Investigation

The liaison station's officer in charge was Lasse, a quiet middle-aged man in a faded dark-gray uniform. His movements were crisp and efficient.

He led Harry and the others out of the cabin and north along a trampled path through the tundra.

The ground underfoot was soft and damp. Moss and lichen made faint crunching sounds beneath their boots, and bare rocks occasionally jutted through the soil, coated with thin layers of gray-white lichen.

After about forty minutes, Lasse stopped before a low mound.

It was not tall, and its slopes were gentle. Sparse dwarf birches and a few clumps of heather grew on it.

Lasse pointed to the top. "The signal source is beneath this mound, about forty meters down. The Technical Group's scans show several cavities below, arranged irregularly."

Harry crouched at the edge of the mound, took off his glove, and pressed his palm to the ground.

The tundra's surface was warmer than the frozen ground in Norway. The soil was soft and moist, and a rapid tremor pulsed against his palm.

The signal was nothing like the one in Norway. That pulsing signal had resembled a heart beating slowly. This one was more like a swarm of insects vibrating their wings at once: high-frequency, low-amplitude, and continuous.

He closed his eyes and felt it for a while. The vibration traveled up through his palm, its rhythm fine and even, with no pauses, interruptions, or clear direction.

The signal spread across the entire mound. Its strength barely changed from edge to center, as though the whole area were emitting the same signal at once.

"The signal's strong, and its rhythm is fast." He opened his eyes. "It's a different pattern from the one in Norway. The vibration here has a high frequency and low amplitude, like some