Beside her Sam Reid stood rock still and as she watched four lenses lumped the visor over his face. It gave the appearance of some sort of giant alien being staring down on the puny Earthlings below it.
Morag turned back to the mist-filled basin. The more she stared, the more the hair on the back of her neck rose. “Well, that’s not creepy at all,” she whispered. Like the boiling sea of another world. Suddenly she wished that Alex Hunter had tied her up and left her behind.
CHAPTER 16
Alex stared down into the thick mist. It was impossible to see anything through it, and it hung in a layer over the crater floor that extended for miles. Whatever had come out of the Orlando had massively spread.
He exhaled slowly; he had a bad feeling about this one. With any luck, they’d be gone within another eight to twelve hours. Without luck, they had breathable air for two days — one day, if it was high activity. He set a timer on his wrist that would begin counting down when he engaged his oxygen.
Alex then quickly sent off a message to Hammerson: Reached peak, zero casualties, commencing search, over. The message screen on his forearm screen rotated for a few seconds, before giving him back a single word — failed.
Shit, must be the effects of the atmosphere blister already. He’d expected it, and they’d planned for it. He’d have to send up communication bullets as they went. This meant he could get brief messages out, but nothing could get in — one-way comms only — as good as it got.
They were above the strange mist layer, and with his visor still up, he couldn’t smell any unusual odors, but he could feel the warmth against his face. He’d give the team another few minutes to acclimatize before dropping down. The temperature differential would be too extreme for the civilians, so better to ease them into it.
As Alex watched something seemed to lump in the center of the sea of cloud like a whale coming to the surface but not quite breaching. The huge dark shape traveled for several hundred feet before sinking from sight.
“I hope that was a trick of the light.” Sam had appeared beside him.
“You and me both,” Alex said, continuing to watch. “Hammerson said they detected movement, so…”
“Can’t see a goddamn thing.” Sam retracted his quad lenses, held up an arm using his wrist scanner, and moved it over the crater. He read some data and whistled. “The actual floor of the crater is still another 500 feet down, and given the mist only starts about half way, we still got some climbing to do.”
“At least it’s all downhill.” Alex grinned up at his friend.
Sam nodded. “Yep, there is that.” He lowered his arm. “What the hell is keeping it from blowing away?”
“Good question… and next one is, where is it all coming from?” He checked his wrist communicator again. “Comms are down. So its electromagnetic influence is reaching us even up here. I can’t smell anything, but we’ll need to permanently hood up as soon as we start to descend.”
Sam grunted. “Can you see anything?”
Alex knew what he was asking, and turned back to the smog. His vision was far superior to anyone else’s, and could even see changes in thermal radiation. He stared, concentrating, and saw that further out over the mist, there was the occasional swirl and eddy, as if whatever he thought he saw before was still swimming just beneath its surface.
“There’s certainly movement down there. But I can’t tell what it is, or whether it’s a single signature or multiple objects moving together.”
“Our Russian friends… or maybe survivors?” Sam raised his eyebrows.
Alex continued to stare. “Don’t think so.”
Sam sighed. “Why do I get the feeling that this was never going to be a simple rescue and recovery mission?”
Alex snorted. “If that’s all it was, they wouldn’t have needed us. So let’s find the Orlando, and get the hell out of here.” He turned. “Knight.”
The young HAWC joined them. “Boss?”
Alex nodded toward the crater. “Give me a direction on the Orlando.”
Steve Knight held up a tracker, the screen showing a 3D representation of the crater basin, cutting it up into a grid, and then identifying a quadrant where the main shuttle fragments rested. He pointed with a flat hand.
“North, northeast, 4,569.3 feet. Terrain is… wait a minute.” He frowned as he looked at the formations. “Hard to get an accurate geographic reading; there’s plenty of weird formations down there, maybe rock, but…” His frown deepened.
“What is it?” Alex watched him.
“System must be screwy. Formations that were there a few seconds ago are now gone.” He turned slightly, angling the scanner. “No, not gone… just somewhere else.”
“Could it be that the magnetic disturbance is giving us some distortion?” Sam’s brows rose slightly.
Alex looked at Sam whose face said he didn’t believe it for a second. Alex nodded and looked back out over the murky air. “Okay, that’s enough sightseeing. Let’s find us some holiday snaps and maybe a few dead astronauts.”
The group shed a lot of their clothing. The HAWCs now stood at the cliff edge, gazing out over the crater basin in their armored suits, hoods up and looking like a group of heavily muscled black-clad robots. The NASA crew donned a modern version of lightweight HAZMAT suits and breathing equipment, and Morag and Calvin wore the borrowed same. Piles of cold weather clothing lay at their feet. It wouldn’t be needed down lower where the temperatures reached fifty degrees and well above that in humidity.
Alex watched the group begin to scale down and then paused to briefly look up at the clouds above. He could just make out the thrum of a helicopter he knew was up there somewhere. He didn’t like the odds of being able to grab the sample from the sky, but if Vincenzo said he could do it, then Alex had to believe him.
He turned to his team. “Franks, Dundee, take us down.”
“Yo.” Casey leaped over the side, followed by the Aussie, and then the rest of the group.
Scaling down, even with his insulated suit, Alex felt the warmth embrace him. The air was thick, and he knew it wasn’t just the humidity, but the mix of strange gases being given off by something the Orlando might have brought down with it. He paused to look at his gloved hand — it glistened, like it was coated in oil. And the mist seemed to be small particles rather than a gas.
Alex let go of the rope and dropped the last dozen feet, and on landing his feet squelched. He looked down, seeing the green-gray sludge.
Nice. “Knight, give me an LF check.”
The young HAWC pointed his forearm reader at their surroundings and turned slowly. “Holy shit. Life forms off the chart.” He shook his head. “Hard to get any sort of clear reading. I’m overloading the sensor.”
Alex grunted. “Probably the free-floating bacteria — basically this fog is a living thing.” He looked down at the muck he stood in. “As well as this stuff.” He frowned, listening. “Anyone else hear that?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Like some sort of whine, like when you got a goddamn mosquito in your room. Where’s it coming from?”
Alex shook his head, turning slowly. It seemed to be coming from all around them. Everywhere.
“This mist… it’s not a gas,” Anne Peterson said, waving a hand slowly in front of her face. “This is suspended particular matter. Bacterial clumps, maybe algae, or maybe something else entirely.” She waved her hand in front of her face again making the mist swirl. “It has weight, so the lighter form is suspended, and after a while it sinks, clumps, and becomes this slime matter.”