"You need to get some rest," Bishop said. "Before you become a patient here yourself."
Crane sighed again, stretched. "I guess you're right." And she was: he'd soon be too bleary-eyed to interpret the slides properly. So he stood, said his good-byes to Bishop and the staff, and exited the Medical Suite.
Although most of the Facility remained terra incognita to him, he knew his way from the Medical Suite to his quarters well enough to make the trip without conscious thought. Down to Times Square, then left past the library and theater, one flight up in the elevator, another left, then two quick rights. He yawned as he opened his stateroom door with his passcard. He just wasn't thinking clearly anymore. A good six hours of sleep would put the problem in perspective, maybe point out the answer that was eluding him.
He stepped inside, yawning again, and placed his palmtop device on the desk. He turned-and then froze.
Howard Asher was sitting in the visitor's chair, an unknown man in a lab coat standing beside him.
Crane frowned in surprise. "What are-" he began.
Asher made a brusque suppressing gesture with his right hand, then nodded to the man in the lab coat. As Crane watched, the stranger closed and locked the room and bathroom doors.
Asher cleared his throat softly. Crane had seen little of him since their squash game. His face looked worn, pained, and there was a haunted gleam in his eyes, as of someone who had been struggling with demons.
"How's the arm?" Crane asked.
"It's been rather painful the last day or two," Asher admitted.
"You need to be careful. Vascular insufficiency can lead to ulceration, even gangrene, if the nerve function is impaired. You should let me-"
But Asher cut him off with another gesture. "There's no time for that now. Look, we'll need to speak quietly. Roger's not in the adjoining quarters at present, but he could return at any time."
This was the last thing Crane had expected to hear. He nodded, mystified.
"Why don't you sit down?" And Asher motioned toward the desk chair. He waited until Crane was seated before speaking again.
"You're about to cross a threshold, Peter," he said in the same low voice. "I'm going to tell you something. And once I've told you, there will be no going back. Things will never be the same for you again, ever. The world will be a fundamentally different place. Do you understand?"
"Why do I get the sense," Crane said, "you're about to tell me I was right, back there in the squash court? That this isn't about Atlantis, at all?"
A bleak smile passed over Asher's features. "The truth is infinitely stranger."
Crane felt a chill in the pit of his stomach.
Asher placed his elbows on his knees. "Have you heard of the Mohorovicic discontinuity?"
"It sounds familiar. But I can't place it."
"It's also known as the M discontinuity, or simply the Moho."
"The Moho. I remember my marine geology professor at Annapolis talking about it."
"Then you'll remember it's the boundary between the earth's crust and the mantle beneath."
Crane nodded.
"The Moho lies at different depths, depending on location. The crust is much thicker beneath the continents, for example, than beneath the oceans. The Moho is as deep as seventy miles beneath the surface of the continents, but at certain mid-oceanic ridges, it's as shallow as a few miles."
Asher leaned toward Crane, lowered his voice still further. "The Storm King oil platform is built above just such an oceanic ridge."
"So you're saying the Moho is close to the crust directly below us."
Asher nodded.
Crane swallowed. He had no idea where this was headed.
"You were told the same story that all workers in the unclassified levels of Deep Storm were-that during a routine mining operation, drillers on the Storm King platform found evidence of an ancient civilization beneath the ocean floor. And that story is true-as far as it goes."
Asher plucked a handkerchief from his pocket, mopped his brow. "But there's more to it than that. You see, they didn't find artifacts or ancient buildings, anything like that. What they detected was a signal."
"A signal? You mean like radio waves?"
"The exact nature of the signal is problematic. More of a seismic ping, almost a kind of sonar. But of an unknown nature. All we can say for sure is that it's not naturally occurring. And before I leave this room, I'll prove it to you."
Crane opened his mouth to speak. Then he stopped. Disbelief, shock, perplexity, all rose within him.
Seeing the look on Crane's face, Asher smiled again: an almost wistful smile this time. "Yes, Peter. Now comes the difficult part. Because, you see, that signal came from beneath the Moho. Beneath the earth's crust."
"Beneath?" Crane murmured in disbelief.
Asher nodded.
"But that would mean-"
"Exactly. Whatever it is that's transmitting the signal-we didn't put it there. Someone else did."
20
For a moment, the stateroom was quiet. Crane sat motionless, struggling to absorb what he had just heard, as the meaning of Asher's words worked its way through him.
"Take a minute, Peter," Asher said kindly. "I know it's a hard thing to get your mind around."
"I'm not sure I believe it," Crane replied at last. "You sure there's no mistake?"
"No mistake. Mankind has no technology capable of inserting a mechanical device beneath the earth's crust-let alone a device that can emit such a signal. Because of the natural phase change that occurs at the Moho, listening devices on the earth's surface are neither sensitive nor technologically advanced enough to pick up certain kinds of waves from below the crust. But because of the mid-Atlantic ridge, the Moho is unusually shallow here. That-along with the depth of the Storm King well holes-led to the accidental discovery of the signal."
Crane shifted in his seat. "Go on."
"Of course, the government's immediate goal became to excavate to the source of the signal, determine what it was. It took quite some time to get the project ramped up, the necessary equipment in place. The depth we're operating at makes things extremely difficult-this Facility was built for other purposes and was not meant to operate anywhere near this deep. Hence the surrounding dome."
"How long did the preparations take, exactly?"
"Twenty months."
"That's it?" Crane felt stunned. "General Motors can't even design a car prototype in twenty months."
"That shows you just how seriously the government is taking this project. In any case, the excavation has been online for almost two months now, and the pace is frantic. Significant progress has been made. A vertical shaft has been dug beneath the Facility. We're excavating toward the source of the signal."
"How is that possible? Isn't the rock molten at that depth?"
"The crust is relatively thin, the geothermic values are low, and radiogenic heat production is far less than it would be in the continental crust. P-wave and S-wave readings indicate the lithosphere is only about three kilometers beneath us-'only' being a relative term, of course."
Crane shook his head. "There must be some logical, some terrestrial, explanation. Some Russian device, or maybe Chinese. Or some naturally occurring phenomenon. If I learned anything from that marine geology course, it's that we know precious little about the composition of our own planet, save for the thinnest outer layer."
"It's not Russian or Chinese. And I'm afraid there are too many things that don't add up for it to be naturally occurring. The geology of the impact, for example. Normally, for something to be embedded so deep in the earth, you'd expect to find a serious geologic disturbance-the undersea equivalent of Meteor Crater. But in this case, the layers of sedimentation above the anomaly are in almost perfect synch with the surrounding matrix. Think of a child digging a hole on the beach, dropping a shell into it, and putting the sand back in place. There's no earthly phenomenon to explain that."