“How does the pilot and crew see out?” Dane asked.
“Video and imagers,” Ariana said. “To keep the pressure integrity of the craft there are only two breaches to the titanium sphere: one is the hatch, which is titanium also and basically a titanium hatch closely fitted to the rest of the sphere, and one reinforced access port for the electronics and controls.”
“What’s the point then?” Dane asked.
“What do you mean?”
“If we can’t see out why put people inside? Why not just use an RPV?”
“You can see out,” Ariana said. “Using the low light level television, LLTV and other imagers such as sonar and radar, you’ll be able to 'see’ better than using your eyes. It also makes the craft less intrusive as you don’t need to light up the ocean with bright lights in order to be able to see. The Deep Flight II has conventional searchlights but it also has infrared searchlights.”
“Will we have the ability to pick up these muon things?” Dane asked.
“Not yet but we’re working on that,” Ariana said. She continued, using the laser to highlight the screen. “The craft is twelve meters long, by four wide, by four meters high. Each pressure sphere is three, point five meters in outside circumference, two point eight meters in inside circumference.
“Maximum speed is six knots, descent rate is four hundred feet per minutes, ascent seven hundred feet per minute. The dual engines are powered by a series of batteries. Flight endurance is twelve hours, life support is ninety-six. Outside of the spheres it is a 'wet’ submersible which means the engine, everything other than where the crew is, will not be pressurized and will be open to the water.”
A cell phone rang and Sin Fen pulled it out of her belt. She turned her back and spoke in a low voice for several seconds, then closed the phone. “Captain Stanton and I have work to do. I’ll leave you to complete the briefing.”
Stanton and Sin Fen left the room, leaving Dane and Ariana alone.
“How have you been?” Dane asked before she could go back to her slides.
“As good as can be expected,” Ariana replied.
“Which means?”
“Pretty crappy.” Ariana stood up and walked over to a porthole, staring out at the ocean. “We both were lied to and we both were used.”
“And we’re both here now,” Dane noted.
“Of course,” Ariana said. “Where else would we go? Walk away? Pretend what’s happening in the gates isn’t real? Pretend that Trident didn’t land in the Atlantic? Those bombs didn’t explode?” She turned and faced Dane. “Foreman and my father know us better than we know ourselves. They’re both experts at using people. They don’t have consciences but they know how to manipulate people who do.” She shrugged. “And besides, the threat is real. Foreman has had to do whatever he could to fight it when no one would believe him.”
““But not your father,” Dane noted.
Ariana sat back down. “He’s old and he worked hard-”
“Don’t make excuses for him,” Dane said.
“He got you to rescue me,” Ariana noted. “I think you’re being a bit hard on him.”
“I’m a bit hard on everyone,” Dane said. “Why are you here?” he asked. “Besides the fact that your company owns this ship.”
“Because some of my friends were killed in the Angkor gate.” She looked up at him. “Is that good enough for you?”
“Yes.”
“And there’s the threat,” Ariana said. “You know about the lines of propagation along the plate tectonics?”
Dane nodded. “But Foreman said that was just a reconnaissance. Imaging.”
“So far,” Ariana said. “But I’d say the nuke attack went a bit further than a reconnaissance.”
“Sin Fen said that was a test.”
Ariana nodded. “Yes, but one hell of a test, don’t you agree? The interior of the Earth is my area of expertise and what the Shadow is doing scares me. Most people feel solid ground beneath their feet and think the Earth is a big rock with a molten core deep inside, but that’s not the way it is at all.
“The Earth is a dynamic planet. The very outside of the planet, the crust, is called the lithosphere. It’s around a hundred kilometers thick under the land masses. And relatively cold and stable. Under the oceans, there are places where the lithosphere is only six to eight kilometers thick. That’s like a sheet of paper wrapped around a basketball. This is especially true where tectonic plates meet.” She pointed down. “Like in the Milwaukee Depth.
“Below the lithosphere is the asthenosphere. It’s hotter, less solid and moving very slowly. Plate tectonics results from the lithosphere moving over the asthenosphere.”
Ariana went over to the slide machine and clicked through until she came up with the same image Foreman had shown Dane- the world with lines drawn across it.
“There are six major plates and several minor ones. These plates move relative to each other at various speeds. Anywhere from one centimeter to twenty centimeters a year. Now that doesn’t sound like much, but given the unbelievably large masses involved and the instability of the asthenosphere below, it can produce some rather dramatic results, both long and short term.
“Where plates are pulling away from each other, you have an opening into the asthenosphere which results in a lot of volcanic activity. Where plates converge or smash into each other, one plate usually slips beneath the other along an inclined plane known as a subduction zone. These result in mountain ranges. The Himalayas are the result of such a subduction zone where the Indian plate is sliding under the Asian plate. There is a third type of action- a transform fault where the plates are sliding against each other. The San Andreas Fault is a good example of a transform fault.”
“What makes these plates move?” Dane asked.
“That’s a good question,” Ariana said. “We don’t really know for sure, but the best theory is the slow churning of mantle rock, what’s called mantle convection. That’s where mantle rock deep inside the Earth is driven toward the surface by the extreme heat of the planet’s core. As it gets higher, it cools until eventually it starts to sink back down. Sort of a very slowly boiling pot using rock instead of water. Another theory is that the weight of the plate itself is slightly tipped, causing it to move in a certain direction. This theory is called slab-pull. We’re not really sure which causes plates to move and in reality it might be a bit of both.”
“You’re joking,” Dane said. “We don’t know what’s under our feet and how it works?”
“I’m not joking,” Ariana said. “Up until thirty years ago, there were those who thought the Earth was solid. There were others who thought the Earth was hollow and you could get inside through entrances at either of the poles. Hell, there are still people who think the Earth is hollow and there are large cities populated by strange beings under such places as Mount Shasta in California.
“The only way we have any idea what’s going on under our feet is through remote imaging. The deepest probe ever sent into the Earth hasn’t even come close to going a tenth of the way through the lithosphere, so everything below that is just conjecture.”
Ariana shut of the slide projector. “What scares me, is the possibility that while we may not know much about plate tectonics, whoever’s on the other side of the gates may know exactly how they work and how to manipulate the enormous forces involved.”
“If they do?” Dane prompted.
“If they do, they have a whole range of options. They can bring forth volcanoes. Cause massive earthquakes. Landslides thousands of miles long. If any of those events happen underwater, then the follow-on result would be tsunamis.