Dragon

Except for their separate control consoles mounted around the inner diameter of the sphere, they had an unobstructed 180-degree view ahead. The transparent polymer with the thin threading of titanium made vision equal to that of the resolution on a large-screen television set.

Salazar paid no attention to the blackness or the occasional luminescent fish that swam outside, he was more concerned about what they would find on the bottom. Plunkett monitored the depth and the life-support instruments, watching carefully for any bugs as the pressure increased and the temperature dropped with every passing moment.

The Invincible carried no backup submersible in case of an emergency. If disaster unexpectedly occurred and they somehow became wedged in rocks or the equipment malfunctioned, preventing Old Gert‘s return to the surface, they could jettison the control sphere and allow it to sail to the surface like a giant bubble. But it was a complex system never tested under high-pressure conditions. A failure here and they had no hope for rescue, only the certainty of death by suffocation and a lost grave deep in the eternal night of the abyss.

A small eel-like fish slithered past, its luminous body giving off flashes of light as though a stream of traffic was passing around a series of curves. The teeth were incredibly long in proportion to its head and fanged like a Chinese dragon’s. Fascinated with the interior light of the submersible, it swam up to the control sphere unafraid and cast a ghostly eye inside.

Stacy aimed her battery of still and video cameras and caught it in seven lenses before it was gone. “Can you imagine that thing if it was twenty feet long?” she murmured in awe.

“Fortunately blackdragons live in the depths,” said Plunkett. “The pressure of deep water prevents them from growing more than several centimeters.”

Stacy hit the exterior lights, and the blackness was suddenly transformed into a green haze. The void was empty. No life was to be seen. The blackdragon was gone. She turned off the lights to conserve the batteries.

The humidity rose inside the sphere, and the increasing cold began to seep through the thick walls. Stacy watched the goose bumps rise on her arms. She looked up, clutched her shoulders with her hands, and made a shivering gesture. Plunkett caught the signal and turned on a small heating unit that barely held off the chill.

The two hours it took to reach the bottom would have passed tediously if everyone hadn’t been busy at their own jobs. Plunkett found a comfortable position, and watched the sonar monitor and the echo sounder. He also kept a wary eye on the electrical and oxygen-level gauges. Salazar kept busy plotting their probe grid once they reached the bottom, while Stacy kept trying to catch the denizens of the deep off guard with her cameras.

Plunkett preferred the strains of Johann Strauss for stereo background music, but Stacy insisted on using her “new age” music in the cassette player. She claimed it was soothing and less stressful. Salazar called it “waterfall” music but went along.

Jimmy Knox’s voice from the Invincible sounded ghostly as it filtered down on the underwater acoustic telephone.

“Bottom in ten minutes,” he announced. “You’re closing a bit fast.”

“Righto,” replied Plunkett. “I have it on sonar.”

Salazar and Stacy turned from their work and stared at the sonar screen. The digital enhancement showed the seabed in contoured three dimensions. Plunkett’s gaze darted from the screen into the water and back again. He trusted the sonar and computer, but not ahead of his own vision.

“Be on your guard,” Knox alerted them. “You’re dropping alongside the walls of a canyon.”

“I have it,” returned Plunkett. “The cliffs plunge into a wide valley.” He reached for a switch and dropped one of the ballast weights to slow the descent. Thirty meters from the bottom he dropped one more, giving the submersible almost perfect neutral buoyancy. Next he engaged the three thrusters mounted on the outer ends of the lower spheres.

The bottom slowly materialized through the jade gloom into a broken uneven slope. Strange black rock that was folded and twisted into grotesque shapes spread as far as they could see.

“We’ve come down beside a lava flow,” said Plunkett. “The edge is about a kilometer ahead. After that it’s another three hundred-meter drop to the valley floor.”

“I copy,” replied Knox.

“What are all those wormy rocks?” asked Stacy.

“Pillow lava,” answered Salazar. “Made when fiery lava strikes the cold sea. The outer shell cools, forming a tube through which the molten lava keeps flowing.”

Plunkett kicked in the altitude-positioning system that automatically kept the submersible four meters above the bottom slope. As they glided across the scarred features of the plateau, they spotted the trails of deep crawlers in scattered pools of silt, perhaps from brittle stars, shrimp, or deep-dwelling sea cucumbers that lurked in the darkness beyond the lights.

“Get ready,” said Plunkett. “We’re about to head down.”

A few seconds after his warning, the bottom dropped away into blackness again and the sub nosed over and fell deeper, maintaining its distance of four meters from the steep drop of the canyon walls.

“I have you at five-three-six-zero meters,” echoed Knox’s voice over the underwater phone.

“Righto, I read the same,” replied Plunkett.

“When you reach the valley floor,” said Knox, “you’ll be on the plain of the fracture zone.”

“Stands to reason,” Plunkett muttered, his attention focused on his control panel, computer screen, and a video monitor now showing the terrain below Old Gert‘s landing skids. “There’s no bloody place left to go.”

Twelve minutes passed, and then a flat bottom loomed up ahead and the sub leveled out again. Underwater particles swirled by the sphere, driven by a light current like flakes of snow. Ripples of sand stretched in front of the circular lit pattern from the lights. The sand was not empty. Thousands of black objects, roundly shaped like old cannonballs, littered the seabed in a thick layer.

“Manganese nodules,” explained Salazar as though tutoring. “No one knows exactly how they formed, although it’s suspected sharks’ teeth or whale ear bones may form the nucleus.”

“They worth anything?” asked Stacy, activating her camera systems.

“Besides the manganese, they’re valued for smaller quantities of cobalt, copper, nickel, and zinc. I’d guess this concentration could run for hundreds of miles across the fracture zone and be worth as high as eight million dollars a square kilometer.”

“Providing you could scoop it up from the surface, five and a half kilometers away,” Plunkett added.

Salazar instructed Plunkett on what direction to explore as Old Gert soared silently over the nodule-carpeted sand. Then something gleamed off to their port side. Plunkett banked slightly toward the object.

“What do you see?” asked Salazar, looking up from his instruments.

Stacy peered downward. “A ball!” she exclaimed. “A huge metal ball with strange-looking cleats. I’d guess it to measure three meters in diameter.”

Plunkett dismissed it. “Must have fallen off a ship.”

“Not too long ago, judging from the lack of corrosion,” commented Salazar.

Suddenly they sighted a wide strip of clear sand that was totally devoid of nodules. It was as though a giant vacuum cleaner had made a swath through the middle of the field.

“A straight edge!” exclaimed Salazar. “There’s no such thing as prolonged straight edges on the seafloor.”

Stacy stared in astonishment. “Too perfect, too precise to be anything but manmade.”

Plunkett shook his head. “Impossible, not at this depth. No engineering company in the world has the capability to mine the abyss.”

“And no geological disturbance I ever heard of could form a clean road across the seabed,” stated Salazar firmly.

“Those indentations in the sand that run along the borders look like they might match that huge ball we found.”

“Okay,” muttered Plunkett skeptically. “What kind of equipment can sweep the bottom this deep?”

“A giant hydraulic dredge that sucks up the nodules through pipes to a barge on the surface,” theorized Salazar. “The idea has been tossed around for years.”