The Cydonian Pyramid

T
UCKER
F
EYE LANDED FLAT ON HIS BACK WITH A LOUD
crunch. The impact drove the air from his lungs. He did not know how far he had fallen, or if the sound was that of his bones shattering. All he could think about was breathing. He strained for air, eyes bulging, staring straight up, seeing low dark clouds pressing down upon him, fading toward black — then his chest loosened, and he drew a shuddering breath.

The air
hurt.

He coughed, thinking for a moment that he was back on top of the World Trade Center, breathing smoke — but there was no smell of burning jet fuel. There was no smell at all. He breathed in again, more slowly. This time he recognized the sensation: bitter cold. Cold enough to make his teeth hurt and freeze the linings of his nostrils. Swirling ice crystals blasted his face. He rolled away from the wind and pushed himself up onto his knees. He hurt all up and down his back, but nothing seemed to be broken. The crunch he had heard had been the crusted surface of a snowdrift, not his bones.

He rose slowly to his feet and looked around, squinting into the wind. Only minutes ago he had been running through a forest, pursued by an enormous pink maggot. Now he was standing on a flat glacial surface — an icy expanse furrowed with long, irregular drifts of snow. A few dozen yards to either side of him, ghostly, jagged outcroppings of ice and snow rose up like miniature mountains.

Tucker tipped his head back. The disko that had spit him out hovered a tantalizing thirty feet directly above his head, barely visible, fading in and out of sight against the leaden clouds.

His vision blurred. He blinked. His eyelids dragged across the surface of his eyes. The film of moisture coating his eyeballs had frozen. He blinked rapidly, narrowed his eyes to slits, and once again surveyed his surroundings. The diskos were used by the discorporeal Klaatu to visit important historical events. If there was nothing for the Klaatu to look at, there would be no disko. There had to be some
thing
here that had attracted them . . . unless it was the sheer, raw bleakness.

The wind picked up, tearing at his ears and nose, cutting through the thin gray fabric of his coveralls. Only his feet, protected by his Medicant foot coverings, remained warm. He tucked his bare hands under his armpits and hugged himself.

Growing up in Minnesota, Tucker had known cold — the slablike feel of dangerously chilled cheeks, the nose-cracking, lung-seizing sensation of inhaling ten-below-zero air, the creak of boots on hard-frozen snow — but nothing like this. Already his ears were stinging viciously. He headed toward the nearest outcropping, a sharp-toothed ridge of snow and ice about twenty feet high. From the top, he might be able to spot some nearby shelter.

He climbed, jamming his toes into the crevices. Halfway up, he slipped and skidded to the bottom, clawing at the ice with his bare hands. Driven by desperation and near panic, he attacked the ridge again, scrabbling his way up, ignoring the pain in his fingers. He reached the crest just as a massive blast of wind-borne ice crystals scoured the ridgetop. Tucker turned his face away from the wind and squeezed his eyes closed, waiting for the ground storm to subside. After a few seconds, the wind eased and he was able to look out over what lay beyond: an endless sheet of snow-swirled ice, interrupted by more ragged icy ridges. A bleary, mustard-yellow blob showed through the haze on the horizon. The sun.

The wind came up again. Tucker backed down the ridge to the relative shelter of the flat ice. His hands had stopped hurting, and he could no longer feel his face. Part of his brain knew that this was a bad thing, while another part of him welcomed the loss of sensation. He looked again at the disko, his only way out. But there were no ladders here in this arctic nightmare. He might as well be on Mars.

He could stay where he was and freeze to death, or he could start walking and die someplace else. The smart move would be to stay put. If help were to arrive, it would come from the disko. But standing still was an impossibility. He could feel the cold sinking through his skin into his legs and his chest and his brain.

He had to keep moving. It didn’t matter in which direction. He turned his back on the wind and ordered himself to move. His legs felt like wooden posts, but they obeyed. He followed the base of the outcropping, taking advantage of what little protection it offered. He walked a few hundred paces, then stopped. Everything looked the same, in every direction. Looking back the way he had come, he saw his tracks rapidly being covered by drifting snow. Fearful of losing the disko, he ran back to where he had started.

The disko was gone. Or he was in the wrong place. Either way, he had lost his only chance at survival. He should have stayed put. He began walking in circles.
Keep moving,
he told himself. Every few seconds he looked up to see if the disko had returned. Nothing but low gray sky. He imagined crystals forming in his skin, rupturing cells, lowering his core temperature. The only sound was the hiss of blowing ice particles.

A loud crack splintered the air. The ice tilted abruptly, throwing him off his feet. On his hands and knees, Tucker scrabbled away from the heaving ice. He tried to stand up, but the ice sheet lifted and convulsed and threw him down again. For a moment, he lay half-stunned on the trembling surface, staring up in bewilderment as a dark shape punched up through the ice in a slow-motion eruption.

The thing appeared to be a gray, metallic structure, thirty feet wide, with a flat top and rounded sides. Water sluiced down the metal as it rose; a pale bloom crackled from top to bottom as the water froze on its surface. The grinding screech of metal tearing through ice raked at Tucker’s ears as the thing continued to ascend.

Abruptly, it stopped — a squat metal tower, ten feet high, jutting from the ice. For several seconds Tucker heard only the hiss of the wind and the sighs of ice settling and refreezing. A long pipe with a crook at the end telescoped slowly from the top of the tower. It turned this way and that, then withdrew.

Once again, Tucker became acutely aware of the cold. His face felt like dead meat, and his ears — he was afraid that if he touched them they would shatter. Whatever this metal thing was, it might provide shelter. He was about to get to his feet when the ice crackled and lurched again. Tucker scuttled back quickly, skidding across the ice on his butt.

This time the metal structure pushed up to a height of about twenty feet. The ice on either end of it heaved and cracked apart in a long line. The metal tower continued to rise, supported by a hump of steel extending a hundred feet in either direction.

Tucker realized what he was seeing.

A submarine.

The vessel continued to rise until its deck stood several feet above the surface. Three-foot-thick slabs of ice leaned against its sides. The number 578 was painted at the base of the conning tower. Near the top of the tower, the disko reappeared, flickering dully, then fading.

A few seconds later, the head and shoulders of a man appeared at the top of the tower. Tucker opened his mouth to shout, but a vicious blast of ice-laden wind sent him staggering back. By the time he was able to open his eyes again, the man had disappeared back inside.

The ice pack had shattered for several yards around the submarine. Seawater welled up from the cracks. Tucker made his way carefully forward, testing each step to make sure it was safe. He was within ten feet of the submarine when a hatch just behind the conning tower clanked open. A man dressed in a heavy parka climbed out onto the deck.

Tucker yelled, “Hey!”

The man jerked around in surprise, slipped on the icy deck, and fell with a shout. Tucker started toward him but stopped as he felt the ice shift beneath his feet.

The man stood up shakily, rubbing his elbow, and looked down at Tucker.

“Where did
you
come from?”

“I’m freezing,” Tucker said.

A second man’s head popped up from the hatch. “Everything okay?” he asked.

“No!” said the first man. “I cracked my elbow and”— he pointed a mittened hand at Tucker —“if that ain’t one of Santa’s elves, would somebody please tell me what he’s doing here at the North Pole?”