When nothing interesting happened for about ten full minutes, she got up and walked the last hundred yards to the spot where she sensed the X. She stared down, confused at first. She nudged what appeared to be a body with her foot, while holding up her accelerator and aiming in sweeps around her. This could be a trap.

  “Tanner?” she whispered. She reached down to touch the figure in the darkness.

  It felt unexpectedly soft to the touch—like a deflated balloon. At her touch, however, it suddenly stiffened and she yanked back her hand in alarm. Frowning, she slowly stood up.

  A hand fell on her shoulder, pushing her back down to her knees. She cursed and aimed the accelerator into the face of the man who had her.

  “Hey, hold on,” he said. “It’s me!”

  She realized with a sigh it was Tanner. He had stripped out of his suit and was dripping wet. She slapped away his hand as he reached to help her up.

  She flicked on a flashlight and examined the thing she’d been investigating. It was Tanner’s suit—without Tanner inside.

  “It jumped when I touched it.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “They do that sometimes. You have to be careful when you walk on them. They can trip you.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m staying alive,” he said. “What are you doing here? How did you get past the barrier?”

  “Haak helped me.”

  “Haak? That guy is a sneaky bastard.”

  “I figured that out,” she said, then quickly related her story.

  “Thanks for coming to save me.”

  “Frankly, I’m surprised to find you still alive.”

  “Yeah, I’m kind of surprised as well. The machine dragged me through the barrier to this spot. It had other men dangling from its claws. My suit kept me alive, I think. The claws weren’t very gentle and I might have a few cracked ribs, but I’m still breathing. When we got here, I tried to crawl away, but it always caught me and dragged me back to a circle of bodies. It killed the rest of them, either by accident or design. It was doing something, getting ready to drill into everyone’s heads I guess.”

  “Why do they do that?”

  “I don’t really know. Maybe their technology is such that they can read memories from dead brain tissue. Or maybe they’re doing a thesis on human brain anatomy and they want to get an A.”

  Malena laughed quietly. “Get your suit back on. You’ll need it.”

  “But that’s how I managed to stay alive. See the others? Their brains all got drilled, not mine. I figured maybe it was sensing the suit, so I took it off, slipped away and hid in the bog.”

  “Well, you got half of it right. Come on.”

  She led him back into the nearest pond while he struggled to get his wet, dirty suit on. She explained that the machines couldn’t see a person who was completely submerged in water.

  “Damn,” he said when she was finished. “I could have avoided a lot of bug bites if I’d figured that one out. Strange though, they must not be using infrared. They can’t be following the X the way you do, either. I wonder how they perceive us. I wonder what they must think of us.”

  “They think of us as lab rats,” she said. “That much I’m sure of.”

  She told him about passing through the barrier and shooting down one of the machines with the accelerator. At that, he looked impressed.

  “Well done. I was going to ask for my weapon back—but you figured out the soft spot and killed the machine.”

  “You’re still in command of this team. If you want it, the big gun is yours.”

  “I’m going to let you keep the accelerator, as you have the ability to sense the enemy and aim the right direction before they’re in visual range. Knowing where the aim in the dark is just as important as being familiar with the weapon.”

  She nodded and felt relieved. She hadn’t wanted to give it back. She liked the big gun now that it had saved her life.

  Standing in a pond, Tanner went over some of the finer details of the weapon’s operation. She watched and nodded. He handed it back and they both looked at each other.

  “Thanks for coming after me,” he said, his tone shifting. He’d been all business, but now there was a softer tone in his voice.

  “You would have done the same.”

  “You think so? Well, you might be right. You’re the psi agent. What the hell are we going to do now?”

  Malena looked at him in surprise. He’d always been in command, and up until this very moment he’d always had a plan. But now he was opening up the question for discussion.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I came here to find you. That was the entirety of my plan.”

  “I suppose we have two choices, try to escape, or learn what we can while we’re here.”

  “Option three is to report in to XCU and ask for instructions.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s hold off on that one. We both know what they’ll ask us to do. Let’s make this our own call.”

  Malena nodded. She knew what he meant. Burke and Ostlund were of the same mind when it came to agents—we were all expendable. They wanted X, every scrap of it they could get. They didn’t care how many teams of people they sent into a meat grinder to get it.

  “There’s another factor,” she said. “I don’t think we can get out of this barrier on our own.” She explained what Haak had told her about turning off the field to get out, and how he’d be waiting when she did.

  “Ah, okay,” Tanner said in sudden understanding. “I get it now. He’ll be waiting all right, with a fresh team. He’ll swoop in to grab all the X the moment we get the wall down. That’s why he tricked you into going through the barrier in the first place.”

  She frowned and started wading. He joined her. They watched their environment with wary eyes and she scanned constantly with her mind.

  There was nothing moving other than a few alligators. At the center of the enclosed zone she sensed the big thrumming contact. It was still there and motionless. She wondered what it would look like when she got there.

