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He was asleep, having nightmares again. He was running
in a strange pressurized suit, through narrow, bleak halls.
Part of him knew it was a nightmare for a while, but
knowing that didn’t seem to help him control it, and
gradually he forgot it wasn’t real. Something was pursuing
him, something with strange tusks in the place of hands and
horns sprouting at the joints of its limbs. Its body looked like
it had had its skin flayed off. Or even worse, like someone
had taken a human skeleton and pressed raw hamburger
to it. The bottom half of its face was falling apart. Its eyes
gleamed yellow, glittering and burning.
He realized he had some kind of weapon: a gun that sent
out a whirling blade projected on a beam of light. He kept
turning around and firing the thing, watching it cut with a
grating sound through the creature’s legs, spraying blood
and gore all over. Its legs were gone, but it still kept coming,
posting the tips of its tusks against the ground and
dragging itself forward, moaning. He cut off its arms and
then its head, and finally it stopped.
Thank God, he thought, and wiped the blood off his face.
He had started to turn away when he heard something
behind him. The creature was still writhing, flopping this way
and that, changing. With a wet sound, it sprouted new arms
and legs. It clambered up, roaring, and was after him again.
Screaming, he turned and ran.
“Bad dreams?” asked the man beside his bed. He was a
large man with a square jaw and white hair, dressed in the
dark uniform of military intelligence. He was regarding
Altman with a steady, aloof gaze. To either side of him
were two even larger men who looked like they might be
twins, dressed in street clothes. At a little distance was
another man, smaller and wearing glasses. He looked
vaguely familiar, but Altman couldn’t quite place him.
“Where am I?” asked Altman.
“You’re in your house,” said the military man. “In
Chicxulub.”
“Where’s Ada?”
“You’re girlfriend? She’s not here. She’s safe.”
“What do you mean, safe?” asked Altman, starting to get
out of the bed.
The man raised a finger. Calmly but forcefully the twins to
either side of him took Altman by the arms and lowered him
back onto the bed, holding him down until he had stopped
struggling.
Warily, Altman eyed them. “What are you doing here?” he
asked the military man.
He made a gesture and the other two let go and stepped
back. “I came to see you,” he said.
“And who are you?”
“Markoff,” he said. “Craig Markoff.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything,” said Altman.
“No,” said Markoff. “It doesn’t.”
“And who are they?” he asked, gesturing to the other
three men.
Markoff looked left and right. “These?” he said. “These
are my new associates.” The man with the glasses gave a
smirk. “Tim, Tom, and Terry.”
“Which one is which?”
“Does it matter?” asked Markoff.
“Look,” said Altman, “you can’t just break in here like this.
You have no right to be here. I’m going to call the police.”
Markoff just smiled. When Altman reached for his phone,
he said, “Tom? Tim?”
The twins moved slowly forward. One of them put his
hand on Altman’s wrist and squeezed until he dropped the
phone. The other punched him once, softly, almost lovingly,
in the side.
He fell back on the bed, gasping. Tim and Tom
wandered back behind Markoff, watching Altman struggle
to catch his breath.
When he had calmed down, Markoff said, “Feeling
better, are we? Would you like a drink of water?”
Altman shook his head. Markoff snapped his fingers, and
the man with the glasses tossed Altman a shirt and a pair
of pants.
“You’re in the right frame of mind now,” said Markoff. “Get
dressed. We’re going to have a little talk.”
A few minutes later, he was sitting across the kitchen table
from Markoff, the other three standing next to the doors
leading in and out of the room.
“It’s very simple,” said Markoff. “You filed a grant to
investigate Chicxulub crater.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” argued Altman. “That’s
what scientists do.”
“I’ve already spoken to your friends,” said Markoff. “Or,
rather, my associates have. We’ve determined that the
person motivating this grant application was you.”
“So?”
Markoff gave him a cold look. “Don’t get cocky. If I have
to, I’ll have Tim break your arm,” he said.
