"So now they know about guns," said General Bromley.

  "And they know how to disable our magnetic shields," added Captain Daniels.

  They were back in the conference room. Jeffcott watched miserably as the high ranking military officers and civilians performed a post mortem on the MCV's test run. His arm itched where a medic had sewn up the cut he'd suffered. There'd been almost a sneer on his face as he'd done it, as if he was used to treating far worse injuries and couldn't believe his time was being wasted on something so trivial.

  Daniels and Bailey had gone back into the anomaly, under the cover of forty men aiming guns in their direction, to bring back Carpenter's body. Then they'd tied a towing strap to the MCV so that the trucks could pull it back out. Once outside the anomaly the MCV's engine had started easily and the whole convoy had returned to Papavo, leaving behind a cordon of men to guard the road. The anomaly creatures could leave the anomaly at any point around its perimeter, of course, but Doctor Young's work with the captive creatures suggested that they only had a limited Intelligence when not under the control of the entity that had created them and that they could only communicate with it while within the anomaly. Outside, they would only have a limited ability to solve problems and overcome unexpected obstacles.

  "They've learned a couple of new tricks too," said Assad Ziani, looking at a screen at the end of the room where footage of the incident, taken by a Corporal with a movie camera, was showing. "They can run now, and change the colour of their skins to match their surroundings, like chameleons."

  "It's a far more sophisticated camouflage system than anything possessed in the animal kingdom," said Young. "Can you pause the replay please?" The images on the screen froze and Young rose from his seat to walk to it. "There's a creature, right there," he said, pointing to where there appeared to be nothing but brown tarmac. "Do you see it? It has the same mottled shade of colours as the surface it's sitting on. It's using countershading. Darker on the top, lighter on its sides, to conceal its three-dimensional shape. The sun is almost directly overhead so that it casts no shadow. Overall, its camouflage is so sophisticated that it's effectively invisible. On top of that, it can change colour fast enough to match its surroundings while running. It remains invisible when while it's running towards you."

  "But when it's running it casts a shadow," said Daniels. "All the camouflage in the world can't make sunlight shine on the road under its body."

  "So what's the answer?" asked Bromley. "How do we spot them?"

  "They're warm blooded," said Jeffcott. Everyone turned to stare at him and he almost lost his nerve. He got a grip on himself and continued. "When I killed one, I got blood all over my face. It was hot." He couldn't help but glance at Daniels as he said it and he felt a smirk trying to form on his face. See? he thought. The civilian didn't freeze up.

  "Right," Doctor Young agreed. "Our captive specimens have exactly the same body temperature as humans."

  "Would infra-red cameras be able to spot them?" asked Starr.

  "Absolutely," said Bromley with a smile of satisfaction. "During the day they'd be cooler than the hot ground around them. They'd show up as cold spots. However there would be two brief periods, at dusk and dawn, as the ground is warming and cooling, when they'd be exactly the same temperature as the ground under them. If they attacked us then, we might not spot them."

  "We'll equip the expeditionary force with infra-red goggles," said Starr. "And we'll warn them to be especially vigilant at dusk and dawn. What about the MCV? What kind of condition is it in?"

  "Very light damage," Daniels replied. "Some punctures to the nitrogen tubes and the vacuum insulation. They've probably patched the holes already."

  "Those holes were enough to totally incapacitate the vehicle," Ziani pointed out.

  "They normally carry armour," Daniels told him. "We wanted to make sure the magnetic shield worked before we wasted any more time on them. We searched the area for hostiles before going in. We had no way of knowing about their camouflage techniques. I take full responsibility for the death of Private Carpenter."

  "There'll be an enquiry of course," said Starr, "but considering the urgency of the situation, the threat to the whole world, I don't think you need to worry about the tribunal being too bloodthirsty. We need to develop a wartime mindset here in which casualties are to be expected." Heads nodded around the table but Jeffcott felt his fears deepening. He had no doubt that they would take his own death with exactly the same casual nonchalance.

