by Robin Cook
“Let’s go take a look,” Perry suggested. “This place is fascinating.”
Suzanne grinned in triumph. She glanced at Donald. Even he couldn’t suppress a smile. He’d been sympathetic to Suzanne’s plan but had not been optimistic.
It took Suzanne only a few minutes to unload everything that Mark had stowed in the submersible’s tray. Once the material was lined up next to the well head, she folded the manipulating arms into their retracted position.
“So much for that job,” Suzanne said. She turned off the power to the servo links.
“Oceanus to surface control,” Donald said into the UQC mike. “The payload has been off-loaded. What’s the status of the divers?”
“Compression is nearing depth,” Larry’s voice reported over the speaker. “The bell should be starting its descent shortly. ETA on the bottom, thirty minutes give or take five.”
“Roger!” Donald said. “Keep us informed. We are going to move due west to investigate a scarp we caught sight of on the last dive.”
“Ten-four,” Larry said. “We’ll let you know when the bell is lifted off the DDC. We’ll also let you know when it is passing through five hundred feet so you can take up an appropriate position.”
“Roger!” Donald repeated. He hung up the UQC mike. With his hands resting gently on the joysticks he jacked up the power to the propulsion system to fifty amps. He expertly guided the submersible away from the well head, careful to avoid the vertical run of pipe. A few moments later the Oceanus was slowly flying over the strange topography of the guyot’s top.
“What I believe we’re looking at here is a pristine section of the mantle’s crust,” Suzanne said. “But how and why the lava cooled to form these polygonal shapes is beyond me. It’s almost like they’re gigantic crystals.”
“I like the idea of it being Atlantis,” Perry said. His face remained glued to the view port.
“We’re coming up to the place where we glimpsed that fault,” Donald said.
“It should be just over that ridge of columns coming up,” Suzanne said for Perry’s benefit.
Donald cut back on the power. The submersible slowed as they cleared the ridge.
“Wow!” Perry commented. “It certainly drops off quickly.”
“Well, it’s not a transverse fault,” Suzanne said as she got a full view of the formation. “In fact, if it were a fault at all it would have to be a graben. The other side is just as steep.”
“What the hell is a graben?” Perry asked.
“It’s when a fault block falls in relation to the rock on either side,” Suzanne explained. “But something like that doesn’t happen on the top of a seamount.”
“It looks like a huge rectangular hole to me,” Perry said. “What would you say? About a hundred and fifty feet long and fifty wide?”
“I’d say that’s about right,” Suzanne said.
“It’s incredible!” Perry commented. “It’s like some giant took a knife and cut out a chunk of rock just the way you’d take a plug out of a watermelon.”
Donald powered the Oceanus out over the hole, and they all looked down.
“I can’t see the bottom,” Perry said.
“Neither can I,” Suzanne said.
“Neither can our sonar,” Donald said. He pointed to the echo sounder monitor. It wasn’t getting a return signal. It was as if the Oceanus were poised over a bottomless pit.
“My word!” Suzanne said. She was dumbfounded.
Donald gave the monitor a tap, but there was still no readout.
“That’s very strange,” Suzanne said. “Do you think it’s malfunctioning?”
“I can’t tell,” Donald reported. He tried changing the adjustments.
“Wait a sec,” Perry voiced tensely. “Are you two pulling my leg?”
“Try the side-scan sonar,” Suzanne suggested, ignoring Perry for the moment.
“It’s just as weird,” Donald said. “The signal is aberrant unless we want to accept the pit’s only six or seven feet deep. That’s what the side-scan monitor is suggesting.”
“Clearly the hole is a lot deeper than six or seven feet,” Suzanne said.
“Obviously,” Donald agreed.
“Hey, come on, you guys,” Perry said. “You’re starting to scare me.”
Suzanne turned briefly to face Perry. “We’re not trying to scare you,” she said. “We’re just mystified by our instruments.”
“My guess is there’s one hell of a thermocline just within the rim of this formation,” Donald said. “The sonar has to be bouncing off something.”
“Would you mind translating that?” Perry said.
“Sound waves bounce off sharp temperature gradients,” Suzanne said. “We think that’s what we have here.”
“In order to get a depth readout we have to descend ten or fifteen feet into the pit,” Donald said. “I’ll do that by decreasing our buoyancy, but first I want to change our orientation.”
With short bursts Donald used the starboard front thruster to turn the submersible until it became parallel with the long axis of the hole. Then he manipulated the variable ballast system to make the sub negatively buoyant. Gradually the submersible started down.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Perry said. He was nervously looking back and forth between the side-scan sonar monitor and his view port.
The UQC speaker cracked to life: “Surface control to Oceanus. The bell is lifting off the DDC as I’m speaking. The divers will be passing through five hundred feet in about ten minutes.”
“Roger, surface control,” Donald said into the mike. “We’re about one hundred feet west of the well head. We’re going to check out an apparent marked thermocline in a rock formation. Communications might be interrupted momentarily, but we’ll be on station for the divers.”
“Ten-four,” Larry’s voice said.
“Look at the luster of the walls,” Suzanne remarked as the submersible sank below the tip of the huge hole. “They’re perfectly smooth. It almost looks like obsidian!”
