The flashlight fell from his hands, then the shotgun.

The way it looked at him was devastating . . . it seemed to take him apart at some basal level. Things like defiance and free will writhed briefly in the glaring crimson suns of its eyes, then curled up brown and withered to fragments. There was an unquestioning superiority about the creature. No anger or rage or simple hatred, for such things were by-products of humanity and not within its natural rhythms. It looked down upon Hayes with a neutral pa.s.sivity, maybe slightly amused even or playfully annoyed the way an owner will look down upon a beloved puppy that has s.h.i.t on the carpet. Yes, I've come now, master is here, little one. You've made a mess of things, haven't you? No matter, I'll sweep it up, you precocious and empty-headed little beast. Maybe that's how it was seeing him. As something stupid and messy and foolish that needed a higher guidance, a taste of discipline to set it right. That's what Hayes was feeling in his head, the sense that this thing thought he and his kind had s.h.i.t all over the world, but that was at an end now for daddy was here and he would soon set things to right. We made you what you are and as we made you, little one, we can un-make you.

And that was it.

Those were the thoughts that blossomed in the whistling vacuum of Hayes' mind. That this horror saw itself as a parent looking down at a child . . . not hate there, just a touch of disappointment.

It was in his head now, easily mastering his thoughts, picking through his memories and emotions and subconscious urges almost by accident. Their minds were so dominating and supreme, they did this almost as an afterthought. Like everything else with them, a mind, a psyche, was just something else to be dissected and rendered down to its base anatomy.

Hayes felt something building in him.

Maybe the creature truly did not dislike him, but it also held no warm thoughts for him or his race, either. It was alien and cold and arrogant. Hayes was warm and weak and idiotic. But there was something in him they had not counted on and that something bubbled up from his core and he charged the Old One with murder in his eyes.

He surprised the old master.

It could not comprehend such out and out rebellion, for revolt against their makers was not something they programmed into the human animal. And as such, it was taken by surprise. Shouting a rebel yell, Hayes dove at it, actually grabbed its wavering stick-like appendages in his gloved hands and it was like touching a high-power line or a white-hot bar of smoldering steel. He was instantly knocked on his a.s.s, his gloves melted and smoking.

But the creature had recoiled from him, maybe out of shock or fear. Yes, just like old Doc Frankenstein had recoiled from that shambling monstrosity he created. This thing was appalled by Hayes. He was white and bloated, a hairy and gas-filled fungus . . . symmetrically and anatomically obscene, a disgusting lower order. He had no love for Hayes no more than a scientist has a love for a large spider he toys with . . . but when that spider revolts, it must be crushed as a lesson.

Hayes felt all his hatred drain away.

The Old One was in charge again as must be. Its brilliant and globular red eyes stood stiffly erect at the end of their stalks. The prismatic cilia atop its starfish-shaped head glowed a feral purple, then orange, and then the same color as its eyes. It was p.i.s.sed. It reached out and took Hayes, a wave of irresistible force slamming into his mind. His eyes went wide and his mouth ripped open in a scream as it took his brain, twisted it in its hands and began to squeeze the juice from it.

And then there was an explosion.

A gout of sparks and fire burst just below the thing's head and it fell back, flapping its wings, making a high and keening sound that was either pain or terror. Sharkey had fired her flare gun at it point blank.

It was enough.

Hayes found the shotgun and brought it up.

And just as he felt a hot wave of searing energy come barreling from the thing's mind, he pulled the trigger and the gun boomed. The buckshot struck the thing right in the head, shattering its eyestalks and eyeb.a.l.l.s into a splatter of mucilage. It screamed and it squealed, rising up on those fanning wings and disappearing into the darkness, wailing in torment.

Yes, this is how the dog bites the hand that feeds, you p.r.i.c.k, Hayes thought at it. You may have owned us once. You may have held our squirming destiny in your paws, but no more. Not now.

As if in answer to the creature's agony, the swarm from below began to shrill with a screeching decibel that almost blew Hayes' eardrums out.

Or was it from below?

Because standing there, leaning against Sharkey, he could see that high above the pit, up in that unfathomed blackness there were dozens of Old Ones drifting about, but looking distorted as if through a bad TV monitor.

"It's not real, Jimmy!" Sharkey shouted. "It's not at all real!"

And it wasn't.

What they were seeing up there was a transmission of sorts. Like looking through a window into a distant room or peering through the looking gla.s.s into the crawling madness on the other side. Up there, those images were blurred and fluttering, a vision of some unknown and nameless dead-end of s.p.a.ce that was populated by the Old Ones, maybe their home system and maybe some anti-world caught in-between. Another dimension, another reality, some pestilent graveyard beyond the bleeding rim of the universe. Only a glistening and transparent bubble separated the material of this dimension from that G.o.dless other.

