“Deeplab?” Foreman asked.
“Read-outs from the umbilical say everything is functioning fine but no one is answering the phone. It’s stable now.”
“Deepflight?”
“We have it on radar,” Stanton said. “Passing through fifteen thousand and still descending on the planned glide path.”
“There’s no way to communicate with it?” Foreman asked.
“No, sir,” Stanton replied.
An air force officer thrust a SATPhone at Foreman. “We have commo with Doctor Nagoya.”
Foreman took the phone. “Nagoya, what readings do you have in the Bermuda Triangle gate?”
“We’re not currently oriented toward the Bermuda Triangle,” Nagoya replied.
“Damn it!” Foreman slapped his hand against the top of the conference table. “I’ve got people down there. Reorient now!” He hit the off button for the phone as Captain Stanton’s voice echoed out of the speakers.
“Object is gone. It just blinked out at twenty-seven thousand feet.”
“What about Deeplab?” Foreman asked.
“Still there. Still no communication.”
“Nagoya,” Foreman yelled into the radio, “get me some readings!”
Deeplab reminded Dane of a hornet’s nest, hanging from a thin branch. The sub’s lights highlighted the lab against the surrounding dark ocean. A single lamp glowed where the pipe was bolted into the top of the lab.
“Shouldn’t there be more lights?” Dane asked.
“Why?” DeAngelo had brought them out of the spiral and was slowly approaching the habitat dead on. “They have no windows. They do have cameras and infrared imagers but there’s usually no need to have them on- what are they going to see at this depth any way?”
Dane glanced up at the screen showing the interior of the rear sphere. Sin Fen had her hands against the side of her head, eyes closed in concentration. Dane closed himself off to the space around him and opened his mind as Sin Fen had taught him.
The habitat was less than forty feet in front of them, DeAngelo going into a slight dive to come up under the central access.
“Something happened,” Dane said.
“What?” DeAngelo was concentrating on piloting, eyes shifting between the forward display and his radar which was counting down the feet between them and the habitat.
Dane opened his eyes. Sin Fen was staring at him in the screen. “Do you know?” Dane asked her.
“No.”
“What’s going on?” Ariana asked.
“I feel something very strange,” Dane said.
“Hold on,” DeAngelo warned as shifted the imager view to the top camera. They were directly below the habitat, the bottom hatch less than five feet away from the top of the forward sphere and closing. With a slight thud, they made contact and came to a halt.
“We’ll go in first,” DeAngelo said, “make sure it’s secure, then I’ll come back in, move forward, let you out, go back and anchor us in. I’m pressurizing the lock,” he added.
The difficulty of even the slightest maneuver or operation at deep pressure reminded Dane of the missions he had conducted in Special Forces in extreme cold weather environments. There every little task had to be thought out thoroughly before being attempted, and then it would take two to three time as long to conduct than it would in a more temperate zone. A mistake that would normally cause no more than a minor inconvenience could be fatal in such an environment.
“I’ve got a seal,” DeAngelo was reading his gauges.
For the first time since they were lowered into the water, he let go of the controls and turned onto his back, then sat up. He reached up and slid open a control panel on the side of the hatch.
“I confirm a seal,” DeAngelo said as a green light came on in the panel. He looked at Dane over his shoulder and smiled. “If we open this thing without a seal- well, we wouldn’t even know what killed us.”
Dane heard him, but he was concentrating, trying to get a feel for what lay above. When he had searched for people, Dane had always been able to pick up people’s auras, the projections from their conscious- and even at times, subconscious- minds. Now he was reading nothing other than a vague sense of shock and fear.
“Releasing secondary lock,” DeAngelo threw a switch.
Dane reached out to Sin Fen with his mind. He felt her presence and she reacted to his probe, confirming she was picking up the same disturbing impression from the habitat.
“Do we have a weapon on board?” Dane asked.
“A weapon?” DeAngelo was momentarily confused. “Why would we carry a weapon? You shoot a gun down here, it’s the opposite of shooting one in an airplane with a hundred times worse results. You puncture or even weaken the hull around us, we don’t depressurize, we pressurize, which means we implode. Besides, what do we need a weapon for?”
Dane shook his head. “Forget it.”
DeAngelo went back to his checklist. “Secondary lock disengaged. Equalizing pressure.” He hit a button.
Dane felt his ears pop.
“Primary lock disengaging.” DeAngelo hit a red button.
There was a solid thud sound as the locks in the hatch cycled back. DeAngelo unbuckled his harness and Dane did the same.
“Give me a hand,” DeAngelo was now on his knees, hands on the hatch handle. “Push.”
Dane did as instructed and with a slight hesitation, the hatch swung up into the lock. A splash of water came in, hitting both DeAngelo and Dane.
DeAngelo now used the handle as a step to get into the lock. Five feet above their heads was the bottom hatch for DeepLab IV.
“We’re here guys!” he yelled. He looked down. “They’ll open as soon as they’re sure we’re open and secure.”
Dane looked up. “No, they won’t.”
DeAngelo frowned. “Why not?”
“Because there’s no one alive in there.”
Chapter 10
As far as Ragnarok was concerned the only good thing that had happened since setting foot on dry land was that he had gotten a new ax-head made by a Saxon blacksmith. Other than that, the trip had been misery. Traveling only at night to avoid raising an alarm, Ragnarok plodded after Tam Nok as they went north. The only weather that England seemed to have was cloudy and rainy. They slept during the day, or tried to sleep, Ragnarok too concerned with security to get more than a few minutes of slumber here and there. He wasn’t used to walking so much and his leather boots had chafed the skin raw at several places on his feet.
They had beached the longship along the coast to the west of the Isle of Man. As soon as Ragnarok and Tam Nok were ashore, Hrolf had the crew push the craft back into the water. Ragnarok had stood on the beach, watching his ship disappear into the night. They would meet back at the same place in six days.
Two of those days had already passed, filled with nothing but walking, through forests and over hills and fields. Ragnarok could tell by the stars they were going northward, but he had no idea how Tam Nok was choosing their path or what their destination was. When he questioned her she told him the Gods were leading her and she would know where they were going when they got there; neither a very satisfactory answer.
He had managed to persuade her to halt long enough for him to enter a village early one morning and find a blacksmith. The man had been half-frightened out of his wits to see a hulking Viking appear in the low doorway to his smithy, but a few gold pieces had induced him to bring out a large ax-head, such as the Saxons used to kill cattle, and spend all that day on the forge and anvil fashioning it in the shape Ragnarok wished.
“I will call it Bone Cutter,” Ragnarok said, taking a slash with the ax through the air in front of him. It was dark and the land was growing flatter. Tam Nok was at his side, walking with a steady stride that never seemed to grow weary. She carried a pack with an equal share of the food and water without the slightest complaint. Ragnarok had to fight hard to keep from limping.