  “Both of us know there’s only one thing to do,” she said. “We have to take down the barrier, just as Haak told me to do. Otherwise, we’re trapped in here with these crazy machines. They’ll find us and kill us eventually.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But I don’t agree with you on one point. I don’t think Haak tricked me into coming here.”

  Tanner laughed. “Oh no? He’s very manipulative. People are always taking deadly risks around him—but not Haak himself. He’s always slipping away to do something else. Something that won’t get him killed. In the meantime, the rest of the slobs he’s working with tend to die.”

  “That might be true, in fact I think I’ve already witnessed that behavior pattern. It’s a very effective survival technique. I can see why he’s a successful agent.”

  Tanner snorted. “He’s effective at stealing the credit for the work of others.”

  “Exactly. But what I meant was I would have come through the barrier even if I had known he wasn’t coming with me.”

  He looked at her.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks again. I owe you. I would never have figured out all I had to do was keep my suit on and slip away into a big pond.”

  They both laughed quietly and then got back to the grim business of staying alive. They steadily approached the blob of X she detected at the center of the zone. Malena estimated they would reach it by early morning. She wanted to stop to take a nap, but she knew they couldn’t take a break now. The machines might come swooping in on them at any time.

  -17-

  When she saw what was at the very center of the region with her own eyes, she didn’t believe it. How could they have skipped this in the briefing? It was huge.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked Tanner, whispering into his ear.

  He glanced at her. She thought he looked a bit guilty.

  “Remember your clearance level,” he said.

  “But did you know what was here?”

  “Not exactly. Remember the strange cloud formations that covered the area until recently? They blocked out details.”

  “Still,” she said, marveling. “You’ve got satellites. You’ve probably got something better than a satellite by now—something powered by X that floats in the sky. You had to know it was here. That’s a ship of some kind—and it’s massive.”

  “We estimate it displaces about a quarter million tons,” he admitted. “More than twice as big as our biggest supertanker.”

  She took several steps forward. He put his hand on her arm, pulling her back.

  “It’s not safe,” he said.

  “Of course it’s not,” she snapped, taking another step forward.

  Her last step carried her past the edge of the tree cover. From here, she could see all the way to the top of the massive shadowy hulk that thrust up out of the swamp. The ship looked like a giant elongated football that had rammed into the Earth. It was half-buried in the ground, with the upper half jutting up at an angle. The ship was a dark metallic color, like that of scorched metal. It was detailed by a thousand small angular shapes which were traced on its hull in geometric patterns. The shapes varied. Some were cut into the hull and appeared darker than the rest. Were they windows? She couldn’t tell. The other shapes stuck out: a forest of angular spikes, swirls and prongs.

  “What are those things sticking out all over?” she asked. “Are they instruments? Weapons?”

  “We don’t know,” he said. “They could be either, or none of the above.”

  She turned and looked at him in shock. “How could you hope to face this monster? It’s as big as a skyscraper.”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes they’re completely dead. This one is damaged, certainly.”

  “It’s so big…” she said, retreating under the cover of the trees again.

  Tanner stood close to her and seemed more relaxed now that she wasn’t exposed. “You’ve got to understand, usually when we go on one of these missions it’s a small vessel—often with a single dead pilot in the driver’s seat.”

  “This time they’re alive and they’re not helpless. How could such a thing crash here with no one seeing it? Didn’t it make a burn like a fireball in the atmosphere as it came down? What about radar?”

  Tanner shook his head. “No, none of that.”

  “These ships don’t show up on radar?”

  “Yes, sure they do. But they don’t exactly fall out of the sky the way you’re describing it. They aren’t from space—not exactly.”

  She blinked at him in confusion. “Are you saying they’re time-travelers or something? How’d they get here?”

  “No,” Tanner said, chuckling. “They’re definitely from other worlds. But they don’t fly here with rockets. There are lots of theories about that, which I try to avoid listening to. We really don’t know how they get here. What we do know is that once they come to Earth, they’re stuck. Now, let’s get moving. They might have zeroed us in this position.”

  Malena stared at him for a few seconds. She finally shook her head. “I want some answers first. Give me your best theory.”

  “Will you follow me if I tell you more? We’ve got to maneuver around to the shadowy side of the craft.”

  “I will if you start talking.”

  “Okay, okay. Just come on.”

  She followed him and he did begin to explain in a hushed voice. He frequently paused for them to have a good paranoid look around. They both gazed at the ship worriedly and she sought contacts with her headset. Fortunately, the relatively small crab-machines didn’t seem to be patrolling the area. She figured they were outside the barrier, gathering fresh specimens.

  “There are lots of ideas,” Tanner said, “but I like the whirlpool idea best. You see, some of the techs think these ships get caught by Earth somehow—as if by a spider web. They don’t intend to land here. They’re drawn here and trapped.”

  “Okay,” she said. “But how does it happen? How do they travel?”