But it must have been more than a bubble, for it was clear that they were not coming through. Just hanging there, circling that window like moths attracted by light. And Hayes knew they could see him, feel him there. Just as he knew they wanted through, that they needed through, but they were trapped, unable to swing open the door.

There were thousands of them there, hundreds of thousands, millions. They filled that vaporous window and the charnel depths beyond, a raging and droning hive trying to force their way through to consume and devour, to drain the minds of men dry, to turn the green hills into one immense alien hive. Hayes could feel them, even across those infinite distances, those trans-galactic gulfs of limitless s.p.a.ce . . . he could feel their chewing, voracious appet.i.tes needing to gorge themselves on the latent psychic energies of mankind. For they needed what the human race had. But the barrier held them at bay and even those withering, ravenous minds could not tear through it . . . at least not by themselves.

So they gathered in a writhing, industrious ma.s.s, a living and boiling incarnate cloud of sibilance, an alien infestation. A million piping voices built up, a clangorous explosion of noise like scratching metal and broken gla.s.s and sc.r.a.ping forks.

If they got through, they'd leech the collective mind of humanity dry in a matter of days. Such a thing could not be allowed. It would be hideous beyond imagination.

And just as Hayes thought that this, the horde waiting on the other side, was the most horrible thing the human mind could conceive of, it got suddenly worse. For that hive began to part and something came oozing and worming from out of that entombed, cryptic blackness . . . a roiling atomic putrescence, a living nuclear chaos, a surging and verminous plasma that was gigantic and alive and crystalline. Yes, an extra-dimensional polychromatic abomination that filled s.p.a.ce and filled the mind and sucked the marrow from the souls of men even as it burned their flesh to cinders. It was surging forward, its crystal anatomy flickering and pulsing with colors and brilliance and liquid fire.

Seeing it made Hayes' stomach roll in queasy, peristaltic waves. If such loathsome and wicked beings as the Old Ones could possibly have a G.o.d, this was it. The ultimate horror. Hayes had to look away because this thing was burning a hole through his head. It was malignant and noxious and sinister, the enemy of all living things with any purity in their souls. Its mind was a smoldering reactor and its flesh was not flesh but light and smoke and melting crystals of filth, a crawling fourth-dimensional helix of radioactive plasma. This was the crystallized devil, the incandescent pestilence that crept in the dark and twisted corridors between the s.p.a.ces men understood, the deranged color out of s.p.a.ce that Lind had raved about.

This was it.

The Color Out of s.p.a.ce.

And if the Old Ones ever got through in numbers, that wasting cancer would come with them and it wouldn't be just the earth in jeopardy and the minds of men, because that thing, that sentient cosmic virus, would chew a hole through time and s.p.a.ce and matter, yanking the guts out of the universe in moist, noisome coils and feeding on them.

Hayes was understanding a lot of things finally.

He took hold of Sharkey's hand and together they ran from it all, because human eyes were never intended to look upon these things. And as they ran, as their minds got out of range of that dimensional window or mirror or whatever in Christ it was, the image of that terrible place faded and went to static and then darkness. They both saw it go blank like a TV that had been shut off and they both knew that it had been powered by their minds and that made them think things they did not have time to properly consider.

For even though that cosmic TV had been shut off, that insane piping was still rising, reaching fever-pitch, a jarring and disharmonic storm of noise that was like hot needles puncturing their ears. And there was no doubt why, because the Old Ones, the hive from down in the lake were rising up out of the mouth of the pit in a chirring, buzzing cloud like giant palmetto bugs with great whirring wings, that dissonant and vociferous piping sharp as razors. They were gliding and dipping, gathering and dispersing, filling the city as they had millions of years before. The hive. The colony. Like a swarm of locusts they were coming to strip and rend and eat, coming to collect two more minds.

This is the swarm, Hayes thought, the memory of this is what reverted Cutchen to a frightened beast. The sound, the sight, the smell of them flocking like nightmare birds.

But there was no more time to think.

They were running, trying to find their way by flashlight and instinct and it seemed an impossible thing. There was no time to consider where they were going or what they would do when they got there. They pa.s.sed between those cyclopean walls and dozens of the Old Ones gathered atop them like raptors readying to feed. Each time those things got close, Hayes and Sharkey put their lights on them and they scattered. At first Hayes thought it was some rhythmic pattern of flight they were employing, collecting in profuse throngs then scattering away in buzzing pairs. But that wasn't it at all.

The Old One Sharkey had pegged with the flare gun was not afraid of the heat so much, but the light. Maybe their ancestors had walked by the light of day, but these evolved versions were strictly nocturnal and had been for countless millions of years. Even when the swarm came to collect specimens in those ancient days, it came in the dead of night filtering up from holes in the earth and the sleeping tangles of their cities, probably up through the ice cap, too. And this particular swarm had been living down in that dark lake for eons.

