“That,” said Glinn, “is the problem. There’s nothing there. Not even the seafloor is visible. The sonar signal is simply vanishing as if into a black hole, and what small return we’re getting is stochastic and constantly shifting.”
“Is something wrong with the sonar system?” said the technician.
Prothero sat up, his abrasive voice loud in the room. “No, there isn’t, as I’ve said repeatedly. I’ve checked and triple-checked it.”
“Well,” Alex joined in, “it seems to me the likeliest explanation is equipment malfunction—”
“Hey, hey, hey, there’s no equipment malfunction,” came the querulous reply. “It’s all working perfectly. I’m tired of being blamed for this.”
“Any idea, then, what’s happening?” Alex asked politely.
Listening, Gideon’s dislike of Prothero went through the roof.
“How would I know? Maybe there’s a vent spewing clouds of suspended particulate matter, like clay, into the water. Maybe there’s a small erupting undersea volcano. I’m sick of these questions.”
Gideon spoke up. “No need to get your knickers in a twist, Prothero. Alex is asking legitimate questions.”
Prothero laughed loudly. “Oooh, the white knight comes to rescue the damsel in distress.”
Gideon, feeling the blood rush to his face, was about to respond when Manuel Garza interjected: “No one is blaming anyone. We’ve got an enigma on our hands, which tomorrow’s recon mission will solve. So let’s focus on that and keep the discussion civil.”
Prothero gave an audible snort and went back into his slouch.
“Regarding the recon,” Glinn went on, “we’re going to keep it simple. One DSV will go down to photograph the target object, along with doing a quick photographic and sonar survey of the wreck so we can get a better idea of its position on the seafloor. Extracting those black boxes will be critical.”
He paused.
“We’ll be doing this recon tomorrow. It took us a month to get down here, and there’s no point in wasting any time. Alex Lispenard, as DSV chief, will assign the mission. Any questions?”
There were none.
“That’s all—thank you very much.”
As the room was emptying, Glinn laid a restraining hand on Gideon’s arm, indicating he should stay. When everyone had left, including Garza, he leaned over. “Give Prothero a wide berth.”
Gideon felt a swell of irritation. “He had no business attacking Alex like that. He’s a jerk and I called him out on it.”
“And you were humiliated. You’ll never win a nasty exchange with him. His IQ is forty percent higher than yours.”
Gideon laughed. “Really? You’ve got all our IQs memorized?”
“Of course. Now, about the recon. As I said, Alex will be assigning the mission. And she’ll want to do it herself. Your job is to convince her to let you do it. If necessary, I’ll order her to let you.”
“Me? What the hell do I know about driving those DSVs? This is a bit too important for a honeymoon dive, don’t you think?”
“A baby could drive those DSVs. But here’s why I want you: I sense this recon is more dangerous than people realize, precisely because we don’t know what’s down there. Why can’t we see it on sonar? That’s very disturbing.”
“So you’re saying I’m expendable? I thought my nuclear knowledge was priceless to you.”
“You’re not, and it is. I never thought I’d say this, but you’re…lucky. You get yourself out of the most amazing scrapes.”
“Despite my low IQ?”
“Perhaps because of it,” Glinn said drily.
“How reassuring.”
“Listen to me carefully, Gideon. I want you down there, seeing things firsthand with your own eyes. You said you needed to be convinced this thing is dangerous before you’d lend your expertise—this is your chance. Besides, the more you know about what we’re dealing with, the more you understand, the more useful it will be when the time comes to build—and position—the bomb that will destroy it.”
And with that, he nodded his dismissal.
11
THEY TOLD HIM the descent would take forty minutes—if all went well. Gideon, strapped into the DSV known as Ringo, fought back a growing sense of unease and claustrophobia as the submersible was lowered into the water.
He’d had a right good argument with Alex when he’d asked her to assign the recon to him instead of herself. Nothing had worked—wheedling, cajoling, demanding: even telling her to fuck off. In the end, though, he hadn’t needed to go to Glinn—she’d taken the matter to him herself, and Glinn had endorsed Gideon’s request. The whole incident had left her furiously angry, and that pained Gideon—especially since he wasn’t exactly thrilled to be the volunteer guinea pig.
The surface of the ocean was visible through the forward viewport, rippled by the breeze but otherwise calm. He could feel the faint swing of the DSV as it entered the water. In a moment the submersible was under, with glistening bubbles swirling around the viewport, and then he was staring into the infinite, sun-speared depths.
He took a deep breath. He tried to take his mind off the fact that he was going down into the blackness beyond—almost two miles deep.
“Ringo, do you read?”
“Loud and clear.”
Gideon’s mission-control contact was Garza, who, although he wasn’t exactly the warmest human being, was one of the most competent. For that, Gideon was grateful.
“We’re going to hold you at a depth of twenty feet while we go through the in-sea checklist. You ready?”
“So far, so good.”
While the DSV hung in the water, still on its cables, Garza ran through a checklist, telling Gideon to flick one switch, read a second dial, turn on this pump and turn off that one, while he confirmed that all systems were go. Finally, Garza said: “Ringo, ready to release in one minute.”
The procedure, Gideon knew from the topside briefing, was to release the DSV into the water, where it would sink straight to the bottom, drawn down by its iron ballast. At the bottom, the weights would be jettisoned, giving the DSV neutral buoyancy. Because acoustic or electromagnetic communications between the DSV and ship at a depth of two miles were impossible, for this first dive Ringo would remain in contact with mission control by a wire cable, which would unspool as the DSV descended. If the cable broke—apparently, this was a common occurrence—the autopilot would automatically take over and bring Ringo back to the surface. The cable would carry all of the DSV’s operations, video, and sonar data to mission control, so that if anything started to go wrong they would know it in real time.
“Release in ten seconds.”
Gideon listened as Garza’s voice counted down in his headphones. Then he heard a muffled thunk and felt himself begin to sink. He could see small particles in the water drifting upward past the viewports at a steadily increasing rate. The surrounding sea began to darken: from light blue, to blue, to a deep indigo.
“All systems green,” came Garza’s neutral, reassuring voice, every two minutes.
Now the viewports had faded into black. Occasionally something—a bit of particulate matter—would flash through the DSV’s running lights, moving upward as the vehicle sank.
“Take a deep breath, Gideon. Your vitals are starting to rise.”
He realized he was breathing fast and shallow, and he could feel his heart racing. They were monitoring his vital signs, of course, and he knew this incipient panic would not look good. He made a supreme effort to regulate his breathing, calm himself down, telling himself this was far less dangerous than crossing Seventh Avenue at rush hour.