Assault on Atlantis

CHAPTER FIVE

Dane walked out on the narrow gangway along the side of the Flip toward the rear, Chelsea at his side. The ship was long and narrow, more than two hundred meters in length by only average of ten in width. The bow was wider, expanding in a bulb shape. The rear was also wider, as was where the control section was located. It was also the only part of the craft that remained above water when the ship was “activated.” The other end would fill with water and submerge until the craft was vertical in the water, the bottom end bulb extending into the ocean almost two hundred meters. That end contained a probe that could both detect and emit muons, currently the only way they could track Shadow activity around the planet.

Dane paused as a gray fin cut through the water fewer than five meters away. A dolphin’s head popped up, dark eyes staring at him. Dane returned its gaze as Chelsea sat next to him, waiting.

“Rachel,” Dane whispered. The dolphin’s powerful tail thrust back and forth, lifting its body another half meter out of the water. Dane felt drawn into Rachel’s eyes. For a moment he was no longer onboard the Flip, but underwater, swimming, free of responsibility and worry. He “saw” what Rachel saw. Then it went further as the dolphin projected a vision to him.

Inside the Devil’s Sea gate. Near the black column of a portal, the actual cross-world/cross-time entrance inside the ate. A feeling of intense dread came over Dane. Danger. Great danger awaited. Ambush.

The moment was gone as quickly as it had come as an alarm bell stridently rang out for several seconds. It was the warning that the Flip was going into operation. Dane tried to shake off the negative emotion he had picked up from Rachel, but it clung to him. The dolphin emitted several clicks then disappeared under the waves. Dane envied the creature its freedom.

“Come on,” Dane said to Chelsea, heading toward the control section as he felt the deck under his feet shudder. He opened the hatch to the control room and walked in. The room as dimly lit, allowing the display screens to more clearly portray their data. The first thing Dane noted was the large dark red circle over Antarctica and South America-the hole in the ozone layer. Another red circle encompassed an area in Russia-Chemobyl’s deadly legacy.

A short, dark-haired Japanese woman was sitting in the center of the room surrounded by several computers. Dane went over to her position, Chelsea padding lightly next to him. “Any activity?” he asked.

Ahana, who was now the senior scientist, given the death of her mentor Doctor Nagoya, reached down and rubbed Chelsea’s ears. “Nothing. The gates are stable.”

“Are y sure the Devil’s Sea gate is stable?” he asked, still feeling the dread that had been brought to him by Rachel’s vision. The Flip had been attacked before by the Shadow sending a ship loaded with explosives out of the gate. Was another attack coming?

‘Some slight muonic fluctuations,” Ahana said, “but nothing major.”

They had managed to save the world from the Shadow’s attempt to tap energy from the planet’s core, a victory that now appeared to be in vain given the growing hole in the ozone layer and the spreading cloud of radiation. Dane briefly wondered if the time line he had seen in his vision this morning had also had such a victory or if the Shadow had gone first for that Earth’s ozone before trying to tap the core. They had learned little about the Shadow, but enough to now know it was an intelligent race that was able to use portals inside the gates to travel between parallel worlds, and that there was a group beyond the Space Between, known only as the Ones Before, that were trying to aid mankind, although that assistance always seemed obliquely given.

Dane felt the deck under his feet shift slightly and the walls appeared to move. It was actually the deck rotating in response to the ship’s movement, as the probe was slowly submerging.

“How many gates are open?” Dane asked.

“Here,” Ahana said. “And the one in Lake Baikal is still “Here,” Ahana said. “ And the one in Lake Baikal is still survey, which is why we’re rotating.”

“How about the radioactivity from Chernobyl?” Dane ked her. The Shadow had been tapping the Russian nuclear plant for a long time and finally destroyed it, releasing a toxic cloud of radioactive gas that was being borne by winds across Russia.

“The gate is still closed-after all, they’ve taken everything they can from the reactors. The cloud will reach Moscow in about a week. It’s strong enough that it will continue over most of Russia and Northern Europe.”

“Have you ever found a gate near the North Pole?” Dane asked.

“No.”

“Can you check to see if there is any activity there when you do your scan?”

“Certainly.”

Dane rubbed the stubble on his chin as he looked about. “Do you have the imagery taken by the Aurora spy plane of the sphere that took the ozone?”

Ahana pointed at the seat next to hers and indicated the computer screen. “I’ll bring it up there for you.”

Dane took the seat and waited. The screen flickered, then came alive with a view of an empty sky. He could hear the sound of an engine in the background, then a voice on an intercom:

“Let’s take this slow.”

“Range?”

“Two hundred klicks. ETA in two minutes.”

“Paint me something.”

“Extending imaging pod.”

The view shifted as the display went from the nose camera to the pod imager extending out of the belly of the SR-75. Dane could now see ocean far below the plane, but still clear sky ahead.

“One minute, thirty seconds.”

