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His face grim, he tore his gaze away and once more stared at the long tubelike structure that rose a few feet behind him. It had a small opening, just wide enough that a man might fit inside. Without stopping to think of the dan-ger, Mulder slipped inside.
It was tight, but he could fit. He began to climb down, struggling to see in the near-darkness, hands and feet slipping as he tried to gain pur-chase. The tube felt slippery, almost oily, to the touch, but there were small protuberances like rivets which he could steady himself on. He climbed down for what seemed like hours, fighting exhaustion, when without warning his hands slipped and he began to slide. He strug-gled futilely to stop, but continued until he reached the end of the tube and found himself striking a narrow ledge. He scrambled desper-ately at last managing to hold on.
His breath shuddering, he looked down-ward. As he did so the binoculars slipped from his pocket and fell. He watched them fall, light glinting as they twisted and turned. He waited for the sound of their impact, waited and waited and then held his breath, to make sure he wouldn't miss the sound of them hitting bottom.
He heard nothing. There was no bottom; or if there was, it was so far below him as to be the yawning chasm of a true abyss. He looked downward and saw an unimaginably black and bottomless pit. The sight terrified him. With every ounce of strength that remained, Mulder pulled himself along the ledge, his fingers dig-ging into the slick material, until finally he managed to lift himself up, and then over, onto the i
He took a deep breath, then got to his feet. He was in a sort of corridor, darker and warmer than the one he had left, its walls glistening faintly. He pulled out his flashlight and trained its beam on the tu
He walked carefully following the faint beam of light until he saw before him the cryolitter. He approached it hesitantly, and when he reached it he stood for a long moment. Inside were Scully's clothes and the little gold cross she always wore around her neck. He stooped and picked up the cross, pocketed it, and went on.
It was as though he were inside some hellish abattoir. Throughout the entire length of the corridor, a metal rack was suspended from the ceiling. Hanging from the rack were the pods-the objects he had seen on the upper level. But here it was warm enough that they were not completely frozen. He walked along slowly, his flashlight tracing the outlines of what each cryopod held: a human body, barely visible behind a very thin sheath of green ice.
But the faces that stared out from these pods were not the crude, proto-human visages of the thing he had seen above. These were men and women like himself. Each had a dis-turbingly organic-looking tube protruding from his or her mouth. Their eyes were wide, gazing out with blind, confused horror, as though they still looked upon whatever dreadful apparatus had frozen them alive.
Rapt with dread, Mulder walked alongside this malign carousel, staring at first one face, then another.
Trying not to admit to himself, even now, what he was looking for—who he was looking for—until he saw her.
"Oh, Christ," he whispered.
He drew up short in front of a wall of green ice. There, within one of the frozen cysts, her features unmistakable, was Scully. Her russet hair rimmed with snow, her eyes turned heav-enward. A tube protruded from her mouth, and she had a look of horror on her face.
Fighting his own horror, Mulder struck the cryopod with his flashlight, smashing it against the icy covering again and again: nothing. Remembering the cryolitter in the distance he ran to it, grabbed one of the oxygen tanks from its lid, and raced back to Scully. Grunting with effort, he raised the tank and drove it repeat-edly against the cryopod.
With a muffled crack the pod shattered. Ice and slush pooled onto the ground, and for the first time he saw Scully clearly, her body shrouded with frost. With shaking fingers he unzipped his jacket and felt for the envelope in the i
Then he jabbed it into her shoulder.
Almost instantly, viscous amber fluid oozed from the tube in her mouth, thick as melted tar. Then the tube began to shrivel, the desic-cation moving from where it entered her mouth all the way to the cryopod that had enclosed her. At the same moment the tu
Her eyes blinked, her lips moved as she tried to suck in air. Rapture gave way to fear as her eyes rolled, trying to focus, and still the air would not reach her lungs.
"Breathe!" Mulder cried. "Can you breathe?"
Before him she strained, her expression desperate, like a swimmer struggling to come up for air. Then amber liquid suddenly poured from her mouth. She began to cough and gag, taking huge gulps of air as her eyes finally focused on Mulder, as though he were a phan-tom—or a miracle. Her mouth worked as she tried to speak, whispered words that Mulder couldn't discern.
"What?" He leaned into her tenderly, putting his ear against her cold mouth. The softest sound imaginable came out.
"Cold—"
"Hang on," said Mulder grimly. "I'm going to get you out of here."
Gently he pulled her from the cryopod and laid her on the floor, then began peeling away the outer layers of his own clothing—his socks, his hooded parka, his protective outer pants— and put them onto her.
Inside the ice station the room began to shake. The Cigarette-Smoking Man hurried past row upon row of computers where men sat, their eyes fixed on the blinking screens. In front of one monitor, a man looked up worriedly as the Cigarette-Smoking Man hastened to his side.
The man pointed at the screen, where a complex system of graphs had suddenly changed, numbers and levels skyrocketing. "We've got a contaminant in the system," he said.
The Cigarette-Smoking Man stared expres-sionlessly at the screen. "It's Mulder. He's got the vaccine."
Without another word he turned and hurried for the door. Around him men were ru
There he was met by a gaunt man whose close-cropped hair was almost hidden beneath his parka hood: the man who had shot Mulder. He flung open the door of the tractor and clam-bered inside.
"What's happened?" he yelled.
The Cigarette-Smoking Man swung into the cab alongside him. "It's all going to hell."
The snow tractor began to pull away. Behind them steam vents erupted on the sur-face. Beneath the ice station, hot air blasting from the ducts was causing the ice shelf to melt and collapse.
"What about Mulder?" the other man shouted.
The Cigarette-Smoking Man glanced behind them and shook his head. "He'll never make it."
The tractor began to pull away. Behind them, mist rose like smoke from the domed structures.
• • e
Hundreds of feet below, the narrow passages of the buried spaceship filled with foggy conden-sation.
Mulder swung his flashlight before him, trying vainly to pierce the mist with its feeble beam. In his arms was Scully, her limp body poised awkwardly in a fireman's carry. She wore Mulder's snow parka and nylon outer pants, and her face grazed his shoulder as she tried to lift her head to speak.
"We've got to keep moving," Mulder said hoarsely. He was laboring to get her up the interior of the steep, curving spoke that tra-versed the dome's center. All around them rivulets of water streamed from the hanging cryopods, pouring down to form pools and rushing brooklets on the circular central floor.