Renault, the executive chef, looked at his watch impatiently. Then he turned to Crane. “So, Doctor,” he said, with something like satisfaction, “the Tub arrives. My men here retrieve the foodstuffs. Conrad does a checklist to make sure nothing was forgotten. All under my supervision. Satisfactory?”
“Yes,” Crane replied.
“Incoming at T minus one minute,” the woman called out.
Renault drew a bit closer. “You had other questions?” he asked. And he glanced again at his watch as if to say, Ask now, while I’m wasting valuable time anyway.
“Has anybody else on your staff complained of health problems recently?”
“My saucier has a sinus infection. But that hasn’t prevented him from reporting to work.”
Crane had expected this reply. Now that he’d satisfied himself on food handling, he was eager to get to work on the heavy metal possibility. His eyes began to rove: over the assembled crowd, to the attractive woman at the monitoring station, to an electrical bulkhead beside her. Drops of condensation dripped slowly from the underside of the bulkhead. He was half tempted to say good-bye and head back down the walkway to the Facility hatch—only he felt pretty sure he’d need Renault, and his paperwork, to get back inside.
There was a thud on the far side of the dome, and the platform trembled slightly: the Tub had docked. People began to move around, preparing for the airlock to be opened.
“Docking successful,” said the woman. “Initiating hatchway decompression.”
“What about behavior patterns?” Crane asked the chef. “Has anybody behaved in an uncharacteristic or unusual manner?”
Renault frowned. “Unusual? In what way unusual?”
Crane didn’t reply. His wandering eye had returned to the bulkhead, where the condensation was dripping more quickly now. Odd, he thought. Now, why would condensation be—
There was a strange, high-pitched sound almost like the spitting of a cat, so brief Crane wasn’t sure he’d heard it. And then, quite suddenly, a jet of water—no wider than the point of a pin—appeared at the spot where the drip had been. For a moment, Crane simply stared in disbelief. The jet was perfectly horizontal, like the beam of a laser, hissing and boiling, and it arrowed straight inward for at least a hundred feet, almost reaching the Facility itself before gravity began pulling it downward in a gradual arc.
There was a moment of stasis. And then came the whoop of a klaxon, the shriek of alarms. “Perimeter breach!” an electronic voice boomed through the echoing space. “Perimeter breach! This is an emergency!”
There was a cry of surprise from the people on the platform. The uniformed woman grabbed her radio, spoke into it quickly. “This is Waybright at Tub Control. We’ve got a pinhole perforation in the control conduit. Repeat, it’s here, the breach is here! Send in a containment crew on the double!”
Someone screamed, and the crowd drew back to the edges of the platform. A couple of people began edging back down the walkway toward the Facility.
“It’s gonna widen!” somebody cried.
“We can’t wait for the team!” said Conrad. And instinctively he put out his hand to seal the breach.
Instantly, Crane darted forward. “No!” he cried, stretching out an arm to pull Conrad back. But before he could do so, Conrad’s left hand passed through the jet of water.
And, neatly as a surgeon’s scalpel, the pressurized water severed each finger at the second knuckle.
Then the platform became a pandemonium: screams, cries of surprise and horror, the shrill bark of commands. Conrad slumped to the floor, grasping his injured hand, mouth wide in surprise. The catwalk rang with the sound of booted feet as the Facility hatchway boomed open and men in heavy suits came running up toward them, bulky equipment in hand. Meanwhile, Crane had crouched low and—careful to avoid the murderous jet of water—picked up the severed fingers and placed them carefully, one after the other, in his shirt pocket.
18
Admiral Richard Ulysses Spartan stood in one corner of the metal platform, severely erect, gazing wordlessly at the scene around him. Ten minutes earlier, when he first arrived, the waiting area fixed to the dome wall had been a little bedlam: rescue workers and medics; engineers; uniformed seamen and officers; and one hysterical, panicked scientist who refused to move. Now it was much quieter. Two armed seamen stood at the edge of the catwalk, barring entry to the platform. Some engineers and maintenance workers huddled around the metal and titanium seal that had been fixed over the pinhole leak. A single housekeeping employee knelt over the gridwork floor with a bucket, swabbing bloodstains from the metal.
Watching it all, Spartan frowned. He detested flaws and errors and was highly intolerant of them. Flaws, even small ones, had no place in any military operation. That was especially true in an installation such as this, where the stakes were so high and the environment so dangerous. The Facility was a highly complex system, a fantastic network of interdependencies. It was like the human body. The fact that it worked at all was a marvel of engineering. But remove just one key system and the resulting chain reaction would shut down everything else. The body would die. The Facility would fail.
Spartan’s eyes narrowed further. Truth was, that had come disturbingly close to happening just now. Worse, it was apparently due to another element even more objectionable than error—a human element.
Movement appeared in his peripheral vision. Turning, Spartan saw the trim figure of Commander Korolis walking up the catwalk from the Facility. He arrived at the platform and the two guards immediately stepped aside.
