The sphere was solid with just two holes in it; one a section that screwed out to allow ingress, egress, and the second, smaller one that accessed control and command cables. To see outside, the crew used various cameras and radar. Powerful spotlights were bolted all around the craft, allowing the crew to illuminate the area immediately around it. It was forty feet long, and the wingspan was fifteen feet. The submersible had been hastily rigged with a pod, the purpose of which had not been explained to the crew.
Inside Deepflight, Captain Gann insured that all checklists for the dive were completed, and then turned to his partner, Lieutenant Murphy. “Ready, Murphy?”
“Ready.”
“Release umbilicals.”
“Released.”
“We’re going down.”
“The submersible is at ten thousand meters’ depth,” Ahana reported. “The pod is working. “ She looked up from her computer monitor. “Sir, do those men in Deepflight know what exactly their mission is?”
“Reconnaissance,” Nagoya replied shortly.
“Their real mission,” Ahana amended.
“That is Foreman’s responsibility,” Nagoya said.
“Sir. .” she began, but stopped.
“It is dangerous,” Nagoya agreed. “But the pod is designed to be jettisoned. We don’t know what the reaction from the Shadow will be or if there will even be a reaction.”
“And if there isn’t?”
“Then we send the submersible into the gate itself. We’re hoping by just approaching the graveyard and using the pod to send out the frequency we’ve determined that we will draw some sort of reaction, but the crew will have a chance to escape. The odds are much lower if they have to go into the gate.”
“ And Russia?”
“Kolkov says he is working on a plan to insert their pod. That is phase two.”
Deepflight III passed through nine thousand meters. It was descending into the center of the Marianas Trench, radar making sure they were clear of walls on either side. Gann and Murphy were focused on navigation, insuring that everything was functioning correctly. With the outside pressure at seven tons per square inch, the slightest malfunction could be fatal.
“Depth to bottom?” Gann asked.
“Two thousand, one hundred thirty-three meters,” Murphy replied.
“Right on target.”
“There,” Ahana was pointing at her computer screen. The solid black triangle marking the Devil’s Triangle gate was changing shape, the southernmost side stretching as if giving birth.
“Everyone ready!” Nagoya yelled. His assistants bustled; making sure their gear was tracking correctly. They all watch as a circle separated from the triangle and began moving southward picking up speed.
“Just like the sphere from the Bermuda gate.” Ahana finally said.
In the War Room, Dane looked up as Foreman activated a screen that relayed what was being picked up by Nagoya’s people in Japan.
“We have activity from the Devil’s Sea gate,” The CIA man announced.
They could all clearly see the sphere of muonic activity moving southward.
“What’s it going for?” Dane asked.
“Our probe,” Foreman said.
The secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs rushed out to the main operations center, leaving Foreman alone in the conference room.
“Do they know they’re bait?” Dane asked.
“They know enough to do the mission,” Foreman said.
On Deepflight, Gann and Murphy were completely unaware of the sphere coming toward them. The bottom of the Challenger Deep was thirteen hundred meters below when Murphy noticed an anomaly on the radar screen.
“Captain, check the side-looking radar.”
Gann looked at the screen and saw what had grabbed his partner’s attention. The bounce back from the north wall had suddenly become totally smooth. Gann immediately stopped their descent.
“Distance to bottom?” Gann asked.
“Twelve hundred meters.”
“Let’s take a look.” Gann goosed the propellers, guiding them toward the north face. “External lights on.”
Murphy flipped on the switch activating the powerful searchlights mounted on the top and bottom of the submersible.
“Cameras on,” Gann ordered.
The video monitors flickered, and then came alive, showing the glow of lights but nothing else.
“Range to the north wall?” Gann asked.
“Four hundred meters.”
“What do you think it is?”
‘Either the most perfect underwater geological formation that ever occurred or somebody built something down here,” Murphy answered.
“At eleven thousand meters?”
‘I’m just telling you what the data indicates.”
“Range to wall?”
‘Three hundred meters.”
The largest man-made underwater craft is the Russian Typhoon class submarine, which is one hundred seventy-one meters long, just shy of two football fields in length, and which displaces twenty-six thousand, five hundred tons. The back sphere that was heading toward the Challenger Deep dwarfed even a Typhoon, being almost seven hundred meters in diameter. It was not only larger than any man-made moving object; it was larger than most man-made stationary objects, including the Great Pyramid.
It also moved faster than any man-made submersible, punching through the ocean at eighty knots.
“Fifty meters,” Murphy warned, and Gann slowed Deepflight to a crawl.
As Murphy watched the radar screens, Gann shifted his attention to the video monitors.
“Forty. Thirty. Twenty.”
Gann bought them to a dead halt. “Look,” he said to Murphy.
Directly in front of them the rock wall on the North Side of the Deep gave way to a smooth, gray surface. The edge of the gray curved slightly downward.
“Do a down scan along the wall,” Gann ordered.
Murphy did so and whistled. “We’ve got a perfectly round, flat wall in front of us, over a half mile in diameter.”
“So what is it?”
In the War Room, Dane saw the image relayed from Deepflight’s camera and could have answered Captain Gann’s question. What was on screen was exactly like the doorway they had discovered in the Milwaukee Deep off the coast of Puerto Rico, which led to a large chamber where all the craft lost in the Bermuda Triangle had been stored. His gaze shifted from the image to the display showing the large sphere that had left the Devil’s Sea gate, closing on the Challenger Deep. He got up and walked up to Foreman.
“Are you going to warn them?” Dane asked him.
“What good would it do?” Foreman replied.
“You sent them there deliberately.”
“It’s war. Even you must accept that now.”
‘It’s easy to send other men to their deaths, isn’t it?”
Foreman turned. “No, it isn’t easy, and I’m getting sick of you trying to take the moral high ground. I’m worried about the survival of our species, and you give me grief over every single individual involved.”
“Our species is made up of individuals,” Dane said. “Why didn’t you let the Deepflight crew know what their mission was?”
“Would it have made a difference?”
“What exactly is their mission? Did you send them to find the door or draw something out of the gate?”
“Both.”
Dane picked up something from Foreman’s guarded mind. “What were they transmitting?”