“That sucker just passed right by us, Captain! It’s lost capture!” “Brace yourself, gentlemen,” warned Walden, after issuing a brief sigh.
“That baby’s gonna smack into the wall of the trench, and all hell’s gonna break out down here!”
Rocketing downwards through the same depths that its adversary had just penetrated, the Pantera was in the midst of its own desperate dive. The vessel’s attack center was unusually hushed, its assembled crew members were content to lose their anxieties in the glowing instruments of their individual consoles.
With his own gaze locked on the broad-band sonar screen, Alexander Litvinov monitored the weapon that relentlessly followed in their wake. His sense of hopelessness was only intensified by the somber reports of the senior sonarman.
“The Mk48 continues its pursuit. Impact will take place any moment now.”
With nothing left to do but pray for a miracle, Litvinov found his thoughts going back in time. He was a cadet once more, nervously anticipating his first full day at the Academy. That had been the day that he took an oath to surrender his life if necessary for the defense of the motherland. It had all seemed so unreal at the time. But now he knew differently. Life was the most precious gift of all, and to waste it in this manner was the ultimate tragedy.
Doing his best to contain his fears, Litvinov looked away from the flashing monitor screen, to take one last fond look at the men who awaited death beside him.
They were a brave, admirable lot, and before he could voice his pride, a deafening, gut-wrenching explosion diverted his attention back to sonar. The deck began to shake wildly beneath him, and he blindly grabbed onto the senior sonarman’s arm to keep from falling over.
“What in heaven’s name is happening, Misha?” he managed.
“Have we been hit?”
The bearded technician ignored his pain-racked ears and valiantly struggled to monitor his headphones.
“I don’t believe so. Captain. That detonation took place in the waters directly before us.”
“I bet it was our very own torpedo!” observed Litvinov, with a new sense of hope.
“And we shall continue to penetrate its shock-wave to the very floor of the trench, and lose our relentless pursuer along the way!”
In the adjoining waters, the occupants of the Avalon also heard this booming explosion. Wildly tossed from side to side by the agitated wall of water that accompanied the blast, the DSRV found itself spiraling downwards, completely out of control.
“It’s no use,” reported Ned Barnes as he ineffectively addressed the joystick.
“We’ve lost all thruster power and ballast control. Right now, there’s nothing that I can do to keep us from being sucked into the floor of the trench.”
“What do those readings on the monitor screen indicate?” asked Thomas Moore, who was not the type who easily gave up hope.
“That data is coming from our external sensor pod,” revealed the pilot.
“It must be malfunctioning, because it’s showing an extreme amount of magnetic resonance outside.”
“Could this be a result of that blast?” continued Moore.
“No way,” replied Barnes firmly.
“The only time I ever saw a reading that high was when Avalon was being degaussed, to counter its magnetic signature.”
This matter-of-fact revelation caused Thomas Moore to gasp.
“Damn, they’re activating the device!”
“What device?” asked the confused pilot.
“It has to do with the reason that I was sent down here,” explained Moore, who shuddered to think what would happen to them if Aver/on were to share the Lewis and Clark’s fate.
“Jesus, will you just look at that magnetometer reading,” instructed Barnes with utter disbelief.
“It’s goin’ off the damn scale!”
Moore didn’t have to look up at the monitor screen to recognize the extreme peril that surrounded them.
He knew that the magnetic field would continue to intensify, until the DSRV and its unfortunate occupants were torn apart by a cosmic implosion that would vaporize the very substance that matter was based upon.
Well aware that only two men had ever survived such an encounter and lived to tell about it, Moore could think of only one way they could save themselves.
“Ned, can the Avalon be internally flooded?”
Barnes looked at his associate like he didn’t hear him properly.
“What the hell are you asking’ that for?”
Moore didn’t flinch.
“You’re just going to have to trust me, Ned. Can this vessel be filled with water with us still safely in it, or not?”
The steely-eyed pilot seemed momentarily flustered.
“Jesus, Thomas. Sure, I can pull the plug on the Avalon.
But the only way we can keep breathin’ is through the EBA’s.”
“Then you’d better get on with it, Ned. Or I can guarantee you that you’ll never live to see those Cowboys of yours play in another Super Bowl.”
“The explosion has temporarily masked our hydrophones,” reported the Academician Petrovsky’s sensor operator.
“Then use your low-frequency filters and unmask them,” ordered Valerian from the adjoining firecontrol console.
Seated beside the flag officer. Dr. Andrei Petrov looked up from his computer keyboard.
“Perhaps that blast indicates that the 688 has been destroyed. Then this test is all for naught. And there’s always the chance that it could affect our own submarine that’s prowling these waters.”
Unable to respond to this remark. Valerian vented his frustration on the sensor operator.
“Well, Comrade.
Is it out there?”
The technician nervously addressed his console.
With his hands shaking so badly that he had trouble hitting the proper keys of the input panel, he turned up the volume gain and readjusted the graphic equalizer.
“There appears to be some kind of man-made signature down there,” he tentatively observed.
“But I still can’t be certain if it’s emanating from the 688.” “Let me listen,” said Valerian disgustedly.
With a sweeping motion, he yanked the headphones away from the startled technician, and cupped them to his ears. Barely thirty seconds passed before he came to a conclusion based more on hope than on firm evidence.
“It’s the 688 all right. For the glory of the motherland, reactivate the power grid to one-hundred-percent capacity, Andrei Sergeyevich!”
The physicist obediently addressed his keyboard, and as the reactor pile went critical, he visualized the series of events taking place on the sea floor below. Energized by the power of the interacting atoms that he had just released, the series of magnetic generators placed alongside the walls of the trench would begin throwing out intense resonating pulses of electromagnetic energy. Any solid object within range would be captured by this field, its own atoms pulled apart by the gravitational forces that ruled the universe.
“It’s started! The crystal capstone is activating!” exclaimed Dr. Elizabeth, who followed this news with a detailed description of the battle between good and evil that had taken place in the water directly beneath them.
Al remained skeptical of this entire story, yet he asked, “And just who won this battle, Doc?”