Текст книги "Medusa"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

CHAPTER 4

BERMUDA, THREE MONTHS LATER

THE TAXI DRIVER WARILY EYEBALLED THE MAN STANDING on the curb outside the arrival gate at Bermuda’s L. F. Wade Airport. His potential fare had an unruly ginger beard, and hair pulled back in a short pigtail that was tied with a rubber band. In addition, he wore faded jeans, high-top red sneakers, Elton John sunglasses with white plastic frames, and a rumpled tan linen suit jacket over a T-shirt with a picture on it of Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead.

“Please take me to the ship harbor,” Max Kane said. He opened the door, threw his duffel bag in the backseat, and then slid in beside it. The driver shrugged and put the taxi in gear. A fare was a fare.

Kane sat back and closed his eyes. His brain was about to explode. His impatience had ballooned with each mile traveled over the past twenty-four hours. The long flight from the Pacific Ocean to North America and the two-hour trip from New York were nothing compared to the dragging minutes it took for the taxi to get to the waterfront.

Kane directed the driver to stop near the gangway of a turquoise-hulled ship. The distinctive color and the letters NUMA emblazoned on the hull below the ship’s name, WILLIAM BEEBE, identified the vessel as belonging to the National Underwater and Marine Agency, the largest ocean-study organization in the world.

Kane exited the cab and shoved a wad of bills at the driver, then slung the duffel over his shoulder and briskly climbed up the gangway. A pleasant-faced young woman wearing the uniform of a ship’s officer greeted Kane with a warm smile.

“Good afternoon,” the woman said. “My name is Marla Hayes. I’m the third mate. May I have your name?”

“Max Kane.”

She consulted a clipboard and put a check mark next to Kane’s name.

“Welcome to the Beebe,Dr. Kane. I’ll show you to your cabin and give you a tour of the ship.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ve come a long way and I’m anxious to see the B3.”

“No problem,” Marla said, leading Kane toward the ship’s fantail.

The two-hundred-fifty-foot-long search-and-survey ship was the marine equivalent of a professional weight lifter. With its stern-ramp A-frame crane and wide deck, the fantail was the business end of the ship. It bristled with the winches and derricks that scientists used to launch underwater vehicles and devices that probed the depths. Kane’s eyes went to a large tangerine-colored globe resting in a steel cradle beneath a tall crane. Three portholes that resembled short-range cannons protruded from the sphere’s surface.

“There it is,” Marla said. “I’ll come by in a little while to see how you’re doing.”

Kane thanked the young woman and cautiously approached the globe, treading softly as if he expected the strange object to bolt on the four legs attached to the bottom. He walked around to the other side of the sphere and saw a man in a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts standing in front of a circular opening slightly more than a foot in diameter. The man’s head was inside the globe, his right shoulder angled through the hatch as if he were being devoured by a bug-eyed monster. The string of salty curses that echoed from inside the globe sounded as if they were coming from a pirate cave.

Kane set his duffel bag down, and asked, “Tight quarters?”

The man bumped his head as he backed out of the opening, prompting a few more colorful oaths, and brushed away a shock of steel-gray hair from eyes that were the blue of coral under flat water. He had a broad-shouldered frame that was an inch over six feet, and he must have weighed two hundred pounds. He grinned, showing perfect white teeth against features that had been bronzed by years at sea.

“ Verytight .I’d need a shoehorn and a can of grease to get me into this antiquated refugee from a marine-salvage dump,” he said.

A dark-complexioned face poked from the hatch, and its owner said, “Give it up, Kurt. They’d have to baste you with WD-40 and pound you in with a sledgehammer.”

The broad-shouldered man made a face at the unpleasant image. He extended his hand in introduction. “I’m Kurt Austin, project director for the Bathysphere 3 expedition.”

The man in the sphere wriggled out feetfirst and introduced himself. “Joe Zavala,” he said. “I’m the engineer for the B3 project.”

“Nice to meet you both. My name is Max Kane.” He jerked his thumb at the sphere. “And I’m scheduled to dive a half mile into the ocean in this antiquated refugee from a marine-salvage dump.”

Austin exchanged a bemused glance with Zavala. “Pleased to meet you, Dr. Kane. Sorry to cast doubt on your sanity.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time someone accused me of being one beer short of a six-pack. You get used to it when you’re doing pure research.” Kane removed his sunglasses, revealing eyes of Kris Kringle blue. “And please call me Doc.”

