As the submarine closed in, the interior lighting made the domes stand out prominently against the darkness of the sea.
Zendl dove beneath the western dome and slowed to approach the mating collar. The base of the dome was sixty feet above the seabed, allowing ample room for the submersible to wend its way to the interlock on the floor of the dome. The captain could look directly up through a port in the sail, line up a red painted cross, and blow ballast to rise to meet the collar.
A solid clunk reverberating through the hull told Brande the connection had been made. He waited while technicians above checked the seals, and then equalized pressures. A hiss and a swirling movement of air inside the submarine indicated that the hatches had been opened, and he rose from his seat.
Dokey followed him forward to the ladder, and as Brande stepped up on the first rung, he had a thought.
“Okey.”
“Yo.”
“Here’s a project for you. We want a system, probably in Voyager Five, for embarking wheelchairs. We don’t want to exclude anyone.”
“Good idea, Chief. I’ll talk to Ingrid about it.”
Ingrid Roskens was the chief structural engineer for MVU.
Brande climbed the ladder and emerged into the wide central corridor of the dome’s first level. Engineering and life support systems were hidden behind bulkheads. Two escalators, not yet operating, would move people to the upper level where variants on traditional amusement park rides were in the final stages of construction by the subcontractor. There would be “Davy Jones Locker,” “Shark Spree,” and “Orca’s Revenge,” among the attractions that Brande didn’t intend to visit.
Along this corridor, souvenir booths and fast food enterprises were getting their final touches. “T Shirts by Dokey,” was located in a ten by ten stall, a business commissioned by Okey Dokey, but operated by someone else. He liked to use ideas, ink, and paint, not credit card machines.
“You want to stop by Jack’s Galley?” Dokey asked.
“It’s not open yet.”
“Damn. And here I am, hungry again.”
“My grandma Bridgette always told me to eat a big breakfast,” Brande said.
“Yeah, but your grandma probably knew how to make a big breakfast. You’ve never seen me with a mixer and pancake batter.”
“And let’s keep it that way,” Brande told him.
Avery Hampstead was a scion of the Hampsteads of Philadelphia, but outside the pale of Hampstead appearance. His father’s handsome good looks had been wasted on others in the family, like his sister Adrienne.
Hampstead was identifiable from a block away by his protruding and over lobed ears which, if he were not a proper undersecretary of Commerce, he would have disguised with a 1960’s Ringo Starr styling of his dark hair. He had horsey, square teeth that were often revealed in a smile on his elongated face.
While he didn’t fit the Hampstead image, he did mesh with the family’s tradition of public service, joining two brothers and a sister in the nation’s bureaucracy. His youngest sister detested the foppish, intriguish ways of the capitol, and she had found her calling in promotion, from wrestling matches to fund raising. Like the rest of his siblings, Avery Hampstead earned his living. There was steel and railroad money in the family, but his father had other, unknown designs for it. Beyond education and a single automobile for each of his offspring, the elder Hampstead had provided only the philosophy that work was good for the soul and the psyche.
Fortunately, Hampstead enjoyed his work. He was the Department of Commerce’s liaison with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, overseeing the administration’s contracts and projects in the marine sector. He worked frequently with other agencies conducting research and surveys in the ocean depths for, while NOAA had twenty one specialized vessels in its inventory, Transportation, Interior, and the National Science Foundations could account for another three. The Navy dedicated eight ships to sub surface missions, and the academic institutions controlled another sixty vessels. Then there were the private firms which obtained federal subsidies for exploration.
It was a challenging position, and it kept him from aspiring to higher rank. Hampstead was quite happy where he was.
He liked his office, also, which to the disgust of Angie, his secretary, was decorated with framed posters of some of the wrestling matches Adrienne had promoted. They were garish, and the captions were filled with hyperbole, and he personally found the sport revolting, but they gave him a sense of balance with the real world.
Sometimes, he needed that when working so closely with academics.
Culling through a foot high stack of contracts that had adorned his desk for a week, Hampstead was deep into goals and objectives and the dollars necessary to fulfill them when his intercom buzzed.
“Yes, Angie?”
“The Secretary’s on line one, boss.”
“Thank you.” He punched the button. “Yes sir?”
“Avery, I’d like to have you fly out to Golden.”
“Colorado?”
“That’s the one.”
“Right away?”
“I don’t think there’s any great rush,” the Secretary said, “but the seismic people have an anomaly they think you might be interested in.”
“I can’t imagine that. I don’t know the first, or the last, thing about earthquakes.”
“This one’s out in the Pacific somewhere. That’s your bailiwick.”
After the Secretary rang off, Hampstead looked at the pile of paper in front of him. He thought that his prospects for the afternoon were dismal.
He pressed the intercom bar. “Angie, would you call Alicia and tell her I won’t be home tonight.”
His favorite women were all A’s. Alicia, Adrienne, Angie. He couldn’t have designed it better himself.
“Me? Why me? You always saddle me with these messages.”
“Because if I call her, I can’t come home tomorrow night.”
“That’s possible, I suppose. Do I tell her where you’ll be?”
“I’ll be in Colorado.”
“You never take me to these exotic places.”
“Someday, I promise.”
“When are you going?” she asked.
“I don’t know. You haven’t made my reservations yet.”
Paul Deride was a big, blustery man with a red face, penetrating green eyes, and a spreading halo of thick, blond hair. He was fond of wearing sunglasses with lenses smoked so black that his eyes were indiscernible until he whipped them off and stabbed his quarry with those bright eyes.
His torso maintained the same diameter from chest to hips, a solid cylinder of muscle and sinew. At six foot five inches of height, with wide shoulders and heavy arms, Deride plowed through crowds on the street or in airport terminals like an Ultra Large Crude Carrier. His determination and momentum were difficult to arrest, and he went through life with the same singleness of purpose. Many years before, he had plowed his way through the University of Sydney in record time, then repeated the feat at Oxford in England. Both of his degrees had been obtained on scholarship for in those days he was stone broke, right off a sheep ranch in the outback of New South Wales.