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for a clearer view of the screens.
    “Go home and put the news on, quick. You’re not gonna believe this.”
    Jabba, excited about something on TV. Not exactly breaking news. Although this time—just this once, Bellinger thought—his exuberance seemed justified.
    A brilliant chemical engineer of Hungarian extraction who worked with Bellinger at the Rowland Materials Research Laboratory, Csaba Komlosy had a passion for all things televisual. Well-made, high-concept shows were normally his turf, the kind of show where a gutsy and intense government agent repeatedly managed to save the nation from mass destruction or where a gutsy and intense architect repeatedly managed to break out of the most escape-proof prisons. Lately, though, Csaba had veered into seedier territory. He’d embraced the netherworld of unscripted television—reality TV, so-called despite the fact that it had little to do with reality, or with being unscripted, for that matter—and, much to Bellinger’s chagrin, he really liked to share the more singularly sublime moments of his viewing.
    In this case, though, Bellinger was ready to give him a free pass. Still, he couldn’t resist a little dig. “Since when do you watch the news?”
    “Would you stop with the inquisition and put the damn thing on,” Jabba protested.
    “I’m looking at it right now. I’m at the mall, outside Best Buy.” Bellinger’s voice trailed off as some heads in front of him shifted and the image on the screen snared his attention again. He caught sight of a banner at the bottom of screen, which read, “Unexplained phenomenon over Antarctica.” There was also a small “Live” box in the upper right corner. He just stood there, transfixed, his eyes curiously processing what they were seeing. He recognized the reporter. He’d caught some of her specials over the years and remembered her reports from Thailand after the tsunami a few years back, when he’d first noticed her. Shallow as it sounded, the relative hotness of a TV newscaster was directly proportional to how much attention guys paid to the screen—especially if the news in question didn’t concern armed conflict, a sports result, or a celebrity meltdown. For most guys, Grace Logan—with the unforgiving green eyes, the tiny, mischievous mole poised just above the edge of her lips, the unsettlingly breathy yet earnest voice, the blond curls that always seemed to have a slightly unkempt tousle to them, and the Vargas Girl body that owed its curves to burgers and milkshakes, not silicone—ticked the hot box with ease.
    This time, though, Bellinger’s eyes weren’t on her.
    The camera zoomed in on the phenomenon again, sending an audible shiver through the crowd.
    “Dude, it’s unreal,” Jabba exclaimed. “I can’t take my eyes off the screen.”
    Bellinger couldn’t make sense of it. “Is this a joke?”
    “Not according to them.”
    “Where is this exactly?”
    “West Antarctic ice sheet. They’re on some research ship off the coast. At first, I thought it’s got to be a stunt for a new movie, maybe Cameron or Emmerich or even Shyamalan, but none of them have a live project that fits.”
    Jabba—film geek extraordinaire—would know.
    “How long has it been up?” Bellinger asked.
    “About ten minutes. It came on out of the blue while la Logan was yapping about the breakup of the ice shelf. First it was like this ball of light, then it morphed to a dark sphere—like that black planet in
The Fifth Element,
remember? Totally creeped me out.”
    “Then it turned into this?”
    “Yep.” The crunching sound coming through the receiver spurred Bellinger’s mind to picture the likely setting for his friend’s call: sunken deep in his couch, a bottle of Samuel Adams in one hand—not his first, Bellinger guessed, since they’d both left the lab over an hour ago—and a half-empty pack of sizzlin’ picante chips in the other. Which was why he was on speakerphone.
    Bellinger’s brow wrinkled