They had now reached the platform at the end of the ramp. It was about twenty feet square and fastened securely to the dome's inner wall. An airlock hatch stood at one side, immensely thick, guarded by still more marines. This hatch, Crane felt sure, led to the deep ocean outside the dome. No doubt the Tub would dock itself here, and the supplies brought in through this airlock.
There were a dozen or so people waiting on the platform already: technicians in lab coats, maintenance workers in jumpsuits. Most had brought containers of various sizes. The maintenance crew had the largest ones: black plastic wheeled containers so bulky it must be difficult to fit them through hatchways. Crane guessed these contained waste material being sent back up to the surface.
Beside the hatch stood a control panel manned by a tall and very attractive woman in military garb. As Crane watched, she tapped a few keys, peered at a tiny display. "Incoming at T minus two minutes," she said over her shoulder.
There were a few impatient sighs from the group. "Late again," somebody murmured.
Crane's vertigo had now receded. His eye moved from the woman at the station to the skin of the dome itself. Its curve was gentle and perfect, designed for maximum strength, oddly pleasing to the eye. Amazing to think of the terrific pressure it was under, the almost inconceivable burden of water that pressed down upon it. It was something that, as a submariner, he'd learned not to dwell on. Unconsciously, he stretched forward a hand and briefly caressed the dome's surface. It was dry, smooth, and cold.
Renault, the executive chef, looked at his watch impatiently. Then he turned to Crane. "So, Doctor," he said, with something like satisfaction, "the Tub arrives. My men here retrieve the foodstuffs. Conrad does a checklist to make sure nothing was forgotten. All under my supervision. Satisfactory?"
"Yes," Crane replied.
"Incoming at T minus one minute," the woman called out.
Renault drew a bit closer. "You had other questions?" he asked. And he glanced again at his watch as if to say, Ask now, while I'm wasting valuable time anyway.
"Has anybody else on your staff complained of health problems recently?"
"My saucier has a sinus infection. But that hasn't prevented him from reporting to work."
Crane had expected this reply. Now that he'd satisfied himself on food handling, he was eager to get to work on the heavy metal possibility. His eyes began to rove: over the assembled crowd, to the attractive woman at the monitoring station, to an electrical bulkhead beside her. Drops of condensation dripped slowly from the underside of the bulkhead. He was half tempted to say good-bye and head back down the walkway to the Facility hatch-only he felt pretty sure he'd need Renault, and his paperwork, to get back inside.
There was a thud on the far side of the dome, and the platform trembled slightly: the Tub had docked. People began to move around, preparing for the airlock to be opened.
"Docking successful," said the woman. "Initiating hatchway decompression."
"What about behavior patterns?" Crane asked the chef. "Has anybody behaved in an uncharacteristic or unusual manner?"
Renault frowned. "Unusual? In what way unusual?"
Crane didn't reply. His wandering eye had returned to the bulkhead, where the condensation was dripping more quickly now. Odd, he thought. Now, why would condensation be-
There was a strange, high-pitched sound almost like the spitting of a cat, so brief Crane wasn't sure he'd heard it. And then, quite suddenly, a jet of water-no wider than the point of a pin-appeared at the spot where the drip had been. For a moment, Crane simply stared in disbelief. The jet was perfectly horizontal, like the beam of a laser, hissing and boiling, and it arrowed straight inward for at least a hundred feet, almost reaching the Facility itself before gravity began pulling it downward in a gradual arc.
There was a moment of stasis. And then came the whoop of a klaxon, the shriek of alarms. "Perimeter breach!" an electronic voice boomed through the echoing space. "Perimeter breach! This is an emergency!"
There was a cry of surprise from the people on the platform. The uniformed woman grabbed her radio, spoke into it quickly. "This is Waybright at Tub Control. We've got a pinhole perforation in the control conduit. Repeat, it's here, the breach is here! Send in a containment crew on the double!"
Someone screamed, and the crowd drew back to the edges of the platform. A couple of people began edging back down the walkway toward the Facility.
"It's gonna widen!" somebody cried.
"We can't wait for the team!" said Conrad. And instinctively he put out his hand to seal the breach.
Instantly, Crane darted forward. "No!" he cried, stretching out an arm to pull Conrad back. But before he could do so, Conrad's left hand passed through the jet of water.
And, neatly as a surgeon's scalpel, the pressurized water severed each finger at the second knuckle.
Then the platform became a pandemonium: screams, cries of surprise and horror, the shrill bark of commands. Conrad slumped to the floor, grasping his injured hand, mouth wide in surprise. The catwalk rang with the sound of booted feet as the Facility hatchway boomed open and men in heavy suits came running up toward them, bulky equipment in hand. Meanwhile, Crane had crouched low and-careful to avoid the murderous jet of water-picked up the severed fingers and placed them carefully, one after the other, in his shirt pocket.
18
Admiral Richard Ulysses Spartan stood in one corner of the metal platform, severely erect, gazing wordlessly at the scene around him. Ten minutes earlier, when he first arrived, the waiting area fixed to the dome wall had been a little bedlam: rescue workers and medics; engineers; uniformed seamen and officers; and one hysterical, panicked scientist who refused to move. Now it was much quieter. Two armed seamen stood at the edge of the catwalk, barring entry to the platform. Some engineers and maintenance workers huddled around the metal and titanium seal that had been fixed over the pinhole leak. A single housekeeping employee knelt over the gridwork floor with a bucket, swabbing bloodstains from the metal.
Watching it all, Spartan frowned. He detested flaws and errors and was highly intolerant of them. Flaws, even small ones, had no place in any military operation. That was especially true in an installation such as this, where the stakes were so high and the environment so dangerous. The Facility was a highly complex system, a fantastic network of interdependencies. It was like the human body. The fact that it worked at all was a marvel of engineering. But remove just one key system and the resulting chain reaction would shut down everything else. The body would die. The Facility would fail.
Spartan's eyes narrowed further. Truth was, that had come disturbingly close to happening just now. Worse, it was apparently due to another element even more objectionable than error-a human element.
Movement appeared in his peripheral vision. Turning, Spartan saw the trim figure of Commander Korolis walking up the catwalk from the Facility. He arrived at the platform and the two guards immediately stepped aside.
Korolis approached the admiral and threw him a smart salute. Spartan nodded in return. Korolis had the condition known as exotrophia: one eye looked ahead normally, while the other pointed outward. But his condition was mild, making it difficult to know, when he was facing you, which eye was fixed: whether he was looking directly at you or not. It was an unsettling sensation that had proven rather useful in interrogation and other situations. Privately, Spartan disapproved of Korolis's single-minded obsession with military secrecy-he disapproved of any kind of obsessiveness in his staff-but he had to admit the man was fiercely loyal to the service.