‘These vessels, along with everything else you see in this construction hub today, are top secret. These are the only two such vessels in the world. They cost over a hundred million dollars each to build and they employ technology that will not be released into the civilian world for at least twenty-five years. They come from the drawing boards of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.’
‘DARPA,’ Kate said, ‘of course.’
Derham nodded. ‘We have DARPA to thank for the cell phone, pilotless aircraft, the Internet, digital technology and microelectronics, to name just a few things we now take for granted. But thirty or forty years ago all those things would have been as far-fetched as these babies seem now.’ He waved a hand towards the subs. ‘DARPA had the technology to design these back in the 1980s — primitive versions, for sure, but they worked.’
‘Necessity being the mother of invention,’ Lou remarked.
‘Exactly. The military need to be not just one step ahead, but half a dozen steps. When something is improved or replaced by even better technologies, the older ones are released to the public.’
‘And these have been tested?’ Kate asked. ‘They can definitely reach the depth of the Titanic?’
‘Yes,’ Derham replied. ‘But there’s more. Come this way.’
He took them through a door. A small group of overalled technicians were coming towards them along a corridor and the three newcomers stepped aside to let them pass into the construction hub. Derham then headed off towards a door at the end of the corridor. It led into another large room, alive with activity. Desks and computer terminals lined the walls to left and right. Lab-coated figures and more technicians in differently coloured overalls worked at stations or stood in groups deep in discussion. A glass cube dominated the room. They could see two or three figures moving around inside. They were wearing white hats, latex gloves and shoe covers, and masks over their mouths and noses.
Lou and Kate followed Derham to a secured door that opened with a card from the captain’s pocket, and he led them into a small antechamber. Here they found a collection of plastic parcels. Derham plucked one up, ripped open the packaging and pulled out a gown, a hat and the other paraphernalia needed to go into the sterile room. A few moments later, the three of them were suited up and inside the glass cube.
A circular metal rail had been suspended in the middle of the ceiling of the cube. Dangling from it by wires were a dozen or more metallic-coloured suits. At first glance, they looked like the sort of spacesuits worn by NASA astronauts on the first orbital flights of the early 1960s. But a closer examination showed they were made from a strange silk-like fabric similar to the outer shell of the JVs in the construction hub.
‘These,’ Derham said, ‘are the LMC suits.’
‘LMC?’ Kate asked, eyeing the suits.
‘Liquid metal carbon. It’s a revolutionary new material the eggheads tell me is somewhere between a solid and a liquid. I think the nearest analogy is the element mercury; at least that’s how they describe it.’ He walked over to one of the technicians standing close by, said something and nodded towards the rack of suits. The technician took one down and clambered into it. Pulling on a helmet, he ran his fingers over a panel on his left sleeve, the suit emitted a single low note and expanded. He looked like a Michelin Man.
‘Whoa!’ Lou exclaimed and stepped back. The suit shimmered like a mirage. It had the appearance of moving water, held together in a human shape by some miraculous power.
The technician took a few steps towards Derham and stomped back the other way. Breaking into a brisk walk, he turned just before the far wall and paced back again. They could see the man grinning through the visor of the helmet.
‘It’s not possible to swim in them — they’re too bulky — but these suits,’ Derham explained, ‘allow the wearer to leave the JVs and walk on the ocean floor under pressures in excess of 480 atmospheres — the sort of pressure experienced at the depth of the Titanic wreck. They double up as extremely effective radiation suits.’
‘No way!’ Kate declared. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Derham replied, a faint smile flickering around his lips. It was clear he was enjoying showing off this stuff. ‘The LMC gives under pressure. Think of it as a blob of mercury with a human inside it. In theory, the LMC can take almost unlimited external pressure — it simply moulds itself to the form inside.’
‘My God!’ Lou exclaimed and walked over to the technician in the suit. ‘May I?’ he asked, turning to Derham.
‘Sure.’
Lou touched the shimmering material and Kate came over to try it too. ‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before,’ she said. ‘It’s like… like…’
‘Like it’s not actually there?’ Derham said.
‘Yes,’ Kate replied. ‘Yes, that’s it, exactly.’
‘So,’ Lou said, turning away from the technician. ‘This means you really can get down to the Titanic and inside it. I still can’t wrap my head around that idea. I envy you, man.’
‘Why?’ Derham said, turning first to Kate and then back to Lou. ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’
4
Smoking a fat Bolivar, one of her favourite cigars, Glena Buckingham, the CEO of Eurenergy, sat up from her chair as her Polish executive assistant, Hans Secker, came into the drawing room at her European home, the magnificent Louis XIV country estate of Château Chambourg.
Secker was a small man dressed immaculately in a blue suit and a lightly patterned purple tie. He had worked closely with Buckingham for almost four years and was her most trusted lieutenant.
Buckingham drew on her cigar. ‘I hope this is as urgent as you made it out to be on the phone, Hans. I have to be in Strasbourg in forty-five minutes.’ Her voice was cut-glass Home Counties.
‘I think it is, Glena,’ he replied and leaned down to open his briefcase. He was one of only a handful of people in the world who called her by her Christian name. When he straightened, he had a small folder of papers in his hand. He passed it to her.
The top page was a photograph showing segments of a shipwreck. Buckingham recognized it immediately. ‘Titanic,’ she said. ‘It’s been all over the news.’
‘Officially, Marine Phenomenon REZ375 has been caused by some natural radiation leak.’
She shuffled through the papers and stopped, read a paragraph, lifted another photograph and studied it as she walked towards a massive window trailing cigar smoke behind her. Sunlight splashed onto the marble floor.
‘The source is in the ship itself?’ she exclaimed. ‘And the radiation levels are rising.’
Secker was at her elbow, nodding slowly, a brief cynical smile playing across his lips. Buckingham turned and stared down at him.
‘How can that be?’
‘I don’t know… yet. But I intend to find out.’
Glena Buckingham studied him without expression as she worked through the possibilities in her mind. ‘It could still be a natural source.’
‘It could; but, if you look here.’ He gently turned a page and tapped the bottom paragraph. ‘A precise sensor sweep from one of our satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the site has established that the source is not from the ocean floor or beneath it, but close to twenty-five yards above it, which puts it within the bowels of the wreck.’
Buckingham stared again at the papers. ‘I can see why NATO have set up an exclusion zone… and why you have brought it to my attention, Hans. It could be a natural radiation source, but if it’s not then it has to be an alternative energy source, which definitely presents us with an unacceptable threat. You’ve done well.’