“I feel that emptiness also,” Dane said.
“Is it dangerous?” DeAngelo asked.
“Being in this submersible is dangerous,” Dane said. “We’ll see what is down there when we get there.”
“Passing through twenty-four thousand feet,” DeAngelo said. “We’re in range to get sonar images if you want. But remember, if we turn the sonar on, we’re giving our position away to anyone who is listening.”
“Turn it on,” Dane ordered. “We’re going to have to eventually to see where we’re going.”
DeAngelo locked down the levers in the descending spiral position and flipped a switch. Deepflight’s sonar began painting a picture of the bottom.
Dane watched the sonar screen as an image of the Milwaukee Depth coalesced. A steep bowl shaped depression with steep sides formed. The north side of the Milwaukee Depth was almost vertical, an underwater cliff of vast dimension.
“Do you have the location of the circle that Foreman’s people discovered?” Dane asked.
“The computer is orienting the stored image right now,” DeAngelo said, “comparing it to what we’re picking up on sonar.”
A green circle appeared on the screen. One edge of it touched the very bottom of the Milwaukee Depth, but the majority was off to the north, outside of the edge of depression on that side, beyond the mile high cliff.
“That’s strange,” DeAngelo said. “If the reading is true, then this thing, whatever it is, must be under the ocean floor.”
“Take us to the part that touches the Depth,” Dane tapped the screen.
“Roger that.”
Dane glanced up at the video feed to the rear sphere. Sin Fen was looking at her sonar display. Dane reached out to her mentally, but the only image he picked up was her interest in what she was seeing. They were now in the hole in the ocean floor that constituted the Milwaukee Depth.
“Twenty-six thousand feet,” DeAngelo announced. “We’re three quarters of a mile above the bottom. I’m slowing our descent. Things are getting tighter. I’m going to find the north wall and use it to guide down.”
On the sonar display, the north wall grew closer and closer as DeAngelo steered them toward it.
“There!” DeAngelo said.
Dane looked at the display that showed the outside view lit by the IR searchlights. A gray vertical wall appeared on screen. Alternating between the sonar display and the outer view, DeAngelo took them down along the flat north wall of the Milwaukee Depth.
The depth gauge clicked through 27,000 feet and DeAngelo slowed them further.
“That wall’s not natural,” Sin Fen said.
“Hold up,” Dane ordered DeAngelo. Deepflight came to a halt, floating at 27,600 feet.
A horizontal line had appeared on the rock wall, a black mark against the gray wall, almost a foot thick. It extended left and right as far as the camera could see. Dane leaned forward, getting closer to the screen. The wall below the line seemed to be the same rock as that above, but the rock was totally smooth on the lower portion. The upper portion also appeared to overhang the rock below by a couple of feet. Dane checked the sonar. The wall was completely smooth below.
“The line curves very slightly,” he said. “Follow it to the right,” he told DeAngelo.
The twin propellers churned and the submersible moved along the rock wall, tracing the line.
“It is curved,” DeAngelo confirmed. “We’re descending very slowly.”
Soon Dane could see that the line was on a sloped forty-five degree angle, heading down. “It’s a big circle,” he said.
“Semi-circle,” DeAngelo corrected. “As wide as that curve is, we’re going to be at the bottom halfway down.”
Dane checked the sonar. The bottom was less than three hundred feet below them and the curve had yet to go through the vertical.
“Two hundred from bottom,” DeAngelo announced a minute later.
“This thing is big,” Dane was calculating in his head. “Almost a half mile in radius.”
“The question is,” Sin Fen said, “what is it?”
“One hundred feet and slowing,” DeAngelo’s eyes were glued to the sonar. The line slid by. “Fifty feet.”
Dane could feel the submersible slow, his body pressed slightly against the pad beneath.
DeAngelo switched on the camera in the belly of the sub. Inky blackness met the IR searchlight.
“Twenty-five feet.”
The bottom appeared on the screen. It consisted of striated black rock that met the gray wall. The line was exactly vertical where it disappeared into the black rock. Dane reached out with his mind, but felt nothing.
“This sure as hell ain’t natural,” DeAngelo muttered as he brought Deepflight to a hover. “What now?”
Dane looked at the projection of the muon circle against the sonar pattern and their own location.
“Go west,” Dane said, “along the wall. Take us to the center.”
“Roger that.” DeAngelo turned the submersible and they scooted along, keeping the bottom twenty feet below and the wall fifteen feet off their starboard side. The gray rock was perfectly smooth and Dane wondered if it was rock at all.
“Is the bottom view normal?” Dane asked DeAngelo.
“The only time I’ve seen anything like this is when I was in the Pacific off Hawaii- molten rock that hits seawater and cools quickly. But that was near the surface- magna that flows on land and then goes into the water. Magna that comes out directly into the ocean from a vent doesn’t look like this.”
“So how do we have this type of rock at twenty-eight thousand feet?” Dane asked.
“Hell, how do you have this smooth stuff to our right?” DeAngelo asked in turn. “I’ve never seen anything like that either.”
“It’s a door,” Sin Fen’s voice came over the intercom.
That’s what Dane had been thinking, but the sheer magnitude of the door itself and the depth they were operating at made it hard to accept the concept.
“Damn big door,” DeAngelo said. He glanced at the sonar. “It’s over a mile wide.”
“It doesn’t appear to have been opened in a while,” Dane said. “The bottom half looks like its blocked in.”
“Besides the constant low level field surrounding whatever is behind the door,” Sin Fen said, “Nagoya picked up spikes of muonic activity in this area several times.”
“We’ve got something ahead on the wall,” DeAngelo said.
Dane looked at the video screen. The IR searchlights lit up a black circle in the center of the gray. The black was forty feet in diameter. The infrared light didn’t reflect off of it, but rather seemed to be absorbed.
“Can we see it in normal light?” Dane asked as DeAngelo brought them to a hover.
“It won’t look any different,” DeAngelo said, but he turned on the outer lights anyway. The computer automatically switched to the normal light video cameras.
DeAngelo was right- it looked the same. A black circle that seemed to grab the light and suck it in. Dane had seen something like it before.
“It’s a gateway,” he told the other two. “Flaherty came to me in Angkor Kol Ker through something like that and we went through the same thing to go from Angkor to the Scorpion.”
“A gateway in the middle of what looks like a door?” DeAngelo said.
“I’ve got a smaller gate in my door at home,” Dane said. “My dog uses it.”
“I don’t think I like that analogy,” DeAngelo had turned them straight on, facing the black circle.
“The question is,” Sin Fen said, “what is on the other side? Where does it lead? If it’s like the small gate you went through at Angkor, it could transport us anywhere.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Dane said.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” DeAngelo said.