Austin gestured toward the orange globe. “Don’t pay any attention to my earlier comment, Doc. I’m nursing a serious case of sour grapes. I’d make the dive in a heartbeat if the bathysphere came in a bigger size. Joe is the best deep-sea guy in the business. He’s made the diving bell as safe as any NUMA submersible.”

Zavala cast an appraising eye on the sphere. “I used technology that wasn’t available back in the thirties, but otherwise it’s the original Beebe-Barton design that set the record by diving 3,028 feet in 1934. The bathysphere was beautiful in its simplicity.”

“The sphere design seems so obvious to us now,” Kane said. “At first, William Beebe thought that a cylinder-shaped bell might work. He was chatting with his friend Teddy Roosevelt years before the actual dive and sketched his idea out on a napkin. Roosevelt disagreed and drew a circle instead, representing his preference for a globe-shaped bell. Later, when Beebe saw the Otis Barton design based on a sphere, he realized that was the only way to deal with the pressure at great depth.”

Zavala had heard the story before. “Beebe saw that the cylinder’s flat ends would cave in,” he picked up the story, “but a sphere would distribute the pressure more evenly around its entire surface.” He squatted next to the globe and ran his hand over the thick skids that the legs rested upon. “I’ve added emergency flotation bags in the runners. There’s more than a little self-preservation involved, Doc. I’ll be making the dive with you.”

Kane rubbed his palms together like a hungry man savoring a juicy steak. “This is a dream come true,” he said. “I pulled every string I could to get on the dive list. William Beebe is responsible for my career in marine microbiology. When I was a kid, I read about the glowing, deep-ocean fish that he found. I wanted to share Beebe’s adventures.”

“My biggest adventure has been trying to stuff myself through that fourteen-inch door,” Austin said. “Try it on for size, Doc.”

Kane, who was about five foot eight, hung his jacket on the bathysphere’s frame, then poured himself headfirst into the sphere, doubled his body with the skill of a contortionist, and poked his head out the circular opening.

“It’s roomier in here than it appears from the outside.”

“The original bathysphere was four feet nine inches in diameter, and had walls one and a half inches thick made of fine-grade, open-hearth steel,” Zavala said. “The divers shared their space with oxygen tanks, filter trays, a searchlight, and telephone wires. We’ve cheated a little. The portholes are polymer instead of fused quartz. The tether is Kevlar rather than steel, and we’ve replaced the copper communications link with photo-optic fiber. We miniaturized the bulkier instruments. I would have preferred a titanium sphere, but the costs were higher.”

Kane easily exited the sphere and stared at it with near reverence. “You’ve done an amazing job, Joe. Beebe and Barton were aware they were risking their lives, but their boyish enthusiasm overcame their fears.”

“That enthusiasm must have rubbed off on you to come all this distance,” Austin said. “I understand you were in the Pacific Ocean.”

“Yeah. Contract work for Uncle Sam. Pretty routine stuff. We’re about to wrap it up, which is fortunate because there was no way I would have missed this opportunity.”

The third mate was making her way across the deck toward the bathysphere accompanied by two men and a woman carrying video cameras, lights, and sound equipment.

“That’s the NUMA film crew,” Austin said to Kane. “They’ll want to interview the intrepid divers on camera.”

A look of horror came over Max Kane’s face. “I must look like crap. Smelllike it too. Can they wait until I hop into the shower and trim the porcupine quills on my chin?”

“Joe will fill them in while you clean up. I’ll see you in the bridge after you’re done with the interview,” Austin said. “We’ll go over the plans for tomorrow.”

As he headed for the bridge, Austin reflected on how Beebe’s books had stirred his own imagination when he was a boy growing up in Seattle. He recalled one story in particular. Beebe described standing at the edge of an underwater precipice at the limit of his surface air supply, looking down with yearning into the deep water beyond his reach. The scene crystallized Austin’s own tendency to push to his limits.

Born and raised in Seattle, Austin had followed his boyhood dreams, studying systems management at the University of Washington. He also attended a prestigious deepwater diving school, specializing in salvage. He worked a few years on North Sea oil rigs and put in a stint with his father’s ocean-salvage company, but his spirit of adventure needed freer rein. He joined a clandestine underwater-surveillance unit of the CIA that he led until it was disbanded at the end of the Cold War. His father hoped he would return to ocean salvage, but Austin moved over to NUMA to head up a unique team that included Zavala and Paul and Gamay Trout. Admiral Sandecker had seen the need to create the Special Assignments Team to investigate out-of-the-ordinary events above and below the world’s oceans.

