Anya didn't answer. She just gripped her sister’s hand tighter and stared at the dark, silent pillar of LSM-43. It looked like nothing more than a dead machine now. But she knew, somewhere deep in the ice, it was still listening. And it was patient.
Masha gasped.
She turned to her sister. "LSM-43 isn't a sampler, Masha. It's a lure." Anya-10 Masha-8-Lsm-43
"But LSM likes it when I listen. It tells me stories about the old ocean under the ice." Anya didn't answer
The climate control log for Sector 7 read: All systems nominal. Population: Anya-10, Masha-8, LSM-43. But she knew, somewhere deep in the ice,
The common room was a cathedral of silence and frost. The violet light from the LSM-43 cast long, skeletal shadows. Masha stood directly in front of the aperture, her small face bathed in that alien glow.
To the outside world, that was all that remained of Outpost Krylov. Three cold signatures on a screen. But inside the creaking, frozen dome, they were a family of sorts.