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on as she strode through the crowded dry lab. Half a dozen researchers in white coats shuffled about electron microscopes, banks of computers, and tables laden with rock samples. None of them even looked up as the group passed, as though Dr. Mathis might snap a ruler across their knuckles if they showed such insolence. “We’re set up for both radiocarbon and luminescent dating, isotope analysis, and fluorescence spectrometry,” she went on. “We can also do nondestructive gamma analysis, which we’ve already done on the specimen’s teeth and bone tissue, as well as DNA analysis.”
    Finally they reached a thick, metal door with a narrow pane of safety glass down the left side. A placard above the lintel read CAUTION—WET SPECIMEN CONTAINMENT—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY .
    Grove glanced through the screened glass but couldn’t see much more than a narrow examination room, and maybe a part of a table or gurney in the center, radiant with halogen light. He glanced over at Maura County, who had taken a step back and now stood behind Okuda with a sheepish look on her face. She gave Grove a nervous yet encouraging smile. Grove smiled back. He liked this woman. There was a frantic sort of honesty about her that was refreshing.
    Mathis reached over to a metal lockbox mounted next to the door, spun a few tumblers, and opened the lid. From inside the container she pulled out a couple of sealed packages. In one package was a sterile mask. In another was a pair of rubber surgical gloves. She handed the packages to Grove and nodded at them. “You have four minutes, Mr. Grove,” she announced without ceremony or emotion.
    The door wheezed open.
    Ulysses Grove took a deep breath, set down his attaché, put on the mask and gloves, then went inside the suite.
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    He didn’t need four minutes. He didn’t even need four seconds. All he needed was one good look at that six-thousand-year-old corpse and everything changed. Everything rearranged itself inside Grove like tumblers in his brain clicking into some horrible new combination, altering his world forever, causing an icy rush of gooseflesh along his spine. He didn’t make a sound, didn’t move. All he did for several agonizing moments was stand there gazing down at that narrow stainless steel examination table in the center of that sterile room.
    The Iceman lay there in a pool of silver light, a runner of gauze beneath him and the metal table. Even to an uneducated eye it was obvious that this was an ancient cadaver, the skeletal arms and legs sheathed in flesh the color of burnt tobacco, so old it looked vacu-formed around the bones and tendons. The body was so well preserved its eyeballs were still intact—two overdone quail eggs gazing up emptily at the miracle-light of a future millennium. In life the mummy had been diminutive by modern standards—perhaps no more than five feet tall—with the prominent jaw of early Homo sapiens.
    But in death, it had taken on an eerie tableau of a toy posed by a disturbed child.
    Dizziness jumped on Grove again, and he reached for something to hold on to. There was nothing to grab—only the examination table—so he staggered slightly. Then he stood there, blinking away the bewilderment.
    One time when he was only eight years old, a group of class bullies lured him into the school gymnasium at night, locking him in, and then proceeding to torment him with ghostly projections shone through skylights with a jury-rigged slide projector. It had taken the young Ulysses over an hour to overcome his terror and analyze the situation, eventually figuring out the source of the “ghosts.” But during that hour, the utterly debilitating confusion had almost been worse than the fear. He hated not understanding something. And on that terrible night, especially during that first hour, he just kept on thinking, There’s an explanation, a logical explanation for this