“I thought you told me as a biologist we’d never be able to cut a deal with aliens,” Tanner said.

  “Yeah, I did say that. But now that I see their ship, I suppose I’m thinking of them as humans needing help.”

  “I can understand that,” Tanner said. “But to answer your question: the beings on the crashed ships are usually dead when we get there. Often, they’ve been dead for centuries. But this is an unusual case. This ship is huge, and the visitors are still active.”

  “So, you’ve never even tried to make contact?”

  “Sure we have. We’ve tried to talk to them. It doesn’t go very well. I’m not sure if it’s them or us—but they aren’t very diplomatic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “Just hope you never try to talk to one. If you do, keep a gun trained on it at all times.”

  Malena was less than satisfied. Now that she’d seen the ship, she could imagine all the secrets they must know. Her people were backward in comparison. It seemed like her people—all humanity—was squandering a fantastic opportunity. If these aliens were dropping down onto Earth it was understandable they might be frightened or at least in a bad mood. But if Earth could establish trade with advanced races, the benefits could be tremendous. She thought of scientific achievements and centuries of technological secrets unlocked all at once. If it didn’t work out, fine. But they should keep trying. They didn’t have anything to lose by doing so.

  “If we keep robbing them when they crash, won’t that piss them off?” she asked. “I mean, what if they decide to send a military ship here one day to get rid of us? To exterminate us like fleas on a dog?”

  Tanner stopped and pointed to the darkest region in the ship’s shadow. There was a pool of water there formed in the middle of the crater which extended a hundred feet or more in a crescent under the ship. The pool shimmered when a breeze came down to them from the forest outside.

  Malena saw nothing but a mud hole full of cold, black water. “Yeah? What about it?”

  “That’s where the hatch will be. Under there.”

  “A hatch? You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not going in there.”

  “You mentioned a military ship. That might be what this behemoth really is. We’ve wargamed this type of scenario out many times. Before I left XCU headquarters, we looked through the archives. This ship is the biggest thing they’ve ever sent. Even more troubling, it put up a barrier to keep us out, and it’s buzzing with protective smaller vessels. I think they might have tried just what you were suggesting.”

  Her eyes widened. “You mean this is an invasion attempt?”

  “A failed one, from the looks of it. But yeah, this is definitely something different.”

  “What’re we going to do?” she asked, feeling a fresh wave of fear. She was beginning to wish she’d never come looking for Agent Tanner.

  “First, we’re going to report in to XCU. Ostlund will be back on duty now. We have to tell him what we’ve found.”

  Malena nodded. She handed the accelerator over to Tanner and crouched down in the crater on a chunk of dirty granite that resembled a grand piano. The boulder must have been kicked up by the crashing ship when it plunged into the ground.

  She closed her eyes and called out to Ostlund with her mind, seeking contact.

  “Who…? Is that you, Agent Marin? You must learn to identify yourself when making contact. It’s protocol.”

  “Sorry sir, I haven’t had time to be trained in mind-reading etiquette.”

  “Never mind, then. What is your position and situation?”

  She explained at length. He listened quietly, asking for details now and then. Five minutes later, he’d heard enough.

  “This is excellent. You’ve made it in farther than any team we know of. Haak was instrumental to your success, just as was reported. I’ll have to send my thanks to the Dutch team.”

  Malena frowned. “That’s not quite how we see it, sir. Haak—”

  “Yes, I know. For some reason all field people dislike Haak. Let me tell you: from the point of view of management, that man is a god. He never fails to survive and to get the deed done. I only wish Haak was an American. Still, your efforts are appreciated and you’re showing great promise for a junior agent.”

  She decided not to bother arguing with Ostlund. “What do you want us to do next?”

  “Do? Get inside that ship and turn off the barrier so we can get inside. Feel free to grab whatever X you can, but don’t overload yourself with specimens. Clean-up crews can do that later.”

  She opened her eyes and looked at Tanner. He was scanning the rim of the crater and the belly of the alien craft that loomed over them.

  “Sir, I don’t know if we can do that. There are only two of us. We only have one effective weapon. If we breach the hull, there’s bound to be an alarm set off. We’ll have every one of these flying machines coming after us with their claws snapping.”

  “Possibly,” Ostlund admitted. “But you have no better option. You can crouch there and shiver, waiting for them to find you. Or you can try to turn off the barrier. The choice is yours. We can’t do much to help, but we are positioning assets in case you succeed in removing the field.”

  “Assets? What assets?”

  “We’ve lost most of our agents as you know. Fortunately, Haak is preparing a fresh team of Dutch forces to move in and support you when that barrier goes down. You should be aware that the Cubans are massing a force of their own in the north.”

  “Why do you think Haak can fight these things when the last teams have all died?”

  “Our two teams crashed into the barrier. Haak’s team was taken out by Cubans, not the visitors. Frankly, I think you are overestimating the threat represented by these flying machines. So far, the visitors have not been overly effective.”

  Malena felt like arguing with him about that, but she didn’t see the point. They had to get the barrier down. It was the only way they were going to survive.

