With renewed sense of terror the three moved away from the door.
“Somebody is controlling all this,” Suzanne said gravely. Her worried eyes swept around the seamless room. “And now we are trapped.”
“It’s got to be Russians,” Donald said.
“Enough about the Russians!” Suzanne shouted. “You were in the military too long. You see everything in terms of yesterday’s hostilities. This isn’t about Russians.”
“How do you know?” Donald yelled back. “And don’t you dare denigrate my service to my country.”
“Oh, please!” Suzanne intoned. “I’m not disparaging your naval service. But look around, Donald! This isn’t anything earthly. Look at the light, for goodness’ sake.” Suzanne held out her hand. “There’s no light source, but the illumination is totally even. And there’s no shadow.”
Perry held out his hands and tried to form shadows, but it was impossible. Donald watched but did not try it himself.
“It’s a uniform photon flux that must be penetrating these walls somehow,” Suzanne said. “And if I had to guess I’d say there was a significant ultraviolet component.”
“How can you tell?” Perry said.
“I can’t,” Suzanne admitted. “Not for sure since the human eye doesn’t pick up ultraviolet, but to my mind there’s a definite distortion of the blue of our coveralls and the maroon of your jogging suit.”
Perry looked down at his clothing. To him the color was the same as it always had been.
“The spheres!” Donald yelled.
All eyes shifted to the glass balls. Their opalescence had suddenly and dramatically increased so that they were glowing. A moment later there was a cracking sound, and beginning at both apices the spheres opened like enormous flowers losing their petals. With a gush of fluid the divers spilled out onto the floor.
Donald was the first to overcome his shock. As quickly as he could, he rushed to Richard’s side. Realizing the unconscious diver was trying to breathe, Donald pulled off the man’s helmet and tossed it aside. Richard coughed violently.
Perry rushed to Michael. While he removed Michael’s helmet he could hear Richard’s coughing. Michael, however, was not even breathing. Calling upon his CPR training, Perry knew what to do. First he hauled Michael from the debris of the collapsed sphere, pulling his still attached umbilical with him. After a quick check to make sure the diver’s mouth was clear, he pinched his nostrils closed, took a breath, and gave Michael a lungful of air. Turning his head to the side, Perry took another breath. He was about to repeat the cycle when he noticed that Michael’s eyes were open.
“What the hell are you doing, man!” Michael questioned. He pushed Perry’s face away, which was inches from his own.
“I was doing mouth-to-mouth,” Perry said. He got to his feet. “I didn’t think you were breathing.”
“I’m breathing!” Michael insisted. He made a face of disgust and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Believe me, I’m breathing.”
Richard’s coughing jag came to an abrupt end, and he blinked away the tears it had brought on. His first concern was Michael. When he saw that his buddy was alive and well, he glanced around the room before looking up at the others.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “What happened?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Perry answered.
“Where the hell are we?” Richard asked. His eyes took a second quick dash around the room. A perplexed expression clouded his face.
“An equally interesting question,” Perry said.
“Were you looking for us on your dive?” Donald asked Richard.
For a moment Richard merely looked confused. Then Donald’s question helped restore his memory. “Oh, my god!” he cried. “We were on a nearly thousand-foot sat dive! We didn’t decompress!” Richard struggled to his feet. His legs were wobbly, especially on the slippery floor. “Michael, we’ve got to get into the DDC!”
“Take it easy!” Donald said. He grabbed Richard around the upper arm to calm him and keep him from falling. “There’s no DDC here. Besides, you’re all right. Obviously you don’t have the bends.”
Richard’s confusion deepened. He extended his legs and his arms to check his joints. Blinking repeatedly, he looked around the room again, and while doing so noticed the umbilical connecting him to the base of the collapsed sphere. “What the hell is this?” he demanded. He grasped the composite group of hoses and wires and immediately let go. His lips curled in revulsion. “Jeez, it feels soft, like I’m holding someone’s intestines.”
“It has to be some kind of life support,” Suzanne said, speaking up for the first time since the divers had emerged from their shells. “Considering the shape you’re in without decompressing, I guess it had something to do with that as well.”
Richard gingerly touched the device attached to his stomach. It was the size and shape of the head of a toilet plunger. As soon as he touched it, it detached. Catching it in his hand, he looked at its business end. To his horror a series of wormlike appendages protruded from it, their wriggling heads soaked in blood—his blood.
“Ah!” Richard cried. He dropped the device, which quickly retracted into the base of the flattened sphere like a disappearing vacuum cleaner cord. In a panic Richard unzipped the front of his neoprene suit down to his pubis. When he looked at his stomach he cried out again. There were six puncture wounds in a circular pattern around his navel.
After watching Richard, Michael struggled to his feet and hesitantly looked down at his own stomach. He was dismayed to see a similar apparatus. With an expression mirroring Richard’s, he reluctantly touched it with his index finger. To his relief it immediately detached and retracted. Opening his dive suit he found the same peculiar pattern of oozing stab wounds around his umbilicus.
“Holy crap!” Michael voiced. “It looks like we were stabbed a bunch of times with an ice pick.” He shivered. “I can’t stand blood.”
