Prologue
A shaft of gold gleamed off the light cast by the driller. Slowly, the drill powered down, and the machine tilted so that its camera fixed squarely on the object before it. Millions of miles away, within the confines of one of Earth's biggest space exploration control centers, a technician squinted hard at the monitor. Something about the metal under that ice looked… unnatural, far too polished and smooth to be there by mere chance. What had the probe found? Had they really just discovered evidence of life on Mars?
On any other day, the technician would have called his supervisor over immediately, but this was no ordinary day. This find could revolutionize the world. Life on Mars would have millions of implications. He would be lauded as a champion of science; he would go down in the history books as the man who incontestably discovered extraterrestrial life.
The technician looked up over his computer monitor. His boss had a coat over his arm and a few coworkers trailing behind him. Lunchtime. Perfect.
Pleased with his luck, the technician initiated the drill and very carefully began to break the ice around the metal. How would he tell everyone the news? Should he show this to the rest of the station first? No, straight to the news with this one. Too big to let someone else in the station steal the glory.
The technician swore. The drill had broken through the ice and bit into the metal. The ice was thinner than he had thought. Five keystrokes pulled the drill away, but the damage had been done. Even through the broken ice, he could see a clean chunk missing from the metal.
But, even as he swore again and again and again, fresh pieces of ice slipped away. Water began to drip out of the drilled hole, but the technician was too busy cursing himself to notice. It wasn't until the driller's microphone picked up the noise of one massive break that the technician turned back to the monitor and watched, his jaw dropped, his mind unable to even process what was happening, as the metal within the ice began to move. Something further down the shaft – the technician was sure he had lost his mind, for it looked like a hand – tightened against the metal and began to twist. The technician slammed down the button to move the drill backwards, but nothing happened. Ice fell away from the thing further down the shaft, but even as it did the driller's camera began to short out. The microphone, however, continued to pick up every break of ice as the pieces fell, but there was something else, something wholly other, beneath the sound of cracking ice.
Something growled. Then something screamed, its wail blending in with a new sound of metal on metal, until the technician lost all signal with his driller.