“Has to be a first time for everything.”
Katya closed her eyes momentarily. For all the high technology and military-style planning, it seemed that IMU operations, including defusing booby traps, ran on a wing and a prayer.
“Here’s where this baby comes into her own,” Costas enthused. “This is one of the most sophisticated multitask lasers ever produced. Watch that box.”
The dull green luminosity transformed into a shimmer of tiny particles which pulsated every few seconds. Each surge left an image of increasing complexity, the lines progressively more concrete. After about a minute the image had become three-dimensional. It was as if someone had pressed glowing green putty inside to create a miniature grotto.
“A hologram!” Katya exclaimed.
“Correct.” Costas remained glued to the image. “Phase two was the insertion of a low-energy ultraviolet laser through the hole in the casing, a mapping device which reproduces the image as a hologram in the box. You can adjust the laser so it only reflects off material of a particular density, in this case the vesicular basalt of the volcano.”
Jack looked at Katya. “We use it to replicate artefacts,” he said. “The mapping data are transferred to a high-intensity infrared laser which can cut virtually any material with an accuracy tolerance of one micron, less than a particle of dust.”
“It produced the synthetic polymer copy of the gold disc from the Minoan shipwreck.”
Jack nodded. “IMU also developed the hardware needed to reproduce the Elgin Marbles for the Parthenon in Athens.”
Costas leaned over the console. “OK, Ben. Maximum resolution.”
The surge of green pulsating up and down began to sharpen features which had appeared in outline moments before. They could make out the bulbous outcrops of basalt, a wall of lava formed millennia before the first hominids reached these shores.
It was Katya who first noticed the regularities at the base of the image.
“I can see steps!” she exclaimed.
They watched as the horizontal lines took on an unmistakable shape. The final half-dozen steps leading up from the cliff face terminated in a platform five metres wide. Above it a rocky overhang reached out as far as the submarine, completely sealing off the platform.
Ben began the final countdown with each pulse of the laser. “Ninety-seven…ninety-eight…ninety-nine…one hundred. Resolution complete.”
All eyes focused on the dark recess in the centre of the image. What at first seemed an opaque haze gradually resolved itself into a rectilinear niche four metres high and three metres wide. It was at the rear of the platform behind the stairs and had clearly been hewn out of the rock.
As the scanner retracted, the niche came into clear view. In the centre they could make out a vertical groove from floor to ceiling. Horizontal grooves extended along the upper and lower edges. Each panel was adorned with the unmistakable U shape of the bull’s horns.
Costas let out a low whistle as Katya leaned forward to see.
Jack rummaged in his front pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He quietly read out Dillen’s translation: “The great golden door of the citadel.”
Costas looked up at his friend and saw the familiar fire of excitement.
“I can’t vouch for the gold,” Jack said. “But I can tell you one thing. We’ve found the gateway to Atlantis.”
JACK WATCHED KATYA ON THE OTHER SIDE OF the walkway. She was leaning over the gap talking to Costas, her contorted position emphasizing the narrow confines between the weapons racks and the hull casing. The bobbing dance of their headlamps seemed to magnify the sepulchral gloom around them. There should at least be the groan of ageing bulkheads, the signs of fallibility that gave life to any hull. He had to remind himself that Kazbek had been laid down less than two decades previously and still had the integrity to withstand many times the current water pressure. It seemed at odds with the ghostly interior, with the shroud of precipitate that looked as if it had built up over eons like the secretions of a limestone cave.
As his gaze strayed into the dark recess beyond, Jack felt a sudden tightening, a jolt of primeval fear he was powerless to control.
He could not let this happen to him again.
Not here. Not now.
He forced his gaze away from the interior towards the activity below. For a moment he closed his eyes and clenched his jaw as he summoned all his strength to fight the nightmare grip of claustrophobia. The anxiety of the last hours had left him vulnerable, had opened a chink in his armour.
He would have to be careful.