Richard zipped his suit back up and then tried to take a few steps on shaky legs. He reached out and supported himself against the wall. “Man, I feel like I’ve been drugged.”
“I feel like I was run over with a goddamn truck,” Michael said.
“Where’s Mazzola?” Richard asked.
“We wouldn’t have any idea,” Donald said. “What happened during your dive?”
Richard scratched the back of his head. At first all he could remember was getting into the DDC for the compression, but then, with Michael’s participation, they both were able to remember sketchy details of the descent in the bell and entering the water.
“Is that it?” Donald asked. “Nothing after you left the bell?”
Richard nodded. Michael did the same.
“How come you guys all look like you’ve been in a pigpen?” Richard asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he looked more closely at the walls. “What is this, some kind of hospital or something?”
“It’s no hospital,” Donald said. “We can’t tell you much else other than how we got here, but that includes how we got dirty.”
“That’s a start,” Richard said. “Fire away!”
Donald explained while the two divers slouched against the wall. It was a hard story to swallow, and their eyes narrowed in disbelief.
“Oh, come on!” Richard scoffed. “What is this? Some kind of a put-on?” He regarded the trio with suspicion. This had to be a prank. Michael nodded in agreement.
“This is no put-on,” Donald assured him.
“Just look around this room,” Suzanne said.
“Listen!” Donald said, trying to be patient. “Can’t either of you remember anything about how you got here? Didn’t you see anybody?”
Richard shook his head. With his foot he pushed around the deflated segments of the sphere. The material was now limp instead of rigid and brittle. “Are you serious about us being inside this stuff? You said it looked like glass. It sure doesn’t now.”
“It did just
a short time ago,” Suzanne assured him.
“What we think is that this is a Russian submarine base,” Donald continued.
“Correction!” Suzanne interrupted. “That’s what you think.”
“Russians?” Richard echoed. “No shit!” He visibly straightened up. He looked around the room with renewed interest, as did Michael. Both put their hands against the highly polished walls. Richard rapped on the glossy surface with his knuckle. “What is this stuff anyway, titanium?”
Suzanne started to answer but was interrupted by a hissing noise. Everyone looked back to the locations where the spheres had stood. A vapor billowed out of the exposed holes. Quickly an acrid smell pervaded the sealed chamber, and everyone’s eyes began to tear.
“We’re being gassed!” Suzanne cried before she was overcome by violent coughs.
The group shrank back in terror, pressing themselves against the cold metal walls in a vain attempt to get away from the gas. But before long everyone was coughing and squeezing their eyes shut against the burning sensation.
“Get on the floor!” Donald cried.
Everyone except Perry flattened themselves on the floor while trying ineffectually to cover their mouths and noses with their hands. Perry stumbled back to the door to the cavern and began pounding on it, while screaming for it to be opened.
The door did not budge, but Perry had the presence of mind to notice something despite his panic and physical torment. He was not blacking out nor was he even feeling the slightest bit dizzy. The gas seemed not to have the lethal effect he most feared.
With strength of will Perry held his coughing in check and managed to crack his eyes for an instant despite the discomfort. The room was thick with the foglike vapor. Perry couldn’t see far, but he noticed that his arms were suddenly bare.
Curious as to what could have happened to the sleeves of his jogging suit, Perry squinted. He saw that his sleeves had fallen into tatters. They were hanging in shreds as if he’d dipped his arms into acid.
Aware that his whole body now felt cool, Perry patted his hands along his chest. His jogging suit—indeed, all his clothes—were suffering the same fate as his sleeves. The fabric of the clothing itself was progressively losing its structural integrity.
Perry had had nightmares in the past when he was under stress that he was naked in public. Suddenly it was coming to pass as he felt his clothes peel from his body in strips. He clutched at them and felt them disintegrate in his hands.
“It’s our clothes!” Perry shouted to the others. “The gas is dissolving our clothes!”
At first fear kept everyone else from responding. Perry yelled his message again and stumbled forward in the fog, almost tripping over Donald. “The gas is dissolving our clothes,” he repeated. “And I don’t feel any mental effect whatsoever.”
Donald pushed himself up to a sitting position. His coveralls experienced the same fate as Perry’s jogging suit. Quickly he patted himself to verify that he was indeed becoming naked. But he couldn’t open his eyes; the gas stung too much. Even without the visual confirmation, he was convinced. He called out to the others: “Perry’s right!”
Suzanne, like Perry, was able to get her eyes open intermittently. She saw that it was true about her clothes. Her coveralls literally fell apart. She also noticed that there was no effect on her mental state despite the discomfort she felt in her throat and chest. Relieved, she got to her feet.
Richard and Michael pushed themselves up into sitting positions. With the drugged feeling they were still experiencing, they could not tell if the gas was affecting their consciousness, but both were coughing heavily. For them, the respiratory effect was more difficult than it was for the others.
“My dive suit’s fine,” Richard managed between coughs. But then he made the mistake of running his hand over his shoulder. When he did, the neoprene completely depolymerized. At his touch it fell into tiny spheres.