As Hayes and Sharkey entered the city proper, the Old Ones were done playing, they descended in a droning mob, piping and squealing. Hayes took the flare gun from Sharkey, loaded it, and fired a flare into those seething ma.s.ses. It exploded into a blazing red ball, throwing orange and red plumes of flame. And the Old Ones scattered immediately.

Then Hayes knew what had to be done.

He and Sharkey moved through the city at a breakneck pace, letting their instinct guide them through those cubes and cylinders and tubes and within twenty minutes they came to one of the honeycombed openings. They were ten feet off the ground and much farther down than where they entered. But close enough. They jumped down, panting and sweating, their lungs aching. They scrambled over to the generator and Hayes kicked into life. The face of the city erupted with light and brilliance that sent the Old Ones scurrying and buzzing back into the shadows.

This was it.

This was their chance.

With the grotto lit . . . or their part of it . . . it was easy enough to make a run back to the archway. They did so, vaulting debris and slipping around stalagmites and climbing over rocks. When they got inside the archway, Hayes tripped and went flat on his face. And if he hadn't, they would not have seen. His light went spinning, revealing the dark corners of the arch they had not originally noticed.

"What is that stuff?" Sharkey asked.

Hayes didn't answer, not right away. What he was seeing were a series of thin plastic tubes wrapped around rocks and the frame of the arch itself. It was detcord hooked to electric blasting caps and their had to be seventy or eighty feet of it. Enough to cause a ma.s.sive explosion.

That's why the remote control detonator was up in the SnoCat. Somebody was planning on sealing this place off for an eternity. Gates. Must have been Gates.

"Don't touch it," Hayes warned Sharkey. "That's detcord . . . C-8 plastic explosive shaped into a cord."

"The detonator . . . "

"You got it."

The lights were holding the swarm at bay, but they wouldn't for long. Already Hayes could feel those minds out there collecting themselves, gathering their energies, charging their batteries as it were. And when they turned that force at the generator . . .

Hayes and Sharkey started up the steps.

They moved as fast as they could, running and climbing, falling down and getting back up again until they found the original pa.s.sage. Behind them, echoing and reverberating, came that piping. It was building now. Angry and resolute and directed.

Hayes and Sharkey found the rope ladder, climbed up out of the chasm into the subzero polar night. The storm had pa.s.sed and there were stars out above. Auroras were flickering and expanding in swaths of cold white light over the mountain peaks.

"Get that 'Cat warmed up!" Hayes called to Sharkey as he ran through Gates' deserted encampment.

He ran one way and she ran the other.

He palmed the detonator from Gates' SnoCat and climbed the slope to his own. Sharkey had it running. He climbed into the warming cab and brought the 'Cat around so its nose was pointing back down the drifted ice road. Then he hit the firing b.u.t.ton on the detonator.

At first there was nothing and he thought it hadn't worked or they were out of range, but then it came: a great rumbling from below that set-up a chain reaction of destruction down there. The ground shook and the hills trembled and Gates' camp suddenly disappeared into a smoking crevice.

That's all there was to it.

"Drive," Sharkey said.

Hayes did.

43.

On the way back, Sharkey read Gates' field journal, breezing through things she knew. She said nothing for a long time and Hayes just drove. He couldn't think of a single intelligent thing to say after what they'd been through. Nothing. He couldn't even work up the strength to mourn Cutchen. Poor, G.o.dd.a.m.n Cutchen.

Finally, thirty minutes later, Sharkey said, "Gates had some interesting theories here concerning what this is all about. You up to hearing them?"

He reached over and held her hand. "I'm up to it."

"According to Gates, there's a method to the madness of the Old Ones. They're harvesting minds in a very selective pattern. Some will be harvested to be used, but most . . . most of us will be culled, drained dry, and purged." She clicked off her flashlight and closed Gates' notebook. "They've waited a long time, Jimmy, for their seeds to bear fruit. Again, according to Gates, they'll seek minds much like their own -cold, militaristic intellects that they can easily take hold of, brains that are ready to be awakened and, in some ways, are already awake, receptive. These will be the cells by which they'll contaminate and conquer the entire race . . . reaching out and infecting us mind by mind by mind, spreading out like a plague and waking up those buried imperatives they planted in us so very long ago until we're essentially a hive of bees or wasps, a colony with a single relentless inhuman intelligence, one that can be bent to their will, harvested, and used for their grand plan."

Hayes lit a cigarette. "Which is?"

"Gates is a little vague on that."

"So they don't really want all our minds, just certain ones?"

"Yes. They will infect us all, then purge off those that are what they might consider mutants . . . defiant wills, individualistic minds. They cannot allow such disease germs in the greater whole. But even those that are purged, killed off . . . their psychic energies will be reaped."