Just as his breathing was settling, Costas glanced up at him and gestured at the holographic display with its virtual-reality image of the cliff face. It was mesmerizing proof they were exactly on target.
“Phase three is to get through the hull to that entranceway,” he said to Katya.
“A piece of cake, as you would say.”
“Just wait and see.”
There was a sudden hiss like water escaping through a radiator valve.
“There’s a five-metre gap between the submarine’s casing and the cliff,” Costas explained. “We need to create something like an escape tunnel.” He pointed to a cylinder attached to the unit. “That’s full of a liquefied silicate, electromagnetic hydrosilicate 4, or EH-4. We call it magic sludge. That hissing is the sound of it being forced by gas pressure through the hole we’ve just made onto the outside of the casing, where it’s congealing like jelly.”
He stopped to peer at a percentile display on the screen. As the figure reached one hundred the hissing abruptly ceased.
“OK, Andy. Extrusion complete.”
Andy closed the valve and clamped on a second cylinder.
Costas turned back to Katya. “In simple terms, we’re making an inflatable chamber, effectively creating an extension of the submarine’s casing out of the silicate.”
“The magic sludge.”
“Yes. That’s where Lanowski comes in.”
“Oh.” Katya grimaced as she remembered the new arrival from Trabzon, the ill-kempt figure who refused to believe she could possibly know anything about submarines.
“Maybe not the ideal dinner-party companion,” Costas said. “But a brilliant polycompounds engineer. We poached him from MIT when the US Department of Defense contracted IMU to find a way of preserving the Second World War wrecks at Pearl Harbor. He discovered a hydraulic sealant which can triple the strength of metal hull remains, extract damaging sea salts from old iron and inhibit corrosion. We’re using it for a different purpose here, of course. Lanowski discovered it’s also an exceptional binding agent for certain crystalline minerals.”
“How do you blow it into a bubble?” Katya asked.
“That’s the ingenious part.”
While they were talking, Ben and Andy had been busy assembling another component of the laser unit. Around the chalked circle they had placed a ring of small devices, each one secured to the casing by a suction cup activated by a vacuum gun. Wires fanned inwards to a control panel beside the console.
“Those are diodes.” Costas pointed at the devices. “Solid-state semiconductors. Each one contains a solenoid coil which acts like a bar magnet if you pass a current through it. The cable from the DSRV plugs into the control panel and connects to those wires. We’ve been using the cable to charge up a reserve battery so we can operate independently if necessary. Either way we’ve got enough voltage to propagate a directional beam of electromagnetic radiation right through the hull casing.”
Costas moved aside in the increasingly cramped space to allow the crewmen to assume positions behind the control panel.
“The extruded mixture is suspended in liquid carbon dioxide, CO2 hydrate,” he explained. “The solution’s denser than seawater and the pressure at this depth keeps it from breaking up into droplets. The anechoic coating on the submarine is like sandpaper and should keep the mixture from flowing off.”
The two crewmen had called up a v
ersion of the holographic image on the computer monitor. Andy was reading off co-ordinates while Ben tapped the figures on the keyboard, each input producing a small red cross-hair on the screen. The cross-hairs began to describe an irregular circle round the doorway.
“Lanowski worked out a way of using crystalline nanotechnology to grow a magnetic lattice through the solution,” Costas went on. “At the moment the mixture is like liquefied fibreglass, with millions of tiny filaments compressed against each other. Add a blast of electromagnetic radiation and they lock together as a rock-hard mesh in the direction of the pulse.”
“Like reinforced concrete,” Katya said.
“A fair analogy. Only for its weight and density our stuff is about a hundred times stronger than any other construction material known.”
The cross-hatches became a continuous circle and a green light flashed on the control bar below. Andy slid off the seat and Costas took his place in front of the holographic box.
“OK.” Costas straightened up. “Let’s do it.”
