Mirage

Geek spun three hundred sixty degrees, like a happy puppy circling after its tail.

Little Geek settled onto the ground next to him as if it wanted to be petted. It was then Juan saw the bundle Max had secured to the top of the ROV. He opened it and said a silent prayer of thanksgiving. Hanley thought of everything. His hands were numb to the point of uselessness, and he could barely guide a finger through the activation ring of a magnesium flare, but he managed.

The light was blinding white and would have scarred his retinas if he’d looked at it, but his head was turned away. He didn’t care about the light the flare threw off, only about the way it heated the water there in the lee of the mine tender’s boiler. He could feel the difference after only a few seconds. Also stuffed in the bag were chemical heat packets. He broke their seals to activate them and clamped them between his thighs and under his arms. Others he stuffed between his dry suit and buoyancy compensator directly over his heart.

He gave himself ten minutes to recover. By the time he was ready to go, the acrylic-domed Discovery 1000 with Eric Stone at the controls had joined him. Eric and Little Geek stayed with him during the mind-numbingly long ascent, hovering nearby as he went through hours-long decompression stops. Despite the cold and his exhaustion, he took it slow and safe. He knew he’d probably have to sleep in the Oregon’s cramped decompression tank with Mike, but one night was all he was willing to put in.

Most all the crew were lining the moon pool when he finally emerged from the ocean, and he was greeted with a standing ovation and wild cries and whoops. Max looked especially pleased with himself, and even the doc smiled over her professional concern for his well-being.

He was helped out of the water, and workers shucked his gear in record time.

“How are you feeling?” Julia Huxley asked, shouldering her way to his side. “Any symptoms?”

“I’m cold,” he stammered through chattering teeth. “I’m hungry, and I need a bathroom in the worst possible way.” He turned to Hanley, who was hovering right behind Julia. “I never doubted you.”

“Why would you?” Max said, all nonchalance. “I’ve never let you down before.”

“Thanks.”

“You can owe me.”

“Enough with the male bonding,” Hux cut in. “Juan, you’re going into decomp with Mike so I can monitor you both for signs of decompression sickness.”

“He and Eddie are okay?”

“Eddie has a possible concussion, and Mike’s fine. This is only a precaution.”

“Did he keep the sample of that framework or was this all for nothing?”

“I don’t know,” Hux replied, while, behind her, Max produced the sample with a conjurer’s flourish.

“Ta-da. Mark already took a quick look and says he has no idea what it is.”

Juan took the foot-long rod as he was hustled to the decompression chamber at the back wall of the sub bay. It had a rough texture, but unlike anything he’d held before. If he had to give a single-word description of its texture, he’d say “alien.”

He handed it back to Max. “Get me some answers.”

“Mark and Eric will be up all night on this one, that I guarantee. Now get into your sarcophagus with Mike, and I’ll have the kitchen send down some food. Should be interesting to see Maurice give white-glove service through an air lock.”

Juan stepped through the heavy door to the first section of the two-part steel chamber and had a seat on the thinly padded bench. The air pressure would be brought up to about half of what he and Mike had experienced on the bottom, and then he could enter the second chamber, where Trono now waited. The facilities were primitive and stark, looking like something out of a 1960s Navy training film, but, for safety’s sake, Juan didn’t mind putting himself through the tedium.

He cleared his ears as the pressure in the chamber rose, ran through what had happened over the past hours, and chalked it up as the luckiest escape of his life.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Dr. Huxley released the two divers at seven thirty the following morning. Cabrillo went straight to his cabin, noting that the weather was picking up and causing a pronounced roll as he walked the corridors. He’d spent thirty minutes in the tiny shower closet in the decompression chamber to warm up, so he took another brief shower and shaved using the same straight razor his grandfather had used for forty years as a barber. After patting both the blade and his face dry, he threw on a touch of aftershave, dressed in chinos and a black mock turtleneck, and headed to the mess for breakfast. He stopped first at his desk for his tablet to check their position and noted they were making good time on their rendezvous with the Emir’s yacht, the Sakir.

He took a table in the middle of the dining room and had barely settled before Maurice poured him coffee in a bone china cup.

“Good morning, Captain.” As an ex — Royal Navy man, the chief steward didn’t abide by the team’s corporate structure and never referred to Juan as Chairman. The Oregon was a ship. Cabrillo was in charge. He was, therefore, Captain. “No ill effects from your adventure?”

“Other than a sore back from sleeping on a lousy cot, I’m fine. Thank you.” He sipped at the strong coffee with appreciation. “And now I’m even better. Whatever you bring me for breakfast, double the amount of sausage, please.”

“Have you checked your cholesterol recently?”

“Hux cleared me for double rations of morning pork just last week.”

“Very good, Captain.”

Eric and Mark entered the sedate dining room with the propriety of charging rhinos, spotted the Chairman, and rushed right over. Both wore the same clothes they’d had on the night before and had the wired jittery look of people about to overdose on caffeine.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Juan said broadly. “What has you two buzzing like a couple of bees?”

“Red Bull and research,” Mark replied.

Cabrillo dropped his pretense of disinterest and asked, “What is that material?”

Eric spoke first. “Something that was just discovered a few years ago.”

“It’s a metamaterial,” Mark said as if that was an explanation.

“That means…”

“It’s a material engineered almost at a nanoscale. Its design is what gives it its unique properties, like manipulating light or sound waves.”

“Think of the egg cartons garage bands put up to deaden echoes in their practice spaces. Multiply that by a hundred, and then shrink it down to the nanoscale. The material maintains the precise angles to deflect about anything you want.”

“Would it deaden sound?” Cabrillo asked, thinking he understood.

“Absolutely, only in frequencies we can’t hear.”

Juan realized he didn’t get it at all. “What’s the point?”

“Their shape gives them properties that they wouldn’t normally have. Like the reflective panels on the stealth fighter. Its shape, not the composition of its skin, gives it its stealth characteristics.”

“The skin has stealth properties too,” Mark corrected automatically, because any deviation from absolute truth drove him nuts.

“I’m trying to make a point, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine.”

“So what does this particular metamaterial do?”

“No idea,” Eric said.

“Not a clue,” Murph chimed. “The design of the entire frame determines its exact purpose. The metamaterial makes it happen.”

“Could it bend light around the ship? Make it invisible?”

“Possibly. Or it could work on an electromagnetic wavelength.”