“Let’s head back to the well head,” Perry suggested.
“Could this be an opening into an extinct volcano?” Donald asked. A slight smile flitted across his otherwise rigid face.
“That’s a thought,” Suzanne said with a laugh. “Although I have to say I’ve never heard of a perfectly rectilinear caldera.” She laughed again. “Our dropping down in here like this reminds me of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth.”
“How so?” Donald asked.
“Have you read it?”
“I don’t read novels,” Donald said.
“That’s right, I forgot,” Suzanne said. “Anyway, in the story the protagonists entered a kind of pristine netherworld via an extinct volcano.”
Donald shook his head. His eyes stayed glued to the thermistor readout. “What a waste of time reading such rubbish,” he said. “That’s why I don’t read novels. Not with all the technical journals I can’t get to.”
Suzanne started to respond but changed her mind. She’d never been able to make a dent in Donald’s rigid opinions about fiction in particular and art in general.
“I don’t mean to be a pest,” Perry said, “but I—”
Perry never got out the last part of his sentence. All at once the submersible’s descent accelerated markedly and Donald cried out, “Christ almighty!”
Perry gripped the sides of his seat with white-knuckle intensity. The rapid increase in downward motion scared him, but not as much as Donald’s uncharacteristic outburst. If the imperturbable Donald Fuller was upset, the situation must be critical.
“Jettisoning weights!” Donald called out. The descent immediately slowed, then stopped. Donald released more weight and the sub began to rise. Then he used the port-side thruster to maintain orientation with the long axis of the pit. The last thing he wanted was to hit up against the walls.
“What the hell happened?” Perry demanded when he could find his voice.
“We suddenly got heavier or the water got lighter,” Donald said as he scanned the instrumentation.
“What does that mean?” Perry demanded.
“Since we obviously didn’t get heavier, the water indeed got lighter,” Donald said. He pointed to the temperature gauge. “We passed through the temperature gradient we suspected, and it was a lot more than we bargained for—in the opposite direction. The outside temperature rose almost a hundred degrees Fahrenheit!”
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Perry cried.
“We’re on our way,” Donald said tersely. He snapped the UQC mike from its housing and tried to raise the Benthic Explorer. When he had no luck, he returned the mike to its cradle. “Sound waves don’t come in here and they don’t go out either.”
“What is this, some sort of sonar black hole?” Perry asked irritably.
“The echo sounder is giving us a reading now,” Suzanne said. “But it can’t be true! It says this pit is over thirty thousand feet deep!”
“Now why would that be malfunctioning?” Donald asked himself. He gave the instrument an even harder rap with his knuckles. The digital readout stayed at 30,418.
“Let’s forget the echo sounder,” Perry said. “Can’t we get out of here faster?” The Oceanus was rising, but very slowly.
“I’ve never had trouble with this echo sounder before,” Donald said.
“Maybe this pit could have been some kind of magma pipe,” Suzanne said. “It’s obviously deep, even though we don’t know how deep, and the water is hot. That suggests contact with lava.” She bent forward to look out the view port.
“Could we at least turn off the music?” Perry said. It was reaching a crescendo that only added to his anxiety.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Suzanne exclaimed. “Look at the walls at this level! The basalt is oriented transversely. I’ve never heard of a transverse dike. And look! It has a greenish cast to it. Maybe it’s gabbro, not basalt.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull rank here,” Perry snapped with uncamouflaged exasperation. He’d had it with being ignored. “I want to be taken up to the surface, pronto!”
Suzanne swung around to respond but only managed to open her mouth. Before she could form any words a powerful, low-frequency vibration shook the submersible. She had to grab the side of her seat to keep from falling. The sudden quake sent loose objects flying to the floor. A coffee mug hit and shattered; the shards skittered across the floor along with pens that had fallen. At the same time, there was a low-pitched rumbling that sounded like distant thunder.
The rattling lasted for almost a minute. No one spoke although an involuntary squeak escaped from Perry’s lips as the blood drained from his face.
“What on earth was that?” Donald demanded. He rapidly scanned the instruments.
“I’m not sure,” Suzanne said, “but if I had to guess, I’d say it was an earthquake. There’s a lot of them up and down the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.”
“An earthquake!” Perry blurted.
“Maybe this old volcano is awakening,” Suzanne said. “Wouldn’t that be a trip if we got to witness it!”
“Uh-oh!” Donald said. “Something is wrong!”
“What’s the problem?” Suzanne asked. Like Donald her eyes made a quick circuit of the dials, gauges, and screens in her direct line of sight. These were the important instruments for operating the submersible. Nothing seemed amiss.
“The echo sounder!” Donald said with uncharacteristic urgency.
Suzanne’s eyes darted down to the digital readout located close to the floor between the two pilot seats. It was decreasing at an alarming rate.
“What’s happening?” she asked. “Do you think lava is rising in the shaft?”
“No!” Donald cried. “It’s us. We’re sinking, and I’ve jettisoned all the descent weights. We’ve lost our buoyancy!”
“But the pressure gauge!” Suzanne yelled. “It’s not rising. How can we be sinking?”
