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“What was that critical advancement?” Adam asked.
Phoebe knew the answer. She stared out at the dark forests around them. “It was the emergence ofhardbody parts in animals. Starting with the skeletons of coral.”
3:45P.M.
Adam kept close watch on the bathymetric screen. “We’re approaching fourteen thousand meters.”
“Blowing ballast,” Bryan said. “Going for neutral buoyancy.”
Solid weights were jettisoned off theCormorant’s exterior. The vehicle’s descent slowed to a crawl, then finally stopped.
Adam noted the depth reading.
13,978METERS.
That’s close enough.
“What’s the sonar showing?” Adam asked Phoebe.
She pinged the bottom. “The haloing from before is still there, only more distinct. Some portion of the seabed is a mile under us. But I’m still seeing lots of blank spots, gaps in the sonar sounding.”
“Then let’s take a look,” Adam said.
Bryan rotated the underwing cameras, pointing them straight down. Their eyes had been rolled up during the descent to protect their lenses. “Pulling up the feed from cameras one through four.”
He tapped switches, and the large monitor over the helm bloomed to light. It was divided into four zones, one for each camera. But their views were stitched together to form a single large image.
The view was blurry, but Bryan zoomed in and out, focusing each lens until a crisp image of the seabed revealed itself.
Gasps rose from the group.
Adam hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t that hellscape. The bottom of the cavern appeared to be a moth-eaten ruin. Massivepockets, fissures, and gaps split up the landscape. They must be what formed those blank spots on the echosounding. If sonar couldn’t penetrate those dark depths, then they must be impossibly deep, maybe delving all the way through Earth’s crust.
Adam dismissed this thought and focused on what he could see. The intact sections of the seabed were blistered with huge calderas, all fuming with black smoke.
Phoebe pointed a finger at one. “What is that?”
From his geology classes, Adam knew the answer. “Submarine volcanos. But these don’t spewmagma. Instead, they blast out liquidcarbon dioxide. There’s one in the Philippine Sea. The Eifuku volcano. It reaches temps of more than two hundred degrees. But those down there, that deep and large, who knows how hot they get?”
“What about those dark yellow spots on the seabed?” Datuk asked. He reached over Phoebe’s shoulder and waved a finger across a series of pestilent-looking blemishes, ending at a huge pool of the same.
“I don’t know,” Adam admitted.
He squinted at them. The largest looked to be a good mile across. A black crust rimmed its edge. The shoreline was a dark umber that grew lighter until at the center it was a glowing yellow sun.
Phoebe leaned closer. “They’re lakes of molten sulfur. I’ve seen pictures of them elsewhere but never in person. And certainly never that huge. The largest looks as if it’s eddying around a central pool of molten rock.”
Bryan pointed to the bottom-right corner of the monitor. “Is that the tail end of a submarine?”
They all shifted their attention, reminded of why they were down here.
“Can you adjust the cameras?” Adam asked.
Bryan slid the four lenses in that direction. As he did, the full length of the lost submarine came into view. It looked like a crumpled child’s toy abandoned on the ground. It was framed and half covered by shattered trunks and branches of coral that had fallen with it. The rest of the collapsed forest must have rained down into those bottomless gaps or been burned up in the volcanos and molten pools.
Too bad the sub hadn’t met the same fate.
As if summoned by this thought, something massive shifted out of the neighboring forest. It burrowed under the deadfall, remaining mostly hidden. Brief glimpses of it showed a tunneling black mass patched by rough spots, as if it was carrying a carapace of rock with it. It was huge, three times the diameter of the submarine, dwarfing the crumpled boat.
