Dane cut him off. “We’re going to be living this theory, Professor. How good a theory is it?”
It was Ahana who answered. “I will be living it also, as I will be accompanying you on this reconnaissance. The theory is as good as we can make it with the information we have. Somewhere inside those gates is the true gate, the access point to the other side, which we are calling the portal.”
“The black hole that Flaherty came through,” Dane said. The elevator was still going down, rock walls sliding by. “That was a portal.”
“As was the black hole you went through, traveling from Cambodia to the Scorpion,” Ahana said. “That along with Foreman’s high-frequency experiments years ago, indicated the gates are connected in some way. The connection between the Chernobyl and Devil’s Sea’s probes again proves that; we’ve been able to gather considerable data.”
“How come the Shadow hasn’t shut down the probes?” Dane asked.
Nagoya shrugged. “We don’t know. But I suspect that they haven’t even really noticed them. Think about it. The Shadow has been attacking our world for millennia. We’ve barely been able to defeat it with help from the Ones Before. I would imagine there is a degree of arrogance on the part of the Shadow that may blind it to the possibility of us crossing to its side.”
“You’re giving it human qualities,” Dane noted.
“You’re correct,” Nagoya noted. “And that may be denigrating the intelligence that is over there. Bringing it down to our level.”
“You sound like you admire it,” Dane said.
“I can admire its capabilities, not its goals,” Nagoya said.
“Back to gates,” Foreman cut off the discussion. “The connections between them?” he prompted Ahana.
“You might consider these connections wormholes,” she said. “Whether the other side is a separate dimension or another planet, we don’t know, but what the probes allowed us to do is have a direction and a destination. We tracked the path the Devil’s Sea probe took as it went into the gate, and once you go into the gate, you should be able to pick up the path between portals, which will give a destination or at least an idea where one of these wormholes are. More importantly, the probes gave us the data we need to make a device that we believe can open a portal if we can tap into sufficient power. An interesting aspect is that there is time variance on the data.”
“Which means?” Dane asked.
“That time is a variable on the other side,” Ahana said. “We’ve even had some of our data time-reversed, as if time was going backward at certain points.”
“That would explain Flaherty and the Scorpion,” Dane noted.
The American officer, Loomis spoke up. “We’ll be using a specially modified prototype attack craft designed for the SEALS for the reconnaissance. Waterproof, airtight. Able to go on land or water. Heavily armed. It’s called the Crab for Combat Reconnaissance Assault Boat.”
Dane remembered some of the creatures that had attacked his team in the Angkor gate over thirty years ago. He wondered how well this Crab would stand up against them. Before anyone could say anything else, the elevator came to a halt.
“This way,” Nagoya pointed. “We have to transfer to another elevator.”
“How deep is this place?” Colonel Shashenka asked.
“Three miles down,” Nagoya said as they followed him.
“We’re also going to use biotechnology,” Loomis continued.
“What does that mean?” Dane asked.
“Project Rachel,” Loomis said.
Dane waited, letting the military man feel superior by giving out information in pieces.
“Rachel is something the Navy has been working on for a long time. She’s a Pacific dolphin, specially trained to follow commands and make a modicum of contact with humans. She will expand our reconnaissance abilities. Since there seems to be a problem using electromagnetic equipment around the gates, Rachel will give you an organic capability that shouldn’t draw unwanted attention.”
Dane remembered the beach and the dolphins. He glanced at Foreman, but the CIA man didn’t seem to make any connection.
“And once we complete the recon?” Dane asked. “Let’s say we find the portal. You said you had the means to open it if you could tap into enough power.”
Nagoya nodded. “Yes, We mean to draw power out of the gate to allow us to turn it around to open the portal.”
“And how do you plan to draw that power our?” Dane asked.
“With an extension cord,” Ahana said.
“What’s the plug?” Dane asked.
“We are,” she answered.
“This is getting smarter and smarter,” Dane said. “Then what happens?”
