text: [Themes: sci-fi]
  
  You stand close to the shimmering edge of the sphere, feeling the full effect of the snowy breeze blowing out of it. All you want to do is stick your arm through and test your theory that this is a two-way portal, because this simple act will probably tell you more than your WristComp can at the moment.
  
  You reach in and immediately feel the bite of the winter air, as if there was nothing at all between where you stand and that frozen alpine lake, wherever that place may be. But before you can marvel at this unique situation, you are pulled through the sphere as if by gravity. In the space of a second, you feel as if you've been yanked through this unusual portal to the other side, placing you fully within the snowy landscape.
  
  The forward momentum then betrays you, however, because you are now standing at the top of an ice-covered bank, and before you can secure your footing on level ground you lose your balance and slide fifteen meters down to the bottom.
  
  You stand up and dust the snow off your field uniform after making your clumsy entrance. Wherever this place is, it is bitterly cold here! You know you are still on Folvan only because the gravity is just as strong here as it was a moment ago. Otherwise, it is daytime at this new location, and the middle of winter.
  
  You are standing on the brushy shoreline of the frozen lake, a place high in a range of low, rocky summits. There are no signs of life at the moment, but there is what appears to be a small Folvan village a short distance away. Behind you is the icy slope with the skid mark you made as you slid down it. There is another sphere at the top of it, just like the one that brought you here--except now, the view on the other side is the painted rock chamber where you were standing a moment ago!
  
  OK, you reason to yourself. The spheres are spatial portals of some kind; these two point to each other and allow people (and objects) to pass through freely. You can only assume that you have been transported to a point in Folvan's southern hemisphere--out of communications range with the Orion, and someplace where no one would ever think to look for you. Getting back to your team should be easy, with one hitch: you'll have to make your way up the icy slope somehow.
  
  > If you check out the nearby village, turn to page 81.
  Curiosity gets the better of you. Although you don't understand the technology behind the portals, and their presence on this world defies your understanding of the Folvans' level of development, clearly they were placed here for a reason, and the village before you is a place of some significance.
  
  It is just a few hundred meters away--not very far at all, but considering that you are totally unprepared for this winter weather, the trudge through the snow is long enough. The area around the village is covered with a kind of low-lying shrub that barely emerges through the snow; you suspect these may be berry bushes of some kind, but of course in the winter season they are all bare and lifeless. In the distance, on the far side of the frozen lake, you can see something large flying over the far summits. A weak KWAA! reaches your ears, and you quickly figure out that it is another teek-teek, this one in its natural habitat. It is a good three kilometers away, and does not seem to be coming your way.
  
  The village is a cluster of earthen mounds, all of equal size and shape, arranged in no regular order. There are no tracks in the snow, no plumes of smoke, and no signs of life whatsoever. Either the village has been deserted, or it is only used in the summer.
  
  But then as you at last enter the settlement, you notice something else: many of the mounds have had holes blasted through them, suggesting that a fierce battle took place here. You examine one of the blast holes and notice that the edges have become glazed, as if exposed to extreme heat. With your WristComp, you confirm that these were created by plasgun beams--but what would Folvans be doing with plasguns?
  
  Most of the structures, which you assume to be dwellings, do not look distinct from one another, and most have been exposed to the elements and partly filled with snow. Your WristComp shows quite clearly that this entire settlement is deserted. There are no people--Folvan or human--anywhere nearby.
  
  But there is a larger structure just beyond the periphery of the town, which you presume to be a communal gathering place. As you follow the narrow, crooked street toward it, you begin to find unusual lumps in the snow, as if there are a great many things buried beneath your feet. You kneel down to see what might be concealed under the hard-packed snow, and to your horror you find the frozen head of what at first appears to be a giant locust.
  
  You dig out just enough more to confirm what should be impossible: this is an Iib Ch'iib, an alien race that has been the bane of humanity for centuries. But their homeworld is many lightyears from here, so it makes no sense that they would be on Folvan.
  
  This is a major and completely unexpected discovery, something that you need to report immediately. According to your WristComp, the Orion's orbit will bring it within communications range in another fifteen minutes, so you decide to endure the cold in the shelter of one of the smaller residential mounds before calling for assistance.
  
  > Page 82
  While you wait, you take shelter in a nearby hut that seems relatively undamaged. These mound-shaped earthen structures seem to have no doors or windows, just a cave-like opening on one side that is tall and wide enough for a person to enter. But the inside is not what you expect at all; rather than a living space with places to sleep and cook, there is simply a hole leading into the ground. That must be where the Folvans live: underground. The mounds are just here to cover the entrances.
  
  Should you go down to see what a Folvan residence looks like? No. Your curiosity has gotten you into enough trouble already today, so you're better off staying above ground so you can make contact with your ship.
  
  As soon as you see the indicator on your WristComp display that a signal from the Orion has been obtained, you activate your comm.
  
  "Where have you been, Lieutenant?" It's Aolin Wyte, your mission liaison to the bridge. He sounds perturbed. "Your team lost contact with you, and now we find you on the far side of the planet."
  
  "I need to report a discov--" you start to say, but Lieutenant Wyte cuts you off.
  
