'Look. Over there!'
The beam of light in front of them was swallowed by darkness. As they drew closer they could sec that the seabed dropped off abruptly. The light was lost in the abyss.
'Stop here.'
Eddie's fingers flew over the controls. He counterbalanced the thrust, and the Deep Rover came to a halt. Then it started to spin.
'Current's pretty strong here,' said Eddie. The submersible kept turning until the floodlights lit the edge of the precipice. 'Looks like something caved in, not long ago either. I'd say it's pretty fresh.'
Stone's eyes roamed around nervously. 'Any clues from the sonar?'
'There's a drop of at least forty metres. Can't tell what's on the other side.'
'You mean the plateau-'
'There is no plateau. It's fallen through.'
Stone chewed his lip. They had to be really close to the processor now. But there hadn't been a precipice here last year. Then again, it probably hadn't been there a few days ago either.
'Let's go down,' he decided. 'We'll take a look at where it goes.'
The Deep Rover gathered speed and sank down over the precipice. It was only a couple of minutes before the seabed emerged in the floodlights. It looked like a bomb site.
'We need to ascend a few metres,' said Eddie. 'Those crevices look nasty. We could easily fall down.'
'Sure, just a sec- Shit! Straight ahead.'
A torn pipe, one metre in diameter, came into view. It ran diagonally across enormous chunks of stone and disappeared beyond the floodlights. Thin black threads of oil were rising from it, climbing towards the surface in taut columns.
'It's a pipeline!' Stone was appalled. 'Oh, God.'
'It used to be a pipeline,' said Eddie.
'Let's follow it.' Stone knew where the pipeline would lead – or, rather, where it originated. They were on the site of the unit.
But the processor was gone.
A fissured wall loomed ahead. Just in time Eddie jerked the submersible up. The wall seemed to extend forever, but soon they were up and over it with just centimetres to spare. It was only then that Stone realised it wasn't a wall: it was a vast expanse of seabed, rising vertically through the water. Beyond it, there was another steep drop. Particles of sediment drifted through the beam of light, clouding their vision. Then the floodlights caught a stream of bubbles shooting frantically towards the surface, spraying from the gaping edges of a hole. 'Holy shit,' whispered Stone. 'What happened here?'
Eddie banked to avoid the column of bubbles. For a moment they lost sight of the pipeline, then it pushed its way back into the light. It led downwards.
'Damned current,' said Eddie. 'It's pulling us into the blow-out.'
The Deep Rover spun.
'Keep following the pipeline,' commanded Stone.
'That's madness. We need to ascend.'
'The processor's right here,' insisted Stone. 'We'll see it any second now.'
'Like hell we will. There's nothing left to see.'
Stone was silent. Ahead, the pipeline curved upwards, as if it had been uprooted by a giant hand. It ended in a twisted stump, the warped steel curled in weird-looking sculptures.
'Still want to go on?'
Stone nodded. Eddie manoeuvred the submersible alongside the pipe. For a moment they hovered above the serrated opening, as though in the clutches of a gaping maw.
'Any further and there'll be nothing beneath us at all,' said Eddie.
Stone clenched his fists. Alban had been right. They should have sent a robot first In that case, giving up now would be truly absurd. He needed to know what had happened. He had no intention of returning to Statoil without a full report. He refused to let himself be humiliated again by Skaugen.
'Keep going, Eddie.'
'You're crazy.'
On the other side of the twisted pipe, the fissured seabed slanted steeply downwards. The clouds of sediment thickened. Now the strain was telling on Eddie too. At any moment a new obstacle might appear in their path.
Then they saw the processor.
In fact, all they could see were some struts, but Stone knew right away that the Kongsberg prototype was gone, buried under the rubble of the broken plateau, more than fifty metres deeper than it had originally been built.
He peered closer. Something detached itself from the metal struts and came towards them.
Bubbles.