  "Will the armour defend the MCV's against the kind of attack you experienced today?" asked Bromley.

  "I have no doubt that it will provide complete protection," Daniels replied. "It's designed to withstand small arms fire. Claws thrown with the force of a baseball will just bounce off."

  Bromley nodded unhappily. "It would solve an awful lot of problems if the superconductors didn't have to be kept so cold," he said. "Why not just use something that works at normal temperatures?"

  Jeffcott gave a bitter laugh before he could stop himself. "A superconductor that works at room temperature is the holy grail that scientists all over the world have been working towards for decades," he said. "Not so long ago they had to be cooled with liquid helium, which is way colder than liquid nitrogen, not to mention way more expensive. The discovery of superconductors that worked at liquid nitrogen temperatures was hailed as a major breakthrough. Whoever invents a room temperature superconductor is going to change the world, and make himself a billionaire in the process." He saw blank looks from the politicians and military men sitting around the table. "The country that invents it will rule the world," he added, "so we'd better hope it's a friendly one." That got their attention, he was pleased to see. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.

  "Preparations for the expedition will proceed," said Starr, as if eager to change the subject. "You will set off as soon as both MCV's are ready."

  "Understood," said Bromley. Starr then rose from his seat, signalling that the meeting was over.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  ☆☆☆

  The next day there was an earth tremor.

  Jeffcott didn't think anything of it. He'd experienced several since coming to the States. If he was on the west coast he might have been more worried, wondering whether it was the prelude to the 'big one' that everyone had been expecting for so long, but so far as he knew nobody was expecting a big one in Arizona.

  The people he met in the canteen seemed to feel the same way. As they sat around eating their eggs and bacon they were mostly talking about sports results or their worries for their families back home. When Jeffcott mentioned the tremor to the group of guys he was becoming friends with they told him about other tremors they'd experienced and the small damages they'd caused. One of the men, a redhead called Murphy, took off his cap to show Jeffcott the scar he'd gotten from a falling roof tile back in his childhood. That had been in Colorado, he said casually, putting his cap back on. Back in ninety six. He'd then gone on to describe the horrors of the American health care system and how much five minutes being sewn up by a nurse has cost his parents.

  Jeffcott had soon forgotten all about it, but then, around mid afternoon, he and everyone else who would be taking part in the expedition were called to a special meeting in the lecture hall. This time he wouldn't be speaking and he sat in the rows of seats along with the soldiers, squeezed between the biggest black man he'd ever seen and a blonde with a savage crew cut who looked as if he'd been given the super soldier serum. They both looked at him as if he should have still been in school.

  Captain Daniels was standing in front of the cinema screen at the front of the hall, along with a civilian that Jeffcott hadn't seen before. He was wearing a brown suit and had an academic look to him. Jeffcott heard soldiers all around him speculating on who he was and what this was all about. One thing they all seemed to agree on was that it wouldn't be good.

  The Captain said something into a phone and the lights dimmed. Then an image appeared on the cinema screen. A satellite image of what appeared to be a patch of Arizona desert. Everyone fell silent as they waited for the Captain to speak.

  "I expect you all felt the earth tremor this morning," he said. Jeffcott leaned forward in his seat, suddenly concerned. "It was no ordinary tremor," the Captain continued. "Professor Wilson here will explain."

  "My name is Professor Samuel Wilson of the Arizona Geological Survey," said the man in the brown suit. "I was brought in, in some haste..." He gave the Captain a sharp look, which he ignored. "...to look at this satellite image." He gestured at the image on the screen behind him. "I am somewhat familiar with the geology of the area, and when I saw it I asked for another image of the same area, taken earlier." He gave the Captain a look and the Captain said something else into his phone. The image on the screen was replaced by two smaller images side by side. At first glance they both looked like the first image, but then Jeffcott noticed that the one on the left was slightly different.

  "This image was taken a week ago, shortly after the anomaly first appeared," the Professor said. "If you look at the one taken this morning, you will notice some differences. Here, here and here."