After completing the team’s last assignment, the search for a long-lost Phoenician statue known as the Navigator,Austin had heard that the National Geographic Society and the New York Zoological Society were sponsoring a docudrama on Beebe’s historic half-mile bathysphere dive of 1934. Actors would play Beebe and Barton, using a prop bathysphere, with much of the action simulated.

Austin persuaded the NUMA brass to let Zavala design a state-of-the-art bathysphere. The diving bell would be launched from the agency’s research vessel, William Beebe,in conjunction with the docudrama. Like all government agencies, NUMA had to fight for its share of the federal funding pie, and favorable publicity never hurt.

Dirk Pitt had taken over from Sandecker as NUMA’s director after Sandecker became the Vice President of the United States, and Pitt was equally interested in creating favorable public awareness of the agency’s work. The bathysphere’s pressure sphere would be recycled after the expedition as the heart of a new deep-sea submersible. The diving bell was nicknamed the B3 because it was the third pressure hull using the Beebe-Barton design.

Trailed by a cameraman and sound technician, Zavala and a freshly scrubbed Kane climbed to the bridge after being interviewed in front of the bathysphere. Austin introduced Kane to the captain, an experienced NUMA hand named Mike Gannon, who spread a chart out on a table and pointed to Nonsuch Island off the northeast tip of Bermuda.

“We’ll anchor as close as possible to Beebe’s original position,” the captain said. “We’ll be about eight miles from land with just over a half mile of water under the ship’s keel.”

“We decided on a shallower location than the original so we could film the sea bottom,” Austin said. “How’s the weather looking?”

“There’s a gale expected tonight, but it should blow out before morning,” Gannon said.

Austin turned to Kane. “We’ve been doing all the talking, Doc. What do you hope to get out of this expedition?”

Kane gave the question a moment’s thought.

“Miracles,” he said with a mysterious smile.

“How so?”

“When Beebe reported hauling phosphorescent fish in his trawl nets, his fellow scientists didn’t believe him. Beebe hoped the bathysphere would vindicate his research. He compared it to a paleontologist who could annihilate time and see his fossils alive. Like Beebe, my hope is to dramatize the miracles that lie beneath the surface of the ocean.”

“Biomedicine miracles?” Austin asked.

Kane’s dreamy expression vanished, and he seemed to catch himself.

“What do you mean, biomeds?” Kane’s voice had an unexpected edge to it. He glanced at the video camera.

“I Googled Bonefish Key. Your website mentioned a morphine substitute your lab developed from snail venom. I simply wondered if you had come across anything similar in the Pacific Ocean.”

Kane broke into a smile. “I was speaking as an ocean microbiologist . . . metaphorically.”

Austin nodded. “Let’s talk miracles and metaphors over dinner, Doc.”

Kane opened his mouth in a yawn.

“I’m about to hit the wall,” he said. “Sorry to be a bother, Captain, but I wonder if I could have a sandwich sent to my cabin. I’d better get some sleep so I can be fresh for tomorrow’s dive.”

Austin said he would see Kane in the morning. He watched Kane thoughtfully as he left the bridge, wondering at his edgy response to a routine question. Then he turned back to confer with the captain.

THE NEXT MORNING, the NUMA ship followed the course Beebe’s expedition had taken, heading out to sea through Castle Roads, passing between high, jagged cliffs and old forts, past Gurnet Rock and into the open sea.

The gale had petered out, leaving a long, heaving swell in its wake. Plowing through low mounding water, the ship traveled for another hour before dropping anchor.

The diving bell had been put through dozens of tank tests, but Zavala wanted an unmanned launch before the main dive. A crane lifted the sealed bathysphere over the water and allowed it to sink to the fifty-foot mark. After fifteen minutes, the B3 was winched back onto the deck, and Zavala inspected the interior.

“Drier than an eye at a miser’s funeral,” Zavala said.

“Ready to take the plunge, Doc?” Austin asked.

“I’ve been ready for nearly forty years,” Kane said.

Zavala tossed two inflatable cushions and a couple of blankets through the door. “Beebe and Barton sat on cold hard steel,” he announced. “I’ve decided a minimum of comfort will be necessary.”

In turn, Kane produced two skullcaps from a bag and handed one to Zavala. “Barton refused to dive unless he wore his lucky hat.”

Zavala pulled the cap down on his head. Then he crawled through the bathysphere’s hatch, taking care not to snag his fleece-lined jacket and pants on the steel bolts that surrounded it. He curled up next to a control panel. Kane got in next and sat on the window side. Zavala turned the air supply on and called out to Austin, “Close the door, Kurt, it’s drafty in here.”

