“Crazy,” Salazar repeated. He leaned forward in his seat and shook his head from side to side as if clearing the growing pain. He looked as though he was aging a year with each passing minute.
“Can’t you hear it?” Stacy uttered in a low croaking voice. “They’re coming closer.”
“She’s crazy too,” Salazar rasped.
Plunkett held up his hand. “Quiet! I hear it too. There is something out there.”
There was no reply from Salazar. He was too far gone to think or speak coherently. An agonizing band was tightening around his lungs. The desire for air overpowered all his thoughts save one, he sat there and wished death to come quickly.
Stacy and Plunkett both stared into the darkness beyond the sphere. A weird rat-tailed creature swam into the dim light coming from inside Old Gert. It had no eyes, but it made a circuit of the sphere, maintaining a distance of two centimeters before it went on about its business in the depths.
Suddenly the water shimmered. Something was stirring in the distance, something monstrous. Then a strange bluish halo grew out of the blackness, accompanied by voices singing words too garbled by the water to comprehend.
Stacy stared entranced, while Plunkett’s skin crawled on the back of his neck. It had to be some horror from the supernatural, he thought. A monster created by his oxygen-starved brain. There was no way the approaching thing could be real. The image of an alien from another world crossed his mind again. Tense and fearful, he waited until it came nearer, planning on using the final charge of the emergency battery to switch on the outside lights. A terror from the deep or not, he realized it would be the last thing he’d ever see on earth.
Stacy crawled to the side of the sphere until her nose was pressed against its interior. A chorus of voices echoed in her ears. “I told you,” she said in a strained whisper. “I told you I heard singing. Listen.”
Plunkett could just make out the words now, very faint and distant. He thought he must be going mad. He tried to tell himself that the lack of breathable air was playing tricks on his eyes and ears. But the blue light was becoming brighter and he recognized the song.
Oh, what a time I had with Minnie the Mermaid
Down at the bottom of the sea.
I forgot my troubles there among the bubbles.
Gee but she was awfully good to me.
He pushed the exterior light switch. Plunkett sat there motionless. He was used up and dog-weary, desperately so. His mind refused to accept the thing that materialized out of the black gloom, and he fainted dead away.
Stacy was so numbed with shock she couldn’t tear her eyes from the apparition that crept toward the sphere. A huge machine, moving on great tractorlike treads and supporting an oblong structure with two freakish manipulator arms on its underside, rolled to a stop and sat poised under the lights of Old Cart.
A humanlike form with blurred features was sitting in the transparent nose of the strange craft only two meters away from the sphere. Stacy closed her eyes tightly and reopened them. Then the vague, shadowy likeness of a man took shape. She could see him clearly now. He wore a turquoise-colored jumpsuit that was partially opened down the front. The matted black strands on his chest matched the dark shaggy hair on his head. His face had a masculine weathered, craggy look, and the mirth wrinkles that stretched from a pair of incredibly green eyes were complemented by the slight grin on his lips.
He stared back at her with a bemused interest. Then he reached down behind him, set a clipboard in his lap, and wrote something on a pad. After a few seconds he tore off a piece of paper and held it up to his view window.
Stacy’s eyes strained to focus on the wording. It read, “Welcome to Soggy Acres. Hang on while we connect an oxygen line.”
Is this what it’s like to die? Stacy wondered. She’d read of people going through tunnels before emerging into light and seeing people and relatives who had died in the past. But this man was a perfect stranger. Where did he come from?
Before she could match the puzzle pieces, the door closed and she floated into oblivion.
8
DIRK PITT STOOD ALONE in the center of a large domed chamber, hands shoved into the pockets of his NUMA jumpsuit, and studied Old Gert. His opaline eyes stared without expression at the submersible that sat like a broken toy on the smooth black lava floor. Then he slowly climbed through the hatch and dropped into the pilot’s reclining chair and studied the instruments embedded in the console.