Through blinks, Michael had glimpsed the fate of Richard’s suit. He glanced intermittently at his own suit, reluctant to touch it or even move, but Richard reached out and gave his shoulder a sharp slap. The effect was instantaneous. One minute the dive suit looked normal, the next it was running off Michael like so many drops of water.
Suddenly, an alarm sounded and a red light on the wall opposite the door to the cavern began to flash—moments before, that same wall had appeared seamless. Through the caustic vapor, the five began to discern the outline of an open doorway below the light.
The alarm ceased after a few minutes but the light continued to blink. Then they noticed the sound of a high-pitched whistle. Air was being forced through a narrow vent.
Perry advanced slowly toward the flashing light. When he reached the wall, he saw that the outline of the door was more distinct. He felt around its edges. When he did he could feel a steady current of air pushing in. That explained the whistling. He tested with his foot to make sure the floor was level across the threshold. Then he stepped through.
Perry was immediately relieved. The curtain of fast-moving air kept the acrid gas from the hallway he’d entered. The walls, floor, and ceiling were constructed of the same polished metal as the gas-filled room, but the level of illumination was significantly less. Twenty feet ahead Perry could see that the corridor opened up into another chamber.
Perry poked his head back through the air curtain.
“There’s another room,” he shouted. “And it’s clear. Quick!”
The other four struggled to their feet and moved toward the blinking light. Suzanne had to guide Donald; he couldn’t stand to open his eyes. In a minute, the entire party made it into the new room.
The gas wore off swiftly. They were so relieved that they weren’t troubled by the complete disintegration of their clothes. All five were stark naked, but other concerns were more pressing. Ahead the second room beckoned.
“Let’s move,” Donald said. He gestured for Perry to precede them since he was already in the lead.
Perry flattened himself against the wall and motioned for Donald to pass. “I think you should be first. You’re still the captain of the ship.”
Donald nodded and pushed past. Perry fell in behind him followed by Suzanne. The two divers brought up the rear.
“It’s pretty obvious what’s going on now,” Donald said.
“I’m glad it’s obvious to you,” Perry said.
“What do you mean?” Suzanne asked.
“We’re being prepared for interrogation,” Donald said. “It’s a recognized technique to strip away a person’s sense of identity as a way to break down resistance. Our clothes are certainly part of our identity.”
“I don’t have any resistance,” Perry said. “I’ll tell whoever it is whatever they want to know.”
“Donald, does that mean you know what that gas was?” Suzanne asked.
“That’s a negative,” Donald said.
Donald halted at the second room’s threshold and peered in. It was considerably smaller than the first chamber although it, too, was lined with the same mysterious, metallic material. From where he was standing, he could make out a glass-doored exit as well as a white hall begin with what appeared to be framed pictures on the walls. Within the chamber he noticed that the floor sloped toward the center, where there was a grate, and the ceiling peaked to a central point with a second grate.
“Well?” Suzanne questioned. From where she was she couldn’t see what lay ahead.
“It looks encouraging,” Donald said. “There’s a relatively normal looking corridor beyond a glass door.”
“Then let’s move,” Richard called impatiently from behind Suzanne.
With both hands on the doorjamb for support, Donald moved first one foot onto the sloped floor and then brought the other to it. As he’d anticipated he began to slide once he let go. He slid for about three feet with his hands flailing to keep from falling. At that point the floor angled out to be almost level. He turned and warned the others.
Every
one was careful except Michael. Having grown up in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he’d played hockey since age five, he wasn’t concerned about the slick floor. But its angle took him by surprise. His feet went out from under him on his first step, and he careened into the others like a bowling ball. In a flash the entire group was a pile of entwined naked limbs.
“For chrissake!” Donald snapped. He extricated himself and helped Suzanne to her feet. The others struggled up by themselves. Michael was hardly remorseful. Now that his eyes were open, he was much more interested in appreciating Suzanne’s body. Richard swore and cuffed Michael on the top of his head. Michael shoved Richard in return, effectively sending them both to the ground again.
“Knock it off!” Donald shouted. Being careful not to fall, he separated the two divers. Richard and Michael obeyed, but continued to glare at each other.
“My god!” Suzanne voiced. “Look!” She pointed back at the doorway they’d just come through. Everyone gaped in astonishment. The doorway was silently sealing over, as if the metal wall were fusing together. Within moments the opening was gone without a trace. The wall was seamless.
“If I’d not seen that with my own eyes, I’d never believe it,” Perry said. “It’s supernatural, like a movie special effect.”
“I can’t begin to understand the technology,” Suzanne said. “I think it lets the Russians off the hook.”
A deep gurgling sound then issued from the central grate. All eyes turned in its direction.
“Oh no!” Suzanne said. “What’s coming now?”
Before anyone could respond, a clear fluid that looked like water bubbled up through the central floor grate. The group shrank back, then scrambled toward the glass door. The angle and slippery surface of the floor forced them to their hands and knees. The first to the door began to bang on the glass, desperate for a way to open it. Behind them the inrushing water had become a geyser; the water level was rising rapidly.