“Captain, check the side-looking radar.”
Gann looked at the screen and saw what had grabbed his partner’s attention. The bounce back from the north wall had suddenly become totally smooth. Gann immediately stopped their descent.
“Distance to bottom?” Gann asked.
“Twelve hundred meters.”
“Let’s take a look.” Gann goosed the propellers, guiding them toward the north face. “External lights on.”
Murphy flipped on the switch activating the powerful searchlights mounted on the top and bottom of the submersible.
“Cameras on,” Gann ordered.
The video monitors flickered, and then came alive, showing the glow of lights but nothing else.
“Range to the north wall?” Gann asked.
“Four hundred meters.”
“What do you think it is?”
‘Either the most perfect underwater geological formation that ever occurred or somebody built something down here,” Murphy answered.
“At eleven thousand meters?”
‘I’m just telling you what the data indicates.”
“Range to wall?”
‘Three hundred meters.”
*****
The largest man-made underwater craft is the Russian Typhoon class submarine, which is one hundred seventy-one meters long, just shy of two football fields in length, and which displaces twenty-six thousand, five hundred tons. The back sphere that was heading toward the Challenger Deep dwarfed even a Typhoon, being almost seven hundred meters in diameter. It was not only larger than any man-made moving object; it was larger than most man-made stationary objects, including the Great Pyramid.
It also moved faster than any man-made submersible, punching through the ocean at eighty knots.
*****
“Fifty meters,” Murphy warned, and Gann slowed Deepflight to a crawl.
As Murphy watched the radar screens, Gann shifted his attention to the video monitors.
“Forty. Thirty. Twenty.”
Gann bought them to a dead halt. “Look,” he said to Murphy.
Directly in front of them the rock wall on the North Side of the Deep gave way to a smooth, gray surface. The edge of the gray curved slightly downward.
“Do a down scan along the wall,” Gann ordered.
Murphy did so and whistled. “We’ve got a perfectly round, flat wall in front of us, over a half mile in diameter.”
“So what is it?”
*****
In the War Room, Dane saw the image relayed from Deepflight’s camera and could have answered Captain Gann’s question. What was on screen was exactly like the doorway they had discovered in the Milwaukee Deep off the coast of Puerto Rico, which led to a large chamber where all the craft lost in the Bermuda Triangle had been stored. His gaze shifted from the image to the display showing the large sphere that had left the Devil’s Sea gate, closing on the Challenger Deep. He got up and walked up to Foreman.
“Are you going to warn them?” Dane asked him.
“What good would it do?” Foreman replied.
“You sent them there deliberately.”
“It’s war. Even you must accept that now.”
‘It’s easy to send other men to their deaths, isn’t it?”
Foreman turned. “No, it isn’t easy, and I’m getting sick of you trying to take the moral high ground. I’m worried about the survival of our species, and you give me grief over every single individual involved.”
“Our species is made up of individuals,” Dane said. “Why didn’t you let the Deepflight crew know what their mission was?”
“Would it have made a difference?”
“What exactly is their mission? Did you send them to find the door or draw something out of the gate?”
“Both.”
Dane picked up something from Foreman’s guarded mind. “What were they transmitting?”
“The pod they took with them was transmitting muons on a frequency that Dr. Nagoya felt would draw attention from the Shadow.”
“Mission accomplished,” Dane said. “Now get them out of there.”
“There isn’t enough time for them to get to the surface,” Foreman said. “And even if they did, what makes you think the surface is going to be safe? Remember what happened to the crew of the Glomar. It’s called sunk cost, and there’s no way around. We knew there was a good chance that anything we set there was going to draw a reaction and that if it did, there was nothing we could do about it.”
“They can hide inside the graveyard,” Dane said. “We went through a smaller door in the center of the door we found in the Atlantic. Have them search for it.”
‘How do you think those craft in the graveyard you visited got there?” Foreman asked.
“Most likely the sphere,” Dane said, “but it’s worth a chance.” He looked at the display. “They don’t have much time. They might be safe in there.”
“All right,” Foreman agreed. He picked up a handset and called to the submersible via the Reveille.
*****
Gann and Murphy were mesmerized by the massive door they had uncovered when Foreman’s voice came over the radio.
“Deepflight, this is Angel Six. Over.”
Gann picked up the mike. “This is Deepflight. Over.”
“Do exactly what I tell you to,” Foreman said. “Go to the center of the circle. Look for a smaller black circle there. Go into it. Jettison the attached pod before you go in.”
“What is this?” Gann demanded.
“You don’t have time to argue or ask questions,” Foreman said. “You’ve got an enemy bogey heading your way.”
“Enemy bogey?” Gann repeated glancing at Murphy.
A new voice cut in. “This is Reveille. Roger that, Deepflight! Roger that! Something very big is coming this way. Range ten kilometers and closing at eighty knots. It’s freaking huge, and it is not responding to hails!”
Gann shoved the controls, turning the nose of Deepflight toward the ocean bottom. He increased the throttle, and they headed down.