Pitt was a tall man, firm muscled with broad shoulders and straight back, slightly on the lanky side, and yet he moved with a catlike grace that seemed poised for action. There was a razor hardness about him that even a stranger could sense, yet he never lacked for friends and allies in and out of government who respected and admired him for his loyalty and intelligence. He was buoyed by a dry wit and an easygoing personality—a trait a score of women had found most appealing—and though he adored their company, his most ardent love was reserved for the sea.
As Special Projects Director of NUMA he spent almost as much time on and under water as he did on land. His main exercise was diving—he seldom crossed the threshold of a gym. He had given up smoking years before, casually controlled his diet, and was a light drinker. He was constantly busy, physically moving about, walking up to five miles a day in the course of his job. His greatest pleasure outside his work was diving through the ghostly hulk of a sunken ship.
There was the echo of footsteps from outside the submersible, footsteps crossing the rock floor that had been carved smooth under the curved walls of the vaulted roof. Pitt dewed around in the chair and looked at his longtime friend and NUMA associate, Al Giordino.
Giordino’s black hair was as curly as Pitt’s was wavy. His smooth face showed ruddy under the overhead glow from the sodium vapor lights, and his lips were locked in their usual sly Fagan-like smile. Giordino was short, the top of his head came just up to Pitt’s shoulder line. But his body was braced by massive biceps and a chest that preceded the rest of him like a wrecking ball, a feature that enhanced his determined walk and gave the impression that if he didn’t come to a halt he would simply walk through whatever fence or wall happened to be in his path.
“Well, what do you make of it?” he asked Pitt.
“The British turned out a nice piece of work,” Pitt replied admiringly as he exited the hatch.
Giordino studied the crushed spheres and shook his head. “They were lucky. Another five minutes and we’d have found corpses.”
“How are they doing?”
“A speedy recovery,” answered Giordino. “They’re in the galley devouring our food stores and demanding to be returned to their ship on the surface.”
“Anyone brief them yet?” asked Pitt.
“As you ordered, they’ve been confined to the crew’s quarters, and anyone who comes within spitting distance acts like a deaf mute. A performance that’s driven our guests up the walls. They’d give their left kidney to know who we are, where we came from, and how we built a livable facility this deep in the ocean.”
Pitt gazed again at Old Gert and then motioned a hand around the chamber. “Years of secrecy flushed down the drain,” he muttered, suddenly angry.
“Not your fault.”
“Better I left them to die out there than compromise our project.”
“Who you kidding?” Giordino laughed. “I’ve seen you pick up injured dogs in the street and drive them to a vet. You even paid the bill though it wasn’t you who ran over them. You’re a big softy, my friend. Secret operation be damned. You’d have saved those people if they’d carried rabies, leprosy, and the black plague.”
“I’m that obvious?”
Giordino’s teasing look softened. “I’m the bully who gave you a black eye in kindergarten, remember, and you bloodied my nose with a baseball in return. I know you better than your own mother. You may be a nasty bastard on the outside, but underneath you’re an easy touch.”
Pitt looked down at Giordino. “Yo
u know, of course, that playing good samaritan has put us in a sea of trouble with Admiral Sandecker and the Defense Department.”
“That goes without saying. And speaking of the devil, Communications just received a coded message. The admiral is on his way from Washington. His plane is due in two hours. Hardly what you’d call advance notice. I’ve ordered a sub readied to head for the surface and pick him up.”
“He must be psychic,” mused Pitt.
“I’m betting that weird disturbance is behind his surprise visit.”
Pitt nodded and smiled. “Then we have nothing to lose by raising the curtain for our guests.”
“Nothing,” Giordino agreed. “Once the admiral gets the story, he’ll order them kept here under guard until we wrap up the project anyway.”