  She disconnected and looked up at Tanner, who watched her expectantly.

  “We’re going into the ship,” she said.

  Tanner nodded. His lips were set in a grim line, and she realized then he wasn’t any more excited about the prospect than she was. Perhaps he was even more disturbed, as he’d done insane things like this in the past.

  They took a moment to eat and rest before proceeding. She sketched a picture of the crashed ship while they rested. Tanner walked up and peered over her shoulder.

  “Pretty good,” he said. “But couldn’t you just take a picture?”

  “Sketching relaxes me,” she explained. “Right now, I’m nervous.”

  A few minutes later she found herself wading into the cool water. She found herself wondering what she would see inside, and what Tanner may have witnessed in the past. She figured she would find out soon enough.

  -18-

  They were hip deep in the water by the time they reached the ship’s dark hull. The ship was cold in some places and hot in others. Where it was hot, steam wisped from the blackened hull.

  She stretched out her hand and touched it. The surface was a scarred, burned metal. It was adorned with pipes, jutting blocks and even curved blades. To her, the design was odd. She’d always thought of spaceships as smooth and sleek.

  “I remember finding this type of vessel on Greenland,” Tanner said. “The team called the flying crab-things ‘dissection machines’.”

  Malena listened to him worriedly. She didn’t like the name “dissection machine”. It didn’t conjure-up positive thoughts. She didn’t like the ship itself, either.

  “These visitors were in Greenland?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, tracing an angular protrusion of metal with his gloved hands. “Careful. Some of these edges are as sharp as swords.”

  They waded back and forth in the gloomy shade of the ship. They churned up mud and that made her boots feel squelchy. They were both running their hands over the dark, burnished steel looking for a way to open it. Water dripped down on their heads, coming from somewhere far above.

  “If they were in Greenland, wouldn’t I have heard of it?”

  “They were there, trust me. We found a ship in the ice. A big black one, buried a thousand feet down. The scientists counted the rings in their ice cores and said it had been there since the medieval warm period—about a thousand years ago. The ice had retreated back then, and the glaciers were smaller. It must have landed when the Vikings were colonizing the area. I’ve always wondered if any of them were captured by it.”

  Malena stared at him in disbelief. “A thousand years ago? What have these visitors been doing all this time? Why haven’t they landed to meet us openly?”

  “Well, they don’t seem to come all the time. They come in waves during certain points in history. We’re like a rock and space seems to be like the ocean. During one century there might be a lot of visitations, during the next the currents change and we aren’t in the way any longer. But when we are in the way, they come and crash into us.”

  She nodded, and ran her hands down a corkscrew-like projection. This one was sharp on the inner edge. She could feel it cutting open her glove. She lifted her hand to study it. The smart fabric knitted itself together, but she could feel her skin inside begin to sting. It would take days for her flesh to do what these gloves could do in seconds.

  “Why are you telling me all this now?” she asked.

  “Because I figure you’ve earned it by this time. Regulations and clearances are bullshit when you’re trying to pick the lock of a huge spacecraft.”

  She nodded. “This does seem pointless though,” she said. “How do we know the hatch is here, under the ship? What if it’s on top? What if it’s buried?”

  Tanner lifted a finger and pointed out into the open sky. “If it was buried, those devil machines couldn’t have gotten out.”

  “Okay. But what if they have a hatch a hundred feet up on the far side?”

  “They might. But I’ve seen this type of ship before in Greenland. It was a much smaller version, of course. The hatches were all around the central portion, about the middle of the entire oblong shape. We’ll find one.”

  “About these dissection machines, what’s their purpose?” she asked.

  “They explore the environment, like scouts. Along the way, they seem to pick up interesting specimens and tear them apart to have a look inside. That’s why XCU agents gave them that name.”

  “And we’re the interesting specimens, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell me more about this ship you found in Greenland. Were there living inhabitants?” she asked.

  “No. All dead and frozen long ago. We burned our way down through the ice to find it. Everything was boring, a typical dig. But when we exposed the hatches, a few of these buzzing machines came out. They killed more than one of my team members.”

  “You said that the visitors were all dead.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So who was flying these machines around?”

  “They’re capable of flying themselves.”

  “Oh,” she said, catching on. “They’re robots?”

  He nodded. He was crouching now in a deep spot. His head and shoulders were still above the surface, but his arms were submerged. He began tugging at something and his face strained.

  “The ones we dealt with in Greenland were automated.”

  She was about to ask what these beings looked like, but he suddenly waved her forward.

  “Something moved. Come help me twist this metal bar.”

  She joined him, and he guided her hand under the water to an L-shaped piece of steel. It was big, about two yards long and a foot in width. With both of them straining, she could feel the piece shift in her hands. It felt like it was hinged or attached somehow at one end. By applying pressure to the other end, they made it slowly move in a clockwise direction. She felt as if she was moving the hand on a giant clock—or opening a giant door handle.

  “Tanner?” she asked when they both stopped to take a break. She looked around at the huge ship that loomed overhead. “These beings—they’re big, aren’t they?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. About fifteen to twenty feet tall. We found skeletons in the ice.”

