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 version 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.”