The altimeter needle dipped below the ten-thousand-foot mark. Ten thousand feet. It was a miracle they had made it so low; a miracle a wall of rock had not risen suddenly and blocked their glide path. Then, almost directly ahead, the trees parted and the landing lights revealed a flat, snow-covered field.

“A meadow!” Gold shouted. “A gorgeous, beautiful alpine meadow five degrees to starboard.”

“I see it,” acknowledged Vylander. He coaxed the slight course adjustment out of the Stratocruiser by jockeying the engine-cowl flaps and throttle settings.

There was no time for the formality of a checklist run-through. It was to be a do-or-die approach, textbook wheels-up landing. The sea of trees disappeared beneath the nose of the cockpit, and Gold cut off the ignition and electrical circuits as Vylander stalled the Stratocruiser a scant ten feet above the ground. The three remaining engines died and the great dark shadow below quickly rose and converged upon the falling fuselage.

The impact was far less brutal than any of them had a right to expect. The belly kissed the snow and bumped lightly, once, twice, and then settled down like a giant ski. How long the harrowing, uncontrolled ride continued Vylander could not tell. The short seconds passed like minutes. And then the fallen aircraft slid clumsily to a stop and there was a deep silence, deathly still and ominous.

Burns was the first to react.

“By God … we did it!” he murmured through trembling lips.

Gold stared ashen-faced into the windshield. His eyes saw only white. An impenetrable blanket of snow had been piled high against the glass. Slowly he turned to Vylander and opened his mouth to say something, but the words never came. They died in his throat.

A rumbling vibration suddenly shook the Stratocruiser, followed by a sharp crackling noise and the tortured screech of metal being bent and twisted.

The white outside the windows dissolved into a dense wall of cold blackness and then there was nothing-nothing at all.

At his Naval Headquarters office in Washington, Admiral Bass vacantly studied a map indicating Vixen 03’s scheduled flight path. It was all there in his tired eyes, the deeply etched lines on his pale sunken cheeks, the weary slump of his shoulders. In the past four months Bass had aged far beyond his years. The desk phone rang and he picked it up.

“Admiral Bass?” came a familiar voice.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Secretary Wilson tells me you wish to call off the search for Vixen 03.”

“That’s true,” Bass said quietly. “I see no sense in prolonging the agony. Navy surface craft, Air Force search planes, and Army ground Units have combed every inch of land and sea for fifty miles along either

side of Vixen O3’s plotted course.”

“What’s your opinion?”

“My guess is her remains are resting on the seabed of the Pacific Ocean,” answered Bass.

“You feel she made it past the West Coast?”

“I do.”