  "Did you know Dr. Wildon has been injured?" he says. "Your team is rushing him back aboard right now."
  
  "Dr. Wildon? What happened? Will he be OK?"
  
  "Probably, but you should have been there with them. From what I understand he was clawed by some wild beast. What is going on down there? Why are you not with the rest of your team?"
  
  He sounds angry with you, as if he's about to chew you out for misbehavior. You almost start to offer an explanation when you catch yourself--Wyte is your liaison, not your commanding officer. He can carry on all he wants, but you don't owe him any apologies.
  
  "Is the captain or first officer available?" you say.
  
  "No," Lieutenant Wyte says flatly. "Stay where you are. I'll send a shuttle down--"
  
  "Captain Ynthramanni here," a familiar voice cuts in. "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?"
  
  At last! Someone reasonable to talk to. Now you can finally communicate your discovery. You're freezing here in this abandoned, shot-up village, so you explain the two most extraordinary things you've just found: a spatial portal of some kind, and a Folvan village filled with dead Iib Ch'iib. To your relief the captain seems very interested in your findings, and less interested in accusing you of abandoning your team.
  
  "As I understand it, Lieutenant Wyte is organizing a landing party to come pick you up," Ynthramanni says. "Stay where we can find you. Try not to make any more jumps across the planet, if you can help it. I don't think Mr. Wyte could handle the shock of losing track of you again."
  
  > Page 83
  It will be another fifteen minutes before the shuttle lands, and now the cold is becoming unbearable. Standing still is the last thing you want to do; you need to move around, generate warmth.
  
  To occupy yourself while you wait, you try and see if you can make any sense of what the Iib Ch'iib were doing here, and what happened to them. Clearly, they were trying to storm the large structure just outside the village when something killed them all at once. The alien corpses are disgusting, and you were happier when they were covered in snow. But the cold has preserved them fairly well, and the only way to determine the cause of death is to take a look.
  
  You make it a quick look, having brushed off a larger mound of snow to reveal six Iib Ch'iib heaped against each other as if in a post mortem demonstration of camaraderie. They appear burned, not shot, suggesting the entire swarm had been killed in a flash of radiation. And the bands of dead aliens suggest the center of that burst was inside the large building they had been attempting to overrun.
  
  That building--shaped like a giant mound, similar to the residential structures but five times the size--stands about fifteen meters beyond the edge of the village. You have to trudge through the snow all the way to the far end to find the entrance, which is similar to the cave-like slots on the residential mounds. And just like those structures, the inside of the mound is not an architectural space, but a shelter for an entrance to some underground burrow.
  
  But when your eyes adjust to the darkness, you see something startling: two human bodies, severely burned, their arms intermeshed as if in an eternal embrace of love.
  
  All of a sudden the walls seem to be closing in around you, so you flee into the welcoming freshness of the open air. At least the Iib Ch'iib corpses are buried in snow and easier to ignore.
  
  A moment later you hear the distant whoosh of a shuttle descending through the upper atmosphere, speeding toward your location. It is broad daylight on this side of Folvan, but if there are no (living) Folvans around, there is no need for the shuttle pilot to be coy. The craft circles around the village, and the pilot tips his wing when he spots you. A moment later it sets down in the snow, a healthy distance from the swarm of dead Iib Ch'iib.
  
  The hatch opens, and Lieutenant Skaxa rushes out with a security team--hurrying past you to examine the scene of the battle. But Captain Ynthramanni, clad in a warm coat, is standing in the shuttle entrance, beckoning you inside. "Here, put this on," he says, offering you a coat of your own to wear. "You must be freezing."
  
  "Thank you, sir."
  
  "I'm told Dr. Wildon will be fine," the captain says. "Something about a teek-teek attack? Anyway, he'll have a good scar to remember it by."
  
  "I'm sorry that I got separated from my team," you say. You look to see if Aolin Wyte in on board the shuttle, but you see no sign of him.
  
  "Tell me about this spatial portal you mentioned."
  
  Once you have warmed up a bit, you do more than tell the captain--you show him the sphere by the frozen lake, a portal that leads to the rock-walled chamber that you now know to be several thousand kilometers away. Before you know it, more shuttles are landing with more people and more analytical equipment to try and piece together what transpired here. It seems you have uncovered quite the mystery. The science teams identify the portal as an artificial wormhole. Lieutenant Skaxa's people confirm that the Iib Ch'iib had been advancing on the structure outside the village, when an unknown object inside released a burst of radioactive energy--possibly another artificial wormhole that was intentionally collapsed.
  
  And the two embracing humans? A medical team identifies them as Aro Tligman and Emman Theep, Dr. Munro's two research assistants. Several Folvans, also killed in the blast, were discovered deeper inside the chamber.
  
  The only thing not found was any sign of Dr. Munro herself. Therefore your search for the missing xenoanthropologist has yielded more questions than answers. What is the link between the Iib Ch'iib and the portal? How were your adversaries aware that all of this strange technology existed on Folvan, when Star Base Ishtria seemed to have no clue? What was the source of the radioactive blast, and why were Tligman and Theep killed along with all of the aliens?
  
  Perhaps the only way to find out will be to track down Dr. Munro.