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  Jack nodded. “I’ve been at significant depths before, and the one thing I’ve always found is that this world, down here, is so alien to the warm, golden place high above it.”

  Mironov smiled. “Mysteries and myths, Jack. It’s why people like us are drawn to it.”

  “Oh, good lord.” Jack leaned forward in his seat.

  “All slow,” Mironov said softly. “Michael?”

  “On it.” Brenner checked the sonar and other proximity scanners, and then shook his head. “All quiet, but then there’s a significant sonar shadow being projected.”

  “Is that what I think it is?” Cate said almost reverently.

  Mironov stopped the Nautilus, and the air bubbles bled away. “Yes it is; it’s where the world was ripped asunder.”

  PART TWO

  THE ABYSS

  It’s like a crack in the world

  CHAPTER 28

  “Here at the bottom of the world, everything was upside down.” Lesley Howarth

  Mironov switched on the high intensity lights and everyone in the command center just stared in awe. Only Michael Brenner kept listening in on the underwater scanners.

  “Here at the bottom of the world, everything was upside down.” Cate’s mouth curved into a small smile as she remembered a favorite children’s book from years ago. “Like Jack said; it’s like looking at the start of another world.”

  Jack nodded. “You read about them, and you see pictures of them, but it’s only when you witness them with your own eyes you appreciate what they’re really like.”

  “The trench; it’s like a crack in the world.” Cate felt a little light-headed. “What am I saying? I mean that’s exactly what it is.”

  The trench looked like a jagged tear in the sea bottom, as though some god had ripped the earth apart with their hands. Mironov angled the lights and they could make out part of the trench cliff walls that fell away to nothingness.

  He took his hands from the controls. “The Middle America Trench runs from central Mexico to Costa Rica. It’s 1700 miles long and, at its deepest, drops to nearly 23,000 feet. Massive but, as we mentioned, this guy is by no means the deepest trench in the world.”

  “There be monsters,” Cate whispered.

  “Yes, and now we know there really are.” Mironov looked along the dark void for a few moments. “The Alvin distress signal indicates it has now tipped inside the lip of the trench, and is approximately fifty miles from our position. We’ll travel along the inner rim and stay close to the cliff wall so as to stay within its sonar shadow. We can then sneak up on her position.”

  He looked at each of their faces. “Is everyone ready?”

  Cate had a sudden urge to say: no, take me back home. But she knew that if anything happened to Samantha Britt, and she didn’t at least attempt to save her, she would never forgive herself. But Mironov’s crew and Jack were ready, so …

  She nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  “Moving ahead to twenty knots, begin air ejection and ready for cavitation.” The Nautilus began to accelerate and Mironov lowered his brow toward the dark void. “Now.”

  Once again the micro bubbles were pushed from the nose of the craft as the Nautilus rapidly shot though the water. The air coalesced as it slid back along the submersible’s body, coating it and creating the tunnel-like effect of the supercavitation.

  “Move us up to 200 knots, Jack.”

  “Only 200?” Jack asked.

  “Yes, now I think we will be in the territorial lair of the beast, and caution plus stealth might be more appropriate.”

  “What depth?”

  “At 3500 feet – we’ll take it down well below where we think the Alvin is, and came up on her from below. My view is the shark will be patrolling the waters above it, not below. The seismic pounding has seen off all its usual prey in the deeper waters, and its hunting has been supplemented with a slower-moving group of creatures in the shallower zones.”

  “Yeah, us,” Cate mumbled. “One question: the blasting has stopped now, so why didn’t it return to the deeper water?”

  Mironov cocked his head. “Maybe it likes it in the shallower water – more prey. Or maybe it’ll take many more months for its deeper habitat to restock with food. Remember, a beast of this size would need to consume an enormous quantity of flesh.”

  “They’re apex predators,” Jack said. “They can go long periods without food, but when they eat, they gorge, and can consume ten percent of their body weight in a single feeding.”

  “And what’s ten percent of a Megalodon’s weight?” Brenner asked.