Pitt began walking toward a circular doorway with Giordino at his side. Sixty years in the past, the domed chamber might have been an architect’s vision of a futuristic aircraft hangar, but this structure covered no aircraft from rain, snow, or summer sun. Its carbon and ceramic reinforced plastic walls housed deep-water craft 5,400 meters beneath the sea. Besides Old Gert, the leveled floor held an immense tractorlike vehicle with an upper body housing shaped similar to a cigar. Two smaller submersibles sat side-by-side, resembling stubby nuclear submarines whose bows and sterns had been reattached after their center sections were removed. Several men and one woman were busily servicing the vehicles.
Pitt led the way through a narrow circular tunnel that looked like an ordinary drain pipe and passed through two compartments with domed ceilings. There were no right angles or sharp corners anywhere. All interior surfaces were rounded to structurally resist the massive outside water pressure.
They entered a confined and spartan dining compartment. The one long table and its surrounding chairs were formed from aluminum, and the galley wasn’t much larger than the kitchen on an overnight passenger train. Two NUMA crewmen stood on each side of the doorway keeping a tight eye on their unwelcome guests.
Plunkett, Salazar, and Stacy were huddled at the opposite end of the table in muffled conversation when Pitt and Giordino entered. Their voices stopped abruptly, and they looked up suspiciously at the two strangers.
So he could talk with them at their own level, Pitt planted himself solidly in a nearby chair and glanced swiftly from face to face as if he was an inspector of police examining a lineup.
Then he said politely, “How do you do. My name is Dirk Pitt. I head up the project you’ve stumbled upon.”
“Thank God!” Plunkett boomed. “At last, somebody who can speak.”
“And English at that,” added Salazar.
Pitt gestured at Giordino. “Mr. Albert Giordino, chief mover and doer around here. He’ll be glad to conduct a grand tour, assign quarters, and help you with any needs in the way of clothing, toothbrushes, and whatever.”
Introductions and handshakes were traded across the table. Giordino ordered up a round of coffee, and the three visitors from Old Gert finally began to relax.
“I speak for all of us,” said Plunkett sincerely, “when I say, thank you for saving our lives.”
“Al and I are only too happy we reached you in time.”
“Your accent tells me you’re American,” said Stacy.
Pitt locked onto her eyes and gave her a devastating stare. “Yes, we’re all from the States.”
Stacy seemed to fear Pitt, as a deer fears a mountain lion, yet she was oddly attracted to him. “You’re the man I saw in the strange submersible before I passed out.”
“A DSMV,” Pitt corrected her. “Stands for Deep Sea Mining Vehicle. Everyone calls it Big John. Its purpose is to excavate geological samples from the seabed.”
“This is an American mining venture?” asked Plunkett incredulously.
Pitt nodded. “A highly classified suboceanic test mining and survey project, financed by the United States government. Eight years from the initial design through construction to start-up.”
“What do you call it?”
“There’s a fancy code word, but we affectionately refer to the place as ‘Soggy Acres.’ “
“How can it be kept a secret?” asked Salazar. “You must have a support fleet on the surface that can be easily detected by passing vessels or satellites.”
“Our little habitat is fully self-sustaining. A high-tech life-support system that draws oxygen from the sea and enables us to work under pressure equal to the air at sea level, a desalination unit for fresh drinking water, heat from hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, some food from mussels, clams, shrimp, and crabs that survive around the vents, and we bathe under ultraviolet light and antiseptic showers to prevent bacteria growth. What supplies or equipment replacement parts we can’t provide on our own are dropped into the sea from the air and retrieved underwater. If it becomes necessary to transfer personnel, one of our submersibles rises to the surface where it is met by a jet-powered flying boat.”
Plunkett simply nodded. He was a man living a dream.
“You must have a unique method of communicating with the outside world,” said Salazar.
“A surface relay buoy tethered by cable. We transmit and receive via satellite. Nothing fancy but most efficient.”
“How long have you been down here?”
“We haven’t seen the sun in a little over four months.”
Plunkett stared into his coffee cup in wonder. “I had no idea your technology had developed to where you can tackle a research station this deep.”