“Or Tom,” said one of the twins from where he stood near
the doorway.
“Or Tom,” said Markoff. He turned and looked at the twin.
“Don’t worry, Tom. He has two arms. Enough to go around.”
Then he turned back to Altman, looked at him with one
eyebrow raised.
“I’m sorry,” Altman said.
“That’s better,” said Markoff. “Your proposal for
investigating the crater has been pulled from the grant
proposal pool. It is now classified. The investigation of
Chicxulub crater has become a military matter.”
“So, I was right,” said Altman.
“About what?” asked Markoff.
“You’re not just trying to retrieve the submarine. You’re
trying to get at whatever is in the crater.”
“You’re a clever boy,” said Markoff. “Maybe too clever for
your own good. The reason I’m here is to find out how much
you know and evaluate whether you would be a valuable
member of our team. If you are, I am prepared to allow you
to join us—in a limited capacity, of course. If not, I’ll have to
figure out something else to do with you.”
“What do you mean by ‘something else’?”
Markoff shrugged. “Could be ship you back to your own
sector. Could be having you put in confinement for as long
as it takes us to complete the project. Could be something
a bit more serious.” Behind him, the twins exchanged
glances and smiled. “I suppose, Mr. Altman, that it’s up to
you.” Markoff straightened in his chair, put both his hands
palm down on the table. “Well, Mr. Altman, shall we begin?”
Markoff started off slow.
“How did you first realize there was something unusual
going on in the crater?”
“I detected a gravity anomaly.”
“It wasn’t the pulse signal?”
Altman shook his head. “The pulse signal came later.”
“Who told you about the pulse signal?”
Altman hesitated, tempted to lie, and then he realized it
didn’t matter: Hammond was dead.
And then, suddenly it clicked: he knew where he had
seen the man with the glasses.
“Charles Hammond told me,” he said. “I believe your
associates knew him.”
Markoff looked back at Terry. The latter hesitated a
moment, nodded.
“But we didn’t kill him,” said Tim.
“No, we didn’t kill him,” said Tom.
“No talking shop here, boys,” said Markoff. “Terry, why
don’t you take Tim and Tom and wait for me outside?”
The three of them quietly left the room.
“How do I know you are who you say you are?” asked
Altman.
Markoff turned back, his gaze steady. “I wondered when
you were going to get around to that. Either I am or I’m not,”
he said. “If I am, then it’ll be worth your while to cooperate if
it will get you on the expedition. If I’m not, then there’s very
little you can do about it. Whether you tell me the truth or
not, you’re probably in trouble either way. Tell me . . . what
do you think you know?”
It’s a reasonable enough gamble, thought Altman. I know
that DredgerCorp is working with the military to salvage
the submarine, so chances are he is what he says he is.
The trick is knowing how to tell him enough to get him to
bring me aboard on the project, but not so much that he
thinks he’s already gotten all he can out of me, that he
doesn’t need me anymore.
He took a deep breath. “I’d guess there’s something in
the heart of the crater,” said Altman. “Not a natural
phenomenon, but something else.”
“Go on,” said Markoff.
“Considering its location, it must have been there a very
long time.”
“How long?”
“It might have been there thousands of years. Or even
longer.”
“Why do you think so?”
“The Yucatec Maya have a kind of mythology surrounding
it. They call it the tail of the devil.”
He saw a gleam of something in Markoff’s eye. “You’ve
told me something I didn’t know, Altman,” he said. “How did
you find this out?”
“I’ll give you more details if you bring me in on the
project.”
Markoff nodded, his lips tight. “I’ll let you get away with
that, for a few minutes, anyway. What do you think it is?” he
asked.
“I have no fucking idea,” said Altman.
“There’s no room on the team for someone who doesn’t
have imagination. What do you think it could be?”