  There were dark lines on the newer image, Jeffcott saw. Each one crossing a major road. They looked like barricades put up to block passage along the roads, but they couldn't be. They had to be something far bigger to be visible from space. He felt his guts tightening with fear.

  "What you're looking at are escarpments," said the Professor. "Places where a seismic event has caused the ground to split open and either rise or drop on one side to create a cliff face. I estimate these escarpments to be between two and three metres high. Impassable to vehicles."

  There was dead silence in the hall as everyone drank in the significance of what the Professor was saying. "They're all on roads," someone finally said. "It was done deliberately."

  "That would seem to be the case," the Professor agreed. "The enemy has the ability to cause seismic events within the anomaly, in highly targeted locations. This would seem to be a deliberate attempt to hinder our use of these roads. Obstruct our ability to reach Maricopa."

  "Are we in danger here?" another man asked.

  "Impossible to say," the man replied. "The enemy might not know the location of this facility, or he might only be able to cause seismic events within the anomaly. Seismic events in one area are known to be able to trigger others several miles away, though, and its possible that the effect could be transmitted outside the anomaly by an existing fault line. There are several fault lines in this general vicinity, I'm afraid, and the edge of the anomaly is now very close."

  "How are they doing this?" said Jeffcott. He didn't realise he'd spoken aloud until the huge black man sitting beside him looked around at him.

  "What matters is that they can do it," said the Captain, though. "We can let the eggheads ponder that problem later."

  "No, the gentleman is right," said the Professor, though. "How they're doing it could be very important. Seismic events are caused by stresses in the Earth's crust, and every event releases some of that stress. It may be that the formation of these escarpments has released all the stress currently in the rock, leaving them unable to repeat the operation for the time being. The question then becomes, how long will it be before more stress builds up, and that can only be answered if we know where the stress came from. How they were able to create it and release it."

  "The anomaly seems to encourage the crystallisation of amorphous substances," said Jeffcott, encouraged by the Professor's words. "Metal, glass. That sort of thing. Could the rocks of the Earth's crust inside the anomaly be crystallising?"

  "I have absolutely no idea," the Professor admitted. The bedrock of Arizona is mainly composed of moderately to strongly consolidated conglomerate and sandstone deposited in basins during and after late Tertiary faulting. It also includes lesser amounts of mudstone, siltstone, limestone, and gypsum..."

  "Perhaps the two of you could get together and discuss the matter on your own," suggested the Captain impatiently. "What we need to know now is how this will affect our mission to Maricopa. Can these escarpments be scaled or bypassed?"

  "They're several metres high and likely to be near vertical," the Professor replied. "There may he places where collapse has occurred, creating ramps of boulders and loose soil, but they'll probably be steep and unstable. I would recommend not trying to climb them."

  "Could we go around the escarpments?" the Captain then asked. "Our vehicles are capable of crossing very uneven ground."

  The Professor looked up at the satellite image again. "The escarpments seem to be no more than a few miles long. You could probably go around them by travelling cross country if your vehicle are up to the task. You would know the answer to that better than I do."

  "What do you think, McGrady?" the Captain asked someone in the audience.

  "I've driven cross country across deserts plenty of times," the man replied, standing. "I would recommend we go no more than twenty miles per hour. Other than that, I don't see any difficulty."

  Daniels frowned unhappily at the longer time it would take to make the journey, but then he nodded. "Pick a couple of men who know the ground between here and Maricopa," he said "and pick a good route. We want flat, even ground wide enough for three vehicles to drive abreast. You've got thirty six hours. The engineers say the MCV's will be ready to go at dawn the day after tomorrow." The man nodded and sat again.

  "Anyone have any questions?" the Captain then asked, looking up at the ranks of seated men. The men glanced at each other but remained silent, as did Jeffcott. He did have questions, but he would keep them for Professor Wilson after the meeting.

  "Very good," said the Captain. "As I said, we're scheduled to leave at first light Thursday. You've got until then to make whatever preparations you want to make."

  He then walked towards the door and a dozen simultaneous conversations broke out in the lecture hall.