“Reveille, this is Angel Six. Recommend you head away at Flank speed.”
“Roger that.”
*****
Dane watched the sphere closing on the Challenger Deep as relayed from Nagoya’s computers and integrated with the Department of Defense positioning information on both Deepflight and the Reveille. It was going to be very close. He felt impotent, unable to influence what was about to happen.
*****
“Geez, look at that,” Murphy whispered. “Whatever’s coming in is filling the entire screen in the north.”
Gann didn’t have time to look at the radar. He was navigating by visual, staying oriented on the gray wall just above the top of Deepflight.
“There,” Gann said as the gray changed to black. He had the submersible do a roll, and then the nose was pointing at a small black circle.
“Looks solid to me,” Murphy said.
Gann finally spared a glance at the radar. He saw what had shocked Murphy. A curved edge had filled the entire top half of the screen, and it was coming closer. The only thing he’d ever seen that big moving was an iceberg, but this thing was coming under its own power.
“I’m going in,” Gann said as he edged forward on the controls.
“Don’t forget we need to jettison the pod,” Gann said. “Do it.”
*****
On board the Reveille, the engines were maxed out as the ship made to the south. On the bridge, the captain was watching the approaching sphere on radar also. Unfortunately, the ship was built for research, not speed or combat, so even at full throttle they could only make eighteen knots. And they had no weapons on board, although the captain doubted that any weapons they might have would be effective against whatever was coming.
*****
Deepflight blinked out of existence on the status board, the image of the sphere completely filling the canyon deep inside the Challenger Deep, the video feed from the
submersible going blank.
Dane sat down at the conference table and shook his head. “How many on board?”
“Two,” Foreman said. His attention still on the board. “Damn,” Foreman muttered.
Dane looked up. The sphere was moving, ascending. “It’s going after the Reveille.”
Foreman picked up the microphone. “Reveille, this is Angel Six. Over.”
“We’ve got it on radar, range five thousand meters horizontal, nine thousand meters vertical and closing. Any suggestion would be helpful. Over.”
Foreman looked at Dane, who simply shook his head.
“Five us a video feed,” Foreman ordered.
A screen on the wall flickered, and then they could see the Pacific Ocean from the bridge of the Reveille. The water was perfectly calm, the sun shining. The only thing marring the tranquility of the scene were the increasingly anxious reports from the Reveille’s radar man coming out of the speakers.
“Range four thousand meters horizontal, seven thousand meters vertical, and closing at high speed.”
“We’re still waiting on any suggestions,” the captain of the Reveille said. “Over.”
“It might be bluffing,” Foreman suggested.
“What the hell is it, anyway?” the captain demanded.
“We don’t know,” Foreman admitted.
“Great.”
‘Range three thousand meters horizontal, five thousand meters vertical, and closing at high speed.”
*****
Gann felt the air around him changing, the pressure increasing. His head pounded, and the video screen was dark.
“What the hell is going on?” Murphy demanded.
The nose of the submersible had hit the dark circle just moments ago, and then slowly they’d gone into it, as if being absorbed. Alarms began going off. Gann ran through emergency procedures but could find nothing seriously wrong until he glanced at the outside pressure-reading gauge.
“That can’t be,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Outside pressure is one atmosphere.”
“The gauge is broken,” was Murphy’s immediate assessment.
Both men blinked as the light inside increased dramatically as the three screens showing the outside view suddenly brightened far beyond what the searchlights could do.
“Where the hell are we?” Murphy whispered. His training took hold, and he checked his instruments. He didn’t believe what he was seeing, but he reported it anyway. “I’ve got a reading of the surface ten meters above us.”
“That would explain the atmospheric reading,” Gann observed. He checked the radio, trying to reach the Reveille and Angel Six, but only static came back. “Let’s see where we are,” he finally said.
*****
The sphere was solid black and perfectly round. There was no external sign of a form of propulsion; nevertheless, it was pushing through the water at high speed, closing on the Reveille.
It was also picking up anything in its path via a hole that had irises open on the very front, about fifty meters wide. It had swallowed the transmitting pod before halting in front of the large door, then reversing direction and heading for the surface.
*****
“Range zero meters horizontal, one thousand meters vertical, and rising at high speed. Closing on us, sir,” the radar man added, a quaver in his voice.
The captain of the Reveille nodded. He opened the door that led to the bridge wing on the right side and stepped out onto it, a crewman following him with a video camera that was connected by satellite to the War Room. The captain leaned over and looked down at the smooth ocean, waiting.
*****
On the top portion of the sphere, the opening grew as the metal irises moved back. As the sphere got closer to the surface and the Reveille, the opening grew larger until it encompassed a quarter of the surface.
*****
“Oh God,” those in the War Room heard the captain of the Reveille exclaim. Then they saw what had caused the reaction as the video camera was pointed downward.
Rising out of the water all around the Reveille was the edge of the opening in the sphere, water pouring down the side of the massive object until the edge was a hundred meters above the mast of the ship. Then the opening began to iris shut, daylight disappearing rapidly as it closed.
