Sphere

by Michael Crichton

"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said. "But we don't have a lot of time, so let's get right down to it. If you'll kill the lights, we can begin. "

  The first slide showed a large ship with an elaborate superstructure on the stern.

  "The Rose Sealady," Barnes said. "A cable-laying vessel chartered by Transpac Communications to lay a submarine telephone line from Honolulu to Sydney, Australia. The Rose left Hawaii on May 29 of this year, and by June 16 it had gotten as far as Western Samoa in the mid-Pacific. It was laying a new fiber-optics cable, which has a carrying capacity of twenty thousand simultaneous telephonic transmissions. The cable is covered with a dense metal-and-plastics web matrix, unusually tough and resistant to breaks. The ship had already laid more than forty-six hundred nautical miles of cable across the Pacific with no mishaps of any sort. Next. "

  A map of the Pacific, with a large red spot.

  "At ten p. m. on the night of June 17, the vessel was located here, midway between Pago Pago in American Samoa and Viti Levu in Fiji, when the ship experienced a wrenching shudder. Alarms sounded, and the crew realized the cable had snagged and torn. They immediately consulted their charts, looking for an underwater obstruction, but could see none. They hauled up the loose cable, which took several hours, since at the time of the accident they had more than a mile of cable paid out behind the ship. When they examined the cut end, they saw that it had been cleanly sheared-as one crewman said, 'like it was cut with a huge pair of scissors. ' Next. "

  A section of Fiberglas cable held toward the camera in the rough hand of a sailor.

  "The nature of the break, as you can see, suggests an artificial obstruction of some sort. The Rose steamed north back over the scene of the break. Next. "

  A series of ragged black-and-white lines, with a region of small spikes.

  "This is the original sonar scan from the ship. If you can't read sonar scans this'll be hard to interpret, but you see here the thin, knife-edge obstruction. Consistent with a sunken ship or aircraft, which cut the cable.

  "The charter company, Transpac Communications, notified the Navy, requesting any information we had about the obstruction. This is routine: whenever there is a cable break, the Navy is notified, on the chance that the obstruction is known to us. If it's a sunken vessel containing explosives, the cable company wants to know about it before they start repair. But in this case the obstruction was not in Navy files. And the Navy was interested.

  "We immediately dispatched our nearest search ship, the Ocean Explorer, from Melbourne. The Ocean Explorer reached the site on June 21 of this year. The reason for the Navy interest was the possibility that the obstruction might represent a sunken Chinese Wuhan-class nuclear submarine fitted with SY-2 missiles. We knew the Chinese lost such a sub in this approximate area in May 1984. The Ocean Explorer scanned the bottom, using a most sophisticated sidelooking sonar, which produced this picture of the bottom. "

  In color, the image was almost three-dimensional in its clarity.

  "As you see, the bottom appears flat except for a single triangular fin which sticks up some two hundred and eighty feet above the ocean floor. You see it here," he said, pointing. "Now, this wing dimension is larger than any known aircraft manufactured in either the United States or the Soviet Union. This was very puzzling at first. Next. "

  A submersible robot, being lowered on a crane over the side of a ship. The robot looked like a series of horizontal tubes with cameras and lights nestled in the center.

  "By June 24, the Navy had the ROV carrier Neptune IV on site, and the Remote Operated Vehicle Scorpion, which you see here, was sent down to photograph the wing. It returned an image that clearly showed a control surface of some sort. Here it is. "

  There were murmurs from the group. In a harshly lit color image, a gray fin stuck up from a flat coral floor. The fin was sharp-edged and aeronautical-looking, tapered, definitely artificial.

  "You'll notice," Barnes said, "that the sea bottom in this region consists of scrubby dead coral. The wing or fin disappears into the coral, suggesting the rest of the aircraft might be buried beneath. An ultra-high-resolution SLS bottom scan was carried out, to detect the shape underneath the coral. Next. "

  Another color sonar image, composed of fine dots instead of lines.