“Then we go through,” Loomis said. “We have forces assembling; as do the Russians,” he acknowledged his Russian comrade in arms.
“What kind of forces?” Dane asked.
“Whatever we can get through,” Loomis said. “That’s another reason why we’re running a recon first.”
Dane could sense the confidence of the military men. They believed in the power of their weapons, but he wasn’t as sure they would be successful. Their weapons were designed for human enemies. The second elevator came to a halt, and they followed Nagoya to his lab.
He pointed to a monitor that showed a solid black triangle. “This is Devil’s Sea gate. It has assumed this size, approximately four miles on each side, and visual reports indicate the perimeter is delineated by solid black.”
He nodded to Ahana, who sat down in front of the keyboard and typed in some commands. A small red dot appeared near the bottom of the triangle. “That is the pod,” he said. “It is transmitting muons, but a slightly different pattern than the gates are transmitting. It is the first time we have successfully sent anything into a gate and been able to receive a report.”
“Other than the few people who’ve come back out,” Dane said.
“Ah…” Nagoya was obviously embarrassed. “Yes, that is true. My apologies. What is curious is that Chernobyl seems to be providing the power that is coming out of the Devil’s Sea gate.”
“So the Shadow is once more using something we invented against us,” Dane said.
“It appears so.”
“How soon will your recon craft be ready by the gate?” Foreman asked Loomis.
“Six hours.”
Ahana changed the display, and he could see another black triangle with another red dot inside, not far from the Dnieper River.
“How did you get your probe in?” Dane asked the Russian.
“A brave volunteer,” Shashenka said.
“Right.” Dane glared at Foreman who ignored him. “Did the gate there cause the problems at Chernobyl?”
“Yes,” Shashenka said. “We have kept it tightly classified, but the gate tapped into the core of Reactor Four. When we tried to shut it down, it was too late, and the reactor went critical. And the volunteer was my brother,” he added giving Dane a hard look.
“I’m sorry,” Dane said.
“He was dying of cancer,” Shashenka said. “Our brother was an engineer at the reactor and was killed when it went critical. My brother felt it was his duty to give his life in a meaningful way to avenge Andrej’s death rather than dying by wasting away.”
“Then he was indeed a brave volunteer,” Dane said. “My apologies.”
“Your apologies are accepted,” Shashenka said.
“Why is the gate at Chernobyl different?” Dane asked.
“A good question,” Shashenka said. “Our Professor Kolkov believes one of the major purposes, perhaps the major purpose, is to gather energy from our world. The Chernobyl gate might be smaller because the small size sitting over the core of Reactor Four is sufficient to get the power needed. The other gates might have to be larger in order to accomplish the same thing.
“Kolkov analyzed data taken during the construction of the Chernobyl Reactor, and found some anomalies. He believes that the gate was there but no
t active during construction. The data were quite strange. There were signs of radioactivity at the site prior to the first tree being cut down.”
Ahana spoke up. “Since we are considering time to be a variable inside the gates, it is possible that radiation that comes from the gate is moving backward and forward in time from the point of the tap into the core.”
“What are you talking about?” Dane demanded.
Ahana pointed to her right. ‘Our time is going this way. But what if the Shadow’s time inside the Chernobyl gate is going that way also,” she pointed in the opposite direction.
“So the energy tap could be for energy the Shadow has already used?” Dane asked, trying to understand.
“We know some of the energy is being sent to the Devil’s Sea gate in our present,” Ahana said. “But there is also the possibility that the energy is being spread through not only space but time.”
Dane considered that. “That means Chernobyl could be a very critical node to the Shadow.”
Ahana nodded. “If we could get a better understanding of the entire gate and portal system, it would help.”
Dane thought they were focusing too much on the scientific aspects of all of this. “What purposes do you think the gates have other than gathering energy?” he asked.
