The roof of this structure sat near a depth of two hundred and fifty feet, the bottom checked in below three hundred and twenty. The dome loomed above it and off to one side.
Kurt was grudgingly impressed. Building a structure like this at a depth of three hundred feet was quite a task to begin with. To do it in a toxic lake, in secret… He was more than grudgingly impressed.
He took his hand off the throttle, and the amphibious rig coasted to a halt near the center of the lake. Kurt got out of his seat and climbed onto the flatbed behind him.
He was directly over the main structure. Now all he had to do was get down there.
Joe spent a few minutes tending to Bradshaw and trying to patch him up with the meager offerings of the first-aid kit. Despite the effort, Bradshaw looked bad, ghostly pale, with skin that was cool to the touch. He needed real attention and he needed it soon.
Joe left Bradshaw and began to rummage around in the SUV beside them. He grabbed a handheld radio and turned it on. The LED, which should have lit up nice and green, remained dark. Joe fiddled with the power switch a few times and then keyed the mike. He got nothing: no squelch, no static. The battery was dead.
Looking for a charger, Joe noticed that the keys were still in the SUV’s ignition. He also noticed that both doors were open and yet the dome lights were dark, and the dash wasn’t emitting any kind of annoying ping.
He reached over and turned the key. He twisted it to OFF and then back to the ACC position. Nothing changed. No warning lights, no voice telling him the door was ajar, nothing.
“That’s odd.”
He climbed out of the SUV and grabbed his rifle. Moving quickly from one vehicle to the next, he checked them all. Each one of them was as dead as the last.
Six new vehicles. Not one with an ounce of juice. A rack of radios and two cell phones in the same condition. A flashlight in the glove box of the last vehicle had just enough power to make the old-style filament glow for a second or two, but then it too went dark.
Joe felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He glanced at the sky. This was exactly the kind of thing that happened right before the mother ship arrived.
He moved back to Bradshaw. “Why are all the batteries dead?”
“Dead?”
“The cars, the radios, they’re all dead,” Joe explained. “You need to be medevaced, but I can’t find a way to call for help.”
Bradshaw’s eyes went glassy. He had no answers. Joe wasn’t even sure he was hearing the questions anymore.
Joe stood up and glanced out over the water. Bradshaw needed to be moved ASAP, but the only vehicle with any power was the amphibious rig now sitting a half mile from him in the center of the poisoned lake.
TEN
Kurt donned a wet suit and approached the small one-man submarines that rested near the back end of the flatbed. The bright yellow machines were affectionately called speeders. They resembled Jet Skis, with a set of small dive planes forward and a clear canopy that the driver pulled down and locked into place once he or she was seated on the vehicle.
The machines were rated to five hundred feet, powered by a lithium-ion battery pack similar to those in modern electric cars and equipped with a pair of grappling claws, headlights, and an internal air/water bladder.
The canopy and much of the body were made from hyperstrong polymers designed to resist the pressure at great depths. Though they’d yet to be tested on a deep dive, Kurt had great faith in them. Joe was the main designer, and Kurt had found all of Joe’s designs to be even stronger than the specs indicated.
After a quick series of checks, he was ready to go. He released the strap holding the speeder in place and then set the flatbed gradient lever at thirty degrees. The hydraulics kicked into gear, and the flatbed began to tilt like the back of a dump truck.
Kurt climbed onto one of the speeders and pressed the switch that closed the hatch. The canopy quickly locked into place, covering Kurt snugly. Straddling the seat with his arms stretched forward and his legs out behind him, Kurt felt like he was on a nautical motorcycle.
The tail end of the flatbed reached the lake, and water came up around the sides of the speeder. Through the canopy Kurt noticed the hue of the water. Pink at the very top but darker red as the light was absorbed.
He wondered for a second just how toxic the mess was. Then he twisted the throttle and drove off the ramp, wondering about the sanity of anyone who would dive into a soup like this.
At first, the speeder cruised a few feet beneath the surface. Then Kurt adjusted the dive lever, and the ballast tank filled with water. Pushing the handlebars forward caused the dive planes to tilt downward, and the speeder began to descend.
Kurt continued forward for twenty seconds or so and then leaned to the left, bringing the unit around in a wide turn. By the time he was eighty feet deep, the water around him looked like red wine. Fifty feet deeper, it was the color of dried blood. Whatever compounds were suspended in it, they filtered out the light very efficiently. But as he dropped lower, Kurt was able to make out the top of the dome.
It was smooth but mottled in appearance, as if some kind of mineral had precipitated out on the curved surface. Perhaps it was calcium or copper or manganese, but, whatever it was, it reflected more light than the surrounding water.
As he finished his pass across the dome, Kurt feathered the throttle and ejected the last of the ballast air. The speeder began to sink again.
Kurt stared into the blackness. The roof of the laboratory structure rested about seventy-five feet below the top of the dome. He hoped its surface would be covered with the same minerals and that he’d spot the roof before he banged into it and let everyone inside know he was there.
“Two hundred and ten,” he said, reading the depth gauge out loud. “Two hundred and twenty.”
He scanned the void around him. Nothing but darkness. It was like he was sinking into a black hole.
“Two hundred and thirty,” he said quietly.
If the gauge was reading correctly, he would hit the lab’s roof in twenty feet or so. Still, he saw nothing.
He pumped a smidgen of air into the bladder like a motorist trying to top off his tires to the perfect pressure. One quick hiss, then another one. The descent slowed.
The depth gauge soon read two hundred and forty feet, and Kurt still saw nothing outside. At two hundred and forty-five, he put a slight bit of pressure on the air switch again. And by two and forty-seven, his nerves gave out.
He jabbed the switch until the speeder reached neutral buoyancy. The descent stopped, and the speeder hung motionless in the dark.
Kurt slid his thumb upward and tapped the light switch. He hit it just hard enough to send some juice through the circuit, but not enough to fully switch it on. The lights flashed dimly and went dark again. In a brief flash, they revealed a world of neon red and the corroded top of the laboratory a mere three feet below him.
“At least I’m in the right place,” he muttered.
If this ungainly construction was indeed a laboratory, there had to be a way in. Toxic water or regular, the safest, most efficient way to build an airlock in a marine environment was to put it underneath the structure.
Kurt risked another flash, got a bearing on the edge of the structure, and went over the side. Dropping downward once again, he began to make out a soft glow around the bottom of the lab: illumination spilling from the airlock.
“Nice of someone to leave a light on for me,” Kurt muttered.
At just that moment, the speeder tilted violently to the right, and a strange metallic twang reverberated through the water.