All the teams checked in negative, earning a disgruntled complaint from the team leader.
“As I said,” Tank’s voice came over his ear piece, “people have been diving this site for years. If any opening had ever been found, it would have shaken the scientific world. Even the most outlandish claims say that it is a solid monument, not an accessible temple.”
“There’s a way in,” King replied irritably.
“Dosimeters detect no indication of tachyon radiation,” Nadia’s voice replied.
“That doesn’t mean the mask’s not here. In Cornwall it was contained inside Imhotep’s lead-lined coffin.”
“If that was the case here,” the Russian’s voice replied, “I should be able to pick up a large metallic object with a magnetometer. Hold on.”
Thirty foot below the surface, Nadia finned hard against the current, struggling to keep herself steady. As well as all her diving gear, she also had an array of scientific equipment, specially designed for underwater work, attached to her vest. She plucked a Fluxgate magnetometer from it and wrapped the strap around her wrist so she didn’t lose it. She flicked it on and tried to study the screen through the magnifying effect of the gloomy water. “That’s incredible,” she breathed, forgetting herself for a moment. The current pulled her sharply and she forced herself to kick against it.
“What?” King’s voice was urgent, excited.
“I’m detecting a very strong magnetic signature.”
“The mask?”
“Unlikely,” she replied. “The magnetic reading is off the scale.”
“What are you getting at?” Gibbs snapped. Already down for over twenty minutes, with no indication of an entrance, constantly battling the powerful current was starting to get to every member of the team.
“I am getting at the fact that whatever metallic object I am detecting is very large,” she replied curtly. “In fact it is…” her voice trailed off as a conclusion dawned on her. She packed away her magnetometer and spoke through her radio to her buddy. “Garcia, I need the metal detector.”
“Stand by,” Sid heard Nadia’s voice instruct all the teams.
Close to the surface the current wasn’t as strong, however she could feel the pull of the waves fifteen feet above as she hovered alongside Kristina Lake directly above the flat top of the sunken structure.
She and Lake had been the only team to think they had found an opening. On the surface of the monument was what she could only describe as three ‘wells’ descending six feet into the rock. Two of the wells were circular but the third, oddly, was vaguely hexagonal, its six sides almost discernable. King had told the team about the two circular depressions but had missed the hexagonal, and therefore less natural, shape in his briefing. Nevertheless, after a brief surge of excitement, it had proven to be, quite literally, a dead end.
From her vantage point, she looked down on the monument in its entirety and could make out the tiny figures of the other teams. She knew King was down near the base and, logically, the most plausible place to find an opening, but was unable to make out which figure he was. Just the thought of him sent her emotions into a spin so she forced herself to blot him out of her consciousness for the moment. There would be time to attend to the demands of a broken heart later.
“Sid,” Lake’s voice suddenly cut into her thoughts. She heard an echo of concern there. “Drop down now.”
Sid felt a surge of panic and exhaled the air from her lungs. It took a moment but she finally felt herself dive, assisted by a suddenly outthrust hand from Lake who pulled her to the roof of the structure.
Instantly, the terrifyingly recognisable silhouette of a hammerhead shark sped past, only three feet away. It slowed for an instant and turned her way and Sid felt the wave of panic erupt into terror as one of the creature’s eyes bored into her. Then, with a ripple of muscle, it pushed off and vanished into the gloom.
Sid sucked in the air through her rebreather. She heard King’s voice suddenly erupt in her ear but couldn’t discern the words. Her own heartbeat hammered and echoed through the water. She began to thrash but Lake grasped her arms and held her firmly.
“Sid, it’s okay. It’s okay, don’t panic,” she told her. “Take deep breaths. Calm down.” Slowly, Sid regained her self-control. She forced herself to breathe in and out slowly but she didn’t let go of Lake’s hand. Through their face-plates she could see the other woman’s concern.
“He was just coming to investigate,” Tank’s voice came from somewhere below, obviously having seen the excitement. “Sometimes they get a bit close for comfort, but they’re just being curious.”
“You okay?” King asked, the worry in his voice evident.
“I’m fine,” she forced herself to reply. “Just don’t expect me to watch Jaws with you anytime soon.” Her mental slip stirred up unwanted thoughts again. They wouldn’t be watching any movies together again, curled up on the sofa in front of a fire…
“Steven Spielberg’s got a lot to answer for,” Tank half-joked.
“My god,” Nadia’s voice suddenly interrupted, snapping everyone’s attention back to the matter at hand. “This whole structure is a meteorite.”
“What?” Raine’s voice sounded incredulous through Nadia’s underwater radio.
“This entire structure has been fashioned out of a meteorite,” she elaborated. “More specifically, I believe it could be the same meteorite as the fake mask which we found.”
“I thought you said it was constructed out of the sandstone and mudstone of the bedrock, King?” Gibbs reminded them all over the open communication channel.
“That’s right,” King said defensively. “Geologists have taken samples—”
“I presume the only samples that have been studied are of the surface levels?” Nadia asked. “No one has drilled into the ‘structure’ to take samples from its core? Just like no one, I presume, has bothered to run a magnetometer or a metal detector over it?”
She knew there was a scathing tone in her voice but she did not care. From what King had told them about the structure, most of the scientific community had, at best, given the site only a cursory glance, leaving the ‘science’ to pseudo-scientists, self-taught amateurs with little funding but a lot of imagination.
“I guess not,” King replied sheepishly, as though the oversight was his responsibility.
“There is a large metallic core at the centre of this structure,” she explained. She had studied her findings as thoroughly as possible given the difficult conditions, and had fine-tuned the metal detector’s discriminator and pulse inductor to the phase response of the meteoric metal from which the fake Moon Mask had been fashioned. “We are looking at the same metal… possibly the same meteorite.”
“What about tachyons?” Gibbs asked urgently and Nadia wasn’t sure whether his question was born out of concern for their welfare or excitement of finding a ‘mother lode’ of tachyon-emitting metal which would dwarf the Moon Mask’s discovery.
“I hate to disappoint you, but no, I detect no tachyon emissions from the structure itself. Hence why I claim it to be of the same, or similar meteorite as the fake mask, not the ‘real’ one.”