Deep Storm

19

Crane pulled back from the black rubber eyepiece, blinked, then rubbed his face with both hands. He glanced around the laboratory, waiting for his vision to adapt. The images slowly sharpened: a medical technician across the room, working with a titration setup. Another technician entering data into a workstation. And just across the lab table, Michele Bishop, who-like himself-was using a portable viewer. As he watched, she, too, leaned away, and their eyes met.

"You look about as tired as I feel," she said.

Crane nodded. He was tired-bone tired. He'd been going twenty hours straight: first with a harrowing and exhausting microsurgical procedure to reattach Conrad's severed fingers, then with the seemingly endless follow-up on his hypothesis of heavy metal poisoning.

And along with the weariness was also disappointment. Because so far, no significant traces of heavy metals had been detected in the Deep Storm personnel. Hair, urine, and other samples had been examined, without result. He and Bishop were now examining slides from energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometer tests, but once again, nothing so far. The public areas of the Facility had also come up clean.

He sighed deeply. He'd been so convinced this was the answer. It still could be, of course. But with every new test that came back negative, the chances grew increasingly remote. Just as disappointing, Jane Rand's data mining efforts had turned up nothing.

"You need to get some rest," Bishop said. "Before you become a patient here yourself."

Crane sighed again, stretched. "I guess you're right." And she was: he'd soon be too bleary-eyed to interpret the slides properly. So he stood, said his good-byes to Bishop and the staff, and exited the Medical Suite.

Although most of the Facility remained terra incognita to him, he knew his way from the Medical Suite to his quarters well enough to make the trip without conscious thought. Down to Times Square, then left past the library and theater, one flight up in the elevator, another left, then two quick rights. He yawned as he opened his stateroom door with his passcard. He just wasn't thinking clearly anymore. A good six hours of sleep would put the problem in perspective, maybe point out the answer that was eluding him.

He stepped inside, yawning again, and placed his palmtop device on the desk. He turned-and then froze.

Howard Asher was sitting in the visitor's chair, an unknown man in a lab coat standing beside him.

Crane frowned in surprise. "What are-" he began.

Asher made a brusque suppressing gesture with his right hand, then nodded to the man in the lab coat. As Crane watched, the stranger closed and locked the room and bathroom doors.

Asher cleared his throat softly. Crane had seen little of him since their squash game. His face looked worn, pained, and there was a haunted gleam in his eyes, as of someone who had been struggling with demons.

"How's the arm?" Crane asked.

"It's been rather painful the last day or two," Asher admitted.

"You need to be careful. Vascular insufficiency can lead to ulceration, even gangrene, if the nerve function is impaired. You should let me-"

But Asher cut him off with another gesture. "There's no time for that now. Look, we'll need to speak quietly. Roger's not in the adjoining quarters at present, but he could return at any time."

This was the last thing Crane had expected to hear. He nodded, mystified.

"Why don't you sit down?" And Asher motioned toward the desk chair. He waited until Crane was seated before speaking again.

"You're about to cross a threshold, Peter," he said in the same low voice. "I'm going to tell you something. And once I've told you, there will be no going back. Things will never be the same for you again, ever. The world will be a fundamentally different place. Do you understand?"

"Why do I get the sense," Crane said, "you're about to tell me I was right, back there in the squash court? That this isn't about Atlantis, at all?"

A bleak smile passed over Asher's features. "The truth is infinitely stranger."

Crane felt a chill in the pit of his stomach.

Asher placed his elbows on his knees. "Have you heard of the Mohorovicic discontinuity?"

"It sounds familiar. But I can't place it."

"It's also known as the M discontinuity, or simply the Moho."

"The Moho. I remember my marine geology professor at Annapolis talking about it."

"Then you'll remember it's the boundary between the earth's crust and the mantle beneath."

Crane nodded.

"The Moho lies at different depths, depending on location. The crust is much thicker beneath the continents, for example, than beneath the oceans. The Moho is as deep as seventy miles beneath the surface of the continents, but at certain mid-oceanic ridges, it's as shallow as a few miles."

Asher leaned toward Crane, lowered his voice still further. "The Storm King oil platform is built above just such an oceanic ridge."

"So you're saying the Moho is close to the crust directly below us."

Asher nodded.

Crane swallowed. He had no idea where this was headed.

"You were told the same story that all workers in the unclassified levels of Deep Storm were-that during a routine mining operation, drillers on the Storm King platform found evidence of an ancient civilization beneath the ocean floor. And that story is true-as far as it goes."

Asher plucked a handkerchief from his pocket, mopped his brow. "But there's more to it than that. You see, they didn't find artifacts or ancient buildings, anything like that. What they detected was a signal."

"A signal? You mean like radio waves?"

"The exact nature of the signal is problematic. More of a seismic ping, almost a kind of sonar. But of an unknown nature. All we can say for sure is that it's not naturally occurring. And before I leave this room, I'll prove it to you."

Crane opened his mouth to speak. Then he stopped. Disbelief, shock, perplexity, all rose within him.

Seeing the look on Crane's face, Asher smiled again: an almost wistful smile this time. "Yes, Peter. Now comes the difficult part. Because, you see, that signal came from beneath the Moho. Beneath the earth's crust."

"Beneath?" Crane murmured in disbelief.

Asher nodded.

"But that would mean-"

"Exactly. Whatever it is that's transmitting the signal-we didn't put it there. Someone else did."