Fragment

12:02 P.M.

As he descended the aluminum stairway to inspect the damage to Section One, he heard shrieking whistles around him. A rhythmic pounding reverberated through the lab below. He peered out of his hazy visor at the sensors studding the plastic tube.

About the size of smoke detectors, the sensors lining the vestibule sniffed out any microbial life that might breach the outer lining. They monitored the hermetically sealed space between the outer and inner layers using LAL extracted from the blood of horseshoe crabs, which had been injected into each unit.

A small glass tube in the sensors was supposed to turn yellow in the presence of microbes. NASA had already used similar devices to ensure that interplanetary probes were microbe-free during construction.

As Briggs crept down the aluminum stairway toward the hatch of Section One he noticed that all the green LEDs on the sensors had turned red-and the test tubules had turned bright yellow.

Thankful for the blue cleansuit he had been cursing a moment before, Briggs reached the bottom of the stairs and peered through the hatch window into Section One.

Halos of sunlight streamed into the lab from ring-shaped clusters of holes punched through its roof.

The shafts of light illuminated the creatures crawling, flitting, skittering, and leaping throughout the lab.

The center between one of the rings of holes in the roof fell out and larger animals immediately poured through.

The swarms of creatures gathering below seemed to notice him peering through the window at them and they all moved with unnatural speed straight toward him, creating a cyclone of paper and flying debris.

A rain of wasps and drill-worms splattered like bugs on a windshield as Briggs jerked back from the window. A sudden, piercing alarm sounded.

He turned and ran up the aluminum stairway.

All around him the lining of the vestibule was twinkling now with purple LEDs. He remembered as he ran that the inner layer was laced with fiber optics that detected structural damage to the vestibule. The whole tube turned purple-red as the inner lining was breached around him.

Briggs cursed the baggy cleansuit as he vaulted up the creaking aluminum stairs.

“Technical difficulties?” Pound snapped. “NASA spent 180 million dollars on this lab, Dr. Cato. I thought it was designed for this!”

“Designed for this?” Nell stifled a laugh, looking at Dr. Cato ruefully.

“Some adaptations have been made,” Dr. Cato answered patiently. “Even while the lab was being shipped, and ever since it got here. It’s quite miraculous what they’ve been able to do. But StatLab was primarily designed as a modular mobile lab that could be dropped into remote disease hot-zones, Mr. Pound. It wasn’t designed to be under siege by anything larger than a virus.”

Nell guided Pound along with a firm hand on his waist.

“We should be getting word shortly on the status of Section One. In the meantime, let’s take a look at some things that we’ve already found, OK?”

The afterburners of an F-14 Tomcat roared as it was catapulted from the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

When the bone-rattling tumult had passed, a Navy officer resumed shouting at Zero over a revving V-22 Sea Osprey, which stood behind her on the gray plane of the flight deck.

“You’re the only one who’s been in there and survived,” the officer yelled.

Zero looked around at the busy men and women on top of the gigantic aircraft carrier. “What makes you think I would go back in there?” he shouted back.

“Cynthea said you wanted to get off the Trident,” she yelled. “You’ll be quarantined on the island until this is over. The President needs a cameraman there-if you want it, the job is yours!”

Zero looked around wryly in the direction of the Trident. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered. He pointed at a monster RV. “In that thing?”

Sitting on the deck with a thick cable attached to its roof was the most macho off-road vehicle Zero had ever seen. Aside from the word “NASA” stenciled in red on its side, impressive by itself, the rover had two monster knobby tires in front and halftracks behind. It had four bubble windows like those on a deep-sea sub, three in front and another at the rear. Protruding from the front of the vehicle was a wedge-shaped grille like the cowcatcher on a 19th-century locomotive. Two heavy robotic arms were folded to either side of the front bubble, like the arms of a praying mantis.

“The XATV-9,” the Navy officer shouted over the Osprey’s engines, pointing behind her. “NASA’s experimental Mars rover! Shipped in by special order of the President himself. You couldn’t be safer in your mother’s arms, sir! What do you say?”

The lensman in Zero answered. “OK,” he shouted, cursing himself at the same time.

“You need to get in now, sir!”

Two flight deck crewmen rushed Zero forward. They sealed the airtight hatch behind him as he climbed into a sunken shotgun seat before the three bubble windows. A control panel out of Buck Rogers glittered between Zero and the driver, who was a clean-cut man in a navy blue jumpsuit. He gave Zero a confident thumbs-up and then pointed at a nice Steadicam on a folding robotic arm mounted to the roof above the shotgun seat.

“Strap yourself in quick,” the driver advised. “You ain’t never had a ride like this.”

Zero clicked the seat harness and grabbed the handles of the Steadicam, which swung down weightlessly from the ceiling. He put the wide viewfinder to his left eye just as the Osprey yanked them off the deck.

“Woo-Hoooo!” the driver yelled.

They swung out over the ocean. Zero gulped as he aimed the camera out the window.