The screen went blank.
*****
Captain Gann threw the hatch open and blinked in the bright light, trying to get his bearings. The air was stale, with a texture to it that Gann couldn’t identify. He was in a huge, semicircular space. The submersible was floating in the center of a body of water that extended a mile and half in all directions. Above, a bright, glowing orb illuminated everything. Beyond the water, a black beach two miles in width ran up to the wall that curved around overhead to the light.
What caught Gann’s attention, though, were the planes and boats that littered the black beach. Thousands of them. He saw an ancient Polynesian raft beached next to a modern oil tanker; a jet fighter with Russian markings next to a biplane. It was overwhelming, a veritable mechanical graveyard of the ages.
*****
“It’s moving again,” Dane noted. He watched the progress of the sphere on the screen for several seconds, then realized what he was seeing. “It’s heading back to the Deep.”
There was no sign of the Reveille in the live spy satellite feed they had of the area. The ship had disappeared, swallowed up by the sphere.
*****
“Look at that!” Murphy exclaimed, pointing.
Gann shifted the binoculars in that direction. A silver-skinned plane with two engines, one on each wing, was on the black beach. Among all the other craft here, he found nothing particularly spectacular about that particular plane.
“A Lockheed Electra,” Murphy said. He twisted the knob on his binoculars. “A Lockheed Electra 10E!”
“And?” Gann was trying to absorb the variety of ships and planes he was seeing. Some he didn’t’ recognize at all.
“Do you know what the E in the 10E stands for?” Murphy didn’t wait for an answer. “Earhart. That’s Amelia Earhart’s plane!”
Both men staggered as a large bubble of air broke the surface just in front of the submersible, rocking the craft. Gann felt a spike of pain in both ears and realized there had been a sudden change of pressure. He leaned over and looked down, just in time to see the top edge of the opening in the sphere break the surface all around the submersible.
*****
“The sphere is heading back for the gate,” Ahana reported, even though Nagoya could clearly see that on the screen.
“What about the probe?” he asked.
Ahana flipped a switch, and a red dot appeared inside the sphere. “Working.”
“Excellent.”
They watched as the dot entered the black triangle marking the boundaries of the Devil’s Sea gate.”
“Do you have a lock on that position?” Nagoya asked anxiously.
“Locked and all data recorded,” Ahana confirmed.
*****
In the War Room, Dane saw the red dot appear. “What’s that?”
“The sphere must have sucked in the pod,” Foreman said.
“What about Deepflight?” Ariana asked.
“No sign,” Foreman said.
“How does this probe open the gate?” Dane asked.
“You’ll have to ask Nagoya that,” Foreman said. “We aren’t even certain it will work. But it’s a good sign that we can track it. Pack your gear; we’re heading to Japan. By the time we get there Nagoya should have been able to analyze the data the probe is sending.”
Ariana had been on her laptop while all this was occurring. “I’ve located someone who claims to be an expert on crystal skulls in New York City. Also, the Museum of Natural History has one in its collection. I’ve arranged to meet with a museum representative and the expert this evening.
Dane stood. “Keep in touch.”
“I will.”
She spun the globe once more. “We’re missing something.”
Dane paused. “What do you mean?” Foreman was already out of the room, heading for the elevator.
“Nagoya is coming up with theories, Foreman has been studying these gates almost all of his life, and yet we still know almost nothing about them or the Shadow, or the Ones Before.” She spread her long fingers, covering several of the gates marked on the globe. “I don’t’ know what it is, but we’re missing something very important.”
“I know we are,” Dane agreed. He smiled. “If you find out what it is, let me know, OK?”
“Be careful,” Ariana warned.
“I will.”
“Don’t trust Foreman.”
“That’s a given.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE PAST
79 A.D.
Emperor Vespasian had been dead for one day short of two months. There had been the obligatory month of mourning. Then the month-long games celebrating the new emperor, Titus, had begun. They would end on the next day. The games had been such a success that Titus had already begun plans for a bigger arena, to be called the Coliseum, which would be built so that larger and more elaborate games could be held with more spectators than the current arena could hold. It had long been said that as long as the emperor provided bread and games, he would stay in power.
In the Imperial Palace on the Palatine hill, Titus walked through empty rooms that had been cleared of his father Vespasian’s things and awaited his. He had watched his father’s ascent to power from the son of a tax collector to emperor, and he had learned much in the process. One key lesson was to look for plots everywhere and stop them before they had a chance to gain momentum. It is with this in mind that Titus went down a long corridor toward where two Praetorian Guards waited. As he approached, they saluted and opened the tall doors.
Titus entered his audience chamber and went directly to the chair set on a dais. His senior advisers were all in place, waiting. Titus leaned back, head against the high back of the chair. Only two months and already he felt the weight of the empire on his shoulders. He raised a finger to Thyestes, the Greek who had also been Vespasian’s adviser. Thyestes had the pulse of Rome, it was said, and thus knew the health of the empire and, more importantly, the health of the emperor.
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