It reminded Stone of the colossal vortex of gas that they'd seen on the Sonne- of the blow-out when the video-grab had plunged through the hydrates.
Suddenly he was filled with panic. 'Move!' he yelled.
Eddie released the remaining weights. The submersible jerked upwards and shot through the water, followed by the vast bubble. Then the maelstrom engulfed them and they fell back down. 'Shit!'
'What's going on down there?' It was the tinny voice of the technician on the Thorvaldson. 'Eddie? Answer me! We've got some funny readings up here. A whole load of gas and hydrates is surfacing.'
Eddie pressed the transmission button. 'I'm throwing off the outer hull. We're on our way up.'
'What's the matter? Are you-'
The voice of the technician was drowned by hissing and banging.
Eddie had blasted off the battery pods and sections of the hull. It was a last-ditch attempt to lose weight. The Deep Rover, minus its batteries and exostructure, started to spin and rise again. Then a powerful jolt shook it. Stone saw a rock appear beside him, a gigantic slab of seabed had catapulted upwards. Inside the capsule, things turned upside down. He heard the pilot scream as they were hit again, from the right this time, pushing them out of the blow-out. The Deep Rover instantly gathered speed and shot up. Stone clung to the armrests, practically lying in his seat. Eddie sagged towards him, eyes closed, blood running over his face. Stone realised with horror that now it was up to him. Frantically he tried to remember how to stabilise the submersible. He could switch the controls from Eddie to himself.
Eddie had shown him how to do it. It was that button there.
Stone pressed it, trying at the same time to push Eddie away from him. He wasn't sure that the thrusters would work now that the outer hull was gone. The numbers were whizzing past on the depth gauge, so he knew the submersible was still rising fast. In the end it didn't matter which direction they were heading in, so long as it was up – thank God there was no need to worry about decompression problems: the pressure in the capsule was kept at surface level.
A warning light flashed on.
The floodlights above the right-hand tank went out, then all the other lights. Stone was plunged into darkness.
He was shaking.
Calm down, he told himself Eddie showed you the emergency power supply. It's one of the buttons on the top row of the control panel. It either turns itself on or you have to do it manually. His fingers felt for the panel in the darkness.
What was that?
Now that the lights were out, it should have been pitch black. But something was shining.
Were they already that close to the surface? He'd checked the depth gauge before it went dark, and it had shown over 700 metres still to go. The submersible hadn't reached the top of the slope yet. They were well below the shelf break and beyond the reach of daylight.
He blinked.
A faint blue glow was emanating from the water, so faint he could barely be sure it was there. It loomed up from the depths, shaped like a funnel, tapering and disappearing into the darkness of the abyss. Stone held his breath. He could have sworn that the light would glow brighter if anyone approached. Now most of the light waves were swallowed by the water so it was still a long way off.
It had to be enormous.
The funnel started to move.
Its opening seemed to expand, while the rest of it swung round. Stone's fingers froze over the console in search of the power button.
He was mesmerised. It was bioluminescence – there was no doubt about it. Bioluminescence, filtered through millions of cubic metr
es of water and gas. But what kind of bioluminescent sea creature could grow to that size? A giant squid? The light in front of him was bigger than any squid – bigger than anyone could ever imagine a squid to be.
Or was it an optical illusion, caused by the sudden switch from light to dark, the ghostly traces of the rays from the floodlights?
The longer he stared at the thing, the paler it seemed to become. The funnel slid slowly into the depths.
Then it was gone.
Stone resumed his hunt for the emergency-power button. The submersible was rising steadily through the water, and he felt relieved at the thought of reaching the surface and putting the nightmare behind him. At least the video cameras hadn't been lost when Eddie fired off the hull. Had they caught the glowing thing? He wasn't sure if the technology was sensitive enough to detect such a weak signal.
But the glow had definitely been there. Then he remembered the peculiar footage that Victor had filmed, a creature retreating from the light. My God, he thought, what the hell have we unearthed?
