TEN MINUTES LATER, crude oil swamped Brian Turski's boots as he eyed the gash in the pipe.

"That's not from stress," he said to Joe Abady. "They only saw the spill from the air," the foreman replied with a frown. "Not this."

"Looks like someone took an ax to it," Brian said. Still frowning, Abady glanced down the broad ravine. Some of the men followed his line of sight. The pipeline slithered off like a great fat snake in either direction. To the north it was a straight run into the nothingness of the Alaskan wilderness. To the south it twisted around a bend in the ravine and was gone.

The forty-eight-inch pipe was built on raised pipeline support members that looked like field posts for Titans. Here and there below the pipeline were dark, uncertain patches and bits of brittle scrub. A few broad streaks of windswept snow hugged the ravine walls on either side.

"Just a rupture," Abady announced gruffly. "Probably froze, then popped. No one'd be stupid enough to come out here except us. Let's get to work."

With the drop in pressure that signified a rupture, the line had been shut down. Twelve pumping stations and two million gallons of crude oil sat idle until repairs could be made.

Stepping carefully through the thick pool of oil, Brian headed for one of the support members. As he walked he cast a casual glance down the ravine. And froze.

Something had moved.

It was subtle, ghostly, caught more with his peripheral vision than anything else. But though his eyes had almost ignored it, his brain wouldn't let them.

He squinted into the distance.

Nothing. No movement, no anything. Just the land and the sky and the pipeline that ran between them. For Brian Turski, an eerie silence descended on the ravine. The grunts of the men behind him faded to silence.