“It mustn’t be working,” Donald said frantically. “There’s no doubt we’re sinking. Just look out the damn view port!”
Suzanne’s eyes darted to the window. It was true. They were sinking. The smooth rock face was moving rapidly upward.
“I’m blowing the ballast tanks,” Donald barked. “At this depth there won’t be much effect, but there’s no choice.”
The sound of compressed air being released drowned out Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring but only for twenty seconds. At such a pressure the compressed air tanks were quickly exhausted. The descent was not affected.
“Do something!” Perry yelled when he could find his voice.
“I can’t,” Donald yelled. “There’s no response to the controls. There’s nothing left to try.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Mark Davidson was dying for a cigarette. His addiction was absolute, although he found giving them up was easy since he did it once a week. His craving was maximum when he was relaxing, working, or anxious, and at the moment, he was very anxious indeed. For him, deep diving operations were always a walk on the wild side; from experience he knew how quickly things could go horribly wrong.
He looked up at the large institutional clock on the wall of the diving van, with its monstrous sweep second hand. Its intimidating presence made the passage of time hard to disregard. It had now been twelve minutes since there had been any contact with the Oceanus. Although Donald had specifically warned that there might be a short communication break, this seemed longer than reasonable, especially since the submersible had not responded to Larry Nelson’s last message. That was when Larry had tried to tell them that the divers were passing through five hundred feet.
Mark’s eyes darted down to the pack of Marlboros he’d casually tossed onto the diving van’s countertop. It was an agony not to reach over, take one out, and light up. Unfortunately, there was a newly instituted prohibition about smoking in the ship’s common areas, and Captain Jameson was a stickler about rules and regulations.
With some difficulty Mark pulled his eyes away from the cigarettes and scanned the van’s interior. Everyone else present seemed calm, which only made Mark feel more tense. Larry Nelson was sitting perfectly still at the diving operations monitoring station along with the sonar operator, Peter Rosenthal. Just beyond them were the two watch standers, who were in front of the diving system’s operating console. Although their eyes were constantly scanning the pressure gauges of the two pressurized DDCs and the diving bell, the rest of their bodies were motionless.
Across from the watch standers was the winch operator. He was perched on a high stool in front of the window looking out on the central well. His hand rested on the gear shift for the winch. Outside, the cable attached to the shackle on top of the diving bell was being played out at the maximum permitted velocity. From a neighboring drum came a second, passive cable that contained the compressed gas line, hot water hose, and communications wires.
At the far end of the van was Captain Jameson, absently sucking on a toothpick. In front of him were the controls that formed an extension of the bridge. Even though the ship’s propellers and thrusters were being controlled by computer to keep it stationary over the well head, Captain Jameson could override the system if the need arose during diving operations.
“God damn it!” Mark spat. He slammed a pencil he’d been unconsciously torturing to the countertop and stood up. “What’s the divers’ depth?”
“Passing through six hundred ten feet, sir,” the winch operator reported.
“Try the Oceanus again!” Mark barked to Larry. He started to pace back and forth. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, and it was getting worse. He began to lambaste himself for encouraging Perry Bergman to go on the dive. Being personally aware of Dr. Newell’s interest in the seamount and her desire to make purely exploratory dives, he worried that she might try to impress the president to get her way. That might mean she�
��d pressure Donald to do things he might not normally do, and Mark was aware that Dr. Newell was the only person on the ship who potentially had that kind of influence over the normally strictly-by-the-book ex-naval line officer.
Mark shuddered. It would be a disaster of the first order if the submersible got wedged in a fissure or a crevice where it may have descended to examine a particular geological feature up close. That had almost happened to the submersible Alvin, out of Woods Hole, and the near tragedy had been on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, not that far away from their present location.
“Still no response,” Larry said after several unsuccessful tries to raise the Oceanus on the UQC.
“Any sign of the submersible on side-scan sonar?” Mark demanded from the sonar operator.
“That’s a negative,” Peter said. “And bottom hydrophones have no contact with their tracking beacon. The thermocline they found must be impressive. It’s like they dropped down into the ocean floor.”
Mark stopped his pacing and looked back at the clock. “How long has it been since that tremor?” he asked.
“That was more than a tremor,” Larry said. “Tad Messenger measured it four point four on the Richter scale.”
“I’m not surprised—it knocked over that pile of pipe on the deck,” Mark said. “And as much as we felt it up here, it would have been a hell of a lot worse on the bottom. How long ago was it?”
Larry looked down at his log. “It’s been almost four minutes. You don’t think that has anything to do with our not hearing from the Oceanus, do you?”
Mark was reluctant to answer. He was not superstitious, yet he hated to voice his worries, as if articulating them made them that much more possible. But he was concerned that the 4.4 earthquake may have caused a rock slide that trapped the Oceanus. Such a catastrophe surely wasn’t out of the question if Donald had indeed descended into a narrow depression at Suzanne’s insistence.
“Let me talk to the divers,” Mark said. He walked over to Larry and took the mike. While he pondered what he wanted to say, he glanced up at the monitor where he could see the tops of the heads and the foreshortened bodies of the three men.