He waited.

Marked the time. Watched the snow and the shovels.

Occasionally he talked to Hutch. She assured him she’d be careful. Wouldn’t get herself killed. Try to relax.

It’ll be okay.

The minutes dragged past. Everything was happening in slow motion.

He didn’t know what he wanted to see. Whether having the thing come back out into the daylight would be a hopeful sign or not.

Hutch’s shuttle dropped into the clouds. “We were lucky,” she said. “Couldn’t have hoped for a better window.”

He was frustrated, having to sit there while the woman took her life into her hands. Damn. What was he supposed to do if she went down the hole and didn’t come out again?

“Hutch?”

“Yes, Jon?”

“How about directing the AI to bring up the other lander? So I can get down there, too?”

There was a long hesitation. “Not a good idea.”

“You might need help.”

“You can’t get here in time to do anything. All you’d do is put yourself at risk.”

“Damn it, Hutch, you can’t expect me to just sit here.”

“There’s an outside chance they’ll need the lander as a shelter.”

“Hutch, damn it—”

“Let it go, Jon. I’ll get to you as soon as I know something.” She was below the clouds now, descending toward the plain. Mountains in the distance.

The hole had become a gaping wound. He watched it, stared at it, wished he had a better angle, wished he could look down into it.

THEY CONTINUED UP. Matt tried to pick up the pace, tried to do it without stumbling. He kept his eyes on the stairs because Antonio was right behind him, crowding him. Or maybe he didn’t want to look fearful. He was almost at the top when the journalist screamed. A pair of glittering green eyes had appeared at the top of the staircase. Enormous eyes. He threw himself back as the head rose, large and reptilian, wide and big and grinning with dripping incisors.

He was falling back down the stairs and suddenly everything was dark again. The head was gone, and he was grasping for the handrail and simultaneously trampling somebody, probably Antonio.

One of the lights hit it again. The thing was white as the snow outside.

They were all tumbling, scrambling, screaming, back down, hopelessly tangled in one another’s arms and legs. The thing came after them, slow and deliberate and watching, mouth wide, big enough to take any of them down whole. Matt lost the rhino gun. The thing’s jaws kept opening wider. He could have driven a truck into its mouth.

Then there were no more stairs, and he crashed hard onto the floor. And there was the rhino, just the barrel, sticking out from under somebody. He made a grab for it but it vanished again. And a small voice somewhere whispered to him, Captain Rigel, Captain Rigel.

The thing’s eyes stayed locked on him. So much for the lightbender. Light swept across the scene, and he saw a long python body, absolutely white, silver as starlight, wide as a small train, stretching up the stairway, across the landing, disappearing into the darkness.

He was groping for the gun, trying to find it in the chaos. But it was Antonio who came up with it finally, who fired a charge into the creature’s mouth. Right between those cavernous jaws and down its throat. Its tongue flicked, red and glistening. Then the round exploded, and the head was gone. Red mush blew past him, got all over him. The body slithered past, slammed past, knocked him down, kept coming, kept jerking and thrashing, and began to pile up. Antonio couldn’t fire a second charge because Matt had the projectiles. But it wasn’t going to matter.

The convulsions slowed. And stopped. For a long time no one said anything.

Finally, in a voice that was barely a squeak, Antonio asked if it was dead.

“I think so.” Matt shuddered. He was under the goddammed thing. It had piled up on him and he’d been too terrified to move.

Antonio gave him a hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“I don’t think Rudy is.”

Oh.

Matt got clear, finally, and went to look at Rudy. “He took a bad fall, Matt.”

They extricated him from the beast. His head hung at an odd angle. His eyes were wide-open, locked in terror. The book he’d been carrying was still gripped in his right hand.

Matt couldn’t find a pulse.

Antonio handed over the rhino gun, and Matt fired another cartridge into the thing.

chapter 30

MATT KNELT OVER Rudy, trying to awaken him, trying to breathe some semblance of life into him. “Nothing?” asked Antonio.

“Can’t be sure.” Matt didn’t want it to be true. God, he didn’t want that. Rudy dead. Why the hell had they come down here anyway? For a goddam book? He took it, the one Rudy still cradled, and, still on his knees, threw it against the wall.

Antonio was shining his light up the staircase. “We need to get out of here, Matt. There might be more of these things around.”

“Yeah.” He bent over Rudy again, felt for a pulse, for a heartbeat, anything. Finally, he gave up, and they lifted his body.

The serpentine corpse partially blocked the staircase.

They climbed past it, hanging on to Rudy, trying not to touch the thing. Matt found himself thanking God Rudy didn’t weigh more.

They got to the top. And to the end of the snake. When they were past it, they stopped to rest a few moments. Then they stumbled into the supply room. The cable was still in place.

As soon as they put the body down, Antonio turned and started back into the corridor. “I’ll just be a minute,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“Get the books.”

“You can’t go back down there, Antonio,” he said. “Let them go.”

He stopped in the doorway. “What do you think Rudy would have wanted?”

There was something in Antonio’s eyes. Sadness. Contempt. Weariness, maybe. He’d seen how Matt had reacted. Had seen him jump when the serpent appeared. Knew that, instead of playing the heroic role he’d assigned himself, he’d fallen down the stairs, fallen on top of Rudy, anything to get away. “Wait,” said Matt. “You’ll need a hand.”

WHEN THE LINK began working again, he contacted Hutch and gave her the news. She told him she was sorry and had to fight for control of her voice. She was on her way down from the Preston, and when they climbed out of the hole, carrying Rudy’s body, and bringing one of the two books with them—one had gotten lost somewhere, was probably beneath the dead animal—her lander was already visible coming in over the snowfields.

She landed a few meters away and got out. They laid Rudy in the snow, and she knelt beside him. One of the problems with the hard shell the force field throws over the face is that you couldn’t wipe your eyes.

When she’d regained control she stood up. “You guys okay?” she asked.

“We’re good,” said Matt. She carried a rhino gun. “Where’s Jon?”

“In the McAdams. I didn’t have time to pick him up.” She looked down the side of the mountain, gazed at the broken tower, at Antonio. She was trying to say something else. And finally it came: “Was it quick?”

Matt nodded.

Other than that, she didn’t say much. Told Matt and Antonio thanks. Embraced them. Then she suggested they not hang around. They opened the cargo locker and lifted Rudy inside.

WHEN THEY GOT back to the McAdams, they froze Rudy’s body and put it in storage. As captain of the ship on which he’d been a passenger, and as a longtime friend, Hutch would perform the memorial service. She’d brought along a captain’s uniform, with no expectation of having to wear it.