Phobos

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by Steve Alten


  Beck joins Kurtz in the van ten minutes later. The former CIA assassin is cradling the turquoise-eyed newborn. Madelina is sedated in back.

  “She’s a cutie, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d her old man die?”

  “He accidentally stuck a butcher knife up his own ass.”

  “Hey, it happens.” Handing Lilith Eve Aurelia to his friend, Kurtz drives the van, heading for the commuter airport.

  EPILOGUE

  When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.

  —ATTRIBUTED TO SRI CHINMOY GHOSE

  Evelyn Mohr opens her eyes. The world is spinning in vertigo, her flesh tingling. For a moment she fears she has been struck by lightning, then she remembers.

  The cruise ship … the hole in the Atlantic!

  She is lying on her side in a darkness so complete she cannot see her hand in front of her face. She can hear grunts and groans, but she has no idea where she is. Feeling around the carpet, she manages to locate her i-glasses. Tries to contact her husband, Dave, but gets only static.

  Adjusting the smart glasses’ setting, she changes the lenses from tint to night vision. The impenetrable blackness becomes an olive-green corridor, harboring several dozen bathing suit–clad passengers, sprawled out in clusters. Most remain unconscious; a few are sitting up, disoriented, their eyes glowing a nocturnal silver.

  Searching the corridor, Evelyn locates the steel hatch leading outside. Standing on wobbly legs, she pushes open the watertight door and ventures out onto one of the ship’s privacy sun decks.

  “Oh my …”

  The sun is long gone, the night sky sparkling with constellations and nebulae and distant spiral galaxies as vivid as images taken from the newest Earth-orbiting telescopes. To the north she sees Jupiter, as big as the moon, its moons twinkling like diamond dust. To the east is Saturn; beyond, Neptune—a neon-blue dot partially eclipsed by its sister planet’s rings of ice.

  Her eyes catch movement in the heavens—two small moons. One orbits directly overhead, the other is moving unusually fast, rapidly dipping toward the inky ocean horizon.

  “Where the hell are we?”

  “A different time, a different place.”

  She sees him standing by the guardrail, a lanky Adonis with long dark hair and a bodybuilder’s physique. His eyes appear azure blue in the lunar light.

  Evelyn approaches. “You’re Anna’s friend, the one who saved me.”

  “Julian. And you’re Evelyn, Dave Mohr’s wife.”

  Her heart races. “Did Lilith send you?”

  “My mother sent me. You can trust me, I’m a friend.”

  “What happened to us?”

  “The cruise ship was dragged down a wormhole. Our presence in the portal created an alternative universe of space-time.”

  “You sound like my husband.”

  “Your husband no longer exists; he won’t be born for another 127 million years.”

  “What?” Her throat constricts as other passengers join them. “How is that possible?”

  “Look around you. This isn’t Earth, Evelyn. It’s Mars—back when the Red Planet was green and possessed an atmosphere … just before the great cataclysm.” He suddenly pauses, his eyes darting to focus on the water. “They found us. Everyone back inside the ship!”

  The gathering crowd shoves its way back inside the corridor.

  Evelyn grabs onto Julian to keep from being dragged away, her eyes catching a glimpse of the terrifying lizardlike creatures surfacing off the starboard bow. “Who are you? The truth!”

  “My name is Julian Agler Gabriel. My friends call me Jag. Like my mother, Sophia, I’m full-blooded Hunahpu.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to ensure humanity’s future.”

  He drags her inside, securing the hatch behind them as the predatory reptilian Martian race begins its assault on the Paradise Lost—Phobos reappearing on the western horizon, glowing orange in the alien night sky.

  To be continued …

  Visit www.SteveAlten.com for a sneak peek.

  BY STEVE ALTEN FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES

  Domain

  Goliath

  Meg: Primal Waters

  Resurrection

  The Loch

  Meg: Hell’s Aquarium

  Grim Reaper: End of Days

  Phobos: Mayan Fear

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  PHOBOS: MAYAN FEAR

  Copyright © 2011 by Steve Alten

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  eISBN 9781429985635

  First eBook Edition : August 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Alten, Steve.

  Phobos : Mayan fear / Steve Alten.—1st ed. p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  1. End of the world—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3551.L764P47 2011

  813’.54—dc22 2011021554

  First Edition: October 2011

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  WARNING:

  Epigraph

  PART 2 - THE EFFECT

  The Final Papers of Julius Gabriel, PhD

  1

  2

  The Final Papers of Julius Gabriel, PhD

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  The Final Papers of Julius Gabriel, PhD

  11

  12

  13

  14

  PART 1 - THE CAUSE

  The Journal of Julius Gabriel

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  The Final Papers of Julius Gabriel, PhD

  24

  25

  26 - Eleven Years Later …

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  EPILOGUE

  BY STEVE ALTEN FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES

  Copyright Page

 

 

 


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