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Maddock shone his flashlight into the icy throat, but beyond about twenty yards, the beam vanished into shadow, illuminating nothing.
He glanced over at Bones. “Something’s not right about this.”
They had ventured only a little ways inside, just far enough to find shelter from the constant wind, so he didn’t have to shout to be heard, but even without the wind, it was brutally cold. The perpetual summer sun did not reach very far beyond the threshold of the ice cave.
“What are you talking about?” Rose interjected. She held out her hand, displaying the makeshift pendulum which was still pointing ever so slightly forward, into the depths of the ice tunnel. “The hatchet brought us here. This is exactly where we’re supposed to be.”
“We came here looking for a secret base, built by the Nazis and taken over by the U.S. government. Or whoever it was that tried to kill us. So where is it?”
Bones nodded slowly. “He’s right. It doesn’t look like anyone has been here in... forever.”
Behind her goggles, Rose’s eyes widened in surprise and alarm as she began inspecting the immediate area. “Maybe this is a back door. I don’t know. But this is what we came here to find.”
Maddock had no argument for that. “Maybe you’re right. Watch your step and stay on your toes.”
They started forward, down a smooth sloping passage that seemed too perfect to have been created by natural forces, but showed absolutely no indication of having been bored out by artificial means. The tunnel curved gently but relentlessly to the right, a counter-clockwise corkscrew spiraling down into the ancient ice. The grade was so steep that, without crampons and ice axes, they probably would have been unable to walk it, but as they made their way down, the dangling tomahawk head began to lift, indicating that their descent was indeed bringing them closer to the anomaly that was affecting the axe head.
After about fifteen minutes of trekking, the passage opened into a much larger cavern in the ice. The floor of the hollow was flat and clear. The walls were curved, like the inside of an enormous air bubble frozen in the ice, but cutting through the middle of the cavern was a slanted flat wall. The thin layer of clear ice could not hide the black stone underneath.
“The pyramid!” Bones said.
“We’ve been circling it,” Maddock confirmed. “I’d guess we’re about four hundred feet down from where we started.”
Rose checked the tomahawk again. It was hanging straight out in front of her. “We’re almost there.”
Almost where? Maddock wanted to ask, but the answer appeared as if by magic.
“That wasn’t there a second ago,” Bones said, pointing to a triangular opening in the stone wall.
Maddock was pretty sure it wasn’t. “I guess this is where we need to go.
The tunnel, like the opening, was a perfect equilateral triangle, about nine feet high from base to apex. The black stone remained partially hidden under the ice, but the shape was unmistakable. A short ways in however, they reached a junction with a transverse passage.
“Decisions, decisions,” Bones muttered. “Should we flip a coin?
“No need.” Rose held out the cord attached to the axe head, but it continued to point straight forward, into the unyielding wall.
“So much for that idea. I’ve got a quarter in my pocket, but I can’t get to it with all this stuff on. You want to reach in for me?” He winked at her.
Rose rolled her eyes. “Get Dane to do it.”
“Let’s try left,” Maddock said, ignoring the banter.
“Why?”
“Why not? If it doesn’t lead somewhere, we can always turn back and try the other way.”
Bones looked at Rose and they both shrugged.
The passage extended for about thirty yards before making a right turn. As they moved, the tomahawk shifted, relative to their direction of travel, but kept pointing to a fixed point somewhere on the other side of the wall until, midway down the adjacent passage, they came to another opening. The tomahawk was pointing straight into it.
Rose laughed nervously. “Wow. It feels like something’s pulling on it.”
Maddock looked over. The cord trailing from her hand was stretched taut. He reached out and put his hand on the cord, feeling the tension there. “May I?”
She looked back at him suspiciously, but then nodded.
He twisted the cord around his gloved hand once, twice and then gripped it firmly before telling her to let go.
He thought he was prepared for the transfer, but the cord almost yanked him off his feet. He allowed himself to be drawn forward, his curiosity more powerful than his caution. Just beyond the entrance, the passage opened into an enormous vaulted chamber—the hollow interior of the pyramid.
Bones looked up in awe. “I’ll bet this was some kind of hangar. For the UFOs.”
Maddock glanced over at Rose. “I thought this place was supposed to be some kind of prison. Wasn’t that what you’re great-grandfather’s book said?”
Rose shook her head uncertainly. “Yes, but in his next book, the Outpost was destroyed, so I really don’t know how reliable they are.”
“There’s a second book?”
“Actually, there was a whole series. You can buy them online.”
“That would have been good to know earlier.” Maddock shot an accusatory glance at Bones.
The latter shrugged. “I didn’t know.”
Maddock continued forward, following the tomahawk like someone being pulled along by an enormous dog straining against its leash, until it crunched into an enormous ice hummock. Although his light could not reach to the lofty apex, Maddock had no doubt he was standing almost directly beneath it, and that the goal of their search lay in the exact center of the structure.
“There’s something hidden under here,” he said. He let go of the cord and the tomahawk remained where it was, plastered against the hummock. He took out his mountaineering axe and began chipping away at the ice around the object, but after just a few hits, the jagged pick end broke through, revealing an empty space at the center. Even stranger, when he wrestled the pick free, a puff of warm air hit his face. He took another whack at it, and this time, a section of ice bigger than his head broke loose and vanished into the newly created hole, along with the tomahawk.
Maddock shone his light into the gap and saw, just a few feet away, a black sphere, about eighteen inches in diameter. Stuck to it like a paperclip to a magnet, was the tomahawk. The object was completely ice free, and suspended in mid-air with no apparent means of support. The small cavity inside the hummock was thick with a strange fog, like dry ice vapors, leading Maddock to believe that the object was somehow sublimating the ice—evaporating it without first melting it into water—and freeing itself after years, or perhaps even millennia, of imprisonment.
“I think we woke something up,” he said, not looking back. “Bones, give me a hand with this.”
The big man stepped forward and added his ice axe to the effort, and in a matter of minutes they hacked out an opening large enough to crawl through. Maddock shouldered his way into the gap. The air inside was warm, but only in comparison to the sub-zero conditions outside. Maddock felt no radiant heat from the object.
He wormed in a little further, until he was close enough to touch it, which he did after only a moment’s hesitation. He knew there was a faint possibility that he would get fried to a crisp like a fly in a bug-zapper, but his instincts told him that if the object—the artifact or orb or whatever it was—was dangerous, it was probably already too late.
The object bobbed a little at his touch but that was all that happened.
He gripped the cord attached to the tomahawk, and gave it an experimental tug. The orb moved toward him like a helium balloon on a string, but as he pulled it closer, he could feel the resistance increasing, as if the black sphere was being pulled back to its original position by an invisible bungee cord. He pulled harder still, wrestling the orb out of the cavity in the hummock, and wrapped both arms around it to keep it from going anywhere.
Bones let out a low whistle. “Holy crap. What the hell is that thing?”
“I don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s the reason those goons tried to kill us.”
“Goons, Mr. Maddock?” The unfamiliar voice echoed in the vast hall. “That’s unkind.”
Adrenaline dumped into Maddock’s bloodstream as he whirled around, shining his light at the perimeter of the chamber, searching for the source of the voice. Bones grabbed Rose, thrusting her behind him, as if to shield her with his body, and shone his light out as well.
As if in answer, several spots of light appeared near the entrance; high-intensity LED lights, all trained on the three of them.
“I’m sure if you really got to know us,” the voice went on, “You would come up with something much more colorful.”