Ivana was in the process of enjoying a sip from this communal mug when Lenclud crawled back into the sphere. The Frenchman looked drawn and tired, and he gratefully accepted the coffee from Ivana and softly addressed her.
“They’d like to see you next, mon amie.”
With Lenclud’s help, she entered the narrow access way from which he had just emerged. Crawling forward on her hands and knees, she didn’t have to go far until her head and upper torso emerged into a cramped, dimly lit compartment, designed much like a space capsule.
She found herself positioned between two seated men, who were surrounded by glowing gauges and instruments.
Both appeared to be middle-aged, and dressed in identical blue coveralls.
“I understand that you’re Dr. Ivana Petrov,” said the heavyset man seated to her right.
“I’m Commander Thomas Moore. Welcome aboard the Avalon.”
“It’s good to be here,” replied Ivana, who noted that Moore didn’t wear a baseball cap like his square-jawed associate.
“Dr. Petrov,” continued Moore.
“Commandant Lenclud mentioned that your emergency might have been prompted by a discovery that you made on the bottom of the trench beneath us. Was the machinery that he told us about by any chance connected to a dual power cable that extended towards the surface?”
“It certainly was. Comrade. In fact, I saw this cable with my very own eyes.”
Moore seemed satisfied with her answer and probed still further.
“If we were to continue to the floor of the trench, could you show it to us?”
“I’d be happy to. Comrade. But under our current circumstances, isn’t such a visit dangerous?”
“Not any more than staying around here,” returned the quick-talking American, who instructed her to give his tight-lipped co-worker a description of the exact portion of the sea floor where her discovery had been made.
Thomas Moore pulled out a detailed bathymetric chart, and the two Americans shared a muffled conversation before Moore readdressed Ivana.
“Hang on. Doctor. We’re going down.”
She braced herself with a hand placed behind the back of each seat, and she watched as the pilot expertly manipulated his joystick. The DSRV’s rounded bow angled sharply downwards in response, and she sensed a certain urgency guiding the Americans onwards.
“Dr. Petrov, are you aware of the fact that your father is currently aboard the Academician Petrovskyf And that he could very well be responsible for that machinery that we’re going down to inspect?” revealed Moore on a spur-of-the-moment impulse.
Moore’s intense glance never left Ivana’s face as it lit up in pained confusion.
“But my father can’t be up there. He’s in forced exile!”
“He’s aboard that support ship all right. And from what I understand, that machinery could belong to a device that your father invented over five decades ago.”
Ivana’s expression turned to horror, and Moore prepared to set the hook.
“Dr. Petrov, do you know anything about your father’s work in the field of antimatter? Is it true that he actually invented a device that could make solid objects invisible, and then teleport them to different locations?”
“This can’t be happening,” she managed, her voice trembling with emotion.
“He promised the world that he’d never put his theories into practice. He knew better than anyone that if such a device were to fall into the wrong hands, the resulting danger to mankind would be too great to contemplate.”
Stunned by the reality of this shocking revelation, Thomas Moore knew that Admiral Proctor’s suspicions had been correct. Now he had to destroy this device, before it was responsible for more tragedy.
“Torpedo has just broken the three-thousand-yard threshold, sir,” reported a very worried Tim Lacey.
“It’s com in right down with us.”
Walden was standing almost directly behind the helm, tightly gripping a ceiling-mounted handhold when he received this bad news. Still in the midst of a spiraling dive, the Rickover’s bow was steeply angled downwards, making the mere act of standing almost impossible.
“Let’s try a couple of snap turns. Chief,” suggested Walden.
“And make ‘em crisp.”
“You got it. Captain,” returned the COB, who passed on additional instructions to the helmsmen.
The deck rolled over hard on its left side, while continuing the descent. Then like a jet fighter in a dogfight, the Rickover abruptly changed course, causing the deck to cant over in the opposite direction.
“What’s our sounding?” called out Walden forcefully.
“That last turn put us almost directly on top of the trench, Captain,” informed the navigator.
“We’ve got a good thousand feet of water between us and the bottom.”
Since they had already descended well over seven hundred feet, the sea floor was just at the outer limit of their crush depth. Not wishing to push their luck too far, Walden conveyed his strategy to all within voice range.
“I want to take us all the way down to fourteen hundred feet before pulling us up. I know we’re going to be close to the walls of that trench, but that’s where I want to lead that damn torpedo!”
A tense, somber atmosphere prevailed inside the Pantera’s attack center, where Alexander Litvinov and his secondin-command anxiously stood behind the senior sonarman. Also in the midst of a desperate crash dive, the Pantera had just broken through the thermocline, at a depth of four hundred and twenty feet.
“Why not try another series of roll turns. Captain?” offered Yuri Berezino in a bare whisper.
“Noise alone won’t lose this pesky Mk48, Yuri,” remarked Litvinov.
“But if we can combine it with speed and depth, then we stand a real chance of escaping this threat.”
“Torpedo continues to close,” said the bearded sonarman in a dull monotone.
“Isn’t there any way of losing it?”
“Easy, Misha,” cautioned Litvinov, who reached out to massage the back of the technician’s neck.
“We have plenty of ocean beneath us to play with, and many things can happen to that torpedo along the way.”
“I curse that damn zampolit for ever getting us in this fix!” swore the sonarman.
Litvinov calmly replied while increasing the pressure of his massage.
“Come now. Comrade. Quit getting your blood pressure worked up for such an insignificant matter. The Pantera shall see us to safety, and then we’ll let a firing squad take care of our dear political officer.”
“What do you mean he refused to activate the power grid?” screamed Igor Valerian in a near rage.
“He must do as ordered!”
The Academician Petrovsky’s senior lieutenant rather sheepishly responded to this outburst. “So I told him. Admiral. But he just sat there, and said that it would be much too dangerous to recharge the system.”
“The good doctor will soon enough learn the meaning of danger. Comrade,” returned Valerian bitterly.
“For now he has provoked a whirlwind!”
Squaring his shoulders with this remark, the one eyed veteran stormed out of his cabin, with his secondin-command close on his heels. With a brisk, angry stride. Valerian raced down the long central passageway that took him past the engine room. Not stopping to return the greetings of the group of men huddled around the moon pool he hurriedly entered his security code into the keypad beside the sealed aft hatchway.
In his mad rush he entered the wrong sequence, and had to wait for the system to reset itself before he impatiently tried it again. This time he succeeded, and the door popped open with a loud click.
The laboratory where Dr. Petrov had been working was located beside the reactor compartment. Its door was closed, and Valerian burst into the room without even bothering to knock. He found the silver-haired physicist huddled over a samovar of tea, and the admiral wasted no time venting his wrath.