Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [133]
‘What do you think it is?’ Montana asked.
‘Who knows,’ Hensleigh said.
‘It could be a way to open it up,’ Gant suggested.
Hensleigh snorted. ‘Not likely. Do you know any aliens that use keypads?’
‘I don’t know any aliens.’ Gant said. ‘Do you?’
Hensleigh ignored her. ‘There’s no telling what it is,’ she said. ‘It could be an ignition key, or a weapons system . . .’
‘Or a self-destruct mechanism,’ Gant said dryly.
‘I say we just press it and find out,’ Hensleigh said.
‘But which button do we press?’ Montana said.
‘The one with the circle on it, I suppose.’
Montana pursed his lips in thought. He was the senior man down here. It was his call. He looked to Gant.
Gant shook her head. ‘We’re not here to see what it does. We’re just here to hold it until the cavalry arrives.’
Montana looked to Santa Cruz, who had come over from the pool to look.
‘Press it,’ Cruz said. ‘If I’m gonna buy it for this fuckin’ thing, I wanna see what’s inside it.’
Montana turned back to face Sarah Hensleigh. She nodded. ‘Let’s see what it does.’
At last, Montana said, ‘Okay. Press it.’
Sarah Hensleigh nodded and took a deep breath. Then she stretched out with her hand and pressed the button with the red circle on it.
At first, nothing happened.
Sarah Hensleigh lifted her finger off the keypad and looked up at the spaceship above her, as if she expected it to take off or something.
Suddenly, there came a soft harmonic tone, and the screen above the keypad began to glow.
And then another second later, a sequence of symbols appeared across the screen.
‘Oh, shit,’ Montana said.
‘What the . . .’ Hensleigh said.
The screen read:
24157817 – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE
‘Numbers?’ Montana said.
‘English?’ Sarah Hensleigh said. ‘What the hell is this thing?’
For her part, Gant just shook her head. And as she walked away from the ‘spaceship’ she began to laugh softly.
Schofield and Renshaw lay flat on their backs on the cold hard surface of the iceberg, listening to the rhythmic sound of the waves crashing against the ice cliffs two hundred yards away.
They just lay there for a while, catching their breath.
After a few minutes, Schofield reached around with his hand until he found a small black unit attached to his waist. He pressed a button on the unit.
Beep!
‘What are you doing?’ Renshaw said, not looking up.
‘Initialising my GPS unit,’ Schofield said, still lying on his back. ‘It’s a satellite location system that uses the Navistar Global Positioning System. Every Marine has one, for use in emergencies. You know, so people can find us if we end up in a life raft out in the middle of the ocean. I figured this wasn’t too much different.’ Schofield sighed. ‘In a dark room on a ship somewhere, a flashing red dot just appeared on someone’s screen.’
‘Does that mean they’re gonna come for us?’ Renshaw asked.
‘We’ll be long dead by the time anybody gets here. But they’ll at least be able to find our bodies.’
Renshaw said, ‘Oh, great. It’s nice to see my tax dollars at work. You guys build a satellite location system so that they can find my body. Wow.’
Schofield turned to look at Renshaw. ‘At least I can leave a note attached to our bodies telling whoever finds us exactly what happened at the station. At least then they’ll know the truth. About the French, about Barnaby.’
Renshaw said, ‘Well, that makes me feel better.’
Schofield propped himself up on his elbow and looked out toward the cliffs. He saw the mountainous waves of the Southern Ocean smash against them and explode in spectacular showers of white.
Then, for the first time, Schofield took in the iceberg around him.
It was big. In fact, it was so big it didn’t even rock in the heavy seas. Above the surface, the whole thing must have been at least a mile long. Schofield couldn’t even begin to guess how large it was under the surface.
It was roughly rectangular in shape with an enormous white peak at one end. The rest