“Besides trying to destroy our world?” Foreman asked. “Obviously they gather humans and our vessels as the graveyard in the Bermuda Triangle showed.”
“We saw the vessels, and some of them had been cannibalized. But what do they do with the people they take?” Dane wondered.
There was no response to that.
* * *
A scream woke Pytor Shashenka from a nightmare into an even worse reality. Why was he still alive? Why hadn’t the radiation taken him? How could he be alive after what had been done to him?
The scream echoed in the cavern. Out of the corner of his eye he could see one of the strange creatures moving about. He had no energy to turn and look, and he didn’t want to see what it was doing to whoever was screaming.
He was glad Andrej had died in the explosion and not been brought here.
One of the creatures paused in front of him. It had something metallic in its claw. It jabbed forward, and Pytor felt something go into the middle of his chest, then be withdrawn.
He passed out once more.
* * *
In the southeast Pacific, a quarter-mile-thick-crust of solid igneous rock had covered a mile-wide chasm between the Pacific and Nazca tectonic plates for millennia. An empty chasm extended two miles down below the cap to red- hot lava coming out of the Earth’s mantle. Even though the gap was growing bigger year by year, the rate had been slow enough to allow discreet adjustments.
The muonic probing from the Devil’s Sea gate changed that in an instant. As the power moved through the covering rock, a section gave way, causing a cascading effect along a forty-mile stretch.
That far under the ocean, the effect was hardly noticeable, even though the power that was expended was tremendous. However, as the power reached the surface, a wave began to form, very long in length and low in height heading for the westward side of South America at seven hundred miles an hour.
* * *
“What’s the limit on weaponry?” Dane asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you authorized to use nuclear weapons through the gates?” Dane clarified his question.
“The Shadow has used nuclear weapons,” Foreman said.
“I take that as a yes,” Dane said. He turned to Nagoya. “Since you don’t know exactly what’s over there or how the gates are connected, you have no clue what the use of a nuclear weapon will do inside of a gate or portal, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” Nagoya admitted.
“It’s war,” Foreman said simply. “You don’t use a hammer when you can use a battering ram.”
“At what point will you decide to use nukes?” Dane asked.
“When we have determined they’re needed,” Foreman said.
“I hope that doesn’t occur while we’re still in the gate,” Dane said.
“Of course not,” Foreman replied. “This is a reconnaissance mission.”
“What else do you have?” Dane asked Nagoya, knowing it was a waste to extract promises from Foreman.
“The Shadow has been probing constantly,” the Japanese scientist answered. “We’ve been analyzing the pattern of the probes, and while it is covering the entire Ring of fire, there are two key points that the Shadow seems to be paying particular attention to.” He nodded at Ahana, who once more changed the display on the monitor.
“Here,” she pointed. “Mount Wrangell in Alaska. The northernmost volcano on the Ring of Fire. And here.” She changed the view. “Mount Erebus, in Antarctica. The southernmost volcano.”
“I think you need to clue Ariana in on this,” Dane suggested to Foreman.
“We have our experts,” Foreman said.
“Ariana has been inside a gate,” Dane pointed out. “That gives her an insight your experts don’t have. She also has a degree in geology and a lot of practical experience.”
“I’ve already forwarded the data to her.”
“Back to opening the portal,” Dane said. “What’s the plan?”
Ahana pulled a folder out and opened it. “We have our people specially modifying this craft.”
A long, thin craft, almost looking like a pencil, was next to a dock in the picture. The front end of it was bulbous.
“What is it?”
“It’s called a FLIP,” Ahana said. “Floating Instrument Panel. The government began working on it, adding a superkamiokande to the bow” —she tapped the bulb—“about six months ago. There was concern that this site might be targeted by the Shadow, and it was felt it might be good to have a mobile detector.
“It’s over two hundred meters long and has no engines. It gets towed to wherever we want to set up. Then ballast is shifted to the bow, and it goes underwater. The bow sinks, while the stern remains above water until it’s vertical, like this,” she turned the picture, bow facing down. “About twenty meters off the stern, where our control center is located, remains dry. The floor rotates as the entire ship does.”