Ben flipped a switch on the diode transistor panel. There was a low humming and the light surrounding the image began to pulsate. The percentile counter sped through to one hundred and flashed green.
“We’re in business.” Costas glanced at Katya, his face flushed with excitement. “We’ve just fired a 140-volt electromagnetic current through the diodes, magnetizing the EH-4 into a ring which was then projected as a one-centimetre-thick membrane to the co-ordinates represented by the cross-hairs. The chamber’s cone-shaped, with the wide end encompassing the entire rock platform.” He tapped the keyboard. “The current binds the membrane to the casing as a continuous solid mass. The probe showed the basalt has a high degree of magnetism, so the current was able to lock into the rock despite the irregularities of the surface.”
Andy disengaged the wires that led from the diodes to the transistor panel.
“Now that the initial surge has gone through we only need two wires to maintain the charge,” Costas said. “Removing the rest allows us to access the casing and complete the final stage.”
“Cutting through the hull?” Katya asked.
He nodded. “First we need to drain the compartment. Andy’s about to activate a vacuum which will suck the water out through the hole and dump it into the sub. The bilges can take another metre. This boat’s not going anywhere anyway.”
“Not yet,” Jack said. He had been silently watching the proceedings from the walkway, the E-suits and the laser contraption like a scene from science-fiction. His thoughts were dominated by the nuclear horror it was their duty to prevent.
“Ready to activate pump,” said Ben.
Costas flicked the switch and the hum of the transformer was drowned out by the whine of an electric motor. Seconds later they could hear the spray of water being ejected into the darkness below.
“We’re simultaneously injecting air at atmospheric pressure,” Costas said. “The membrane’s strong enough to prevent the chamber from imploding under the weight of the seawater.”
The spray abruptly ceased and Andy gestured towards the screen. “We’re dry,” he announced. “Initiating phase four.”
Jack leaned down and peered intently at the holographic box for any changes in the appearance of the cliff face. The pulsating image showed the scanner had reactivated and was relaying data to the holographic converter.
“The rock-cut door seems to be holding,” he said.
Costas glanced at the hologram. “The probe is detecting fine leakage along the jamb. It’s exactly as we predicted.”
“We modelled this scenario last night on Seaquest,” Jack explained. “We assumed the stairs would lead to some kind of doorway. We also assumed that seawater would have worked its way through and flooded whatever lies beyond. The fact that the door didn’t spring open under the weight of the water inside shows there’s a rock-cut jamb that prevents it from opening outwards. There’s very little marine growth as the hydrogen sulphide in the water eats away any calcite secretions.”
There was a sudden sound of spray beneath them as the vacuum pump automatically kicked in to expel the puddle of water that had begun to accumulate at the far end of the chamber.
“There must also be some kind of locking device,” Jack murmured. “If this really is the way to the heart of Atlantis then they must have gone to great lengths to keep out unwanted visitors.”
“Either way, we’re going in wet,” Costas replied.
Katya looked bewildered. “ ‘Going in wet’?”
“Our only way of getting beyond those doors,” Costas explained. “We’ll walk out dry but then we’ll need to seal the hull and flood the chamber. If the doors hinge inwards we’ll need to equalize the pressure against the weight of water on the other side. Once inside we’re going to be underwater until we reach sea level.”
Ben and Andy were making final adjustments to a robotic arm which they had extended from the central unit to a point just above the chalked circle. After they double-checked its position Ben slid a locking pin through while Andy sat behind the console and tapped in a sequence of commands.
Costas leaned over to inspect the device before addressing the other two.
“That arm’s an extension of the laser we used to bore the hole in the casing. It pivots clockwise on a central axis and should slice through the hull with ease. Fortunately the Akula-class was made of steel, not titanium.”
“How will the hatch keep from imploding inwards when the chamber fills with water?” Katya asked.
“The cut’s angled outwards so the hatch will only open into the chamber and will reseat with water pressure once we’re gone.”
Andy swivelled round to face Costas. “All systems go. Ready to activate final phase.”