“See you for margaritas in a few hours,” Austin gave the order to seal the bathysphere.

A crane lifted the four-hundred-pound hatch cover into place. The launch crew used a torque wrench to screw ten large nuts over the bolts. Kane shook hands with Austin through a four-inch circular opening in the center of the door that allowed instruments to be passed in and out without having to move the cumbersome cover. Then the crew screwed a nut into the hole to seal it.

Austin picked up a microphone connected to the bathysphere’s communications system and warned the divers they were about to become airborne. The winch growled and the crane hoisted the B3 off the deck as if the fifty-four-hundred-pound steel globe and its human cargo were made of feathers, swung it over the side, and kept it suspended twenty feet above the heaving ocean surface.

Austin called the bathysphere on the radio and got Zavala’s go-ahead to launch.

Through the B3’s windows, the divers caught a glimpse of the upturned faces of the launch and film crews and slices of ship and sky before the portholes were awash in green bubbles and froth. The B3 splashed into the crystal clear waters and slipped beneath the surface in the valley between two rolling swells.

The crane lowered the diving bell until it was just under the surface.

Zavala’s metallic-sounding voice came over a speaker mounted on a deck stand. “Thanks for the soft landing,” he said.

“This crane crew could dunk this doughnut in a cup of coffee,” Austin said.

“Don’t mention coffee and other liquids,” Zavala said. “The banois located on the outside of the bathysphere.”

“Sorry. We’ll book you a first-class cabin next time.”

“I appreciate the offer, but my main concern is making sure our feet stay dry. Next stop . . .”

The winch let out fifty feet of cable, and the bathysphere stopped for the final safety inspection. Zavala and Kane checked the bathysphere for moisture, paying close attention to the watertight seals around the door.

Finding no leaks, Zavala made a quick run-through of the B3’s air-supply, circulation, and communications systems. The indicator lights showed that all the bathysphere’s electronic nerves and lungs were working fine. He called up to the support ship.

“Tight as a tick, Kurt. All systems go. Ready, Doc?”

“Lower away!” Kane said.

The sea’s foamy arms embraced the bathysphere like a long-lost denizen, and with only a mound of bubbles to mark its descent the hollow sphere and its two passengers began the half-mile trip to King Neptune’s realm.

CHAPTER 5

THE B3’S PASSENGERS WERE SEALED OFF IN A STEEL PRISON that would have defied Harry Houdini, but their images freely roamed the globe. A pair of miniature cameras mounted on the interior wall transmitted pictures of the bathysphere cabin up a fiber-optic cable to the Beebe’s mast antenna, where the signals were bounced off a roving communications satellite and instantaneously beamed to laboratories and classrooms around the world.

Thousands of miles from Bermuda, a red-and-white communications buoy bobbing in a remote section of the Pacific Ocean relayed the pictures to a dimly lit room three hundred feet below the surface. A row of glowing television screens set into the wall of the semicircular chamber displayed green-hued pictures showing schools of fish darting past the cameras like windblown confetti.

A dozen or so men and women were gathered around the only screen that did not display the sea bottom. All had their eyes glued to a blue-and-black depiction of the globe and the letters NUMA. While they watched, the logo vanished to be replaced by a shot of the B3’s cramped interior and its two passengers.

“Ya-hoo!”Lois Mitchell yelled, pumping her arm in the air. “Doc’s on his way. And he’s wearing his lucky hat.”

The others joined in her applause, then the room went silent as Max Kane began to talk, his words and mouth slightly out of synchronization. He leaned toward the camera, his eyes and cheeks bulging from lens distortion.

“Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Max Kane, director of the Bonefish Key Marine Center, broadcasting from a replica of the Beebe-Barton bathysphere.”

“Leave it to Doc to get in a plug for the lab,” said a gray-haired man seated to Lois’s right.

Kane continued. “We are in Bermudan waters, where we’re about to re-create the historical half-mile Beebe-Barton bathysphere dive made in 1934. This is the third bathysphere, so we’ve shortened its name to B3. The bathysphere’s pilot is Joe Zavala, a submersible pilot and marine engineer with the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Joe is responsible for designing the bathysphere replica.”

Zavala had rigged voice-activated controls that allowed the divers to switch camera views. His face replaced Kane’s on the screen, and he began to describe the B3’s technical innovations. Lois was only half listening, more interested in the NUMA engineer’s dark good looks than his shoptalk.

