Inside Scully moved feebly.
"Scully!" he shouted. "Keep going!"
She made a guttural sound in reply, moan-ing softly, but moved ahead.
"Keep going, Scully—"
They inched onwards, Mulder pushing her when she no longer had to strength to con-tinue. At last the vent opening loomed above them, a square of pearly gray light. Mulder pushed her through and followed, gasping at the bite of cold fresh air as he crawled forward. He looked back constantly to see if any of the creatures were following.
He and Scully were in the space formed by the air pocket, where Mulder had first fallen down from the ice shelf. All around them, the ice and snow which formed the walls of the cavern were melting.
Overhead a crater-sized hole had opened, and they could see bright blue sky through the whirling mist. Mulder shakily got to his feet. Again he looked back.
With an inhuman shriek, one of the crea-tures leaped from the vent opening, claws extending toward him. Before it could reach him, a blast a steam erupted and sent it hurling back down. There was a low, threatening rum-ble. More steam curled up from the vent. With a cry Mulder grabbed Scully by the shoulders. He threw her toward the far wall, leaping after her and covering his eyes.
Behind them, a volcanic blast of steam shot from the vent they had just left, exploding upwards and melting what remained of the snowy walls. There was a deafening hiss as the blast subsided. Mulder grabbed Scully and stumbled toward where there was now a slop-ing embankment, leading up to the surface of the ice sheet.
They reached the top; Scully coughing as she caught her breath, Mulder panting heavily. Together they staggered away from the vent. They came to a small rise and clambered up it, falling often in the soft snow. When they got to its summit, they turned to look back.
Below them was the ice sheet. A series of regularly spaced holes had appeared in it, and through these steam was blasting, defining the circular structure beneath. The white domed tents, dwarfed now by the gargantuan edifice under the surface. As they stared, steam from below blasted with hideous force, the sound so loud they covered their ears against it. Mulder grabbed Scully's sleeve and pulled her protec-tively towards him.
Through the cloud of condensing steam the ice station could just be glimpsed, like an abandoned toy village in all that waste. Suddenly the ice beneath it rippled, and with-out warning the entire sheet gave way. The ice station plunged downward, caving in to the very center of the buried ship. As it did so shock waves radiated outwards. The ground trembled as the horrified Mulder realized what was happening.
"We've got to run!"
He dragged her after him, the two of them looking back to see where the ice shelf was col' lapsing.
Magnificent geysers shot hundreds of feet into the air, powered by the superheated core below. Ice sheared off in an ever-expanding circle, and steam vents erupted everywhere now; they now fled through a hellish landscape of smoke and flying snow, chunks of ice and burning debris. In the center of the collapsing shelf a black shape appeared, resolving itself into a dome as the ice and steam burned off. The black dome grew more and more immense as they ran, struggling to outrace it.
With a cry Scully fell, arms flailing at the soft snow. Mulder yanked her back to her feet, his ears numbed by the roar of the emerging spacecraft. He grabbed her hand, but before they could flee farther the ground beneath them sheared away.
They fell, and fell, and finally landed, hard, on the flat surface of the ship. As it lifted into the air they slid off it and down, plummeting through the air until they crashed onto the exposed ice sheet below. Ice chunks fell in a terrible rain all about them. Mulder crouched over Scully, trying to shield her from the deadly hail of debris, as the vast black hull of the spacecraft continued to rise above them, so huge that it blotted out the sky. Faster and faster it rose, gaining momentum as it broke free of the frozen weight of the icy crater that had imprisoned it. Scully moaned, her face pressed down into the snow. Above her, Mulder stared awestruck as the ship lifted clear of the earth, rotating slowly as it hovered in the sky. For the first time he could see it clearly, the network of spokes and cells that held it together and the smooth central dome.
It continued to rise, its shadow passing over the two tiny figures on the ice below. Mulder turned to watch it pass, the shadow moving like night across the snow, swallowing a small sturdy shape in the near distance—Mulder's snow tractor. And now the craft began to glow as with some unimaginable heat, transforming itself into pure energy. All around it the sky shimmered and pulsed, as the craft seemed to expand.
And then, with a last blinding, deafening burst of energy, it disappeared into a cloud for-mation.
Echoes of its passage rumbled across the ruined landscape. The spacecraft was gone.
Mulder stared at the empty sky, then at Scully. As though awakening from a fever dream, her eyes opened and she gazed back at him. Then, slowly as a child falling asleep, he lay his head down upon the snow. His body heaved with exhaustion; his eyes closed. Moments later he began to shiver, unconscious.
Next to him Scully lay, still as death. A freezing wind howled cross the waste, sending eddies of snow whirling down into the vast crater left by the ship's passing. Then Scully began to cough. She fought to lift her head, blinking.
She looked at Mulder. His face was white, his body limp. With all the strength she had, she pulled him close to her, cradling him against her body and warming him.
She gazed back over her shoulder, at the immense crater left by the ship, dwarfing the wasteland around them, two tiny figures invisi-ble against the immensity and desolation of the endless ice.
CHAPTER 14
FBI OFFICE OF PROFESSIONAL REVIEW J, EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C.
"—in light of the report I've got here in front of me^in light of the narrative I'm now hear-ing-"
Assistant Director Jana Cassidy sat in the middle of the conference table, flanked by her colleagues.
She held a slender sheaf of papers and glanced at them as she spoke, choosing her words carefully. At the end of the table sat
Assistant Director Walter Skinner, his gaze flicking from Cassidy to the auburn-haired woman who sat at a smaller table in the center of the room, the chair beside her conspicuously empty.
"—my official report is incomplete, pend-ing these new facts that I'm being asked to rec-oncile.
Agent Scully—"
Dana Scully tilted her head. Her face bore signs of minor frostbite, but otherwise was healed. Her expression was even and com-posed, but as Cassidy spoke her blue eyes dark-ened with restrained defiance.
"—while there is direct evidence now that a federal agent may have been involved in the bombing, the other events you've laid down here seem too incredible on their own, and quite frankly, implausible in their connec-tion."
Cassidy flipped through a file on the table before her. The faces of the other board mem-bers mirrored her own—curious and slightly annoyed. Only Walter Skinner looked uncom-fortable as he shifted in his seat.