“We’re here,” Dane said.
“But maybe that’s solid,” DeAngelo protested.
“Then I’d suggest you go into it very slowly,” Dane said.
“I don’t-” DeAngelo began but Sin Fen cut him off.
“Go ahead. There is something on the other side.”
“Great,” DeAngelo muttered. He edged the two drive levers forward and they approached the black circle at a crawl.
Dane tried to push his mind forward, through the door, but he was picking up nothing. He wondered what had made Sin Fen say there was something on the other side.
The nose of the submersible was less than five feet from the black circle. Four. DeAngelo slowed them even more. Three. Two. One.
Dane felt the air around him change, press in as if taking on a thicker consistency. Pain rippled across his brain and he was dimly aware that alarms were going off and DeAngelo was throwing switches and pushing buttons in a flurry of activity next to him.
Dane looked up at the screen. Water all around, but the black circle was behind them now. And there was light suffusing the water from above.
“What happened?” Dane asked.
“Extreme pressure change outside,” DeAngelo pushed another button and the wail of the alarm stopped. The sudden silence accompanied the end of the pain in Dane’s head.
“Change to what?” Dane asked.
DeAngelo simply pointed at the depth gauge. It read thirty feet.
“How can that be?” Dane asked. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” DeAngelo said.
“Why don’t we surface and take a look?” Sin Fen suggested from the rear sphere.
DeAngelo edged back and the submersible headed for the surface. They popped up and Dane blinked as the top-side cameras recorded the scene around them.
They were floating in the center of circular body of still dark water, about three miles in diameter. A smooth black beach, two miles in width encircled the water, slowly rising and ending at a rock wall that curved up and in, meeting a half-mile over their heads. A large glowing orb, so bright the camera had to click in place two filters to prevent overload, lit the entire cavern.
Dane had no doubt that this was the muon space that Nagoya’s instruments had recorded. But what hadn’t been recorded were the hundreds of ships and planes that littered the black beach all around them, slowly revealed as the cameras rotated. It was an overwhelming vista; Dane saw ships ranging from Roman galleys through modern warships. Planes from old propeller bi-planes through a SR-71 reconnaissance jet, all tumbled on the metal floor like a madman’s model toy collection. There was even a massive dirigible, the metal skin half-collapsed, lying on its side.
Some of the ships and planes were partially destroyed or disassembled. On the far shore a huge oil tanker had been stripped of its hull, only the steel girders remaining, like a beached whale that had decomposed to its skeleton. A large warship of what appeared to be World War I vintage was missing its bow up to the first gun turret, the metal cut cleanly.
There was no sign of the crews, just the relics.
“It’s a graveyard,” Dane whispered, trying to take in the large numbers and immense variety of craft he was viewing. He reached out with his mind but picked up no signs of life.
“Let’s hope it’s not our graveyard too,” DeAngelo muttered.
“Look to the right,” Dane said. “Between that yacht and the B-24 bomber.”
The escape pod from Deeplab lay on the black beach, the latest addition to the macabre scene.
Ariana Michelet saw the small dot representing Deepflight disappear off her sonar screen. She waited for it to reappear, hoping that it had simply gone behind something but the minutes passed and nothing happened.
She picked up the phone linking her to the Glomar and reported this new development. Captain Stanton told her she had a call that he was relaying.
She waited, then with a belch of static, Foreman’s voice echoed through the operations sphere.
“Do you have any idea where Deepflight is?” Foreman asked.
“It went into the circle of muonic activity,” Ariana reported. “That’s what you wanted from the very beginning, isn’t it?”
Foreman ignored her question and asked one of his own. “You’re aware the Bermuda Triangle gate is growing? Along with the other gates?”
“We heard that it grew when the line of activity came out, but not that it’s still growing.”
“Latest imagery indicates a growth rate that will put it over your location in eight hours,” Foreman said. “You’ll be inside the gate then.”
“And?” Ariana said. “What do you expect me to do about it? Abandon Deepflight? It’ll take the Glomar six hours to pull Deeplab up anyway.”
“I’m just keeping you informed,” Foreman said. “The electro-magnetic activity through the SOSUS system is continuing and increasing. The president has ordered all available ships and subs to sea in preparation.”
“In preparation for what?” Ariana asked.
“That’s what the president asked me and that’s what I’m hoping Dane and Sin Fen can tell us when they get back.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as they re-establish contact.” Ariana cut the transmission and sat back in the command chair.
Chapter 20
“No.”
Ragnarok almost smiled at Bjarni’s curt assessment of the course he had just indicated on the map. The wind was blowing steadily out of the southeast and the sail was tacked to allow them to take full advantage. The islands that lay off the southwest tip of England had passed by off their starboard side an hour ago and they were now south of Eire Land.
He had Tam Nok’s two maps- paper and metal- laid out on the rear-most rowing seat. He tapped the metal one at the spot Tam Nok had said they had to get to. “We have to get there.”
“The currents will be against us,” Bjarni amplified his answer. “We cannot go to the southwest directly. You know that.” The old man leaned over. “The sea comes this way-” his gnarled finger traced a path in the opposite direction that Ragnarok had indicated. “Even if the wind is with us- which it won’t be- we could not fight the sea. We would, at best, sit still in the same place, at worst be pushed back. Even now-” he gestured at the sea around them- “we are being pushed to the north even though our dragon head faces due west.”
“There has to a be a way,” Ragnarok argued. Tam Nok was still sleeping in the forward part of the boat and Ragnarok saw no reason to waste any time- he wanted to head in the right direction immediately.
Bjarni sighed and knelt down next to the maps, Ragnarok joining them. He was simply glad to be back on his ship. Hrolf and the ship had been waiting as promised at the same point on the beach the previous evening. Ragnarok and Tam Nok had boarded without incident and they’d immediately set sail and continued through the night, putting distance between themselves and the land of the Saxons.
With the light of day, it was time to make a decision and Ragnarok knew that was not going to be as easy as Tam Nok would like.
“The only way we could get there-” Bjarni stabbed the map with his finger- “is to travel in a large circle this way.” He traced a route to the south of Iceland, beneath Greenland and along the coast of the large land that lay to the west. “Then we can catch the current and ride into the center of the ocean to the place you wish to go,” Bjarni concluded.
“How long would that take?”
“A year. Maybe less if all goes well,” the helmsman said. “But we would be traveling where no one has ever gone. Strange waters are dangerous waters. And we would have to winter somewhere along this coast,” he indicated the large continent. “And stop often for resupply. No one I know has ever made a journey that far.”