“I envy Doc,” she said without removing her gaze from Zavala’s face.

“Me too,” said the gray-haired man, a marine biologist named Frank Logan. “What a great scientific opportunity!”

Lois smiled slightly as if enjoying a private joke. Her desire to spend time in the close confines of the bathysphere with the handsome Zavala had nothing to do with science. Well, maybe biology.

The camera went back to Kane.

“Great job, Joe,” Kane said. “At this time, I’d like to say a hello and offer personal thanks to everyone who has helped make this project possible. National Geographic,the New York Zoological Society, the government of Bermuda . . . and NUMA, of course.” He put his face closer to the camera, a move that made him look like a grinning grouper. “I’d also like to give my best to all the denizens at Davy Jones’s Locker.”

The room echoed with loud whoops and applause.

Logan was a soft-spoken Midwesterner and was normally reserved, but he slapped his thigh in his excitement. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Nice of Doc to recognize us denizens still slaving away down here in the Locker. Too bad we can’t return the favor.”

Lois said, “Technically, it’s possible but not advisable. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, this undersea lab doesn’t even exist! We’re probably just a line item in a congressional budget cleverly disguised as an order of five-hundred-dollar toilet seats for the Navy.”

A smile came to Logan’s face. “Yes, I know, but it’s stilltoo bad we can’t offer Doc our congratulations. I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more, after all he’s done.” He sensed from the blank expression on Lois’s face that he had made a verbal gaffe, and said, “You deserve a great deal of credit, Lois. After all, your work bringing the medusa project to its near conclusion allowed Max to get away for the bathysphere dive.”

“Thanks, Frank. We allgave up our normal lives to be here.”

A soft gong echoed throughout the room, and a green light blinked over a television monitor that showed what looked like a diamond diadem against dark velvet.

“Speaking of administrative duties,” Logan said with a wry grin, “your company is about to arrive.”

Lois wrinkled her nose. “ Damn.I wanted to watch the rest of Doc’s dive.”

“Bring your guest back here to watch the show,” Logan suggested.

“Oh, no! I’m getting rid of him as quickly as I can,” Lois said, rising from her chair.

Lois Mitchell was nearly six feet tall, and in her late forties she had packed a few more pounds on her frame than she would have preferred. The voluptuous figure under the baggy sweat suit didn’t live up to contemporary ideals of beauty, but artists of a bygone day would have drooled over her curves and creamy skin, and the way her thick raven hair fell to her shoulders.

She bustled from the room and descended a spiral staircase to a brightly lit passageway. The tubelike corridor connected to a small chamber occupied by two men who stood at an instrument panel facing a heavy-duty double door.

One man said, “Hi, Lois. Touchdown is in forty-five seconds.” He pointed to a television screen set into the instrument panel.

The cluster of sparkling lights displayed on the control-room monitor had materialized into a submersible vehicle slowly descending through the murk. It resembled a large utility helicopter that had been stripped of its main rotor and was powered by variable-thrust turbines on the fuselage. Two figures were silhouetted in the bubble cockpit.

The room reverberated with the hum of motors. A diagram of the lab on the control panel began to blink, indicating that the airlock doors were open. After a few moments, the display stopped blinking, signifying that the doors had closed. The floor vibrated with the thrash of powerful pumps. When the water had been expelled from the airlock, the pumps went silent, and a green light flashed over the doors. At the push of a button on the control panel, the doors opened, and a briny smell rushed out. The submersible rested in a circular domed chamber. Curtains of seawater rolled off the fuselage and swirled down gurgling drains.

A hatch slid open in the side of the submersible, and the pilot got out. The men at the control panel went to help unload cartons of supplies from a cargo space behind the cockpit.

Lois strode over and greeted the man emerging from the passenger’s side. He was a couple of inches taller than she was and wore blue jeans, sneakers, and a windbreaker and baseball cap both emblazoned with the logo of the company that provided security for the lab.

She extended her hand. “Welcome to Davy Jones’s Locker. I’m Dr. Lois Mitchell, assistant director of the lab while Dr. Kane is away.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” the man said in a deep-voiced Southern drawl. “My name is Phelps.”

Lois had expected to see a quasi-military type like the tough-looking guards she had glimpsed on trips to the surface ship, where lab staff could take a break from the seafloor, but Phelps looked as if he had been assembled from spare parts. His arms were too long for his body, his hands too big for his arms, his head too big for his shoulders. With his sad-looking dark eyes and large mouth accented by drooping mustache, he had a hound-dog quality about him. He wore his dark brown hair in unfashionably long sideburns.