  "As you see, the fin seems to be attached to a cylindrical object buried under the coral. The object has a diameter of a hundred and ninety feet, and extends west for a distance of 2,754 feet before tapering to a point. "

  More murmurings from the audience.

  "That's correct," Barnes said. "The cylindrical object is half a mile long. The shape is consistent with a rocket or spacecraft - it certainly looks like that - but from the beginning we were careful to refer to this object as 'the anomaly. ' "

  Norman glanced over at Ted, who was smiling up at the screen. But alongside Ted in the darkness, Harry Adams frowned and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

  Then the projector light went out. The room was plunged into darkness. There were groans. Norman heard Barnes say, "God damn it, not again!" Someone scrambled for the door; there was a rectangle of light.

  Beth leaned over to Norman and said, "They lose power here all the time. Reassuring, huh?"

  Moments later, the electricity came back on; Barnes continued. "On June 25 a SCARAB remote vehicle cut a piece from the tail fin and brought it to the surface. The fin segment was analyzed and found to be a titanium alloy in an epoxy-resin honeycomb. The necessary bonding technology for such metal/plastic materials was currently unknown on Earth.

  "Experts confirmed that the fin could not have originated on this planet - although in ten or twenty years we'd probably know how to make it. "

  Harry Adams grunted, leaned forward, made a note on his pad.

  Meanwhile, Barnes explained, other robot vessels were used to plant seismic charges on the bottom. Seismic analysis showed that the buried anomaly was of metal, that it was hollow, and that it had a complex internal structure.

  "After two weeks of intensive study," Barnes said, "we concluded the anomaly was some sort of spacecraft. "

  The final verification came on June 27 from the geologists. Their core samples from the bottom indicated that the present seabed had formerly been much shallower, perhaps only eighty or ninety feet deep. This would explain the coral, which covered the craft to an average thickness of thirty feet. Therefore, the geologists said, the craft had been on the planet at least three hundred years, and perhaps much longer: five hundred, or even five thousand years.

  "However reluctantly," Barnes said, "the Navy concluded that we had, in fact, found a spacecraft from another civilization. The decision of the President, before a special meeting of the National Security Council, was to open the spacecraft. So, starting June 29, the ULF team members were called in. "

  On July 1, the subsea habitat DH-7 was lowered into position near the spacecraft site. DH-7 housed nine Navy divers working in a saturated exotic-gas environment. They proceeded to do primary drilling work. "And I think that brings you up to date," Barnes said. "Any questions?"

  Ted said, "The internal structure of the spacecraft. Has it been clarified?"

  "Not at this point. The spacecraft seems to be built in such a way that shock waves are transmitted around the outer shell, which is tremendously strong and well engineered. That prevents a clear picture of the interior from the seismics. "

  "How about passive techniques to see what's inside?"

  "We've tried," Barnes said. "Gravitometric analysis, negative. Thermography, negative. Resistivity mapping, negative. Proton precision magnetometers, negative. "

  "Listening devices?"

  "We've had hydrophones on the bottom from day one. There have been no sounds emanating from the craft. At least not so far. "

  "What about other remote inspection procedures?"

  "Most involve radiation, and we're hesitant to irradiate the craft at this time. "

  Harry said, "
Captain Barnes, I notice the fin appears undamaged, and the hull appears a perfect cylinder. Do you think that this object crashed in the ocean?"

  "Yes," Barnes said, looking uneasy.

  "So this object has survived a high-speed impact with the water, without a scratch or a dent?"

  "Well, it's tremendously strong. "

  Harry nodded. "It would have to be. . . . "

  Beth said, "The divers who are down there now - what exactly are they doing?"

  "Looking for the front door. " Barnes smiled. "For the time being, we've had to fall back on classical archaeological procedures. We're digging exploratory trenches in the coral, looking for an entrance or a hatch of some kind. We hope to find it within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Once we do, you're going in. Anything