Costas gripped the edge of the walkway and surveyed the equipment one last time.
“Engage.”
Katya watched in fascination as the laser began to describe a clockwise arc on the submarine’s casing, the manipulator arm pivoting round the central unit like an outsized draughtsman’s compass. The cut was only a few millimetres wide and followed the line of the circle chalked by Costas round the GPS fix. After the beam had traversed the first quadrant, Ben positioned a small metallic tube against the cut. With a deft movement he cracked a miniature CO2 cylinder at the back which punched a magnetic strip through to the exterior, creating a hinge so the hatch would swing back against the membrane of the chamber wall.
“Fifteen minutes to go,” Costas said. “Time to kit up.”
Jack lent a hand as Costas hauled himself up onto the walkway.
“The moment the hatch is shut there’s no safety net. Our lives depend on our equipment and each other.”
Slowly, methodically, he double-checked the self-contained life support equipment they had donned in the DSRV. After calibrating the decompression computer on his left wrist he inspected the sealings on Katya’s E-suit.
“The Kevlar mesh has good resistance to rock and metal,” he said. “The rubber sealings divide the suit into a number of compartments, so a leak doesn’t mean you’ll get completely flooded. Even so we’re going to have to be careful. At almost one hundred metres we’re below the deepest thermocline and the temperature will only be a couple of degrees Celsius, as cold as the Atlantic.”
After getting Jack to cast an eye over his equipment Costas disengaged a small console from his left shoulder. It had a digital LCD display and was connected to the manifold on his backpack.
“When that chamber floods we’ll be subject to the pressure of the surrounding seawater, almost ten atmospheres,” he explained. “That happens to be the same depth as the Minoan wreck, so we’re using our tried and tested trimix formula. Any deeper will stretch the envelope for oxygen toxicity. We badly need that passageway to go up and not down.”
“What about decompression sickness?” Katya asked.
“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Costas snapped the console back on its retainer. “At this depth th
e trimix is mainly helium and oxygen. The nitrogen increases as we ascend, the regulator automatically adjusting the mixture as the pressure decreases. Unless we linger too long we should only need a few brief decompression stops to let the excess gas dissipate from our bloodstreams as we go up.”
“We’ll be going up,” Jack asserted. “My guess is this will lead to some kind of peak sanctuary.”
“That makes sense geologically,” Costas said. “It would have been a Herculean task to bore horizontally through layers of compacted basalt. They would have run into vents and even the magma chimney. It would have been easier to tunnel upwards along the line of the lava flow, at about the angle of the stairway.”
“Well, we already know these people were brilliant engineers.” Katya spoke as she fine-tuned her two-way VHF receiver to the same frequency as the other two. “They could quarry an area the size of a football pitch, build pyramids more impressive than anything in ancient Egypt. I don’t think tunnelling would have posed any great obstacle for them.” She reinstalled the communications console on her helmet. “We should expect the unexpected.”
The only noise was the low hum of the generator as the laser worked past the halfway point. Unlike the ragged cut of an oxyacetylene torch the edge was as smooth as if it had been tooled by high-precision machinery. The steady advance of the manipulator arm seemed to count down the final minutes before they would step into the unknown.
Just as the laser was entering the final quadrant, there was a sudden vibration. It was as if an earth tremor had shaken the entire submarine. It was followed by a dull thump and a muffled clanging noise, then an ominous silence.
“Engage reserve battery!” Costas ordered.
“Already done. No break detected in the current.”
The electrical hum resumed as Andy yanked out the cord leading back to the DSRV and scanned the screen for faults.
“What the hell was that?” Jack demanded.
“It came through the hull casing,” Andy replied. “I can’t source it.”
“Not forward,” Ben asserted. “We’re only a few metres from the bow cowling and would know about any impact there. It must be aft, maybe just this side of the bulkhead sealing the reactor chamber.”
Atlantis Page 18