“Did you have a pleasant shuttle ride, Mr. Phelps?”

“Couldn’t have been better, ma’am. The best part was seeing the lights on the ocean bottom. Kept thinking this must be Atlantis.”

Lois cringed inwardly at the overblown comparison to the lost city.

“Glad to hear that,” she said. “Come to my office and we’ll chat about how we can help you.”

She led the way from the airlock along another tubular passageway, then up a spiral staircase to a low-lit, circular room. Fish nosed against the room’s transparent domed ceiling, creating the illusion that the sea was pressing in.

Phelps swiveled his head in wonder. “Talk about a water view! This is unbelievable, ma’am.”

“People find it hypnotic at first, but you get used to it. This is actually Dr. Kane’s office. I’m using it while he’s away. Have a seat. And please stop calling me ma’am.It makes me feel a hundred years old. I prefer Dr. Mitchell.”

“You sure look pretty good for a hundred years old, ma’am . . . I mean, Dr. Mitchell.”

Lois cringed again, and turned up the lights in the room so that the marine life was less visible and distracting. She opened a small office refrigerator, extracted two cold bottles of spring-water, and gave one to Phelps. She settled herself behind a plastic-and-chrome desk of starkly simple design.

Phelps pulled up a chair. “I’d like to thank you for your valuable time, Dr. Mitchell. You must have lots better things to do besides talking to a boring old security guy.”

If you only knew,Lois thought. She gave her visitor a polite smile. “How can I help you, Mr. Phelps?”

“My company sent me to probe for weaknesses in the sea-lab security.”

Lois wondered what kind of an idiot had sent Phelps to waste her time. She leaned back in her chair and pointed toward the transparent ceiling.

“We’ve got three hundred feet of ocean separating us from the surface, and it’s better than any castle moat. There’s a patrol ship up there with heavily armed guards from your company, backed up, if necessary, by the on-call resources of the U.S. Navy. How could we be any more secure than that?”

Phelps furrowed his brow. “With all due respect, Dr. Mitchell, the first thing you learn in this business is that there is nosecurity system in the world that can’t be breached.”

Lois ignored the condescending tone. “Very well, then, let’s start with a virtual tour of the facility,” she said.

She swiveled her chair and tapped a computer keyboard. A three-dimensional diagram that looked like a series of globes and connecting tubes appeared on the monitor.

“The lab consists of four large spheres, arranged in a diamond shape and connected by tubular corridors,” Lois began. “We’re at the top of the administrative pod . . . here. Below us is the crew’s quarters and mess hall.” She manipulated the cursor to highlight another globe. “There’s a control room and some labs and storage in this pod. This pod contains the small nuclear plant. Air is supplied through a water-to-oxygen setup, with backup tanks for emergencies. We’re a few hundred yards from the edge of a deepwater canyon.”

Phelps pointed to a hemispheric shape in the center of the rectangle. “Is this where the surface shuttle came in?”

“That’s right,” Lois said. “The minisubs attached to the underside of the transit module are used for specimen collection in the canyon, but they can be used to evacuate the lab, and there are escape pods available as a last resort. The shuttle airlock is connected by reinforced passageways that give the staff access from any module and contribute to the structural strength of the complex.”

“What about the fourth module?” Phelps said.

“Top secret.”

“How many folks work in the complex?”

“Sorry, top secret again. I don’t make the rules.”

“That’s okay,” Phelps said with a nod. “This is one hell of a job of engineering.”

“We’re fortunate that the Navy had the facility readily available. The lab was originally planned as an undersea observatory. The components were built on land, fully equipped, and towed out here in special barges. The barges were then rafted together, and the setup was fitted together like an old-fashioned Tinkertoy and lowered into the sea in one piece. Luckily, we’re not at great depth, and the sea bottom is fairly level. It’s what they call a turn-key operation. The complex was not meant to be permanent, so it has compressed-air capabilities that allow it to attain negative buoyancy. It could be retrieved and moved to another location.”

Phelps said, “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to see the nonrestricted areas.”

Lois Mitchell frowned, signaling that she was doing this under protest. She picked up the intercom phone and called the control room. “Hello, Frank,” she said. “This is going to take a little longer than I expected. Anything new with Doc? No? Okay, I’ll keep in touch.”

She replaced the phone with more force than was necessary, and stood to her full height. “C’mon, Mr. Phelps. This is going to be fast and furious.”