Altman looked down at the tabletop, at his hands resting
clasped together on it, at Markoff’s hands still palm down
on the other side. “I thought at first it might be a relic from
some ancient civilization, but . . . I’ve thought a lot about it,”
he said, “and the only other thing I can come up with
frightens me.” He looked up, met Markoff’s gaze. “An
object, sending a pulse signal from the center of a vast
crater, perhaps buried since the creation of the crater
thousands or hundreds of thousands, even millions, of
years ago. What if it wasn’t an asteroid that made the
crater but the object itself, striking the earth?”
Markoff nodded.
“Which suggests that it was something that came from
outer space,” said Altman. “Which in turn suggests that it
was something sent here by intelligent life outside of our
galaxy.”
“Which raises the question of why it was transmitting,”
said Markoff.
“And who it was transmitting to,” said Altman. “And what.”
They sat in silence for a while. “If that’s what it is,” Altman
said, “it’ll change our whole understanding of life as we
know it.”
Markoff nodded, finally removing his hands from the table
and putting them in his lap. When they returned, there was a
gun in one of them.
“Ah, Altman, Altman,” he said. “What am I going to do
with you?”
“Are you threatening me?” asked Altman, his voice
rising. He hoped he sounded tough and angry, that Markoff
wasn’t detecting the fear that he felt.
“You obviously have guessed too much to be let go.
You’ve even guessed too much for me to just throw you in
confinement. I have to decide whether to kill you or take you
with us.”
Altman slowly raised his hands. “I’d rather you took me
with you,” he said, a quaver to his voice now.
“Not a shocking preference, considering the
circumstances. Take you or shoot you?” he mused. “I can
see advantages to both. Can you tell me anything else to tip
the scales? Is there something else you forgot to add?”
Altman kept his hands crossed, afraid that if he moved
them, Markoff would see how much he was shaking. His
mouth was very dry. His voice, when he began to speak,
trembled. “There is one other thing,” he said.
“Yes?” said Markoff, casually cocking the gun.
“The villagers found something. A strange creature,
humanoid but not human, that they’re convinced is
connected to the happenings in the crater. They burned it,
but there are still remains you can examine. I’ll take you to
them.”
“Is that all?”
Altman swallowed. “That’s all.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Altman,” Markoff said. He raised the
pistol and pointed it at Altman’s head, then started to
squeeze the trigger. Altman closed his eyes and gritted his
teeth. He heard the snap of the hammer, but no bullet
came.
He opened his eyes. Markoff was watching him, intensely
focused.
“All in good fun,” he said. “The gun was empty. I never
intended to shoot you. Welcome to the team.”
He stood and extended his hand. Altman was still in
shock and didn’t move. Markoff pried his hands apart from
each other and shook one of them.
“You will be closely watched. You won’t have free run of
the facility, but I want you available if and when I need you.”
He leaned in closer. “And if you do betray me, Mr. Altman, I
will kill you,” he said in a low voice. “Do you understand?
Nod if you understand.”
Altman understood.
“Very good,” said Markoff, and started for the door. “I’ll
have Terry make your arrangements.”
“All right,” said Altman quietly.
His hand on the doorknob, Markoff stopped. He stood
there a moment, his back to Altman.
“There’s the question of your girlfriend, isn’t there,” he
said.
Oh, shit, thought Altman.
Markoff turned around, looked at him with searching
eyes. “What should we do about her?”
“You don’t have to worry about her,” said Altman. He tried
to stay calm and expressionless as he said it, poker faced,
but his voice, he knew, was still trembling.
“But I want to worry about her, Altman,” said Markoff.
“Let’s just say it’d be my pleasure.”
“Look,” said Altman desperately. “I understand why you
feel you have to take me, but Ada’s different. She has
nothing to do with any of this. She even tried to stop me
from taking an interest in it. Let her go.”
Markoff smiled. “What you’ve just shown me, Altman, is
that you care enough about her that I couldn’t possibly think
about letting her go. I believe she might come in handy.”
“What are you planning to do with her?”
“Ah, Mr. Altman,” said Markoff. “Questions, always
questions.”
He opened the door and went out.
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