Aha. He'd found the button.
The emergency-power supply clicked in with a hum. The lights on the console came on first, then the floodlights.
Eddie was lying, eyes wide open, next to him.
Stone was leaning towards him when something appeared in the light outside: an enormous sheet, cloudy-looking and reddish. It was coming towards the Deep Rover, and Stone's hand reached for the controls because he thought they were about to hit the slope.
Then he realised that the slope was going to hit them.
The slope was rushing towards them.
That was all he had time to think before the impact smashed the plastic sphere into a thousand tiny pieces.
BELL 430, Norwegian Sea
Since they'd left Trondheim the flight had become so bumpy that Johanson was having trouble giving Walt Whitman the attention he deserved. During the past half-hour the sky had darkened dramatically and was now bearing down on the helicopter as if it wanted to force it into the water. Fierce gusts buffeted them from side to side.
The pilot glanced round. 'Everything all right back there?'
'Couldn't be better' Johanson closed his book. The sea was plunged into a thick layer of fog but he could dimly make out the outlines of oil-rigs and boats. The swell must be high, he thought. A hefty storm was brewing.
'We'll be fine,' said the pilot.
'What's the forecast?'
'High winds.' The pilot glanced at the barometer on the control panel. 'Looks as though we're in for a hurricane.'
'Now you tell me.'
'Well, I didn't know before.' He shrugged. 'Weather forecasts aren't that reliable, you know. Are you afraid of flying?'
'Oh, no,' said Johanson, emphatically. 'It's just the thought of falling I don't like.'
'You won't be falling anywhere. For an offshore pilot, this stuff is child's play. We'll get a good shaking, but that's about all.'
'How long have we got?'
'We're half-way there already.'
'OK.' He opened his book again.
A thousand other noises were mixed with the roar of the engines. Bangs, whistles, crackles. There was even a ringing sound, which came at regular intervals from somewhere behind him. Amazing what the wind could do to the acoustics. Johanson turned towards the seat behind him, but the noise had stopped.
He focused on Walt Whitman.
Storegga Slide
Eighteen thousand years ago, at the peak of the last ice age, the sea level was some 120 metres lower than it was at the start of the third millennium. A large proportion of the world's water was trapped in glaciers, so the water pressure on the shelves was less intense. Some of the planet's seas hadn't yet formed, while during the glacial period others levelled out, some drying up entirely, leaving vast swathes of marshland in their wake.
One consequence of the worldwide drop in water pressure was its dramatic impact on the stability of gas hydrates. Vast quantities of methane were released in a short space of time, particularly in the upper regions of the slopes. The ice crystals that trapped and compressed the methane melted. For thousands of years the hydrates had held the slopes together, like glue, but now they acted like dynamite. As the methane escaped, it swelled to 164 times its former volume, breaking open crevices and craters as it pushed through the sediment to the surface, transforming the seabed into a porous, crumbling rain, incapable of supporting its own weight.
The continental slopes began to collapse, tearing swathes of shelf as they fell. Enormous landslides, carrying huge amounts of debris, hurtled hundreds of kilometres through the depths. Methane entered the atmosphere, causing disastrous climate change. But the slides had other, similarly drastic effects – not just on the sea, but on coastal regions and islands as well.
It wasn't until the second half of the twentieth century that scientists made an incredible discovery. Off the coast of central Norway, they found traces of several landslides, which over 40,000 years had swept away a large proportion of the slope. A number of factors had contributed to them: warm periods, in which the average temperature of the currents near the slope had risen, and glacial periods, like the one 18,000 years ago, when the water had remained cold but the pressure had decreased. Strictly speaking, in terms of the Earth's geology, phases of hydrate stability were the exception.
And the people of the modern world were living in an exception, happy to let the calm deceive them. They liked to think it was the rule.