  “Given an average-sized beast could weigh in at 100 tons, then a nice round ten tons of flesh.”

  “Oh boy.” Brenner blew air through pressed lips and went back to his screens.

  “Yeah.” Jack sighed as they began to descend into the inky blackness. “The thing is, sharks’ hearing, as well as their sense of smell, ability to detect minute chemical trials and electrical impulses, means sneaking up on this thing is going to be near impossible. We can hide in the sonar shadow of the trench’s cliff face, but we so much as sneeze down there, it’ll know.”

  They continued sailing down into the dark water. “Perhaps that’s true.” Mironov said. “Have you heard of something called a distraction display, Jack?”

  Jack lifted his chin. “Something like a courtship display?”

  “Yes, in a way,” Mironov replied. “It’s a common phenomenon in the animal kingdom whereby fish, birds and mammals have been known to pretend to be injured, or mimic calls of their young, or even shake branches of trees to draw a predator away from where their young are secreted.”

  Cate grinned. “You’re going to lure it away somehow?”

  “‘If your enemy is in superior strength, evade him.’ Sun Tzu wrote that around 2500 years ago in his brilliant Art of War. And that’s what we’ll do.” Mironov looked at his large wristwatch. “All stop.”

  Jack eased back on the wheel, and the bubbles appeared and then vanished. The Nautilus hung motionless in the water.

  Mironov held up a finger. “Wait for it.”

  After another moment there came a faint thumping boom. He turned. “It’s quite simple really. We use the same method that drew the beast from the depths in the first place to now draw it away. Our friend Mr. Scott Markesan aboard the Nexxon Corporation’s Kanaloa has agreed, with a little compensation, to recommence some seismic testing, fifty miles away from where we need to investigate.” He grinned. “Our very own distraction display to draw away our predator.”

  Jack chuckled. “Okay, I’m officially impressed.”

  Mironov’s face became serious. “Only be impressed if it works.” He turned back to the controls. “We go on.” He restarted the engines and slowly moved the Nautilus forward before accelerating once again.

  Like distant stars in a night sky, small lights began to flick on and off out in the darkness.

  “Seems not all the sea life has vanished.” Cate pointed. “I’m betting we’ve got hatchets, octopods, lanternfish, and a whole range of other bioluminescent creatures.”

  “Yes, anything that’s well below morsel size of our shark should still be here.” Mironov turned to Francis Williams, his engineering and maintenance crewmember. “Dr. Williams, can you get some close-ups of our glowing friends? I’ve never been this deep into the Middle America Trench before. We might find something interesting.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Mironov.” Williams flicked on another screen, and used a joystick to angle a scope until he found what he was looking for. “Putting it up on the port screen … now.”

  Beside Cate, an eighteen by twelve inch screen came to life; black to begin with, but then flashes of blue, like distant stars, magnified and clarified to eventually show the creatures emitting the light.

  “Wow,” Cate said. “What are you doing all the way up here, handsome?”

  “Handsome.” Brenner wrinkled his nose. “Handsome in my worst nightmare maybe.”
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br />   The blue eel-like fish hung in the blackness for a few seconds, and its oversized disc-like eye turned on them. Transparent glassine teeth were massive spikes in a gaping mouth, and its entire body glowed a soft blue.

  “Pacific viperfish.” Cate leaned closer to the screen. “Those teeth are so big it can barely close its mouth. They’re usually only found in vastly deeper waters – up to 13,000 feet down – so this is the shallows for it.” She squinted. “Wish we had something we could use for scale.”

  Williams played with a few keys, and a measuring scale appeared below the specimen, in both inches and centimeters.

  “Huh?” Cate frowned. “This can’t be right. It says this guy is forty inches long. They only ever reach about eight inches, even when fully grown.”

  Williams’ fingers raced over the keyboard a few seconds more, before he stopped and shook his head. “Nope, no error in the software. Maybe it’s just a very big one.”

  The nightmarish fish flicked a whip-like tail, and vanished.

  “Big indeed,” Cate said. “It’s like finding a sparrow the size of an ostrich.”

