"No damage reports have come back yet, sir-automatic detectors are off-line and the situation's still a little fluid. Power has been fully restored. There seems to be some issues with the environmental controls. Damage control and rescue teams have been dispatched; we're waiting for a sit rep."
"Well, pass it on when you get it. Meanwhile, have Chief Woburn take a squad up to do his own recon."
"Very good, sir."
"'Hades is relentless and unyielding,'" Dr. Flyte said, more to himself than anyone else. Then he lapsed into a quiet, singsong recitation in what Korolis assumed to be ancient Greek.
"Over and out." Korolis replaced the mike. Woburn could be relied on to deal effectively with the situation-he and his agents had been carefully selected for their reliability and their devotion to him, forged over countless clandestine missions in past years.
He now realized that, in the back of his mind, he'd always known this would happen: that he would need the loyalty and support of the black ops team; that at the ultimate moment he would be here, inside the Marble, to claim the prize.
Rafferty looked over from his perch. "Two minutes to interface."
"Spin up the tunnel-boring machine." Korolis turned to the old man. "Dr. Flyte?"
The cybernetics engineer fell silent, glancing back with his bright blue eyes.
"Commence final diagnostics on the robotic array, if you please."
The response was another quotation. "'Son of Atreus, what manner of speech has escaped the barrier of your teeth?'" But-a little grudgingly-Flyte busied himself at his station.
As Korolis turned back to his own control panel, he allowed himself a grim little smile. Let Chief Woburn clean up the mess overhead. His own destiny lay below-three hundred meters beneath their feet.
54
Crane took an involuntary step backward, bumping his shoulders hard against the metal flank of the Facility. He stared in disbelief.
The platform they stood on jutted out roughly thirty feet over the sea floor, into which the base of the Facility had been embedded. Below, a bizarre, almost lunar landscape spread out toward the dome: the exposed sea bed. It rose and fell crazily, in small, alien hills and valleys and ripples, partly submerged. It was a dark-chocolate color, and in the half-light of the dome it shone with an eerie luminescence. It appeared to be made up of a fine, muddy, foul-smelling silt.
But this was not what arrested his horrified gaze. It was the view above.
The dome that surrounded and protected the Facility rose in a gentle curve until it was almost lost from sight, far above. To one side of their little platform, a vertical line of heavy rungs had been bolted onto the Facility's outer skin. These rose, in a straight and unbroken line, up the sheer metal face. Near the top of the Facility, Crane could barely make out the narrow catwalk that led out to the receiving platform for the Tub-the catwalk he himself had crossed the week before. Between this catwalk and their own small ledge, Crane could see one of the massive, tube-shaped pressure spokes that ran like a hollow skewer between the dome and the Facility. This, too, he had seen before.
Except now it looked very different. At the spot where the spoke met the wall of the Facility, torrents of water were spitting and boiling outward and downward in huge, angry spumes. This was the source of the awful roar: a violent cataract of water, jetting from a rent in the pressure spoke with the murderous intensity of a machine gun. Even as he stared, the tear seemed to widen and the gush of seawater increase.
Although half dazed by the awful sight, Crane was immediately aware of several things. Whether structural failure or sabotage, this was the explosion he'd heard. And despite the business-as-usual atmosphere inside the Facility, things were far from all right; if damage control hadn't realized that by now, they would at any second.
With this single glimpse, all Crane's fears, hopes, and goals reversed themselves in an instant.
For a moment he turned instinctively toward the hatch, as if to duck back inside and warn the workers in the Drilling Complex of their peril. Then he remembered that the escape hatch was one-way: reentry at this level was impossible. Besides, the sea floor beneath them was now almost entirely covered in black water, and more was raining down all around them from the widening breach above; within minutes, their tiny platform and the exit hatch would surely be underwater…
He suddenly became aware of a sharp pain in his hand. He looked over to see that Hui Ping was squeezing it as she stared upward at the whirling kaleidoscope of water, her face and hair damp from spray.
He gently freed his hand. "Come on," he said. "We can't stay here."
"I can't do this," she murmured.
She had said much the same thing within the airlock. "We have no choice," Crane replied.
Her eyes moved to his for a moment. Then she lowered them. "I'm afraid of heights," she said.
Crane stared at her. Shit. Oh, shit.
He took a deep breath. Then-trying to ignore the furious storm of water overhead and the icy rain that fell around them-he put a hand on her shoulders and stared kindly into her eyes. "There's no choice now, Hui. You've got to."
"But-"
"It's the only way. I'll be right behind you. I promise."
She looked at him a moment longer, water streaming down her cheeks. Then she swallowed, gave a faint nod.
He turned her toward the gray metal wall of the Facility, placed her right hand on the lowest rung. "Just take it one step at a time."
For a moment she remained motionless, and Crane wondered if her fear had immobilized her. Then-slowly, tentatively-she placed her left hand on the next rung; tested her grip; pulled herself up, fitting her left foot onto the lowest rung.
"That's it," he said encouragingly over the roar of water. "That's it."
She pulled herself up another few rungs and he began climbing as well, staying as close to her as possible. The rungs were cold and treacherously slippery. The smell of salt water was thick in his nostrils.
They climbed very slowly, their silence broken only by Hui's faint gasps of effort. The roar grew louder, and Crane ventured another glance upward. Vast sheets of water were coruscating out from the breach now, curling and twisting away in downward spirals. A faint mist, born of the violently atomized water, was rising everywhere in ragged sheets; illuminated by the weak sodium lights, it looked ethereal and strange, treacherously beautiful.
Hui's foot slipped, her shoe skidding dangerously close to Crane's face. She let out a cry and pressed herself tightly against the rungs.
"I can't," she said. "I can't."
"Just take it easy," Crane said soothingly. "Nice and slow. Don't look down."
Hui nodded without turning her head. Taking a fresh grip on the rungs, she began climbing again, breathing hard.
They continued upward at the same, plodding pace. Crane estimated they'd climbed about forty feet so far. The torrents of water were growing stronger, spattering hard against his hands and face. The closer they got to the actual breach, he knew, the more violent it would get.
Another minute or two of climbing, then Hui stopped, gasping. "Need to rest."
"No problem. Make sure you've got a secure grip, then lean in against the rungs. You're doing great." Secretly, Crane was glad for a break, as welclass="underline" his chest was heaving, and his fingers ached from gripping the cold metal rungs.
He guessed they were now probably just outside the Barrier. The skin of the Facility stretched out from them in all directions, a vast, gray monolithic cliff face of metal. Crane looked down, between his feet. The rungs they had already climbed fell away, a straight line leading into the spray and mist below. He could just make out the small platform they had first emerged onto, barely more than a speck far beneath him. Still farther down, at the extreme limits of visibility, the sea floor was now entirely covered by restless, roiling ocean.