Korolis approached the admiral and threw him a smart salute. Spartan nodded in return. Korolis had the condition known as exotrophia: one eye looked ahead normally, while the other pointed outward. But his condition was mild, making it difficult to know, when he was facing you, which eye was fixed: whether he was looking directly at you or not. It was an unsettling sensation that had proven rather useful in interrogation and other situations. Privately, Spartan disapproved of Korolis’s single-minded obsession with military secrecy—he disapproved of any kind of obsessiveness in his staff—but he had to admit the man was fiercely loyal to the service.
Korolis was carrying a thin white folder tucked beneath his arm. Now he handed it to Spartan. The admiral opened it. Inside was a single printed sheet.
Spartan closed the folder without reading the contents and glanced back at Korolis. “It’s confirmed?” he said.
Korolis nodded.
“Intent, as well?”
“Yes,” Korolis answered. “It was pure dumb luck that it ruptured where it did.”
“Very well. And your new men?”
“They should arrive within minutes.”
“Understood.” And Spartan gave him a dismissive nod.
He watched for a minute, thoughtfully, as the officer made his way back down the catwalk. It was not until Korolis had dwindled to a small shadow outside the Facility entrance that he at last dropped his eyes again to the folder, opened it, and scanned the sheet inside. If the contents made an impression on him, it was visible only in a clenching of his jaw muscles.
Raised voices roused him. The admiral looked up to see Asher arguing with the guards, who were denying him permission to climb onto the platform. Asher turned toward Spartan, and the admiral nodded his permission. The guards stepped back and Asher came over, puffing slightly.
“What are you doing here, Doctor?” Spartan asked mildly.
“I’ve come to see you.”
“I gathered as much.”
“You haven’t returned my calls or e-mails.”
“I’ve been rather busy,” Spartan said. “Some items of importance came up.”
“What I sent you was important, too. Our researcher’s report on what he found in the library of Grimwold Castle. Have you read it?”
Spartan’s eyes slid away for a moment, toward the engineers working on the seal, before returning to the chief scientist. “I’ve skimmed it.”
; “Then you know what I’m talking about.”
“Frankly, Doctor, I’m a little surprised. For a man of science, you seem far too credulous. The entire thing could be a work of imagination. You know how superstitious people were back then: old accounts of demons, witches, sea monsters, and other rubbish are innumerable. Even if it purports to be real, there is no reason to think this account has anything to do with what we’re concerned about here.”
“If you’d read the document you’d have seen the parallels.” Asher, normally so calm and collected, was agitated. “Of course it’s possible the two are unrelated. But if nothing else, it emphasizes the need to slow down. Learn a little more about what’s down there.”
“The only way to do that with any certainty is to expose it. We’ve already learned quite a bit, found quite a bit—you of all people know that.”
“Yes, and look at the results. Healthy people falling sick in alarming numbers. People with no history of emotional problems having psychotic episodes.”
“You brought somebody on board to look into that. What’s he been doing?”
Asher drew closer. “Working with his hands tied. Because you haven’t given him access to the lower levels. Where the real story lies.”
Spartan gave a wintry smile. “We’ve been over that. Security is paramount. Peter Crane is a security risk.”
“He’s a lot less of a risk than—”
But Spartan made a suppressing gesture. Asher drew back, following Spartan’s eyes. A new person had stepped onto the platform: a muscular, sunburnt man in dark military fatigues, carrying a black canvas duffel. His iron-gray hair was cut very short. Catching sight of Spartan, he walked over and executed a crisp salute.
“Chief Woburn, reporting as ordered, sir,” he said.
“Where are your men, Chief?” Spartan asked.
“Waiting outside the Compression Complex.”
“Then join them. I’ll have Commander Korolis show you to your quarters.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Another salute and the officer wheeled around.
Spartan turned back to Asher. “I’ll take your request under advisement.”
Asher had remained silent through the brief exchange, his gaze moving from the stranger’s face to the insignia on his fatigues. Now he confronted Spartan. “Who was that?”
“Surely you heard the name. Chief Petty Officer Woburn.”
“More military? There must be some mistake.”
Spartan shook his head. “No mistake. They’re here at the request of Commander Korolis and will be taking orders directly from him. He believes more manpower is necessary to enforce security.”
Asher’s expression grew dark. “Additional personnel allotments are joint decisions, Admiral. Made by us as a team. And that insignia, the man’s a—”
“This isn’t a democracy, Doctor. Not when the safety of this Facility is concerned. And at the moment, that safety appears to be in jeopardy.” And Spartan gave a subtle nod toward the group of engineers at the far corner of the platform.
Asher turned in their direction. “What’s the status of the breach?”
“Successful containment, as you can see. A submersible is being dispatched from the surface, with additional plating for the exterior of the dome. A temporary seal has been applied until a more permanent one can be fabricated. That will take some time. The affected area is about four feet in length.”
Asher frowned. “Four feet? For a pinhole?”
“Yes. It was only a pinhole. But that’s not what it was intended to be.”
For a moment Asher remained still, digesting this. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Spartan nodded again toward the engineers. “You see that bulkhead where the breach occurred? It runs directly to the airlock housing, where the electrical and magnetic controls that open the hatch are located. When our emergency crews sealed the breach, they found a three-foot cut, all the way from the pinhole to the housing.”