  “It is weird – the size, and also finding bathypelagic species in the mesopelagic zone,” Jack said.

  “And there’s another one.” Williams pointed out. “Dr. Granger, what do you think this one is?”

  “Cate, please.” Even though Cate was fighting impatience she couldn’t help her mouth curving into a smile. “And that’s a fangtooth. Can you bring up the scale again?”

  “Sure.” Williams’ fingers danced for a moment more. “On screen now.” He whistled. “Looks like a bear trap with a tail.”

  The fish was so bony it looked like a swimming skeleton. And once again it displayed a gaping needle-tooth mouth. It had tight skin, more leather than scale, giving it a strange reptilian appearance and heightening its alienness.

  “Same as with the viperfish, this fangtooth shouldn’t be up here. They live their entire life down in over 15,000 feet of water.” She checked the scale. “It’s the size of a good mackerel. And just like before, this thing should only be a few inches long.”

  Jack hmmed. “The Middle America Trench at its deepest point touches the hadal zone.”

  Brenner leaned back in his seat. “That’s in the trench, right?”

  “Right,” Jack said. “Valery, mind if I give them a thumbnail overview?”

  “Be my guest,” Mironov responded. “I’ll take over piloting duties.”

  Jack turned in his chair and clasped his hands together. “If our ocean was a cup of coffee, full to the brim, and we placed some plastic wrap over the top, then that slim skin-like layer of plastic is what we know most about. The entire rest of the coffee, the other 99.99 percent, is an unknown and mysterious dark void.”

  “In specific layers,” Mironov added.

  “Exactly,” Jack said. “And we find that certain things occur in each layer, certain temperatures, currents, pressures, and also various creatures.” He looked at the faces of Williams and Brenner, who were listening intently. Cate nodded and smiled to him.

  Jack continued. “That skin over the top is what we refer to as the epipelagic zone, the sunlight zone. It only reaches down to about 600 feet, and is usually the warmest part of the ocean. One more thing …” He held up a finger. “It is usually the most heavily populated part of our ocean with just on ninety percent of sea life living in that zone.”

  “Makes sense when you consider that many sea creatures are vegetarian and sea plant life needs sunlight for photosynthesis,” Cate added. “Without light, no plants, without plants no food for vegetarians, and therefore no vegetarians. That means far fewer of the creatures that feed on those vegetarians.”

  “So as we go deeper, we enter the realm of the fast-moving carnivore – the eaters of flesh that feed off other eaters of flesh,” Mironov said over his shoulder.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “Next up we have another skin-like layer called the mesopelagic zone, or the twilight zone.” He grinned as Brenner raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, yeah, just like the television show. Except this zone has weak light penetration and we start to see the first of our bioluminescent creatures. It runs down to 3200 feet, close to the crush depth of most submersibles.”

  “The Nautilus can go deeper, Jack,” Mironov said without turning.

  “Following that, we enter the bathypelagic zone, the true deep and called the midnight zone. This layer runs down to 13,000 feet, and the only light you’ll see is from the bioluminescent animals, or sometimes from volcanic eruptions.” He shrugged. “Or from fools like us in our shiny tin cans. Sperm whales can dive down to this level in search of food. Giant squids, and a range of the weird and wonderful, like our friends we just saw on screen.”

  “That’s goddamn deep.” Williams blew air through his lips. “But this trench we’re skirting along is going to be far deeper than that.”

  “Oh yeah, there’s more down there,” Jack said. “If we go deeper, we drop into the abyss, the abyssopelagic zone. Down to about 20,000 feet, and this zone is what three-quarters of the ocean floor lies within. Near freezing and very few creatures at this depth.”

  Jack smiled devilishly and sat forward, elbows on his knees. “But then we find places like this that are the true rips in the Earth, the trenches, we refer to as the hadalpelagic, the forbidding hadal zone, which is the true bottom of the abyss. The word is actually derived from the French word for Hades, hell. As I’ve already mentioned, the deepest point in the ocean is located in the Mariana Trench off the coast of Japan at 36,070 feet. There are creatures that live down there, but we know next to nothing about them, because even if we can get down to them, we can’t move around or spend more than a few minutes there. That world is as alien, and as deadly to us, as is Mars.”