“And what will having a detector on scene do for us?” Dane asked.
“We’re not going to detect,” Professor Nagoya said. “We’re going to transmit. This is the other end of the extension cord. We’re going to lock on the Devil’s Sea probe coming out of the portal and transmit a beam of muons into the gate, into the probe, toward the Chernobyl probe. What we’re hoping to do is tap into the forces at work inside the gate; the weak and strong forces, and then draw them out to us and use them to open the gate and portal.”
Dane had little idea what Nagoya was talking about, and he could tell the military men didn’t either.
“We’ve got support from a carrier task force,” Colonel Loomis trilled in. “The Crab will be launched off the deck of the Grayback, our special operations submarine. The Grayback will remain on station for recovery, five kilometers outside the perimeter of the gate.”
“When do we go?” Dane asked.
“Everything will be ready tomorrow night,” Foreman said. “Tonight, we deploy to the task force.”
“Why don’t’ we check out the graveyard tomorrow then?” Dane suggested. “As long as we aren’t sending out a signal like Deepflight did, we should be safe doing that.”
“Why do you want to check that?” Foreman asked.
“We found that Atlantean ship in the Bermuda Triangle graveyard,” Dave said. “And the Viking ship. Who knows what might be in there? Perhaps your brother’s plane.” He could see that last thought hit home.
“All right,” Foreman agreed. “I’ll arrange a submersible to be ready.”
“How long do we have on the Ring of Fire?” Dane asked Ahana.
“It’s hard to tell,” she said. “So far, it just probing. We’re not even sure if the probing will lead
to anything.”
“Ours will,” Dane noted. “I would assume theirs will, too.”
* * *
Ariana Michelet felt like a ghoul, carrying a satchel containing six crystal skulls into her father’s Learjet. She had Van Liten’s five plus the one from the museum. She put the bag in the seat across from her, then instructed the pilot to take off. She was going from New York to London, were Van Liten had told her another skull was being held by the museum there.
The fax machine on the other side of the plane began spitting out pieces of paper, and Ariana went over to check them, ignoring the Fasten Seat Belt sign, and staggering slightly as the plane accelerated down the runway at JFK International.
She recognized what was on the papers as she scanned: muonic imagery from Nagoya’s superkamiokande. She sat back down and traced the lines. She immediately noted the probing around the Ring of Fire and the focus on Mounts Erebus and Wrangell.
She accessed her geological database and looked at Erebus first. It was the second-highest peak in Antarctica, surpassed only by the Vinson Massif. It was also an active volcano, overlooking the largest base on the continent at McMurdo Station. There was an observatory on the side of the volcano at the three-hundred-meter mark that transmitted telemetry and was the jump-off point for visual inspections once a year, during the brief two month of relatively decent weather.
The volcano was wired, which was a good thing, Ariana thought. Six vertical geophones listened to it; gas emissions were checked by a COSPEC V; and seismic stations at McMurdo and around the world were tuned in to any disturbance that might occur. She went to the Department of Geosciences of New Mexico Tech’s web site, where all this data was collected. She accessed the latest reading and was disturbed by what she saw. The volcano was acting up, and a stage-two alert had been issued. A stage three required evacuation of all those who might be affected.
But why Erebus? Ariana wondered. There were only a couple hundred people at McMurdo, certainly not a significant target for the Shadow. She went back to the map and checked the location. Erebus was located in the Ross Dependency of Antarctica, almost an island, connected to the mainland on one side. It was also adjacent to the Rose Ice shelf, the largest ice shelf on the planet. She saw part of the reason then. If Erebus had a major eruption, the ice shelf would be shattered all along its eastern edge, causing massive blocks to float out to sea. Also, the heat from the volcano would have devastating effects on the ice cap.
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