Frost reluctantly left his stateroom and went down the corridor toward the cramped control room of the Nautilus. He paused as he noted a framed picture wired to the walclass="underline" the Cover of a first edition book of Jules Verne: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The giant squid was attacking the submarine, and one of the men on the cover was fighting back with a harpoon. Frost stared at it for several moments, feeling the tug of association, but again not able to pinpoint it.
Frost passed through the attack center. Barely manned by two crewmen. Most men seemed to spend their time in their bunks. Even Frost had heard that Someone in the torpedo room crew had put together a still and illicit spirits were readily available. Captain Anderson did nothing to stop this-why should he? What else was there to do aboard this ship of war? Prepare for battles that would never come?
Frost spotted Anderson in the control room, seated in one of the three chairs that were occupied-when underway-by e petty officers who “drove” the boat. The captain was staring ahead at the gauges as if expecting to see their readings change, something that had not happened in the twenty-six lays they’d been in this spot.
“Sir.” Frost waited, then repeated himself “Sir.”
Anderson slowly turned. His eyes focusing. “Yes?”
“Your engine produces power all the time, doesn’t it’?”
Anderson blinked. “We get all our power from the reactor. Lights, water pressure, heat, air. All of it. It always runs.”
“But we aren’t moving,” Frost said. “So it could produce more power than we use, correct?”
“Yes.”
Frost opened the box and pulled out the crystal skull. “Good. I will be needing some of that power.”
Just before Dane stepped into the Valkyrie suit. He turned to Earhart. “What did you do with her?”
“With who?”
“The parallel you,” Dane said.
“I put her out of her misery,” Earhart said. She turned her back to Dane and stepped into the suit. Dane stared at her disappearing into the suit for a few seconds and then did the same. As soon as he pressed his back against the rear half, the front swung shut.
Moving the suit was strange, as it required the wearer to make the effort, with the suit following through with the actual movement. Dane pressed his left leg forward and the entire suit moved ahead. He twisted the waist and the suit rotated in place so he was facing Earhart.
“I’m ready,” he announced.
“All right.” Earhart’s voice echoed inside his suit.
Dane followed as Earhart moved out, heading away from the camp and toward the Inner Sea. She had a Naga staff in her right hand, white fingers wrapped around it, claws retracted. They floated six inches above the black sand. When they reached the water, Earhart didn’t hesitate, heading out over the flat surface. Dane followed without hesitation. He had no sense of immediate danger, an instinct that had kept him alive in Vietnam, and he hoped it meant there were no kraken nearby.
They passed around a forty-meter-wide portal and Dane had his first sight of the sphere. As Earhart had said, just the very top of the massive sphere was above the water, a curving surface about five meters high, disappearing under the water in all directions.
As they reached the black metal, the suit adjusted, lifting them up. There was a thin line on the surface, and Earhart followed it until they were at the top.
“The keyhole is there.” Earhart pointed with the sharp tip of the Naga staff. The indentation she pointed to was the opposite of the seven snake heads on the other end of the Naga staff. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Earhart pressed the Naga end into the hole. A golden glow suffused the hole and staff and finally covered Earhart. The crack began widening.
“It’s going to flood,” Dane said as the crack spread down the surface of the sphere toward the water.
“Nothing we can do about that right now,” Earhart replied.
The crack in front of them widened to two meters, narrowing in both directions. Water began to pour in where the crack met the surface of the Inner Sea.
“Go,” Earhart ordered.
Dane moved the suit over the opening and then descended to the sphere. Earhart removed the Naga staff and followed. The moment she removed the staff, the crack began to close. The skin of the sphere was more than three feet thick, and as both cleared it, they found themselves over a massive area, dimly lit from numerous unseen sources and full of massive panels folded together-what the sphere had used to strain the ozone out of Earth’s atmosphere.
The top half of the interior had a floor that bisected the diameter in the exact middle of the sphere. Two waterfalls Sprayed water from either side of the open crack. They continued to slowly descend as the crack shut, cutting off the water.
“Are you sure we can get out?” Dane said.
“Did you ever see a one-way door,” Earhart asked in turn. She pointed with the staff above her. “There appears to be a keyhole right there, on the opposite side of the outer one.”
That didn’t give Dane the greatest confidence. They began: o float down next to the panels. It was a long way to the floor. As he descended, Dane reached out with his mind. Trying to get a feel for the place, an ability he’d always had. All that he could pick up was a sense of sterile coldness.
Dane and Earhart landed gently in the exact center of the floor,
“If it has light, it still has some power,” Dane said.
“The other one we saw had the same light,” Earhart said.
“Where’s the crew?” Dane asked.
“In the control room, I would assume.” Earhart leaned and placed her armored hand on the floor. She backed up as a hatch irised open. It was five feet in diameter. A long tube beckoned. They went into it. moving for almost a minute before they entered an open space, fifty feet in diameter. More than a dozen holes indicated other tubes leading out of the space. In the center was a golden pod ten feet in diameter, its surface shimmering.
“That’s the control center for this thing,” Earhart said.
In reply Earhart moved forward. Dane followed. As she reached the golden surface, Earhart didn’t pause. The gold enveloped her suit and she disappeared. Dane did pause just before the pod. He waited a few seconds, half-hoping Earhart would come back out but when she didn’t, he pressed forward.
He felt a shock course over his skin as the gold wrapped around his suit and drew him in. He bumped into Earhart’s back, slid to the side and came to a halt. There were two other Valkyrie suits in the small space, back to back in the center. A circular console went around both at waist height, with no apparent means of support.
Earhart poked at one of them with the Naga staff, getting no response. Dane moved forward and reached for the right arm of the one she poked. He pressed the code in the small indentations and the suit swung open, revealing a human body, the front half bouncing against the console. The body was missing the skin from the bottom half of its body, a clear material wrapped around from toe to waist covering muscles and sinew. There were no genitalia, but the person was flat-chested so Dane assumed it was a man. His left arm was withered and almost bone thin. A trickle of dried blood was on both sides of his mouth and below his nose.
“They aren’t exactly the healthiest people,” he noted.
“Tile question is,” Earhart said, “whether these are the Shadow or just people being used by the Shadow.”
“I hope they aren’t the Shadow,” Dane said.
“Why is that?”
“Because it means humans are destroying other humans.”
Earhart gave a bitter laugh. “Humans have been doing that ever since we walked upright.”