Minutes to Burn

Savage halted. He turned slowly, facing Rex. "What now?"

Rex crouched and picked up a baseball-sized lump of basalt. He tossed the rock once and caught it, then threw it in a high arc toward Savage. It struck the ground about five feet past Savage in the direction he'd been heading. Breaking the thin crust of the lava and leaving a black outline in the ground, it continued down into the earth, falling through the deep cavity left where the underlying rock had dissolved and retreated. Savage waited to hear a thud when the rock struck bottom. There wasn't one. He stared at the small black hole in the ground, a pin-point opening to a massive underground cavern.

Rex began to walk off in the opposite direction. "This way," he said.

Chapter 33

Cameron gasped when they crested the hill and the lagoon came into view, a disk of water nestled within a craterous swoop on the south-west margin of the island. Inlaid a mere fifty yards from the ocean, the deep green waters struck a sharp contrast to the blue beyond the narrow barrier beach. She rested her hands on her head, taking in both the breadth of the lagoon and the endless sheet of the ocean in a single glance.

Diego paused beside her, amused, and Derek brought up the rear, lugging two canteens and wearing a kit bag like a backpack.

"I thought Navy SEALs were not supposed to gasp," Diego said.

The lagoon had been formed six and a half years ago, the result of a tsunami caused by the Initial Event. Its eighty-five-percent salinity was double that of the ocean, caused by the continuous evaporation of the trapped waters. Due to the high salt content, only algae and shrimp sur-vived there.

Striped with layer upon layer of compressed volcanic ash and dark black lava, the walls of the lagoon had eroded in twists and divots, leaving them dappled with smooth, rippling formations. A few pink flamin-gos stood in the shallow reaches, heads dipped upside down in the bright green water, inverted jaws sifting for food as their tough, bristled tongues suctioned water.

The mud around the lagoon had hardened and cracked, giving it a shattered appearance-myriad pieces of a puzzle fitted but slightly spread. Between the venous cracks, the mud was smooth and white.

A flamingo lumbered over to its young, opened its mouth, and regurgitated milk from its stomach. Cameron opened her mouth, then closed it.

"It is difficult to get to Galapagos," Diego said. "But once you're here, it is easy to want to stay." Removing a sample jar from his pack, he hiked slowly down to the lagoon, leaving Derek and Cameron with the view.

Cameron watched him skillfully navigate the incline before turning back to Derek. From the mats of brush to their right, a farolete rose, a four-foot orange cone of prefabricated modular rings. A navigation aid that functioned like an unmanned lighthouse, it had the seal of the Insti-tuto Oceanografico painted on its side, along with the precise geo-graphic bearings of the unit-Latitude: -0.397643, Longitude: -91.961411.

Derek rested a boot against the farolete, and stopped dead. He was ashen, his face frozen in an expression of disbelief, amazement, and fear. Cameron stepped back quickly, following his gaze to the edge of the brush near her feet.

Inching slowly toward her was a plump, segmented larva, its head eight inches long and rounded. Almost three feet in length, it elevated its torso off the ground, its head cocking slightly to one side. Its mandibles curved into the slit of its mouth. Gills quivered behind its head. Cameron could see her terrified expression in the glassy sheen of the larva's round eyes. She felt her heart double-beat in her chest, and her hands went slick with sweat. The larva emitted a soft, gentle coo, and Derek stumbled back, tripping over his feet and falling down.

His yell echoed back to them from the walls of the lagoon. Cameron pulled him to her side speechlessly as the larva lowered itself flat to the ground again. It inched forward and Cameron and Derek stepped back.

Diego was scrambling up the slope of the lagoon, calling out, but they were transfixed by the strange creature before them and couldn't respond. Cameron wiped the sweat from her face with a sleeve, her cheeks raw, sunburnt, and trembling.

Panting, Diego reached Derek's side and leaned over, hands resting on his knees. When he saw the larva, he inhaled sharply. He stepped back, tears rising to his eyes. The larva inched forward again, prolegs squirming to find holds in the ground, and Diego stepped forward cau-tiously, leaning over it but ready to spring back at the slightest indication of danger.

Cameron grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back. "Let's just take this slow," she said through clenched teeth. Her chest was heaving beneath her top. "Let's just take this slow," she repeated, more for her benefit than for Diego and Derek's.