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The doctor said, "It looks like a melon with a spider on it"

They paddled until they were a few feet from the object The apingit down on the floating head Spider Barrett looked up at the two astonished faces His mouth opened

"Help me," he pleaded

13

With a hull displacement of twenty-three thousand tons and seventy-five thousand horsepower produced by its powerful engines, the Yamal-class Russian icebreaker Kotelny was capable of continuously breaking through seven feet of ice Its sharply angled bow sliced through the slushy spring ice pack like a warh sherbet As Karla Janos stood in the bow and surveyed the fog-shrouded island that was her destination, she felt as if sorave

The involuntary shudder that passed through her y body had nothing to do with the rawness of the weather in the East Siberian Sea Karla was bundled in a down parka, and she had beco cold after tinters with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, where terees below zero She ell enough acquainted with the territory around the Arctic Circle to know that there was little chance Ivory Island would live up to the ie of hiteness evoked by its name, but she was totally unprepared for the total bleakness of the isolated place

As a scientist, Karla knew that her reaction was emotional rather than objective, but the island had a forbidding aspect that she couldn't easily shrug off The most prominent feature of the island was a dead volcano that still had patches of snow around its truncated summit The overcast skies drained all traces of color froht so that the sea and land appeared to be bathed in a depressing gray light As the shiphills and tundra around the volcano were broken by a network of ravines whose twisting cliffs, coht, created an optical illusion, as if the surface of the island rithing in pain

"Excuseanchor in fifteen minutes"

She turned and saw the ship's commander Captain Ivanov was a sturdily built man in his sixties His broad face eathered froed his chin

The captain was a kindly id waters around the archipelago Karla and the avuncular Ivanov had forged a strong friendship since she had boarded the icebreaker at its ho chats over dinner The captain had iy and y that went beyond the tools necessary to coe ship on unfriendly seas She had made him blush when she called him a Renaissance man

Karla rehter, a dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet She was tall, slirace of so blond hair was tied tight at the back of her head in dancer style She had inherited the best features of her Magyar and Slavic ancestry: a wide forehead, high cheeks, wide, sensuous ray eyes whose alh Karla had studied dance briefly, she tended more toward athletic pursuits She had been a track standout at the University of Michigan, where she earned a degree in paleontology with a y

"Thank you, Captain Ivanov," she said "My bags are packed I'll collect theht away"

"Take your tiazed at her with kindly blue eyes "You seeht?"

"Yes, I' the island, and, well, it's rather sinister-looking My iination, obviously"

He followed her gaze "Not entirely I've sailed these waters for years Ivory Island has always seemed different Do you know much about its history?"