into trouble as he approached the narrow opening in the coral. The water surged in and out of the break to create a barrier of turbulence that tossed the lightweight boat around like a rubber duck in a bathtub.
Paddling vigorously, Austin brought the bow around and charged into the opening, but again failed to muster the power necessary to overcome the crosscurrents. He made another try. This time, he yelled, “Once more unto the breach,” but the inspired words of Shakespeare’s Henry V were no match for the power of the sea. All he got for his trouble was a mouthful of seawater.
After his failed attempts, Austin admitted to himself that the sea was just playing with him, and he paddled away from the reef to reconnoiter. As the inflatable rocked in the waves, he caught his breath. Then he extracted a lightweight, electric-powered outboard motor and battery from the pack, clamped the motor to the platform, and punched IGNITION. Except for a soft hum, the motor was almost silent. He goosed the throttle and aimed the inflatable’s blunt bow at the creamy surf welling up around the opening in the reef.
The inflatable bounced, fishtailed, and yawed. For a second, Austin gritted his teeth, thinking he was going to be thrown sideways into the jagged coral. Then the outboard’s propeller blades caught water, and the inflatable squeezed through the opening and glided into the peaceful lagoon.
Austin quickly killed the motor and waited. Five minutes passed, and there was nothing to indicate he had been detected. No blinding searchlights, no hail of bullets, to herald his arrival.
Austin took the lack of a warm reception as an invitation to stay. He dug his scuba gear out of the pack, buckling on his lightweight air tank and buoyancy compensator. He checked his GPS and saw that the inflatable had been thrown slightly off course after passing through the reef.
He began to paddle, until the little black triangle on the GPS’s screen showed he was back on course. A few minutes later, the triangle merged with the circle marking where the satellite showed the dark streak in the lagoon. The submarine he had seen in the satellite image seemed to have sprung from the floor of the lagoon before it vanished magically from sight. The inexplicable disappearance of the Typhoon suggested that there was more to the lagoon than met the eye. Austin had no logical reason to assume the lagoon’s waters were not as shallow as they looked from space, but he look no chances, and had borrowed a tank containing a Trimix mixture from the NUMA research vessel in the event that he had to make a deeper dive than expected.
Austin pulled on his face mask and fins, chomped on his regulator mouthpiece, hoisted himself belly down onto the inflatable’s right pontoon, then rolled off into the lagoon.
Water seeped between the neoprene and his skin and gave him a momentary chill until it warmed to an insulating body temperature. He held on to the side of the inflatable for a few seconds, then he pushed himself away, jackknifed as he dove under the surface, and descended about twenty feet.
As Austin neared the floor of the lagoon, he reached out with his gloved right hand. Instead of touching sand, his fingers pushed against a soft, yielding surface. His coral-blue eyes narrowed behind the lens of the mask. He removed the glove, and discovered that what he thought was sand overgrown with marine life was a loosely woven net covered with an irregular pattern of colors.
Austin slid his knife from its sheath on his thigh, pressed the point into the fabric, and pushed. With only slight pressure, the blade penetrated the net. He sawed a cut in the net several inches long, withdrew the blade, returned it to its sheath, and glided over the fake ocean botton until he came to where he had seen the streak in the satellite picture.
He saw from a few inches away that the streak was in fact a partially mended tear in the fake bottom. The uneven nylon stitching looked as if it had been done hastily.
Austin unhooked a dive light from his vest.
Holding the light straight out in front of him, Austin squirmed through the opening. He brought his body straight up, paddling with his fins as if he were on a bicycle, and spun around slowly. About midway through his three-sixty pivot, he halted and stared with wonder.
About a hundred feet away was a massive object, faintly illuminated by wavy starlight filtering through the net. No details were clearly visible, but it was obviously an enormous submarine.
Austin instinctively switched the light off, even though it seemed unlikely that anybody aboard the sub was aware of his insignificant presence.
