Riptide

The Captain stepped across the gap into the shaft, then helped the others across. They found themselves in a long, narrow tunnel, perhaps five feet high and three feet across, shored with massive timbers similar to those in the Water Pit itself. Neidelman took a small knife from his pocket and stuck it into one of the timbers. 'Soft for a half inch, and then solid,' he said, replacing the knife. 'Looks safe.'

They moved forward cautiously, stooping in the low tunnel. Neidelman stopped frequently to test the solidity of the beams. The tunnel ran straight ahead for fifty yards. Suddenly, the Captain stopped and gave a low whistle.

Glancing ahead, Hatch could see a curious stone chamber, perhaps fifteen feet in diameter. It appeared to have eight sides, each side ending in arches that rose to a groined ceiling. In the center of the floor was an iron grating, puffy with rust, covering an unguessably deep hole. They stood in the entrance to this chamber, each breath adding more mist to the gathering miasma. The quality of the air had grown sharply worse, and Hatch found himself becoming slightly lightheaded. Faint noises came from below the central grate: the whisperings of water, perhaps, or the settling of earth.

Bonterre was flashing her light along the ceiling. 'Mon dieu,' she breathed, 'a classic example of the English Baroque style. A little crude, perhaps, but unmistakable.'

Neidelman gazed at the ceiling. 'Yes,' he said, 'you can actually see the hand of Sir William here. Look at that tierceron and lierne work: remarkable.'

'Remarkable to think it's been here all this time, a hundred feet beneath the earth,' Hatch said. 'But what was it for?'

'If I had to guess,' Bonterre said, 'I would say the room served some kind of hydraulic function, yes?' She blew a long cloud of mist toward the center of the room. They all watched as it glided toward the grate, then was suddenly sucked down into the depths.

'We'll figure it out when we've mapped all this,' said Neidelman. 'For now, let's set two sensors, here and here.' He tapped the sensors into joints between the stones on opposite sides of the room, then rose and glanced at his gas meter. 'Carbon dioxide levels are getting a little high,' he said. 'I think perhaps we ought to cut this visit short.'

They returned to the central shaft to find that Wopner had almost caught up with them. 'There are two sensors in a room at the end of this tunnel,' Neidelman said to him, placing a second flag in the shaft's mouth.

Above, Wopner mumbled something unintelligible, his back to them as he worked with his palmtop computer. Hatch found that if he stayed in one place too long, his breath collected into a cloud of fog around his head, making it difficult to see.

'Dr. Magnusen,' Neidelman spoke into his radio. 'Status, please.'

'Dr. Rankin is getting a few seismic anomalies on the monitors, Captain, but nothing serious. It could well be the weather.' As if in response, a low crump of thunder echoed faintly down the shaft.

'Understood.' Neidelman turned to Bonterre and Hatch. 'Let's get to the bottom and tag the rest of the shafts.'

Once again, they began their descent. As Hatch moved past the hundred-foot platform toward the base of the Water Pit, he found his arms and legs beginning to shake from weariness and cold.

'Take a look at this,' Neidelman said, swiveling his light around. 'Another well-constructed tunnel, directly below the first. No doubt this is part of the original workings, as well.' Bonterre placed a sensor into the nearby joist, and they began moving again.

Suddenly, there was a sharp intake of breath beneath Hatch, and he heard Bonterre mutter a fervent curse. He looked down, and his heart leaped immediately into his mouth.

Below him, tangled in a massive snarl of junk, lay a partially skeletonized corpse, draped in chains and rusting iron, the eyeless sockets of its skull flickering crazily in the light of Bonterre's headlamp. Ribbons of clothing hung from its shoulders and hips, and its jaw hung open as if laughing at some hilarious joke. Hatch felt a curious feeling of displacement, a detached sensation, even as part of his brain realized that the skeleton was far too big to be that of his brother. Looking away and trembling violently, he leaned against the ladder, fighting to get his breath and heartbeat under control, concentrating on the rush of air into, and out of, his lungs.

'Malin!' came the urgent voice of Bonterre. 'Malin! This skeleton is very old. Comprends? Two hundred years old, at least.'

Hatch waited another long moment, breathing, until he was sure he could answer. 'I understand,' he said. Slowly, he unlocked his arm from the titanium rung. Then, equally slowly, he lowered first one foot, then the other, until he was level with Bonterre and Neidelman.

The Captain played his light over the skeleton, fascinated, oblivious to Hatch's reaction. 'Look at the design of this shirt,' he said. 'Homespun, raglan seams, a common garment among early nineteenth-century fishermen. I believe we've found the body of Simon Rutter, the Pit's original victim.' They stared at the skeleton until a distant rumble of thunder broke the spell.

The Captain wordlessly aimed his headlamp beneath his feet. Following the beam with his own, Hatch could now make out their final destination: the bottom of the Water Pit itself. A huge snarl of broken crosspieces, rusting iron, hoses, gears, rods, and all manner of machinery poked up out of a pool of mud and silt perhaps twenty feet beneath them. Directly above the snarl, Hatch could see several large shaftways converge onto the main Pit, damp seaweed and kelp dangling like steaming beards from their mouths. Neidelman moved his light around the wildly tangled ruin. Then he turned back to Bonterre and Hatch, his slender form haloed in the chill mist of his own breath.

'Perhaps fifty feet beneath that wreckage,' he said in a low voice, 'lies a two-billion-dollar treasure.' Though his eyes moved between them restlessly, they appeared to be focusing on something far beyond. Then he began to laugh, a low, soft, curious laugh. 'Fifty feet,' he repeated. 'And all we have to do now is dig'

Suddenly, the radio crackled. 'Captain, this is Streeter.' To Hatch, listening in his headpiece, the dry voice had a note of urgency in it. 'We've got a problem here.'

'What?' the Captain said, his voice hard, the dreamlike quality suddenly gone.

There was a pause, then Streeter came on again. 'Captain, we—just a minute, please—we recommend that