“A cut,” Asher repeated slowly.
“Here, along the inside of the dome. Made by a portable laser cutter, we believe—a detailed analysis is ongoing. This cut compromised the integrity of the entire bulkhead. It could have failed at any time—although failure was more likely during a moment of stress, such as the docking impact of the Tub. Luckily, the laser cut was imperfect—it was deeper in some spots than in others. Hence, the pinhole breach. If the cut had worked as designed, the pinhole would have spread down the bulkhead to the airlock housing itself…”
“Rupturing the hatch,” Asher murmured. “Causing a massive hull breach.”
“A terminal hull breach.”
“And this cut you mention. You’re implying it wasn’t an accident? That it was a deliberate act of—of sabotage?”
For a moment, Admiral Spartan did not reply. Then, slowly, he lifted an index finger and—keeping his gaze locked on Asher—laid it perpendicularly across his lips.
19
Crane pulled back from the black rubber eyepiece, blinked, then rubbed his face with both hands. He glanced around the laboratory, waiting for his vision to adapt. The images slowly sharpened: a medical technician across the room, working with a titration setup. Another technician entering data into a workstation. And just across the lab table, Michele Bishop, who—like himself—was using a portable viewer. As he watched, she, too, leaned away, and their eyes met.
“You look about as tired as I feel,” she said.
Crane nodded. He was tired—bone tired. He’d been going twenty hours straight: first with a harrowing and exhausting microsurgical procedure to reattach Conrad’s severed fingers, then with the seemingly endless follow-up on his hypothesis of heavy metal poisoning.
And along with the weariness was also disappointment. Because so far, no significant traces of heavy metals had been detected in the Deep Storm personnel. Hair, urine, and other samples had been examined, without result. He and Bishop were now examining slides from energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometer tests, but once again, nothing so far. The public areas of the Facility had also come up clean.
He sighed deeply. He’d been so convinced this was the answer. It still could be, of course. But with every new test that came back negative, the chances grew increasingly remote. Just as disappointing, Jane Rand’s data mining efforts had turned up nothing.
“You need to get some rest,” Bishop said. “Before you become a patient here yourself.”
Crane sighed again, stretched. “I guess you’re right.” And she was: he’d soon be too bleary-eyed to interpret the slides properly. So he stood, said his good-byes to Bishop and the staff, and exited the Medical Suite.
Although most of the Facility remained terra incognita to him, he knew his way from the Medical Suite to his quarters well enough to make the trip without conscious thought. Down to Times Square, then left past the library and theater, one flight up in the elevator, another left, then two quick rights. He yawned as he opened his stateroom door with his passcard. He just wasn’t thinking clearly anymore. A good six hours of sleep would put the problem in perspective, maybe point out the answer that was eluding him.
He stepped inside, yawning again, and placed his palmtop device on the desk. He turned—and then froze.
Howard Asher was sitting in the visitor’s chair, an unknown man in a lab coat standing beside him.
Crane frowned in surprise. “What are—” he began.
Asher made a brusque suppressing gesture with his right hand, then nodded to the man in the lab coat. As Crane watched, the stranger closed and locked the room and bathroom doors.
Asher cleared his throat softly. Crane had seen little of him since their squash game. His face looked worn, pained, and there was a haunted gleam in his eyes, as of someone who had been struggling with demons.
“How’s the arm?” Crane asked.
“It’s been rather painful the last day or two,” Asher admitted.
“You need to be careful. Vascular insufficiency can lead to ulcerati
on, even gangrene, if the nerve function is impaired. You should let me—”
But Asher cut him off with another gesture. “There’s no time for that now. Look, we’ll need to speak quietly. Roger’s not in the adjoining quarters at present, but he could return at any time.”
This was the last thing Crane had expected to hear. He nodded, mystified.
“Why don’t you sit down?” And Asher motioned toward the desk chair. He waited until Crane was seated before speaking again.
“You’re about to cross a threshold, Peter,” he said in the same low voice. “I’m going to tell you something. And once I’ve told you, there will be no going back. Things will never be the same for you again, ever. The world will be a fundamentally different place. Do you understand?”
“Why do I get the sense,” Crane said, “you’re about to tell me I was right, back there in the squash court? That this isn’t about Atlantis, at all?”
A bleak smile passed over Asher’s features. “The truth is infinitely stranger.”
Crane felt a chill in the pit of his stomach.
Asher placed his elbows on his knees. “Have you heard of the Mohorovicic discontinuity?”
“It sounds familiar. But I can’t place it.”
“It’s also known as the M discontinuity, or simply the Moho.”
“The Moho. I remember my marine geology professor at Annapolis talking about it.”
“Then you’ll remember it’s the boundary between the earth’s crust and the mantle beneath.”
Crane nodded.
“The Moho lies at different depths, depending on location. The crust is much thicker beneath the continents, for example, than beneath the oceans. The Moho is as deep as seventy miles beneath the surface of the continents, but at certain mid-oceanic ridges, it’s as shallow as a few miles.”