He swam away from the submarine, and saw pinpoints sparkling in the darkness below. He angled his body and dove straight down, only to stop after a few moments to stare at a line of glowing blue objects.
About six of them floated across his path of descent. He waited until the deadly jellyfish were out of range, then dove again toward the bottom. As he dove down, he saw that the lights that had first caught his attention were beacons on the tops of four large spheres built around a hemispheric hub. Each rested on four spindly legs with disk-shaped footings that resembled the legs of a spider.
The metal surface of the globes was unbroken with the exception of one sphere which had a transparent dome. Austin swam closer to the sphere and saw two people under the dome. One was a dark-haired woman and the other was Zavala.
The two were sitting in chairs, apparently deep in conversation. Zavala didn’t seem to be in any trouble, and, from the look on his face he was enjoying himself. Austin guffawed, the deep laugh coming out as a series of noisy bubbles. Only Joe Zavala could find an attractive woman at the bottom of the sea.
While Austin was trying to make sense of the scene under the dome, the woman looked straight up at him and stared. He peeled off like a fighter plane, swam down to the bottom and under the sphere, then toward the hemispheric hub. He remembered from the diagram that the hub was the transportation module. It had an airlock at the top of it for the cargo shuttle.
He swam under the module past four submersibles hanging from the bottom of the hemisphere, and found the hatch that allowed divers access to the module. He inflated the buoyancy compensator. Air from the tank flowed into the vest and he began a slow rise. At the same time, he removed the waterproof pouch holding the Bowen from his pack. He figured he could have the pistol out and ready to fire within five seconds of surfacing. With the element of surprise, that should give him the edge he needed.
Austin’s head broke the surface of the airlock pool inside the hemisphere. He pushed his mask up on his forehead, glanced quickly around, and saw that the Bowen wouldn’t be needed and could stay in its pouch for now. The circular room was deserted.
He swam over to a ladder and put the pouch on the edge of the pool, making sure it was within easy reach. Then he slipped out of his weight belt, fins, and tank and set them next to the pouch. He climbed out, retrieved the Bowen from its pouch, and hung his scuba gear on a hook next to four other sets of dry gear. Then he listened for a minute at the only door.
All was quiet. Austin’s Bowen filled one hand, and his other pressed the wall switch. The door slid quietly open. Austin set off along a corridor, determined to stir up some trouble.
It didn’t take long.
He came to a door marked RESOURCE CULTIVATION SECTION. He opened it and stepped into a twilit chamber that was circular in shape, the walls lined with fish tanks that contained various jellyfish. But it was the larger, chest-high, circular tank at the center of the room that caught his attention.
It contained at least a dozen giant jellyfish. Their bell-shaped bodies were nearly a yard across, and their tentacles were short, thick, and ropy rather than the delicate streaming filaments seen on most jellyfish. They glowed with a pulsating neon blue that provided the sole illumination in the room.
He saw a movement that didn’t come from inside the tank. A distorted face was reflected in the curving glass surface. Absorbed by the strange forms in the central tank, Austin had let himself get sloppy.
The Bowen dangled at the end of his arm near his thigh. He whirled and raised the gun, but the powerfully built guard who had been quietly stalking Austin brought the metal stock of his machine pistol down and it hit the flesh inside of Austin’s wrist. The Bowen flew from his fingers and clattered on the floor, and a fiery pain shot up to his shoulder.
Austin’s right arm was momentarily useless, but with his left hand he reached up and grabbed the machine pistol. As he tried to wrench the weapon from the man’s grasp, his assailant pushed him back against the tank. He slammed against the glass wall, but Austin kept a tight grip on the gun, pushed it up and away from his body, and managed to twist the machine pistol away. His fingers lacked the strength to hold on to the weapon, and it splashed into the tank. The giant jellyfish scattered in every direction.
Both men stared at the lost weapon, but Austin was the first to rally. He kept his useless arm close to his side,
