The Sign Read Online Free PDF Page A

apparition, which filled the screen with its radiance before he pulled back out.
    She looked out at it again. The skycam was closing in on it. “How far from it do you think it is?” she asked Dalton.
    “A hundred yards. Maybe less.” His voice had a slight quiver in it as his eyes darted from the monitor to the apparition and back.
    Gracie couldn’t take her eyes off of it. “It’s just magnificent, isn’t it?”
    “It’s a sign,” someone said. It was the woman Gracie had noticed crossing herself. Gracie looked over, and Dalton panned over to her.
    “A sign? Of what?” another answered.
    “I don’t know, but . . . she’s right. Look at it. It’s a sign of . . . something.” It was the older man who was with her. Gracie remembered being introduced to them on her arrival. He was an American named Greg Musgrave, a glaciologist if she remembered correctly. The woman was his wife.
    Musgrave turned to Gracie, waving toward the skycam, jabbing a nervous finger at it. “Don’t send that”—he stammered, struggling with what to call the Draganflyer—“
thing
any farther. Stop it before it gets too close.”
    “Why?” Dalton sounded incredulous.
    Musgrave raised his voice. “Pull it back. We don’t know what it is.”
    Dalton didn’t take his eyes off his controls. “Exactly,” he shot back, “it can help us figure out what the hell it is.”
    Gracie looked out. The skycam was very close to the apparition. She glanced at Finch, then at Dalton, who seemed determined to see it through.
    “I’m telling you, pull it back,” Musgrave said, moving toward Dalton now, reaching out to grab the remote control console. Dalton’s fingers jerked against the joysticks, making the Draganflyer yaw and pitch wildly, its gyroscopes kicking in to keep it airborne.
    “Hey,” Gracie yelled at him, just as Finch and the captain stepped in to restrain Musgrave.
    “Grace, what the hell’s going on?” Roxberry again, in her ear.
    “Hang on, Jack,” she interjected quickly.
    “Calm down,” the captain snapped at Musgrave. “He’s gonna pull it back before it reaches it,” then, to Dalton, pointedly, “aren’t you?”
    “Absolutely,” Dalton replied flatly. “You know how much that thing cost me?” He checked out the monitor, as did Gracie. The apparition filled the screen. It was grainy, but there was a subtle, undulating shimmer within the image that really gave the impression that it was bubbling with life. Gracie caught the worry in Dalton’s eyes, then looked over at the skycam. The tiny black dot was almost on it.
    “Maybe it’s close enough,” she told Dalton, under her breath.
    Dalton frowned with concentration. “A little closer.”
    “You shouldn’t be messing with it before we know what we’re dealing with,” Musgrave blurted out sharply.
    Dalton ignored him and kept the joystick pressed forward. The skycam glided on, inching its way nearer to the blazing apparition.
    “Dalton,” Finch said, low and discreet. It was getting uncomfortably close for him.
    “I hear you,” he replied. “Just a little bit more.”
    Gracie’s pulse quickened, thumping away in her ears as the skycam sailed ever closer to the apparition. It seemed tantalizingly close now, perhaps fifty feet or less—it was hard to judge the relative distance—when the sign suddenly dimmed right down and disappeared.
    The crowd heaved a collective gasp.
    “You see that? I told you,” Musgrave rasped.
    “You kidding me?” Dalton fired back angrily. “What, you think I scared it?”
    “We don’t know. But it was there for a reason, and now it’s gone.” The scientist put an arm around his wife, and they both turned and stared out into the distance, as if willing it to reappear, dismay clouding their faces.
    “Get real, man,” Dalton shrugged, turning away.
    Over the shelf, the Draganflyer continued on its trajectory unbothered. Nothing showed on its monitor as it buzzed through the air that the apparition had