It was Sir Isaac Newton, the man who formulated the theory of universal gravitation, who first discovered that sunlight passing through a prism revealed the colors of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The human eye perceives only visible light, which lies in a very small region of the spectrum, each color possessing a different wavelength. From shortest to longest the rainbow runs red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The human eye cannot see wavelengths outside this spectrum. Ultraviolet radiation has a longer wavelength than violet light, and infrared radiation has a shorter wavelength than red light. White light is a mixture of every color of the visible spectrum. Black is the absence of light.

Sunlight, our most important source of energy, consists of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Violet and blue wavelengths scatter across our atmosphere more efficiently, but the sky looks blue because the sun emits more energy as blue light than as violet and our eyes are more sensitive to its wavelength. Grass and leaves appear green to us because green is the only color not absorbed by the leaves. The sun’s scattered wavelengths shorten at sunrise and sunset, producing orange and red hues.

My heart pounded with adrenaline as I moved through the ice tunnel, my eyes darting from the pulsating orange light ahead to the Geiger counter in my gloved right hand.

Just a quick look. One quick look and I’ll have enough information to theorize cause and effect. Then I’m up the rope and climbing out of the chasm, and we’re back in the sub and en route to the north basin. Up the ice sheet and I’m done. Done with Vostok, done with Antarctica and its insane cold. Then it’s home to Brandy and William.

Wary of the time, I started to jog, counting each ice-crunching stride to gauge the distance back to the rope.

Twenty-one… twenty-two… twenty-three…

It was a surreal feeling, the color as dazzling as a tropical sunset, the cavern’s solitude violated only by my metal spikes digging into the ice.

Eighty-six… eighty-seven… eighty-eight…

By the time I arrived at the end of the tunnel, the ice was glowing red.

Wheezing cold air from my esophagus, I bent over and paused to rest, my eyes tearing, the goggles pinned against my neck. The tunnel ended ten paces ahead. The light originated from a meter-high ten-pointed figure, the upper three sparks white, the middle six blinking crimson, the bottom one violet.

The pulsating marker was embedded in metal, part of a massive object that spanned the entire opening of the tunnel and beyond, the dark mass entirely encased in ice except for the glowing panel.

This was no asteroid. This was an object not of our world.

How long had it been here? Was it still functioning? Was it the source of the magnetic interference?

Remembering the Geiger counter, I scanned the icon, which registered no radiation.