Deep Storm

3

Peter Crane had spent almost four years of his life inside submarines, but this was the first time he'd ever had a window seat.

He'd killed several hours on the Storm King platform, first submitting to lengthy physical and psychological examinations, then hanging about the library, waiting for concealing darkness to fall. At last he was escorted to a special staging platform beneath the rig, where a Navy bathyscaphe awaited, tethered to a concrete footing. The sea heaved treacherously against the footing, and the gangplank leading to the bathyscaphe's access hatch had redundant guide ropes. Crane crossed over to the tiny conning tower. From there, he climbed down a metal ladder, slick with condensation, past the pressure hatch, through the float chamber, and into a cramped pressure sphere, where a very young officer was already at the controls.

"Take any seat, Dr. Crane," the man said.

Far above, a hatch clanged shut, then another, the sound reverberating dully through the submersible.

Crane glanced around at the cabin. Aside from the empty seats-arranged in three rows of two-every square inch of the walls and decking was covered by gauges, ducts, tubes, and instrumentation. The only exception was what looked like a narrow but extremely massive hatch set into the far wall. A smell hung in the close space-lubricating oil, dampness, perspiration-that instantly brought back his own years wearing the dolphins.

He sat down, put his bags on the adjoining seat, and turned toward the window: a small metal ring, studded around its circumference by steel bolts. He frowned. Crane had a submariner's innate respect for a thick steel hull, and this porthole seemed an alarming, needless luxury.

The sailor must have noticed his look, because he chuckled. "Don't worry. It's a special composite, built directly into the hull. We've come a long way since the old quartz windows of the Trieste ."

Crane laughed in return. "Didn't know I was being so obvious."

"That's how I separate the military from the civilians," the youth said. "You used to be a sub jockey, right? Name's Richardson."

Crane nodded. Richardson was wearing the chevrons of a petty officer first class, and the insignia above the chevrons showed his rating was that of operations specialist.

"I did a two-year stint on boomers," Crane replied. "Then two more on fast attacks."

"Gotcha."

A distant scraping sounded from above: Crane guessed it was the gangplank being withdrawn. Then, from somewhere amid the tangle of instrumentation, came the faint squawk of a radio. "Echo Tango Foxtrot, cleared for descent."

Richardson grabbed a mike. "Constant One, this is Echo Tango Foxtrot. Aye, aye."

There was a low hiss of air, the muffled whisper of propellers. The bathyscaphe bobbed gently on the waves for a moment. The hiss grew briefly louder, then gave way to the sound of water flooding the ballast tanks. Immediately, the submersible began to settle. Richardson leaned over the controls and switched on a bank of exterior lights. Abruptly, the blackness outside the window was replaced by a storm of white bubbles.

"Constant One, Echo Tango Foxtrot on descent," he said into the mike.

"What's the depth of the Facility?" Crane asked.

"Just a shade over thirty-two hundred meters."

Crane did a quick mental conversion. Thirty-two hundred meters was over ten thousand feet. The Facility lay two miles beneath the surface.

Outside the porthole, the storm of bubbles slowly gave way to greenish ocean. Crane peered out, looking for fish, but all he could see was a few indistinct silvery shapes just beyond the circle of light.

Now that he was actually committed, he felt his curiosity swelling. As a distraction, he turned to Richardson. "How often do you make this trip?" he asked.

"Early on, when the Facility was coming online, we were making five, sometimes six trips a day. Full house each time. But now that the operation is nominal, weeks can pass without a single descent."

"But you still need to bring people up, right?"

"Nobody's come up. Not yet."

Crane was surprised by this. "Nobody?"

"No, sir."

Crane glanced back out the window. The bathyscaphe was descending rapidly, and the greenish cast of the water was quickly growing darker.

"What's it like inside?" he asked.

"Inside?" Richardson repeated.

"Inside the Facility."

"Never been inside."

Crane turned to look at him again in surprise.

"I'm just the taxi driver. The acclimation process is much too long for me to do any sightseeing. One day in and three days out, they say."

Crane nodded. Outside the window, the water had grown still darker, and the surrounding ocean was now streaked with some kind of particulate matter. They were descending at an accelerating rate, and he yawned to clear his ears. He'd done his share of crash dives in the service, and they'd always been rather tense: officers and crew standing around, grim faced, while the sub's hull creaked and groaned under the increasing pressure. But there was no groaning from the bathyscaphe-just the faint hiss of air and the whirring of instrument fans.

