"It was on the call sheet for them to check in at midnight." " You try every band?" " Repeatedly." "All audio-visual seem to be down." " Maybe it's just a satellite glitch." " We thought so too, till we received this from a tracking station in Bend, Oregon." "They picked it up about a half an hour ago on an emergency frequency." "What are those guys doing?" "We did manage to uplink Firewalker's video camera." "It's at base camp, so we're hoping it can give us a picture and tell us what's going on." "Data feed's coming in now." "What's the robot doing in the volcano?" "I don't know." "There's no descent scheduled." "Firewalker's not responding." "Except for the video feed, I can't get control." " Someone's overriding it." " Lock camera remote, and pan left." "Stop." "Stop!" "Go back." "Tilt up, and zoom in." "Erikson." "What the hell?" "Gimme that!" "There it is again." "Did you see that?" "You saw that shadow, didn't you?" "Yeah, but what could be moving around in that kind of heat?" "I don't know." "Maybe it was..." "just a ghost signal." "I mean, it wouldn't be the first time that..." "What's goin' on up there?" "Let's go now to our science editor, Eric Parker, standing by in Mount Avalon, Washington." " Eric?" " I'm standing here... on an historic eve with a group of scientists who can barely contain their excitement... about this device, which looks like a large titanium bug." "Its name is Firewalker, and next week will make its first descent into an active volcano." "This amazing robot is the brainchild of volcanologist Daniel Trepkos... whose objective is to gather samples from the crater... which may hold valuable scientific data about the Earth's core." ""Scientific data"?" "We're talking about revisiting the very origin of the Earth, peering into the fire where it all began... a human endeavor more important even than man's exploration of space." " That's no mean claim." " Daniel always had a flair for self-dramatization." " I'd heard he was brilliant." " "Brilliant" doesn't go far enough." "Daniel occupies that rare place among scientists where dreams, ambition and great luck converge." " You think his luck ran out?" " The team you just saw sent a distress signal yesterday... after failing to make a scheduled status report, and they haven't responded to any of our calls." "By using remote telemetry we were able to activate Firewalker's camera." "This is what we found." "You're looking at the floor of the volcano." "But this is the last thing we expected to discover." "The dead man is Phil Erikson, chief seismologist." "Now, look at this." "Whoa!" "What the hell is that?" "We don't know." "Whatever it was disabled the camera." "The temperature readings are upwards of 130 degrees at this depth." " But that was alive." " Why weren't you up there?" "I left six weeks ago." "Trepkos and I nearly came to blows." " Over what?" " I wish I could explain." "Daniel and I, uh..." "I always played Salieri to his Mozart." "I was never quite on his plane of intellect." "But this time I found him slipping... into madness." "The way he began to control the others..." "You think he's responsible for what happened?" "Whatever there is between me and Trepkos, I pray that he isn't." "We've got 20 million tax dollars in this project." "If word of it were to get out, it could destroy years of work." "I'm afraid to go through proper channels." "Yeah." "We're not exactly "proper channels. "" "How soon can we get up there?" "Well, we've got a charter flight waiting to take us to Seattle." "From there, a helicopter will fly us to Mount Avalon." "Scully, I don't think it's a good idea for you to go." "Mulder, I appreciate your concern, but I'm ready..." "I want to work." "Maybe you should take some time off." "I've already lost too much time." " There it is." " Helicopter 1-6-7-2-8, Cascade tower." "Helicopter 7- 2-8, Cascade tower, roger with that." "Radar contact, Tremont." "7-2-8, roger." "Altimeter 2- niner-niner-6." "Close north side." "This was Firewalker's satellite relay." "We installed field instruments all around this area." " Seismographs, tiltmeters..." " We'll look around out here after we've checked inside." "These instruments are worth millions of project dollars, and I'm accountable to the U.S.G.S. For every one of'em." "Shouldn't we find the rest of the descent team