“You might say we’re a pioneer expedition,” said Pitt proudly. “We have several projects going at the same time. Besides testing equipment, our engineers and scientists analyze the sea life, geology, and minerals on the seabed and file computerized reports of their findings. Actual dredging and mining operations come in future stages.”
“How many people in your crew?”
Pitt took a swallow of coffee before answering. “Not many. Twelve men and two women.”
“I see your women have traditional duties,” Stacy said sourly, nodding at a pretty redheaded lady in her late twenties who was dicing vegetables in the galley.
“Sarah volunteered. She also oversees our computer records, working two jobs, as do most of us.”
“I suppose the other woman doubles as your maid and equipment mechanic.”
“You’re close,” Pitt said, giving her a caustic smile. “Jill really does help out as a marine equipment engineer. She’s also our resident biologist. And if I were you, I wouldn’t lecture her on female rights on the bottom of the sea. She took first in a Miss Colorado bodybuilding competition and can bench press two hundred pounds.”
Salazar pushed his chair from the table and stretched out his feet. “I’ll wager your military is involved with the project.”
“You won’t find any uniformed rank down here,” Pitt sidestepped. “We’re all strictly scientific bureaucrats.”
“One thing I’d like you to explain,” said Plunkett, “is how you knew we were in trouble and where to find us.”
“Al and I were retracing our tracks from an earlier sample collection survey, searching for a gold-detection sensor that had somehow fallen off the Big John, when we came within range of your underwater phone.”
“We picked up your distress calls, faint as they were, and homed in to your position,” Giordino finished.
“Once we found your submersible,” Pitt continued, “Al and I couldn’t very well transport you from your vessel to our vehicle or you’d have been crushed into munchkins by the water pressure. Our only hope was to use the Big John’s manipulator arms to plug an oxygen line to your exterior emergency connector. Luckily, your adapter and ours mated perfectly.”
“Then we used both manipulator arms to lock onto your lift hooks,” Giordino came in, using his hands for effect, “and carried your sub back to our equipment chamber, entering through our pressure airlock.”
“You saved Old Gert?” inquired Plunkett, quickly becoming cheerful.<
br />
“She’s sitting in the chamber,” said Giordino.
“How soon can we be returned to our support ship?” Salazar demanded rather than asked.
“Not for some time, I’m afraid,” said Pitt.
“We’ve got to let our support crew know we’re alive,” Stacy protested. “Surely you can contact them?”
Pitt exchanged a taut look with Giordino. “On our way to rescue you, we passed a badly damaged ship that had recently fallen to the bottom.”
“No, not the Invincible,” Stacy murmured, unbelieving.
“She was badly broken up, as though she suffered from a heavy explosion,” replied Giordino. “I doubt there were any survivors.”
“Two other ships were nearby when we started our dive,” Plunkett pleaded. “She must have been one of them.”
“I can’t say,” Pitt admitted. “Something happened up there. Some kind of immense turbulence. We’ve had no time to investigate and don’t have any hard answers.”
“Surely you felt the same shock wave that damaged our submersible.”
“This facility sits in a protected valley off the fracture zone, thirty kilometers away from where we found you and the sunken ship. What was left of any shock wave passed over us. All we experienced was a mild rush of current and a sediment storm as the bottom was stirred into what is known on dry land as a blizzard condition.”
Stacy gave Pitt an angry look indeed. “Do you intend to keep us prisoners?”
“Not exactly the word I had in mind. But since this is a highly classified project I must ask you to accept our hospitality a bit longer.”
“What do you call ‘a bit longer’?” Salazar asked warily.
Pitt gave the small Mexican a sardonic stare. “We’re not scheduled to return topside for another sixty days.”
There was silence. Plunkett looked from Salazar to Stacy to Pitt. “Bloody hell!” he snapped bitterly. “You can’t hold us here two months.”
“My wife,” groaned Salazar. “She’ll think I’m dead.”
“I have a daughter,” said Stacy, quickly subdued.
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