Deep Freeze

Durametal was quickly exposed. Kara shifted the drone's position and the heat beam penetrated the open lock of a Zede Starliner.

Sarah held her breath as the optics of the probe took them inside the hull of the ice-bound ship.

"Look at this," Kara said, zooming in on a specimen container that hovered on flux two feet above the icy deck.

"How long would the power last in that flux engine?" Iain asked.

"Just over a year," Vi

The probe flared heat, and he knew that Sheba was dead, for the ice melted to show the X&A logo, and, under it, the name Erin Ke

"You might not want to see this, Sarah," Kara said, as she positioned the probe and focused. The frozen face looked up at them with an expression of surprise.

"Oh, Josh," Sarah whispered. "Oh, please, no."

"That's your brother?" Iain asked.

Pete put his arm around Sarah. "Yes," he said. "That's Joshua Webster."

"What's in the bins?" Iain asked.

"Let's have a look," Kara said.

It took a while, after the probe was positioned above the bin, to make out the mass inside. Kara played the heat beam lightly over the frozen contents. Ruth Webster's face emerged, ruptured eyeballs looking upward past a male head.

It took some time to discover the second specimen bin, which had been left outside when Josh and his party entered the Fran Webster.

"They are all here," Sarah said weakly, when she recognized the ruined faces of her mother and father. "All except Sheba."

"So now we know," Iain said. "Is it time to call in the shock troops?"

"I'm going to take Sarah to our cabin," Pete said.

"That wasn't an answer, was it?" Kara asked, after the de Condes were gone.

"I'm feeling a small suggestion of outright panic," Iain said.

"Pete de Conde didn't get to be one of the richest men in the U.P. by following the letter of the rules," Kara said.

"I'm going to bring up the probe," Iain said.

"No," Vi

"Huh?" said Iain.

"There are eight bodies down there," Vi

"That machine represents a lot of credits," Iain said. "And I'm signed for it."

"Leave it. Park it. Maybe we can retrieve it later."

"Leave it, Iain," Kara said. "He's right. We don't know what we're dealing with here."

"I want no physical contact with the surface, either direct orsecondhand, not until we know a lot more."

Iain bristled, but subsided. He'd had not a few conversations with Vi

"Run all the tests again, and any others that we can think of."

"Polar orbit?" Kara asked.

"Please, Kara," Vi

The monotonous task of sca

Iain took a sleep break, leaving Kara on weapons and Vi

"Do you mind if I have a look at the planet's magnetic field?" Vi

"Not at all," Kara said. "Punch in magnoscan."

"I think I know the procedure," Vi

There was nothing unexpected about the planet's magnetic field. A

series of solar flares were sending strong flows of radiation into the thin atmosphere. Vi

Rose's instruments located an area of relatively thin ice which covered a broad, flat zone lacking the gridded metallic installations. Kara investigated.

"Hey, Vi

"The Erin Ke

"That's my guess, too," Kara said.

"Anything else?"

"Nope. No metal directly under the blast area. At least not enough to show on the ore field detectors. Whoever shot up the joint was using full power, because destruction was complete."

It was, it seemed, another blind lead, another dead end. Vi

At first he didn't realize what he was seeing. In addition to the image and measurements of standard gravitational waves there was a co

"Vi

"I don't know," he said. What he was seeing was impossible. While it was true that gravity could be created artificially aboard ship and nullified by the flux engine, it was not possible to direct such forces in straight lines, as was obviously being done under the ice of the planet.

Someone or something was vectoring gravity waves as power or communications or both. The implications of such advanced technology made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Pete de Conde sipped a cup of coffee as he stared at the grid pattern on the large screen. "Vi

"It looks that way," Vi

"Then even though all of our instruments show that there's nothing down there under the ice there is, in effect, a live power grid covering the whole planet?" Pete asked.

"Power, or communication, or something I can't even imagine," Vi

"And for anyone else," Iain Berol said.

Pete rubbed his chin, sipped his coffee thoughtfully. "Those square constructions are refrigerating units," he said.

Vi

"When someone shot up a few of them, the ice melted," Pete said.

"Then the grid was reformed." He pointed to the area where there was a blank space in the regular grid of square installations. "See how the lines co