  “I for one would dearly love to know what’s going on down there. Even a glimpse,” Mironov said over his shoulder.

  “I might have felt that way a few years back. But not anymore.” Cate sat back, and Jack looked at her, understanding in his eyes.

  Mironov stroked his chin. “Maybe another day. The Nautilus can travel to extreme depths inside its cavitation tunnel. But if we stopped, for whatever reason, and the tunnel collapsed, even for a second, we’d instantly implode. The pressure at those depths is the same as having the weight of forty-eight Boeing 747 jets piled on top of you.”

  “Ouch,” Jack said.

  “Indeed,” Mironov responded smoothly. “I’m going to move us in closer to the trench wall. Might be best if we try and keep movement and sound to a minimum for a while.” He reached for the comms.

  “Mr. Andrews, we are closing in on our target area, is everything in order back there?”

  The weapons technician replied immediately. “Everything ready and waiting on your word.”

  “Excellent, and so, let us enter the belly of the beast. Jack, copiloting again, please.” Jack took his U-shaped wheel again.

  Mironov rechecked the time. “Proximity?”

  Brenner half turned. “Alvin submersible is within ten miles, and is elevated from our position.” He rubbed his forehead. “Weird.”

  Mironov tilted his head. “Elaborate, Mr. Brenner.”

  “I just thought …” The signal engineer’s brows were knitted. “… at this depth I expected the temperature to be hovering around freezing. Deep ocean water is supposed to have a very uniform range, of between zero and three degrees. But outside right now, it’s close to fifteen.” He looked from one screen to another. “There’s a small current coming up from the depths; probably where the warmth is coming from.”

  “Maybe a vent,” Mironov said. He seemed to think on it for a moment, before deciding. “Something to ponder at another time. We have our priorities – it’s time to reach out to our lost submariners. Cate, would you like to do the honors?”

  Cate nodded vigorously. “Would I ever.”

  “Good. And please tell your friends to keep any celebratory exclamations to a minimum. Though we’
re hoping the shark has been drawn away, I don’t want anything to entice it back.”

  “You got it,” Cate said through her grin.

  “Switching comms to your console, Ms. Granger, ah, Cate,” Brenner said. “Frequency has been calibrated. If they’re listening, then they should hear you.”

  “Okay.” Cate licked her lips, deciding for a second or two how to begin. “Calling crew of submersible, Alvin. Calling Dr. Samantha Britt aboard submersible Alvin. Do you read me, over?”

  There came white noise for a moment or two before the incredulous voice of a woman came back.

  “Who is this? I mean, yes, this is Alvin, I mean Samantha Britt, in the submersible Alvin. Where are you? Who am I speaking to?”

  “Samantha, it’s Cate Granger. I just happened to be in the neighborhood, and thought I might swing by. Over.” Cate continued to grin as she spoke.

  “Holy …” There was excited yelling. “Yes, yes, yes!”

  “Shussshhh!” Cate cut her off. “Hold the party for a while, Sam, we know about your big bogy, and we hope to have drawn it away. But let’s not call it back, okay?”

  The celebration immediately died. “Sorry, sorry …” Breathlessness ensued for a second or two. “Where, where are you now?”

  Right now, we’re about …” – she checked with Brenner – “five miles out from you. Are you guys all okay?”

  There was silence.

  “Hello?” Cate frowned, and turned to Brenner. “Have we—”

  Sam’s voice was small when it returned. “No, we lost Wade King, our pilot and engineer. He went outside in the ADS suit to try and free us from the cabling, but the shark came back.”

  “Okay, damn, I understand, Sam. I’m so sorry.” Cate exhaled. “We’re going to try and free you guys. There’ll be a support ship over us shortly, and they can haul you in.”

  “You don’t understand, Cate. We can’t get back up; we’d never make it. This is no ordinary shark, it’s a freaking monster.” Sam’s voice rose.