness had stepped too far.

Topiltzin slowly rose to his feet, eyes unblinking, head lowered, and

spoke in a toneless voice.  "Then I must send him a message he will

understand."

He raised his hands over his head, arms outstretched toward the dark

sky.  As if on cue four Indians appeared wearing white capes clasped at

the neck and nothing else.  Approaching from all sides, they quickly

subdued Rivas, who froze in astonishment.  They carried him to the stone

altar sculpted with the skulls and crossbones and threw him on his back,

holding him down by the arms and legs.

At first Rivas was too dazed to protest, too incredulous with shock to

comprehend Topiltzin's intention.  When horrorstruck realization came,

he cried out.

"Oh, God!   No!   No!"

Topiltzin coldly ignored the terrified American, the pitiful fright in

his eyes, and stepped to the side of the altar.  He gave a nod, and one

of the men ripped away Rivas's shirt, exposing the chest.

"Don't do this!" Rivas pleaded.

A razor-sharp obsidian knife seemed to materialize in Topiltzin's

upraised left hand.  The moonlight glinted from the black, glassy blade

as it hung poised.

Rivas screamed-the last sound he would ever make.

Then the knife plunged.

The tall column-statues looked down upon the bloody act with stone-cold

indifference.  They had witnessed the horrible disPlay of inhuman

cruelty thousands of times, a thousand years ago.  There was no pity in

their timeworn chiseled eyes as Rivas's still-beating heart was torn

from his chest.

Despite the people and activity around him, Pitt was captivated by the

dense silence of the cold north.  There was an incredible stillness

about it that seemed to overwhelm the voices and sounds of machinery. He

felt as though he were standing in numbing solitude inside a

refrigerator on a desolate world.

Daylight finally appeared, filtered by a peculiar gray mist that

permitted no shadows.  By midmorning the sun began to burn away the icy

haze and the sky turned a soft orange-white. The ethereal light made the

rocky peaks overlooking the fjord look like tombstones in a snow-covered

cemetery.

The scene surrounding the crash site was beginning to resemble a

military invasion.  A fleet of five Air Force helicopters had been the

first to arrive, ferrying an Army Special Service Force of heavily armed

and determined-looking men who immediately cordoned off the fuselage and

began patrolling the entire area.  An hour later, Federal Aviation

accident investigators landed and set about marking the scattered

wreckage for removal.  They were followed by a team of pathologists who

tagged and removed the bodies to the helicopters, which quickly

airlifted them to the morgue at Tule Air Force Base.

The  Navy  was  represented  by Commander Knight and the unexpected

appearance of the Polar Explorer.  All halted their grisly chores and