New sequences of tunnels revealed themselves through Hayden’s deepscan, showing an ever-increasing complexity that stretched for miles in every direction.
“Good Lord,” he whispered. “What the hell is this place?”
The Spector suddenly sloughed to the right, then bit down again and steadied.
“Too fast for the treads,” Max said between clenched teeth. “We’re starting to slide.”
“For what it’s worth,” Ryan said, “I’m actually starting to believe these read-outs now. They tell me we’re more than five hundred feet below sea level and under more than 1,500 feet of ice.”
Max’s head was pounding. “Any chance this angle’s going to level out?” he asked Hayden.
“Not that I can see,” Hayden said.
They slipped violently to the left, lifted up almost forty-five degrees on one side…and then slammed back down to level, though they were still pointed downward to an even greater degree. It was like being trapped inside a windowless toboggan that was slaloming down an impossibly difficult track.
We have to get off this roller coaster, Simon told himself.
Max glared at the front-screen, then flicked an eye at the deep scan. “You see what I see? An alcove, off to the right? About three thousand feet ahead.”
Simon shifted his view to the right, downrange…and found it. Little more than a vertical shadow in the harsh spotlights of the Spector.
The back end of the sliding ship wagged like the tail of an angry cat. They could all hear the ice rushing under the treads now-not catching, not holding, just screeching as the whirring treads spun helplessly over the frigid surface. Max checked his speedometer readout. 60…70…80…
“Shoot for it,” Simon screamed.
“Then I’ll have to lose velocity,” Max told him as the shadow of the alcove grew closer and sharper. “If I try to turn into it at this speed, we’ll disintegrate into the far wall.”
“One hundred twenty miles inland,” Ryan shouted. “Depth is 1,782 feet below the ice sheet and increasing.”
“Hayden!” Max called. “Standard braking isn’t working for shit here! I can’t slow her down!”
Hayden frowned. “The blades-”
“I’ve reached maximum extension on the blades! We’re sliding, goddamn it!”
“That’s not possible.” Hayden pulled up the diagram of the extended tread, searching for a solution.
Max checked his velocity again: 85…90…
The surface flattened a bit, lost at least ten degrees of descent as they slipped at ridiculous speed-but it was too little and too late.
“You know what, Max?” Hayden shouted to Max, sounding somewhat terrified. “You’re right. We’re losing traction.”
“What’s next?”
Simon didn’t allow fear to take hold. Rescuing Oliver is my only mission in life, he told himself…and was suddenly struck with a mad inspiration.
“Max!” he screamed. “Heat the treads and bend their front points toward each other! Make a ‘V!’”
“That’s not possible!” Hayden snapped. “This isn’t a goddamn set of skis! You’ll destroy the integrity of the entire mechanism! Hell, at this speed, they might snap and destroy the whole vessel! You want that?”
“Beats slamming into a wall head on,” Max said. He cocked his wrists over the tread controls and rotated his thumbs inward, as if turning down two enormous dials. The tread icons above the controls shuddered for a second and then moved, slowly at first, from two parallel lines to an upside-down “V” shape.
The treads began moving together.
The Spector started to vibrate, to shudder like a derailing train. The rattling was so violent
Simon was sure the vessel was going to come apart at the seams.
“Heat it up, Max!” Simon demanded. “Retract the right blade, let the rear slalom to the right!”
Immediately, Max adjusted the controls. The Spector was slowing but still not enough, still going far too fast, and now it was turning as it slid, not quite broadside to the downhill slope but close enough to scare the living daylight out of him. If they hit a pothole or a crack at this angle, and it caught the edge of the tread, they would roll over and over, tumbling downhill like a rolling pin totally out of control.
He ticked up the heating elements as they slid. He heard the thundering grumble through the screech of the ice as the treads started digging deeper, leaving an eight-inch groove behind them as they careened downhill.
The entrance to the alcove was a narrow, gray rectangle in a raddled field of white now…sliding into view from the left, to the center, to-
Simon was staring at the screen, trying to calculate the speed. Think like you’re skiing, he thought. Timing is everything. “Ready?” he said.
“And waiting,” Max said tightly, his hands still deep in the controls.
“When I tell you, just tap the accelerator-jump us forward, fast and hard, but not too much.”
“Got it.” Max said tightly. Come on, then. They were sliding, sliding, goddamn it.
“Ready?”
“YES!”
“NOW!”
Max pounded on the thrusters, bashed them forward with a leap of thrust that shot them straight toward the opposite wall at a vicious angle-straight toward the endless white vertical barrier that grew closer and closer and-
— the gray gap of the alcove slipped into view, right in front of them, just a few feet before they hit the vertical ice. In that instant they shot through it, and Max stood on the brakes, purposely swaying them to the right and up, riding halfway up the curved wall of the alcove itself. He could feel the treads, still pointing into a “V,” dig deep into new glass-like ice, dragging them down, lowering their speed, more and more, until the Spector slid sideways one last time, back to the level floor of the alcove as the forward momentum bled away. It wallowed for a beat, rolling back and forth on its treads like a fat man on a swing, and then finally stopped. “Not dead yet,” Andrew said as he watched Samantha and Nastasia, white as ghosts, still gripping the armrests on their chairs.
“Thank god,” Samantha said.
Nope, Max thought from the front of the vessel, not yet. He eased back in his chair, lifted his arms from the console and stretched. “Take a rest, everyone. We’ll get out and explore in a bit.” He did his best not to sound completely relieved and breathless.
Not dead yet, he repeated. And I am absolutely amazed at that.
SUBMARINE DOCK
Roland ordered the DITV to halt at the end of Tunnel 3, just a few hundred feet before it opened into the dome. His hand gripped the sides of his seat until the plastic cracked like dry paper; he was that angry, that frustrated.
The goddamn Spiders had beaten him there. The DITV crew had received the CS-23s locational beacon signals just thirty seconds before, and the coordinates were unmistakable-they were waiting at the shore of the dome’s basin, deciding what to do next.
“I can’t believe they’re already here,” he spat out. “What the hell happened?”
“They move quickly,” the tactical officer said very quietly. “Even more quickly than we thought they could, I suppose.”
“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s go. I want to see this.”
The DITV tumbled forward and entered the dimly lit dome. Flare fire and the remnants of the bullets penetrating the ice shelf gave it a ghostly level of illumination, not like most of the tunnels and chambers at this depth and below. As they entered, Roland strode to the surveillance officer’s console and hovered over him. “Show me how far they’ve gone,” he said. “They’ll reach the extraction tunnel if they continue like this down Tunnel 3. We can’t have them discover what’s down there.”