first?" "I'll just take a quick damage survey." "I'll catch up with you in a few minutes." "Hello?" "Looks like somebody wanted to put this operation permanently out of commission." " Mulder!" " Wait!" "Wait!" " What's goin' on?" " Hey!" "This isn't what it looks like." "He just about took my head off!" "I told ya I made a mistake, okay?" "I'm sorry, all right?" " Well, who the hell are you?" " I'm-I'm Ludwig." "I'm Jason Ludwig." "I'm the robotics engineer for the descent team." " Do you always greet people this way?" " I heard a noise, okay?" "I thought it was him." "I was just trying to protect myself... self-preservation." "Who did you think I was that you thought you had to protect yourself?" "Trepkos." "He ran hot and cold, you know?" "Sometimes he wouldn't talk to us for days, and then... boom... you couldn't get him to shut up." "Don't get me wrong, okay?" "No one revered the man more than me." "I mean, he was a prophet, an oracle." "He saw things." "L" " I-I mean, he-he saw things that you and me... we only dream about... and then forget when we wake up." "It's okay." "You can come out now." "The cavalry's here." "This is Peter Tanaka, our systems analyst." "And, uh, this is Jesse O'Neil." "Are you the rescue team?" "No, we're with the F.B.I. F.B.I.?" "But you're taking us back, right?" " After we've investigated what happened here." " Trepkos is what happened here." " Did he kill Erikson?" " He flipped out." "Right after the descent, he just flipped out." "Can you think of anything that might have caused or contributed to his behavior?" "You're asking me?" "Daniel was sick." "He had a bipolar disorder." "I think that's what it was." "It wasn't a secret, but it's not something he advertised either." "But with his medication he was just fine." "Yeah, well, I think Erikson's wife might disagree with that." "You're part of the team, Jesse?" "Daniel was my thesis advisor at the university." " He asked me to assist on this project." " Tanaka Continues Coughing]" " Are these his notes?" " Oh, yeah." "Well, whatever's left of'em." "First thing he did was destroy all his own work... you know, his field journals, his computer disks." "We salvaged what we could, but I don't think you'll find much in there... of use anyway." "Hello?" "Anyone there?" "Scully." "What do you make of Mr. Trepkos's neighborhood?" " What do you mean?" " Don't you think their behavior's a little bizarre," " almost paranoid?" " Considering what they've been through, not especially." "They're practically climbing the walls in there." "They've been living in the middle of nowhere for almost a year." "One of their team members is dead, probably at the hands of another." "You'd have to expect some heightened level of emotional distress." "No, but it's more than that." "There's something they're not telling us." "Based on what?" "Based on when Ludwig tried to play T-ball with my head... he knew I wasn't Trepkos." "Now, Mulder, you're sounding paranoid." "Pierce knows these people." "Let's find out what he thinks." "Okay." "No one... can leave." "Pierce!" " Pierce!" " He's not here." " Can you hear me?" " Something's happened to him." " I'll check the landing site." " Oh, God." "Get over here." "He's over here!" "I found him!" "I found him!" "I found him!" "That should do it." " What should we do with the body?" " Do you have a freezer?" " Yeah." " You radio for the helicopter." "I'm almost done here." " Let me help you." " That's okay." "We got him." " We can't leave, Scully... not yet." " Why not?" " Trepkos is still out there." " I know." "He killed Pierce and probably Erikson." "We should come back with a larger party." "No." "I've been going over Trepkos's work..." "fragments, mostly... but I found several references to a subterranean organism." " What are you talking about?" " An unknown organism existing within the volcano." "I haven't found anything yet that describes it in specific terms, but..." "Mulder, nothing can live in the volcanic interior, not only because of the intense heat, but the gases would be toxic to any organism." "What does this say?" "It describes the metabolism... from hydrogen sulfide into silicon dioxide." "Doesn't that suggest a silicon-based life-form?" "But the fundamental building block for every organism known to man is carbon, from the smallest bacterium to the largest