"Jesus," Hayes said. "They develop us only to harvest. Like farmers. We're nothing but a crop for them."

Hayes was remembering what Gates had said when they chatted with him. He could see it in his mind now: I believe they have seeded hundreds of worlds in the galaxy with life and directed the evolution of that life they have an agenda and I believe it is the subjugation of the races they developed . . .

Sure, the great cosmic farmers spreading out star by star, selecting suitable worlds to be colonized and seeded. Waiting millions of years means nothing to them. For in the end, they always possess the races they engineer and the limitless power of their intellects.

"Gates believed that in every population there were what he refers to as Type-A personalities . . . dutiful, methodical, more machine than man. Minds much like their own. People who place duty and allegiance to a higher cause above all else. And particularly such trifling, human things as love, family, individuality -"

"LaHune," Hayes said, his heart sinking like a brick.

"Yes, exactly. Minds like his may be accidental, but probably not. A small minority the Old Ones engineered in advance to be used like viruses with which to contaminate us all. The end result will be . . . well, I think you can guess."

"A world filled with LaHunes." Hayes looked like he needed to be sick. He pulled off his cigarette, feeling angry and nauseated. "None of us human . . . just cold and brainwashed. Worker ants, drones."

Sharkey nodded. "Yes, but far, far worse, Jimmy. LaHune times ten, LaHune squared. LaHune sucked dry of even his most basal human characteristics . . . automatons with a single directed mind that those aliens can lord over." She paused, slapping the notebook against her knee. "But to what end? I don't know."

But Hayes thought he did.

At least one or two of the reasons, though he suspected there were many of them. They had set a blueprint into motion on this planet as they had probably done on hundreds of others. They sent out colonists that would drift from star to star, planet to planet, seeding them for future harvest just as Gates thought. This would take billions of years but, ultimately, that wouldn't matter to creatures like them that were potentially immortal anyway. And the end result was to establish thousands of outposts, a network of dominance. Using those minds they had engineered, they would have unlimited psychic energy to wield. The sort of energy that was far beyond such simple things as nuclear fusion, it was the very electricity and milk of creation itself.

Oh, it was very simple when you thought about it.

They had known it would work because they had been doing it for trillions of years. They knew how it would happen. All along, they'd known the human race would multiply and spread over the earth. That our engineered neurophysiology would make that quite simple, that we would reason our way out of darkness just as they had. They knew we would over-populate into the billions and that when our numbers reached critical ma.s.s we would find them again and they would be waiting, waiting to harness what we had . . . the limitless, pure kinetic psychic force of the human mind. They would harvest it. They would unite us into a single devastating mind. A new mind, a fresh hive, not ancient and jaded like theirs, but fresh and unborn and indestructible, eternal and infinite and immortal. They would direct the cosmic purity of our thoughts and those thoughts would be energy and matter and focus. They would punch a hole through the dark s.p.a.ces between the stars and bring their race here, the legions, the swarms that would fill the seas and cover the lands and darken the skies and in doing so, would suck humanity dry.

Organic technology. A pure and unmechanistic science.

Yes, we were the ultimate tool, the technology that would summon them and destroy us. And that's what it was all about. Those colonists spreading out, seeding and manipulating, bringing forth a great intelligence that could be absorbed and directed to open doorways between distant gulfs of s.p.a.ce. When their plan reached fruition, there would be no million-year migrations, but a simple jump through wormholes tunneled with pure psychic force. They would have the universe, star by star.

It would take forever, but they were patient.

But when they brought the real swarm through, they would also bring that cremating atomic pestilence, the Color Out of s.p.a.ce. That extradimensional horror which curved s.p.a.ce and dissolved matter as it slithered along, subverting time and reality and suckling the blood of the cosmos itself. Hayes couldn't pretend to know what it really was, but if the Old Ones could conceivably have a devil, then this was it.

And they were devil-worshippers.

Hayes told Sharkey about this and she agreed with him.

"Doesn't this f.u.c.king thing go any faster?" she finally said.

44.

Kharkhov Station.

It came at you out of the whipping, black polar night like some football stadium in the dead center of that glacial white nothingness . . . a sudden oasis of lights and machinery and civilization. Targa House and the meteorology dome. The power station and the drilling tower. Observatories and storage garages. Most of it connected by a webbing of conduits and flagged pathways and security lights. All of it capped by antennas and wind turbines and radar dishes. Outbuildings and huts scattered in all directions. And, off to the far left, the drifted-over runway that would bring the planes come spring. A self-contained community locked down in this eternal deep freeze. And as far as outside help went, it might as well have been sitting dead center of the Martian desert. Because if you were thinking evacuation or rescue, you'd get it about as fast as you would have on the red planet.