Vicki adjusted the speed, slowing the vehicle.
"She'd be a good drone operator," Lamont said.
"She was one," Sexton said. "Vicki did a tour in the Air Force, most of it at Nellis in Nevada. Running Reapers over Afghanistan and Iraq."
"This is more fun," Vicki said. "Whoa, look at that."
She brought the ROV to a stop, holding position with delicate adjustments to the thrusters. The depth gauge read eight hundred and two meters.
Peering at them out of the blackness was a gigantic, stone face.
"Doesn't look like he's having a good day," Lamont said to Ronnie.
"You can't blame him. How would you like to spend five or ten thousand years underwater?"
"That head must be thirty feet tall," Selena said. "It looks like it's carved out of one solid piece of stone."
"Could be part of a statue," Lamont said.
Sexton put his hand on Vicki's chair. "Take a look to the left. I saw something as you moved in."
Vicki adjusted the joysticks and the ROV swiveled to the left. The lights revealed a second stone head rising out of the seabed, this one canted at an angle. The heads bordered a gap in a high wall.
"Wow," Ronnie said.
"If those are statues, everything will be under a hell of a lot of muck and silt," Nick said. "Not good for finding what we're looking for."
"Are you looking for something specific?" Vicki asked.
Selena said, "It might not have been a natural disaster that destroyed Atlantis. It's possible the people that lived here caused it. We're looking for something to tell us what happened."
It was partly true.
"Keep going left," Sexton said.
A narrow plume of white vapor rose from the seabed in front of the wall. It disappeared above the camera's field of view.
"What's that?" Selena asked.
Sexton said, "It's a sign of volcanic activity."
As the robot continued along the wall they saw two more of the vapor plumes.
"Several major tectonic plates come together in this part of the Atlantic. It's always active here."
"Do those plumes mean there's going to an eruption?"
"Not necessarily, but it's not a good sign."
The robot moved left, following the wall until it came to a sudden end where the seabed dropped sharply away. The robot had reached the abyss marking the boundary of the ruins.
Lamont said, "It looks like the earth opened up under them."
"That slope drops away for thousands of meters," Sexton said.
Nick said, "Go back to the heads. They look like they make the sides of a gate. Let's see what's on the other side of the wall."
The robot turned back through the water and reached the stone heads. Vicki guided it through the opening. The lights revealed the shapes of ruined buildings rising from the silt and mud. They spotted more of the vapor plumes.
"Everything's half buried," Ronnie said.
"Not everything," Vicki said. "There's something big ahead."
The rover came to a broad wall of dark stone crusted with sea growth, slanting up toward the surface far above.
"What is it?" Ronnie asked.
Under Vicki's control, the robot followed the slope up. As they neared the top it became evident the structure was a pyramid.
"I'll be damned," Sexton said.
The top of the pyramid was three hundred feet above the seafloor. A large, square opening at the peak gaped out at them. Long strands of seaweed drifted in lazy patterns about the opening.
"This is eerie," Selena said. "It's like finding Egypt underwater. These people had to be far advanced to build that."
"Can you get the robot through that opening?" Nick asked.
"Let me get closer."
Vicki brought the robot up to the opening. The lights revealed nothing from the outside.
"It will fit. We need to be careful, though. It would be easy to get trapped in there."
"Go ahead and take her in," Sexton said.
With a touch at the controls, the robot moved slowly into the interior of the pyramid. A school of odd looking fish swam past the camera and out through the opening. As the robot moved around they saw three more openings like the one they had come through, one on each of the four sides. It was a kind of room. There was a floor covered with silt. Nothing else could be seen but a wide, black shaft in the middle of the floor.
"That's weird," Lamont said.
"Follow that down, Vick."
"You're the boss."
The ROV tilted and headed down into darkness. Two hundred and fifty feet down, the robot emerged into a large chamber at the bottom of the pyramid. Countless centuries of sea muck covered the pyramid floor.
Vicki moved the robot around the room, trying not to kick up debris with the thrusters. Even so, a fine mist of silt began to cloud the water, limiting visibility. It was dreamlike, the walls shifting in and out of focus. Unlike the outside of the pyramid, the interior walls were free of growth.
"That's odd," Sexton said. "Why isn't anything growing inside?"
Selena touched Vicki's shoulder. "Can you hold the robot right there without stirring up more silt?"
"I'll try."
The robot paused as Vicki held it in position. Slowly the water cleared enough to see what Selena was looking at. The inner wall of the pyramid was covered with the writing she'd named Linear D.
"Is the camera recording this?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Selena said, "This is incredible."
"What does it say?" Nick asked.
"It's like the columns and the tablet. These people seem to have been obsessed with their achievements and the greatness of their empire. At first glance it's a history of their expansion into North Africa. At least I think it's about North Africa. Make sure we get everything on that wall."
Vicki worked the robot back and forth until everything had been caught on tape.
"What about the other walls?" Nick said.
"I'll look," Vicki said.
For the next forty-five minutes they recorded the other walls of the pyramid on video. Each wall was covered with writing to a height of about twenty feet, interrupted by blank squares set at regular intervals. The lower lines of writing were obscured by the buildup of silt and muck.
"What do you think those squares were?" Lamont asked.
"Probably paintings," Selena said. "Pictures to go along with the story. Anything like that would've been gone a long time ago."
"We need to bring the robot up," Vicki said. "The battery is running low."
"We have enough pictures for now," Selena said.
"Bring her home, Vicki," Sexton said.
The robot turned and started up toward the shaft leading to the peak of the pyramid. Sudden bright light blinded the camera. The image tilted crazily and went dark. Vicki worked the controls on the console with no result.
"I've lost her. The robot's not responding. Something hit the unit."
Nick's face was tight and angry.
"I'll bet I know what it was," he said.
"Yeah," Ronnie said. "The Russians."
CHAPTER 38
The heat of the day had not yet begun and the patio doors of Elizabeth's office were open to the early morning. She poured a cup of coffee and went outside, where Stephanie sat at a shaded patio table. For the moment it was a pleasant morning in the Virginia countryside, the kind of morning when Elizabeth could pretend there was nothing more important to worry about than what she would have for lunch.
"I wonder what they're going to find down there," Stephanie said as Elizabeth sat down.
"The whole thing is hard to believe, isn't it? People have been arguing about the existence of Atlantis ever since Plato wrote about it."
"I wouldn't be surprised if they kept on arguing. A lot of experts are going to look pretty foolish if it really is Atlantis. They aren't going to want to believe it, even in the face of hard evidence."