The image went black for a second, then a new scene appeared as the lens adjusted.

“What the hell?”

Dane didn’t blame whoever had just excited. A black rectangle filled the screen, almost filling it from top to bottom and extending beyond the left and right limits.

“Wide angle,” someone ordered.

“Geez! How big is that?”

“Radar indicates more than two hundred miles wide by twenty high.”

“What is it?”

“Thirty seconds.”

Dane could tell the SR-75 was slowing as it got closer to the object. The plane was also turning, but the imager-rotated o compensate. Stretching across the entire screen was a latticework of black struts supporting panels of gray material. In the very center was a black sphere — one of the Shadow’s. Dane had seen one crashed on another time line and had an idea how big it was-at least a half-mile in diameter—, which gave him an idea how large the latticework was. Even as the camera recorded, more panels were unfolding at the ends, extending it farther and farther.

The view shifted once more. About a mile behind the black sphere was a black circular portal, and a stream of ionized matter was flowing from the panels into the portal. Lightning crackled around the panels.

“What the bell is that thing doing?”

Dane had been told as soon as he arrived back at the Flip that it had drawn a large amount of ozone out of the atmosphere, but although he knew this was a bad thing. He wasn’t quite sure why.

Dane continued to watch as the end panels began folding in on themselves. The flow of ozone through the trailing portal was slowing. Dane checked the location data at the bottom of the screen. The sphere had entered over the bottom end of South America. It was now over the Gulf of Mexico.

Finally the panels bad all folded in and been tucked inside e sphere. Dane watched as the large black sphere slipped back into the portal and disappeared, the portal snapping out of existence.

Dane turned to Ahana. “I know ozone is important. But I don’t know why. Exactly what is it? What form is it in and how could we get some?”

Ahana paused, assimilating the questions, and then answered … Ozone consists of three oxygen molecules bonded together. It actually makes up a surprisingly small percentage of the atmosphere-or did. If compressed into one layer, ozone would be a very thin band in the stratosphere less than a tenth of inch thick. However. This small amount is spread in a band about twenty kilometers wide in the stratosphere.”

Dane held up a hand interrupting her. “Where exactly is the stratosphere?”

Ahana pointed up. “From here to an altitude of fifteen kilometers is the troposphere. 1be five kilometers above that is a transition zone, then you hit the stratosphere, which extends mother twenty to fifty kilometers.”

“I thought it was all just air.” Dane said. “Oxygen. With carbon dioxide and water in the forms of clouds.” He felt ignorant. But he’d learned early in his Army career to ask the stupid question if it could get information that could save his life and, in this case, perhaps the planet.

“The atmosphere is indeed mostly oxygen, which is formed by photosynthesis. Ozone. As I said, is three oxygen molecules bonded together. At the very top of the atmosphere, high-energy ultraviolet radiation from the sun hits oxygen molecules-which is 02 They split into single oxygen molecules. Some of these single molecules, as they circulate down, bond to form 03 which, in turn, rises and is broken down again and descends in a perpetual cycle.”

“All right. I know what it is and where it is, but why’s it so important that we’ll all be dead soon because it’s gone?”

‘”Ozone screens long-wave ultra-violet-C light and the majority of ultraviolet-B radiation. Although the most immediate threat would be various forms of skin cancer if exposed to se types of radiation, it also does other things. Deeper inside our bodies, our immune systems would be suppressed if exposed to high levels of these wavelengths of light. Various viruses, such as chicken pox, HIV and papilloma would be activated or re-activated by exposure to UV-B. Increased exposure to UV has also been linked to elevated risk of malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, and various infections including e. coli.”

“All this just because we get more direct sunlight?”

“More unfiltered sunlight,” Ahana corrected. “It would also lessen the effect of vaccinations. And you have to remember, it’s not just humans who are going to be effected. Every living thing on the surface of the planet, including plant life, will be affected negatively. No one is really sure which part of the ecological system will collapse first. But there’s no doubt something will go relatively quickly. Then, the chain reaction of disaster will become an avalanche. Most people have no idea how inter-reliant all living things on the planet are.”

Ahana wasn’t done. “Radiation also causes mutations. Although most people think of mutations in the science-fiction term of five-legged dogs, it’s much more serious than that. Mutations happens quicker the faster something reproduces. Bacteria and viruses reproduce at a phenomenal pace. We could see new deadly forms within weeks, if not days, occurring much faster than science’s ability to fight them. We’re still trying to deal with HIV — imagine a dozen new strains occurring next week.”

Dane was beginning the feel bad about asking. He’d hoped the threat would be simple and that perhaps there would be a simple solution. But it appeared the only solution was to replace the ozone layer.

‘’Can we manufacture ozone?”

“Yes. But nowhere near the quantities needed now.”

“Is there any place where we can find a large source of ozone?”

“Not on this planet. The Shadow saw to that.”

“Then we’ll have to go get some,” Dane said.