All in all, over 5500 cubic kilometres had been ripped out of the Norwegian shelf by the landslides that had sent the seabed crashing to the depths. In the sea between Scotland, Iceland and Norway, scientists found a trail of sediment more than 800 kilometres long. The really worrying fact was that the biggest slide had taken place not so very long-ago – within the past 10,000 years. The scientists named it a Storegga Slide, and hoped it would never happen again.
It was a futile hope but, even so, there was a chance that the peace could have lasted several thousand years. New ice ages or warm periods might have caused slides that unfolded at bearable intervals. Instead the worm had invaded with its cargo of bacteria and, aided by the attendant circumstances, had brought things to a head.
On board the Thorvaldson, Jean-Jacques Alban had guessed that the silence from the submersible meant they would never see it again. What he didn't know was the true extent of the events occurring just a few hundred metres beneath the vessel's keel. He was in no doubt that the breakdown of the hydrates had reached a critical phase: over the past quarter of an hour the smell of rotten eggs had become unbearably intense, while the battery of enormous waves had thrown up ever larger chunks of fizzing hydrate. He knew that to stay on the slope was tantamount to suicide. The gas would thin the surface of the water and the vessel would sink. Whatever was going on down there, neither he nor anyone else could predict the effect. He hated to give up on the Deep Rover and its passengers but he knew somehow that Stone and the pilot were dead.
By now the scientists and crew were in a state of agitation. Not everyone understood the significance of the smell and the fizzing, but the rough seas compounded the mood of anxiety. Like a vengeful god the storm had swept down from the heavens, hurling towering waves across the sea. It would soon be impossible to stay upright on deck.
Alban had to weigh up all the factors and decide what to do. It wasn't a question of looking at the safety of the research vessel from the viewpoint of the shipping line or as an asset to science. The safety of the Thorvaldson meant the safety of human lives – including those of the two men on the submersible, whose fate Alban's instincts had accepted, even though his mind had not. Both staying and leaving were equally wrong- and right.
He squinted up at the dark sky and wiped the rain off his face. At that moment a brief calm descended on the choppy sea. But the storm wasn't abating, just drawing breath before it continued with increased force.
Alban decided to stay.
IN THE DEPTHS, disast
er had struck.
The hydrates, transformed by the worms and bacteria from stable icefields and veins to porous, brittle tatters, had suddenly disintegrated. Across 150 kilometres of the slope, the ice crystals of water and methane broke open explosively, releasing the gas. While Alban was persuading himself to stay, the gas was rushing upwards, breaking through walls, cracking rocks, and causing the shelf to rise up and slide forward. Cubic kilometres of stone caved in. As more layers collapsed further down, the whole seabed along the shelf margin was thrown into motion and started to slide. A violent chain reaction pulled one landslide after the another, as debris rained down on the remaining stable layers, reducing them to mud.
The shelf between Scotland and Norway, with its oil wells, pipelines and platforms, showed signs of cracking.
Someone shouted through the storm at Alban. He spun round and saw the chief scientist waving at him frantically. He could barely hear the man's words. 'The slope,' was all he could make out. 'The slope.'
After the lull the sea had whipped up into a frenzy. Black waves battered the Thorvaldson. Alban looked despairingly at the boom from which the Deep Rover had been lowered into the water. The water was foaming. The stench of methane was overpowering. He started to run amidships where the scientist grabbed his arm.
'This way, Alban! Oh, God – there's something you should see.'
The ship shook. Alban heard a low rumble. It was coming from beneath the water. They staggered up the narrow swaying stairway to the bridge.
'Look!'
Alban stared at the control panel. The sonar was scanning the depths. He couldn't believe his eyes. The seabed was gone. It was as though he was looking at a maelstrom. 'The slope's collapsing,' he whispered.
At that moment he knew there was nothing he could do for Eddie or Stone. His foreboding had become a dreadful certainty. 'We've got to get out of here,' he said. 'At once.'
'But which direction?' the helmsman asked.
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