even as Lucas stopped to gaze in awe at the bottle of liquor.
“Wow,” he said sounding more like a frat boy than a scientist, if only for a moment. “We haven’t seen one of those in years.”
“Well, it’s time you re-established a meaningful relationship,” Andrew said, grinning. He reached down and snagged one of a half-dozen bottles at his feet, this one unopened, and tossed it easily to Lucas, who caught it with some difficulty. Lucas, in turn, offered it to his thirsty colleague, who moved as quickly as he could to seize the prize, but as the scientist tried to take the bottle, Andrew noticed for the first time just how frail the man was. He wasn’t going to be able to stand without help, let alone have a drink.
Andrew was suddenly, painfully aware of how the extreme environment had taken its toll on these men—all of them.
The lesson wasn’t lost on Samantha, either. “Hey,” she said to everyone with a false, almost brittle cheer, “how about we open one of these ration crates and have little celebration?”
They had been waiting for the invitation. In a heartbeat, the scientists, under Lucas’ watchful eye, ripped open one of the Spector’s ration crates and pulled out bag after bag of self-contained, self-heating meals-ready-to-eat; they descended on them like ravenous animals. They just ate—without benefit of utensils or table manners. The sound alone was enough to turn Simon’s stomach.
After all too short a time Lucas called a halt. “Take it easy, guys!” he said. He pulled the last of the few unopened packs from his people—even the ones who fought him—to store them in his own bag for later. “Think about what you’ll eat tomorrow and next week. There’s no telling when we can mount that resupply operation, so this is going to have to last us until then.”
One of the men—the first one to ask for liquor—gave a sarcastic snort. “‘Resupply operation,’” he grunted. “Hitting that bunker at the base of Tunnel 5 is a pipe dream, Lucas. Never gonna happen.”
“You see the guards they have posted down there?” another scientist said. “We wouldn’t have a chance.”
“Not before, we wouldn’t have,” Lucas said, then hefted a long, heavy wooden case off the icy ground and plopped it between the men. “But now…”
The complainer glared at the battered wooden box. “Where’d you get that?”
“The abandoned weapons dump up at Tunnel 36. Remember? That’s why we went out in the first place? Well, food and new friends notwithstanding, it was worth the trip.”
He pried open the box to reveal the strangest weapon Simon had ever seen—a structured box like weapon that seemed to look like a retractable robot. The only thing he recognized was the decal of a skull on one matte-finished panel. The international symbol of deadly.
They looked too small and compact to be rifles, but far too large and complex to be a pistol. Max too was fascinated. To him, they resembled the folded gloves of an experimental exo-skeleton he had seen in a government facility years ago—multiple sections that folded out and clicked together to make…something very strange.
Lucas noticed Max staring. “What?” he said in a voice that was almost prideful. “You’ve never seen a ray gun before?”
“Come on,” Simon chuckled, just as curious as Max. “What the hell is it really?”
“I’ll be happy to show you,” Lucas said. “Follow me.”
They moved to a makeshift firing range they had created a safe distance from the encampment, and facing away into the dark far reaches of the cave. With a few gestures, Lucas indicated where he wanted the observers to stand, and Simon noticed for the first time that Nastasia had silently joined them, a look of naked curiosity on her beautiful features.
It only took a few seconds for Lucas to expand the rifle. He depressed a thumb-latch here, pulled sharply, clicked the folding stock up and then down, and twisted, and the weapon had suddenly stretched to five times its original size and locked itself into an entirely new shape—half-rifle, half-glove, wrapped around his forearm like a robotic parasite. Simon couldn’t keep from being impressed; it was beautifully designed, a compact and clever construct of multiple sections that telescoped into a weapon slightly larger than a machine pistol, with a thick, round muzzle the diameter of a broomstick.
Lucas planted a knee on the frozen ground and set his body, as if preparing for heavy recoil. He raised the weapon and pointed it toward the far end of the range at