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For this descent, Datuk had secured a portable radiation monitor so they could track the amount of their exposure inside. Insulated by the thick titanium and leaded glass, they had some protection, but it wasn’t absolute.
He nodded. “So far, we’re still okay. Only picking up eight rem in the sphere. But you definitely don’t want to go swimming out there.”
Adam spoke behind her. “I expected it to be worse by now. We’ve crossed nine thousand meters. Almost to the bottom.”
Phoebe stared out the window and knew the radiation was bad enough. Far below, as they slowed their descent, the coral field remained a dark forest under them. Off in the distance, a luminescent shimmer marked the distant fringe of unaffected coral. The dead patch was easily four times as large as before.
They continued sinking toward the center of that black hole.
She knew the darkness directly under them was not due to deadened coral, but the mouth of the fissure that had opened. Bathymetric measurements showed the crack to be two kilometers long and a quarter as wide.
She reached to her controls and pinged their sonar down into the depths.
Adam noted her effort. “Any better luck?”
She leaned back in her seat. “See for yourself.”
On the screen in front of her, theCormorant’s multibeam sonar showed the walls of the fissure below. While the trench bottomed out at ten thousand meters, the crack through the seabed delved far deeper. Its sides dropped away in sheer cliffs and broken escarpments. According to the gradient scale on the screen, those walls fell at least another two thousand meters, more than a full mile. Beyond that, it was impossible to judge how much farther it dropped. The image blanked out past that point.
“I’m still getting nothing,” she said. “Something is either absorbing our sonar ping or keeping it from reflecting back to us.”
“What could be causing that?” Datuk asked.
Phoebe ticked off the possibilities. “Changes in water density, sonar from another source, noisy sea life.” She shook her head. “But none of that presents as a blank zone like that. We should still be picking upsomething. Instead, our ping simply vanishes.”
Adam offered one frightening possibility. “Unless it’s so deep that our sonar failed to find its bottom.”
“That would only happen if the bottom was hundreds of miles down.”
Adam shrugged. “Do you have a better explanation?”
She scowled and turned to Bryan. “Keep us dropping at this rate. It’s slow enough that if the radiation worsens, we can still head back up before getting overexposed.”
Datuk reported from the back. “Hundred-and-eighty rem outside. Ten inside.”
“Maybe the reason the radiation is less than we expected is because the Chinese sub dropped into a far deeper hole,” Adam said, clearly trying to support his theory. “Like I said before, water is a great insulator, especially at these pressures.”
By now, theCormoranthad reached the top of the forest. They started to drop through its ruins. To either side, the coral spread in a dark ominous deadfall of shattered branches and toppled trunks. Nothing moved out there. Nothing shone or flickered.
As if in respect for the graveyard they were passing through, a heavy silence fell over the group. Phoebe’s chest tightened. Her breathing grew harder.
So much destruction.
As they descended, the boles of the black trees steadily thickened. At a thousand feet in height, the surrounding forest rose as tall as the Empire State Building. She could only imagine the age of this coral field. Considering the slow growth of black coral, it had to be millions of years old.
She gazed in awe at the majesty and mystery around her.
After another ten minutes, theCormorantneared the bottom of the forest. Here, the trunks were forty feet wide. They formed a giant colonnade around them, a dark cathedral six miles under the sea.
“Here we go,” Bryan whispered as they descended past those roots and dropped into the fissure.
“Two hundred rem,” Datuk noted.
Adam leaned down to peer out his window. He studied the rock wall falling alongside them. “I’m not seeing anything growing on those cliffs.”
“Not even algal mats,” Datuk agreed, peering past Adam’s shoulders.
“The rock is still crumbling in places, running with trails of sand.” Adam straightened. “There’s no way this is some ancient crack that has been hidden by a bridge of coral. This is anewfissure.”