  “We’ve never captured a large craft and figured out how it works. Whenever we fool with one too much, it implodes and kill everyone.”

  “Give me the theory, then.”

  “I like the idea that they have some way of sliding between stars—pretend I have no idea how, because I don’t. But instead of flying at light speed by thrusting mass out of the ass end of a rocket, they’re able to jump to different places.”

  “Okay, I’m imagining,” Malena said, trying to stay calm. She felt lightheaded, and walking under windless trees hung with moss made things environment feel even more surreal.

  “In this theory, Earth is an obstacle. A hazard to interstellar shipping. I think they’re bound for other places—worlds more interesting than Earth. But they get caught somehow and brought down for a crash landing here. Lately, it’s been getting a lot worse, and we don’t know why.”

  “So, they don’t have jets or rockets?”

  “No. We’ve seen a few that are capable of atmospheric travel, but they usually just appear as damaged hulks close to Earth’s crust. We detect them, and race out to collect whatever we can find at the crash site. We’re scavengers, that’s all.”

  “You’re making Earth sound like some kind of black hole.”

  “Yeah, it is. I think we’re in the middle of a shipping lane. We’re like a rock with no lighthouse. Ships keep running aground on our world.”

  While they talked, Tanner led her around to the shadowy side of the ship. The high end, which stuck up into the air several hundred feet, seemed unreachable. As they moved through waterways and under tree cover, steadily getting closer, Malena finally balked.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “We aren’t going into that thing, are we?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but probably, yeah.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “We’ve got to,” Tanner said. “What do you think is powering this huge barrier? That takes a lot of X and it has to come from that ship. You’re not going to find the off-switch out here in the swamp.”

  Malena chewed her lower lip and stared up at the huge alien craft. It looked unreal to her, and as they came closer, it wasn’t getting any better. Her mind was refusing to admit that what she saw in front of her was an honest-to-God alien craft from another world. According to Tanner, it had blinked into existence close to Earth and then come crashing down. She’d been expecting something the size of a yacht, maybe, or a barge. But not this monstrosity.

  “You saw this on satellite imagery,” she said, “and you still thought sending in a small team was a good idea? Who’s running XCU? Are they crazy? This thing would take an army to defeat.”

  “We weren’t supposed to go to war with it. We’re an early response team. An investigation group with orders to recon and gather whatever scavenged items we can while we can.”

  “What’s the hurry?” she asked, halting. “This wreck isn’t going anywhere.”

  Tanner stopped and turned to her. “Another classified tidbit—the X will travel. Other teams from around the world are on their way, if they haven’t already landed on the island. The Cubans were the first, but they were underprepared and overwhelmed. Haak is here, but he’s alone. Others will come or are already on site.”

  Malena looked around warily. She didn’t like the idea of other groups of commandos coming to tear a piece off this gigantic ship. She could understand the allure, however. It was huge and dramatic. Just looking at it, she was certain there were about a thousand Nobel prizes for science staring back at her.

  “I still don’t see how we are going to survive walking into that thing,” she said. “It will detect us and send in the flying crab-machines. We’ll be dissected five minutes after we crawl inside.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I didn’t tell you we were going inside until now.”

  She flipped him off, and he chuckled.

  “Now Junior Agent Marin, you can either shut up and follow my orders, or you can walk back to the barrier and wait. Maybe I’ll get lucky and do this solo.”

  She stared at him for a second, then walked closer to the ship.

  “I don’t like those odds,” she said. “You’ll get your head drilled open in an hour.”

  He muttered something and they walked into the shadow of the hulking ship together. The pool of darkness that settled over them was disturbingly deep. As it was still early morning, she felt the coolness steal over her. It was like walking from a sunlit sidewalk into the shadow of a looming building.

  Ahead, she could see the earth was disturbed and had heaved up to form a crater of dark mud. They had to climb a mound of dirt that was over twenty feet high to peek down into the bowl of the crater that surrounded the ship.

  “It looks like it must have fallen some distance.”

  “Yeah,” Tanner said. “But they usually don’t crash down into our planet from orbit. They appear out of nowhere close to the surface and then our gravity pulls them down. Often their ships are already damaged when they get here and can’t stay aloft. Whatever the reason, they tend to crash from altitudes of one thousand to five thousand feet.”

  Malena thought about that. She shook her head. “They should still break apart, right? I mean if an airliner fell a thousand feet, there would be nothing left. It would be in tiny burning pieces.”

  Tanner slid down into the muddy interior of the crater. She hesitated, then followed him, bumping and slapping her boots into cold mud at the bottom.

  “This ship is tougher than our jetliners. Also, they do have some power. We’ve studied films of the crashes. They fight the effect, but always seem pulled down to land here.”

  She frowned, trying to puzzle it all out. Tanner didn’t seem to understand all this any more than she did, and that bothered her. Who were these aliens?

  “Has anyone tried to talk to them? Or are you so focused on robbing the crash sites before anyone else that you just let them die?”