Now the blackness beyond the porthole was absolute. He peered down into the inky depths below. Somewhere down there lay a beyond-state-of-the-art facility-along with something else, something unknown, waiting for him beneath the silt and sand of the ocean floor.

As if on cue, Richardson reached for something beside his seat and passed it over. "Dr. Asher asked me to give you this. Said it might give you a bit to think about on the ride down."

It was a large blue envelope, sealed in two places and stamped with numerous warnings: CLASSIFIED. EYES ONLY. PROPRIETARY AND HIGHLY SECRET. At one corner was a government seal and a lot of small print full of dire warnings to whoever dared violate its confidentiality pact.

Crane turned the envelope over in his hands. Now that the moment had finally come, he felt a perverse reluctance to open it. He hesitated another moment, then carefully broke the seals and upended the envelope.

A laminated sheet and a small pamphlet dropped onto his lap. He picked up the sheet and glanced at it curiously. It was a schematic diagram of what appeared to be a large military installation, or perhaps a vessel, with the legend DECK 10-PERSONNEL QUARTERS (LOWER). He looked it over a moment, then put it aside and reached for the pamphlet.

The title Code of Classified Naval Conduct was stamped onto its cover. He flipped the pages, scanning the numerous articles and lists, then closed it with a snap. What was this, Asher's idea of a joke? He picked up the envelope and peered inside, preparing to put it aside.

Then he noticed a single folded paper stuck within. He pulled it out, unfolded it, and began to read. As he did so, he felt a strange tingle start at his fingertips and travel quickly until it had consumed his entire frame:

EXTRACT FOLLOWS

Ref No. ERF-10230a

Abstract: Atlantis

i. First recorded description

ii. Precipitating events for submergence (conjecture)

iii. Date of submergence: 9500 B.C.

Source: Plato, Timaeus dialogue

History tells of a mighty power which made an expedition against the whole of Europe. This power came out of an island in the Atlantic Ocean; it was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the route to other islands, and from these you might pass to the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean.

Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great empire which ruled over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent. But then there occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of misfortune the island of Atlantis disappeared far into the depths of the sea…

END OF EXTRACT

This brief quotation from Plato was all the sheet contained. But it was enough.

Crane let the document fall to his lap, staring out the porthole without seeing. This was Asher's coy welcome aboard-his way of telegraphing precisely what was being excavated two miles below the ocean's surface.

Atlantis.

It seemed beyond belief. And yet all the pieces fit: the secrecy, the technology, even the expense. It was the world's greatest mystery: the flourishing civilization of Atlantis, cut short in its prime by a cataclysmic eruption. A city beneath the sea. Who were its inhabitants? What secrets did they possess?

He waited, motionless in his seat, for the tingle of excitement to recede. And yet it did not. Perhaps, he decided, this was all a dream. Perhaps the alarm would go off in a few minutes, he'd wake up, and it would be just another sweltering day in North Miami. All this would evaporate and he'd be back to the old grind, trying to decide on a new research position. That had to be the answer. Because it wasn't possible he was descending to an ancient, long-hidden city or that he was about to become a participant in the most complex and important archaeological excavation of all time.

"Dr. Crane?"

At the sound of Richardson's voice, Crane roused himself abruptly.

"We're nearing the Facility," Richardson said.

"Already?"

"Yes, sir."

Crane glanced quickly out the porthole. At two miles down, the ocean was an intense silty black the exterior lights could barely penetrate. And yet there was a strange, ethereal glow that came-against all logic-from below, rather than above. He leaned closer, glanced downward, and caught his breath.

There, perhaps a hundred feet below them, lay a huge metallic dome, its perimeter buried in the sea floor. About halfway down its side, an open, circular tunnel about six feet across led inward, like the mouth of a funnel; otherwise, the surface was smooth and without blemish. There were no markings or insignia of any kind. It looked exactly like the crown of a gigantic silver marble, peeping up from a bed of sand. A bathyscaphe identical to the one he was in sat tethered to an escape hatch on the far side. At the dome's summit, a small forest of sensors and communications gear sprouted around a bulky object shaped like an inverted teacup. From all over the dome's surface, a thousand tiny lights winked up at him like jewels, flickering in and out in the deep ocean currents.

Hidden beneath this protective dome was Deep Storm: a cutting-edge city of technological marvels. And somewhere beneath Deep Storm-as ancient as the recovery Facility was new-lay the unknown mystery and promise of Atlantis.

Staring, entranced, Crane realized he was grinning like an idiot. He glanced over at Richardson. The petty officer was watching him and grinning, too.

"Welcome to Deep Storm, sir," he said.