45
Michele Bishop sat at the desk in her tidy office. She was intently scrutinizing an X-ray on her monitor, her dark blond hair falling over her eyes, chin perched lightly on carefully varnished fingernails. Outside, the Medical Suite was draped in a profound stillness.
Inches from her elbow, the phone rang, shattering the silence. Bishop jumped in her seat. Then she reached for the phone. "Medical, Bishop."
"Michele? It's Peter."
"Dr. Crane?" She frowned. It sounded like him, all right; but his normally phlegmatic, almost lazy voice was rushed and breathless. She pressed the power button on the edge of her monitor, then sat back in her seat as the screen went black.
"I'm in the temporary infirmary on deck four. I need your help, badly."
"Very well."
A pause. "Are you okay? You sound…preoccupied."
"I'm fine," Bishop said.
"We've got a crisis on our hands." Another pause, longer this time. "Look. I can't tell you everything yet. But what's down below us-it isn't Atlantis."
"I guessed that much."
"I've discovered what we're digging toward is something incredibly dangerous."
"What is it?"
"I can't tell you that. Not yet, anyway. There's no time to waste. One way or another, we have to make Spartan stop. Look, here's what I need you to do. Round up the scientists and technicians-the ones you know best. Rational, nonmilitary. Reasonable people you can trust. People who are well connected. Any names come to mind?"
She hesitated a moment. "Yes. Gene Vanderbilt, head of Oceanographic Research. And there's-"
"That's fine. Call me back on my mobile when they're assembled. I'll come up and explain everything then."
"What's going on, Peter?" she asked.
"I've figured it out. What's making people sick. I've told Spartan, but he won't listen. If we can't convince Spartan, we'll have to get a message to the surface, tell them what's happening down here, get them to exercise higher authority. Can you do this?"
She did not reply.
"Michele, look. I know we haven't always seen eye to eye. But it's the safety of the entire Facility we're talking about here-and maybe a lot more than that. With Asher gone, I need help from his staff-those that believed in him and what he stood for. Spartan's men are only days, hours, away from their goal. We're doctors, we took an oath. We have to keep the men and women in our care out of harm's way-or at least try our best. Will you help me?"
"Yes," she murmured.
"How long will it take?"
She paused, eyes darting around the room. "Not long. Fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour."
"I knew you'd come through."
She bit her lip gently. "So Spartan's not going to stop the dig?"
"You know Spartan. I gave it my best shot."
"If he won't stop of his own accord, nobody else is going to be able to convince him."
"We have to try. Look, call me back, all right?"
"I will."
"Thanks, Michele." And the phone abruptly went dead.
Silence returned to the office. Bishop sat in her chair, motionless, looking at the phone for perhaps sixty seconds. Then, slowly, she returned it to the cradle, a thoughtful-almost resigned-expression on her face.
46
By Facility standards, Admiral Spartan's quarters on deck 11 were relatively commodious. The fact they were so sparsely furnished made them appear even larger. The suite of rooms-office, bedroom, conference area-were dressed in a rigidly militaristic style. Instead of paintings, the walls were decorated with commendations. An American flag hung limply beside the brilliantly polished desk. The single bookshelf behind it held numerous Navy manuals and treatises on strategy and tactics. In addition-the only evident window into Spartan's private soul-it also held half a dozen translations of ancient texts: the Annals and Histories of Tacitus, the Strategikon of Emperor Maurice, Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian war.
Korolis had seen it all before. His good eye took everything in, while the other drifted away in a myopic haze. He closed the door quietly behind him and stepped forward.
The admiral was standing in the middle of the office, his back to Korolis. At the sound, he turned. And now Korolis stopped in surprise. Because he now saw, over Spartan's shoulder, one of the sentinels their excavation had uncovered. It hovered placidly in the center of the room, white light pointing toward the ductwork on the metal ceiling. The admiral had apparently been studying it.
Korolis reflected that perhaps he should not be surprised, after all. The admiral had been behaving a little out of character the last day or two. Normally, Spartan took his recommendations almost automatically, without question. But recently the admiral had been overriding his suggestions, almost taking him to task on certain issues. Like that business about putting Ping in the brig, for example. His change in behavior seemed to date from the time of that business with Marble One. Or perhaps the admiral, too, was being affected by…
But Korolis decided not to follow that thought to its logical conclusion.
Spartan nodded at Korolis. "Have a seat."
Korolis walked past the sentinel without giving it another look and seated himself at one of two chairs before the admiral's large desk. Spartan walked around the far side of the desk and settled himself slowly into his leather armchair.
"Everything is proceeding according to schedule," Korolis said. "In fact, far ahead of schedule. With the retasked procedures in place, there have been no further, ah, glitches. It's true that operating in manual mode, with checksums on vital processes, has slowed the digging somewhat, but this has been more than offset by the lack of xenoliths in the sediment, and-"
Spartan raised a hand, stopping Korolis in mid-sentence. "That will do, Commander."
Korolis felt another faint stirring of surprise. He had assumed the admiral had summoned him, as usual, for a progress report. To hide his discomfiture he picked a paperweight from the desk-a large metal cleat, a relic from the Revolutionary War frigate Vigilant-and turned it over in his hands.
There was a brief silence in which Spartan brushed back his gunmetal-gray hair with a heavy hand. "When is Marble Two due back from the digging interface?"
"ETA is ten hundred hours." Korolis replaced the cleat, checked his watch. "Fifty minutes from now."
"Have the recovery unit do the normal post-op. Then have Marble Two secured. And tell the Marble Three team to stand down until further orders."
Korolis frowned. "I'm not sure I heard you correctly, sir. Have Marble Three stand down?"
"That is correct."
"Stand down for how long?"
"I can't answer that yet."
"What's happened? Have you received some word from the Pentagon?"
"No."
Korolis licked his lips. "Begging your pardon, sir, but if I'm to have the men call off the dig, I'd appreciate an explanation."
Spartan seemed to consider this request. "Dr. Crane has been to see me."
"Crane, sir?"
"He believes he's found the cause of the medical problems."
"And?"
"It has to do with the emission signals from the anomaly. He's preparing a report; we'll get the details then."
Korolis paused. "I'm afraid I don't follow. Even if Crane's right, what does the source of the illnesses have to do with the dig?"
"In the course of his research, he's made another discovery. A translation of the alien signals."
"A translation," Korolis repeated.
"He believes them to be a warning."
"Asher believed the same thing. Crane always was his errand boy. They never had any proof."
Spartan looked at Korolis appraisingly for a moment. "They may have some now. And it's funny you should mention Asher. As it turns out, it was the data on his laptop that fueled Crane's discovery."