redwood tree." "But silicon is the closest element to carbon." "It reacts almost identically... with other elements the way it combines to form complex molecules." "A silicon-based life-form has been one of the Holy Grails of modern science." " Maybe Trepkos found it." " Mulder, that is science fiction." "It's some elaborate construct from a delusional mind." "This doesn't prove anything." "Trepkos said he had physical evidence." "It's gotta be around here somewhere." "Mulder, whatever evidence Trepkos had, he destroyed." "Maybe it wasn't Trepkos who destroyed it." "What if it was one of the others?" "Why on earth would they do that?" "Look, the fact is that all these people are suffering to varying degrees... from post-traumatic stress, and from a strictly medical point of view, we have to get them out of here sooner rather than later." "Jesse?" "Can I talk to you?" "Are you okay?" "I hate this place." "What happened here, Jesse?" "You can trust me." "After the first descent," "Daniel changed." "He became withdrawn and paranoid." "He locked himself in the lab for three days and wouldn't let any of us in." "Do you think the descent somehow triggered his breakdown?" "Well, that's what I thought, and then I found out... that he stopped takin' his pills." "Lithium carbonate." "Yeah, he said they were polluting his brain, and he said I was polluting his body." "I'm scared." " I don't wanna die here." " What are you so afraid of, Jesse?" "Daniel." "The only reason I even came here was because of him." "He promised me that this would be an adventure, that it would change my life." "But eight months is a long time, and I just wanna go home now." "Where's home?" "Anywhere but here." "Samples 7, 12 and 22... also contain trace evidence of the organism." "The possibility of this new... or perhaps unfathomably old..." "life-form... has left me sleepless, wondering if I haven't lost all perspective... if my intense desire to find the truth hasn't eclipsed the truth itself." "Our meddling intellect misshapes the beauteous forms of things." "We murder to dissect." "My mind is a tangled knot I can no longer untie." "Daily I fight the urge to sever it completely to stop this descent." "What caused that tremor?" "There's been a lot of seismic activity lately on the northeast rift zone." "If Trepkos hadn't destroyed our instruments we might even have learned something from it." "You feelin' all right?" "Yeah." "You know, Agent Scully's a medical doctor." "You should let her take a look at you." " I'm fine." " Just let her take a look..." "No!" "I'll go get Scully." "Come on." "Get up." " She'll help you." " I don't want her to help me." "Of course you do!" "It's for the best." "We have to get out of here." "He just collapsed after the tremor." "He seems pretty bad." " He's burning up." " What is it?" "I can't tell whether it's an infection or a toxic reaction." " We've got to get him to a hospital." " I'll get a stretcher." " What about Trepkos?" "We can't just leave him." " Give me the short wave." "This is Agent Scully with the Firewalker team." "Come in, Search and Rescue." " You got him?" " Yeah." "You guys go ahead." "I'll get O'Neil and meet you at the landing site." "This is Search and Rescue, over." "Request dispatch of medivac to our location immediately." "We have an Asian male, mid-30s, spiking a high-grade fever." "Tanaka's collapsed." "We're getting him out." "Tanaka!" "Peter!" "Peter, come on!" "Get back here!" "There." " Come on." "Hey!" " Don't go down there!" " Let me go!" "What are you doin'?" " Don't go down there." "For God's sakes, what are you doing?" "He needs our help!" "So what is it, Scully?" "What are we dealing with?" "Without better imaging equipment I can't say for sure." "I'll take any theory you've got." "It appears to be some kind of a fungus." "Anything you recognize?" "Well, I'm not a botanist, but it's fair to guess that it's an unknown genus." " What am I lookin' at here?" " Spores..." "I scraped them off the tip of the fungus." "It appears one of the spores grew inside Tanaka until it reached reproductive maturity, essentially outgrowing its host." "By then it had already caused massive damage, particularly to the respiratory tract." " That would account for the sand in his lungs." " You found sand in his lungs?" "Silicon dioxide... the waste