“Indeed,” Ligacheva said, staring. “And beyond that, the ground is bare.” She pointed.
Schaefer looked at the area the Russian indicated and saw earth that was not just uncovered, but torn up and raw. “Something tells me that’s not shown on your friend’s map,” he said.
”Your something speaks the truth,” Ligacheva agreed. She watched as the American trudged ahead.
Schaefer was an enigma to her. He was endlessly bitter and cynical, constantly mocking any sort of authority, loyalty, trust, even simple humanity yet he was here, pushing on into the unknown against a fearsome foe. He had fought the alien sentry with little more than his bare hands-and for what? He professed no love for his fellow man, no devotion to his homeland. The other Americans plainly hated him, he had mentioned no family or friends…
Perhaps his life was so empty that he had no fear of losing it. He seemed to exist in a friendless world of pain and death; perhaps those devils from the stars were all he had left to give his existence meaning or purpose.
”It’s warm,” Ligacheva said; removing her hat and shoving it into a pocket.
”It’s more than warm,” Schaefer replied, unclipping the collar of his plastic suit. “Something’s got the temperature way up-it must be pushing sixty degrees…”
”Sixty?” Ligacheva exclaimed. Then she realized that the American must be using the foolish, archaic Fahrenheit scale, and quickly worked the conversion in her head. Fifteen or sixteen degrees Celsius-yes, that was about right. She unbuttoned her coat as Schaefer unzipped.
They were walking on bare, moist stone now, without even lingering traces of ice. Something had not just melted the ice and snow, but had boiled most of it away, heating the canyon air in the process.
”What could possibly produce so much heat?” she wondered aloud.
Schaefer, in the lead and scrambling up onto a boulder just at a bend in the ravine, stopped in his tracks and pointed around the corner.
”How about that?” he asked.
She stepped up on the boulder beside him, to where she could see around the corner, and she, too, stopped dead.
They had, beyond question, found the alien ship. It lay in a pit ahead of them; the heat it radiated had melted the permafrost, and its weight had let it sink down into the formerly frozen mud that lined the bottom of the canyon. It was half-buried in dirt, mud, and gravel.
It was gigantic. It was an immense mass of something, but neither Ligacheva nor Schaefer could decide, upon looking at it, whether it was metal or some other material entirely-to Ligacheva it looked almost like bone. Its shape was curving, organic, impossible to describe. Large parts of its surface were an eerie red that seemed to glow dully in the darkness of the arctic night; the rest was lost in shadows, black against that luminescent crimson.
And one arched area, roughly the size and shape of a large door, glowed a brighter red and appeared to be an opening into the ship’s interior.
”I think it’s a different model from the ones I saw in New York,” Schaefer said. “Can’t be sure, as I didn’t get a look at those from above like this.”
”Is that… that opening, there…” Ligacheva struggled to phrase the question she wanted to ask.
”Looks like the welcome mat’s out,” the American said, answering her.
”Should we go in?” Ligacheva asked.
Schaefer hesitated, considering his answer, and saw the air shimmer slightly just beside the opening. The shimmer seemed to move away, across the hull-then the rock blocked his view and he lost sight of it.
It could have been that dizziness from loss of blood had made him imagine it, but Schaefer didn’t think so. He thought it was real.
”No need to hurry,” he said, stepping back down off the boulder. He ducked back out of sight and settled comfortably onto a rock.
If that shimmer had been an alien, and it had already seen him, they were as good as dead-but he was hoping it hadn’t seen him.
Ligacheva joined him behind the bend in the canyon wall and looked at him, puzzled.
”Now what?” she asked.
”Quiet,” he said. “And try not to move. I thought I spotted one of those things.”
Ligacheva tensed; the two of them sat motionless in their sheltered corner for a long moment.
Schaefer was just beginning to decide that he had imagined that shimmer after all when he saw it again, moving along the far wall of the canyon. He watched.
Ligacheva saw the American’s eyes focus on something across the ravine; she turned her own head and searched, but couldn’t spot it.
Then it was gone, and Schaefer relaxed.
”I think our boy’s gone to check on his buddy up the canyon,” he said.
”The sentry we killed?”
Schaefer nodded.
”Then it will know we are in the area,” Ligacheva said. “What will it do?”
”That’s a very good question,” Schaefer said. “And figuring out an equally good answer is why I’m sitting here trying to think.”
He looked around, studying their surroundings-which were almost entirely bare rock. This entire stretch of the ravine had been cooked free of ice. “That thing’s radiating an unbelievable amount of heat,” he said. “That would explain why the satellites picked it up on infrared.”
Ligacheva nodded. “We knew this,” she said.
”But when those boys stopped by the Big Apple to play last year, we couldn’t spot them with infrared,” Schaefer pointed out. “We couldn’t spot them with much of anything. They’ve got stealth technology that makes a B-2 bomber look like a fucking Goodyear blimp wrapped in neon.”
”Then I would say that something must be broken in there,” Ligacheva said. “This ship is hardly invisible.”
”That’s another thing,” Schaefer said. “The ships that cruised Third Avenue were invisible, but we can see this baby just fine. I’d say a lot of things must be pretty broken up in there.”
Ligacheva nodded. She gestured at the sides of the ravine, where the rock had been broken and scarred by some recent impact. “As you said earlier, I do not think they intended to land here at all, and from the appearance of this place, I do not think they landed well.”
Schaefer nodded. “That’s right-it’s pretty clear that this wasn’t a planned visit. That might explain part of their attitude problem-it must have been a rough ride bouncing down this canyon.”
”Understanding their ill temper does not tell us how to deal with it.”
”Oh, I don’t know,” Schaefer said. “Knowing that they’re pissed at the whole damned universe gives us a clue that they aren’t going to want to listen when we ask them nicely to surrender.”
Ligacheva frowned. “If you actually saw one of them just now…” she began.
”Oh, I saw it, Schaefer said. “And I’m glad it didn’t see us.”
”When it finds its dead companion, it will return here,” Ligacheva pointed out. “It will then be angry at us, as well as the universe, no?”
”Could be,” Schaefer conceded.
”And while it did not detect us this time, we cannot count on being so fortunate a second time.”
”Yeah, I’d thought of that.”
”We must act quickly then, before it returns.”
”Act how? What would you suggest we do?”
Ligacheva’s mouth opened, then closed again.
”I don’t know,” she admitted.
”Neither do I,” Schaefer said. He dumped the pack from his shoulder. “I think it’s time to check out just what General Philips and his high-tech boys packed us for lunch; maybe there’s something here that will give us an idea. After all, the general got all this fancy equipment to deal with that ship down there-maybe some of it’ll actually work. I’ve lugged this stuff all this way on the off chance we’ll need it, so let’s see what Lynch handed me to carry.” He opened the pack’s top flap and reached in.