  They went back to work unscrewing the hatch handle, and she realized that in a giant’s hand, this piece of metal would be about the size of heavy door latch. She suddenly felt small and frightened. This ship had been built and crewed by giants. She didn’t like the idea at all. Somehow, she’d always maintained a mental image of small gray or greenish humanoids. Maybe creatures with big heads and over-sized black eyes.

  But now that friendly image had been shattered. She saw an ogre in her mind’s eye instead. A monster with fists as big as her skull and arms as thick as a man’s waist. She shuddered.

  “Come on,” Tanner said. “Keep pushing. We’ve almost got it.”

  She threw herself against the latch, heaving upward now. They’d levered it around and were on the final step. She could feel something heavy giving way inside. Something large and metal shifted. They had twisted the metal latch almost all the way around to its starting position again. It became more difficult to move as it reached its final apogee after a full revolution.

  They heard a loud click. A rattling, metallic sound followed. Malena was instantly reminded of the sound a long chain might make as it falls onto concrete in a snake’s coil.

  Tanner suddenly shoved her hard. She fell backward with him pushing her down. They both splashed into the water, she on her back and he on top of her. She pushed him away, coughing and cursing. Foul water had gotten into her eyes and mouth. She was just taking in a deep breath to curse at him, when the words froze in her throat.

  The water was vanishing. She heard a roar, then a gargling sound. It was as if a giant bathtub had been unplugged, and all the water was sliding down the drain.

  It flowed right past her, tugging at her and wanting to take her with it. Tanner stood and reached down a hand to help her up. She slapped his hand away and stood on her own.

  “I didn’t want the door to crush us,” Tanner explained.

  She nodded. She could see why he’d pushed her now. The ship had opened, but only a crack about two feet wide. The hatch was built to fall open like a drawbridge or an oven door. It couldn’t open all the way, however. It hit the ground before it could yawn wide like a mouth. It was built of foot-thick metal. If it had fallen on them, it might have killed them.

  “We did it,” she said.

  Tanner took a wary step closer. The water level had dropped more than a foot. Instead of reaching their hips, it now ran past their knees. Inside there was nothing visible, just inky blackness.

  “We must be flooding some vast chamber inside,” he said.

  Gauging by the size of the ship, Malena figured they could have drained the entire swamp with room to spare. When the pool in the crater stopped surging into the open hatch, they inched forward and squatted down.

  The opening they had managed to create was only about two feet wide. They both snapped on flashlights and peered inside. There wasn’t much they could make out. It looked like some kind of passageway. The interior walls were made of the same heavy metals as the exterior hull, but looked less blackened. The water still flowed slowly into the mouth. Like a tremendous steel throat it gurgled and rang as it drank the pool they stood in.

  “You first,” she said, giving him a thin smile.

  His face hardened. He edged forward and put one leg in. He had to twist around and flatten his body to get inside.

  His body jerked when he was about halfway into the cracked-open hatchway. He slid inside up to his shoulders. His arms were still outside the hatch, and to Malena it looked as if he were in the jaws of a shark. His upper body tightened and his face went rigid with surprise.

  It was an awful moment. She feared he’d been grabbed by one of those claw-armed machines inside the vessel. She reached out her hands and grabbed him under the arms, hoping to drag him back out.

  “It’s okay,” he said, looking her in the face. A reassuring smile flickered on his lips. “I just slipped, I think. All that water and mud...”

  She could tell he’d been freaked out for a second, too. She let go of him reluctantly.

  “That’s good,” she said.

  He crawled down the rest of the way into the hatch. She stared inside after him. She could see him down there, standing in a muddy mess about five feet down.

  “Seems quiet enough,” he said. “Come on down.”

  Malena took the time to tie a line on the gigantic latch they’d forced open. She let the other end dangle down into the ship. She used it to ease herself inside.

  “In case we need to climb out in a hurry,” she explained.

  He gave her an approving nod and led the way into the darkness. They were in a passageway of rough metal which led uphill at a slant. If the ship had been lying flat, she imagined the passageway would have been flat as well.

  The strangest thing to her was the floor—it didn’t really have one. Humans tended to have one surface of any interior space flat and unadorned. The flat area of the floor was meant for feet and usually there was a clear walkway for easy passage. None of the four walls appeared to meet her definition of a “floor” inside this strange ship. Every surface was festooned by metallic shapes. She wasn’t sure how many of them were functional and how many were decorative. In either case, the lack of an obvious floor made the passage difficult to navigate despite the fact it was nearly twenty feet wide from side to side. They had to carefully walk over sharp-angled metal jutting up from the floor and both walls. Every step was dangerous, and she knew many of the edges were as sharp as blades. She was more pleased with her smart clothing than ever, as her suit seemed to sense the danger and stiffened up to prevent accidental injury. Still, she knew that if she did slip and fall face first onto one of those upraised whorls of steel, she would be cut open as if slashed by a saber.

  After about fifty feet of difficult going, they reached an intersection. In her experience, most intersections were T’s or possibly X’s. This intersection went up and down as well, in a total of six different directions.