product of a silicon-based organism." "Wait a second." "Th-There's no such thing as a "silicon-based organism. "" "Maybe now there is, but we won't have conclusive proof until we determine its molecular structure." "Come on, Scully." "How else do you explain the sand in his lungs?" "It's the best trace evidence we could ask for." "Trepkos was right." "Daniel knew about this?" "He discovered the spore in the samples Firewalker brought up." "He would have told us." "Not if what he discovered was too disturbing even for him to understand." "This might explain something else though." "The spore could explain Trepkos's dementia." "Fungi often contain alkaloids that can affect the nervous system." "Yeah, but wh-what about us?" "I mean, we weren't exposed?" "We don't know that." "If it was an airborne microbe, any of us could have inhaled a spore." "So we're not going home, right?" "Not until we know how it's transmitted, how it incubates." "If even one of us is infected, we could risk infecting a much larger population." "Search and Rescue, this is Agent Mulder." "Do you copy?" "This is Search and Rescue." "We're still in a holding pattern, over." "Please notify F.B.I. District headquarters in Spokane... that our party is quarantining itself due to possible contagion." "Have C.D.C. Set up an evacuation unit on high alert." "What's the nature of the contagion?" "Agent Mulder?" "Tell them it's a biological agent... of unknown origin." "That's affirmative." "Standing by." "Maybe you should go check up on O'Neil." "I'm going to go find Trepkos." " What if he's already dead?" " Then he'll have a tough time answering my questions." "I've got to find out what he knows." "What he's found could change everything we understand about the origin of life." "He's dangerous, Mulder." "He's already killed two men." " Then I have to find out why." " Will you at least let me go with you?" " No." " Look, I know what you're thinking, but you have to get past that..." "we both do." "I'm back, and I'm not going anywhere." "You have to finish the autopsy on Tanaka." "Hopefully, that'll give us a better idea of whatever it is we're dealing with." "I'm counting on you to keep us all from ending up on that slab." " Do like we said, okay?" " Mm-hmm." "You know what to say, right?" "I could use a little help." "Excuse me." " So, what do you need?" " Directions, contour map, U.S.G.S. Survey... anything that can help me get here." "Oh." "These are the steam caves." "They feed into the Sherman crater." " That's how we accessed the caldera." "How'd you get these?" " Firewalker." "They were transmitted right before Trepkos destroyed his camera." "Oh." "So you're finally gonna go after Trepkos." "Well, I'll tell you one thing:" "You won't find him with those." " You won't find him with any map either." " Well, how will I find him?" "You won't... not without a guide." " A guide?" " Yeah, a guide." "Look, I've been up here for almost a year." "I spent months in those caves, charting every fissure, every crevice, so Firewalker wouldn't trip." "LfTrepkos is there, I can find him." " Why are you so eager to help me find him?" " Oh, I-I-I'm not eager." "I just don't feel like waiting for Trepkos to do to me what he did to Pierce and Erikson." "Plus, you've got the gun." "You're the only one who can get us out of this place." "Whatever I'm smelling..." "is it toxic?" "Between the heat and the sulphur it can get pretty nasty in here, but it won't hurt you." "You'll get used to it." " How far does the cave extend?" " About three-quarters of a mile to the crater rim." "Let's head in." "It twists around quite a bit till you get there." "Lots of dead ends... and blind drops, and unless you know where you're going... you're like a rat in a maze." "Your gun." "Back." "Get back." "Why you doin'this, Trepkos?" "He's already dead." "How many times do you have to kill him?" "It's not him I'm tryin' to kill." "I have attempted to culture the spore using temperatures... ranging from human basal to those approximating the volcanic interior." "I have used nutritive mediums containing... human tissue, blood and saliva, even sulphur, however, none of the seven trials have successfully grown... the fungus that killed Tanaka." "Based on this preliminary data, I've come to the following hypothesis:" "Unless these spores are ingested or inhaled... by the host organism immediately upon their release, they become harmless... effectively dead." "Jesse?" "What is it?" "I thought you might like to know chances are good that none of us were infected." "We were at a safe distance from Tanaka when the spores scattered, and as soon as Mulder and Ludwig come back, we can leave." "L" " I just need to run a few more tests, but I think we're gonna be okay." "Okay, Jesse?" "Jesse?" "What went wrong, Trepkos?" "Firewalker carried something back to the surface." "Firewalker brought up an elephant." "The truth... is an elephant... described by three blind men." "First man touches the tail and says it's a rope." "The second man feels the rough leg, says it's a tree." "The third man feels the trunk, says it's a snake." "What about you?" "What do you say it is?" "I say the earth holds some truths best left buried." "Like the spore?" " Who are you?" " I'm Special Agent Mulder." "I'm with the F.B.I." "You don't look like a policeman." "I came down here to investigate Erikson's death." "That's not why you're here." "You still believe you can petition heaven to get some penetrating answer." "If you found that answer," "what would you do with it?" "I just want to know what happened after the first descent." "What did you find?" "It was porous..." "obsidian." "Erikson thought it was some sort of rock, so I told him to pulverize it for analysis." " Erikson released the spore?" " He discovered a new life-form." "In a single moment, everything that science held sacred suddenly turned on its head." "What about Erikson?" "If... if he was infected..." "I was too immersed in the work to notice." "I'd been alone in the lab for three days... when I heard their screams." "They were all gathered around him." "By the time I realized what was happening, they were already changing." "The spore grew in each of them until it became..." "What do you mean?" "It's a parasite." "It lives to find a host." " But you weren't infected." " No." "You destroyed your work, transmitting equipment." "You killed Pierce so no one could leave." "No one can leave." "What about O'Neil?" "Jesse?" " Was she exposed to the spore?" " They were all exposed." " All of them." " I have a colleague... a friend... who's with O'Neil right now." " Let me go to her." " She may already be infected." "I can't let you leave." "Then you're gonna have to shoot me, because I'm walking out of here." "Jesse?" "God, you scared me!" "Jesse, are you okay?" "Jesse, what's wrong?" "Jesse?" "Jesse, what are you doing?" "Scully!" "Scully!" "I'm okay." "I'm okay." "You all right?" "I'm okay." "Yeah." "Look at her..." "she was infected." "I don't know how." "Erikson was the original host." "When the fungus shed its spores, everyone was at ground zero, except for Trepkos." "Did you find him?" "I told her..." "it would change her life." "Search and Rescue, this is Agent Mulder." "Do you copy?" "This is Army Biohazard." "How many are in your party?" "We have two survivors..." "Agent Scully and myself." "Copy that." "Our E. T.A. Is seven minutes." "Mulder, what are you doing?" "They're gonna want to question him." "It's all over, Scully." "He won't talk." "Scully and I are in the third day of a month-long quarantine, undergoing level four decon procedures." "We are, so far, without symptoms of fungal contamination." "All our specimens and field notes were confiscated... by the military biohazard corps prior to our evacuation." "Their presence has delayed for an indefinite period... the arrival of the U.S.G.S. Data retrieval team." "I suspect, though, that there will be little left for them to retrieve." "There are no plans at present to explore further any of the hundreds... of volcanically active mountains in the Cascade range, including Mount Avalon." "All access points to that volcano have been sealed off by Army engineers." "Of the members of the Firewalker descent team, only Trepkos and O'Neil remain unaccounted for." "They are presumed dead, and the search for them has been abandoned." "Firewalker, however, was recovered, though its sensory and locomotive systems were irreparably damaged." "The data it collected from the Earth's interior will never be known, and of the events that occurred at Mount Avalon between the 11 th and 13th of November, 1994," "mine stands as the only record."