Atlantis: Bermuda Triangle

Chapter 19

“Confirming hatch sealed,” DeAngelo reached up and put his hand on the red light indicating the top hatch in the forward sphere of Deepflight was sealed. Dane knew what he was doing by touching the light- just like a jumpmaster in airborne school the eyes followed the hand to double-check.

DeAngelo repeated the confirmation request into the small microphone on the headset he wore. “Sin Fen, please confirm rear sphere hatch sealed.”

“Confirm hatch sealed,” Sin Fen reported from her place five meters to the rear of where Dane and the submersible’s commander were located.

DeAngelo triple-checked that on the status board in front of him. “Hatches sealed. Deeplab, we are prepared to release.”

Ariana’s voice came through clearly. “All secure here. I will disconnect umbilicals in ten seconds. Good luck. I’ll keep the porch light on.”

“Thanks,” Dane said. He knew she wasn’t happy about being left behind in Deeplab, particularly left alone, but someone had to maintain the habitat.

There was click and he knew the commo and power umbilical cords were pulled back into the habitat. They were on their own now, isolated from the rest of the world.

DeAngelo was prone next to Dane, his hands on the controls. There were dull metal on metal sounds.

“We’re clear of the habitat,” DeAngelo said. He pushed forward on the two levers. “Descending.”

Dane had a slight feeling of disorientation as the submersible nosed over and headed for the depths. That feeling was on top of something deeper, more primeval.

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll hit something?” Dane asked. All the screens showing the outer view were black as DeAngelo had both the visible and IR external lights off.

“Like?” DeAngelo asked.

“A whale?”

“We’re much deeper than whales can go,” DeAngelo said. “Sperm whales can only dive down to about four thousand feet. Actually some species of seals can dive deeper than whales- about another thousand feet deeper.”

DeAngelo pointed at the depth meter, the red numbers clicking through 22,000 feet. “This deep, the ocean is almost a desert. There’s very little life and certainly none large enough to cause us any damage if we hit it.”

“Something’s out there,” Dane said.

DeAngelo looked over at him. “What-” he paused as Sin Fen’s voice came through their headsets.

“He’s right. Something is out there.”

“And alive,” Dane added. “To the north. Near the gate.” He closed his eyes. “In the gate. It knows we’re here. It’s hungry for us.”

“What are you talking about?” DeAngelo asked.

Dane opened his eyes. “You are going to have to trust us. This is why we are here. To feel things others can’t feel.”

DeAngelo flipped some switches. “I’m turning the IR lights and cameras on so we can see but not be seen.”

Dane looked at the screens. Nothing but black with the cone of IR light shining through. He shook his head. “We’re safe for now. It can’t come out of the gate. But the gate is growing. Sin Fen,” he said, “do you sense it.”

“It is growing,” Sin Fen agreed. “Very slowly, but it’s creeping in our direction. We do not have much time.”

“We’ll be at the bottom of the Puerto Rican Trench in an hour and a half,” DeAngelo said. “Do you sense what is down there?”

Dane shook his head. “Not really.” He looked up at the screen. “Sin Fen?”

“There is a blank spot below us I cannot see into.”

“I feel that emptiness also,” Dane said.

“Is it dangerous?” DeAngelo asked.

“Being in this submersible is dangerous,” Dane said. “We’ll see what is down there when we get there.”

“Passing through twenty-four thousand feet,” DeAngelo said. “We’re in range to get sonar images if you want. But remember, if we turn the sonar on, we’re giving our position away to anyone who is listening.”

“Turn it on,” Dane ordered. “We’re going to have to eventually to see where we’re going.”

DeAngelo locked down the levers in the descending spiral position and flipped a switch. Deepflight’s sonar began painting a picture of the bottom.

Dane watched the sonar screen as an image of the Milwaukee Depth coalesced. A steep bowl shaped depression with steep sides formed. The north side of the Milwaukee Depth was almost vertical, an underwater cliff of vast dimension.

“Do you have the location of the circle that Foreman’s people discovered?” Dane asked.

“The computer is orienting the stored image right now,” DeAngelo said, “comparing it to what we’re picking up on sonar.”

A green circle appeared on the screen. One edge of it touched the very bottom of the Milwaukee Depth, but the majority was off to the north, outside of the edge of depression on that side, beyond the mile high cliff.

“That’s strange,” DeAngelo said. “If the reading is true, then this thing, whatever it is, must be under the ocean floor.”

“Take us to the part that touches the Depth,” Dane tapped the screen.

“Roger that.”

Dane glanced up at the video feed to the rear sphere. Sin Fen was looking at her sonar display. Dane reached out to her mentally, but the only image he picked up was her interest in what she was seeing. They were now in the hole in the ocean floor that constituted the Milwaukee Depth.

“Twenty-six thousand feet,” DeAngelo announced. “We’re three quarters of a mile above the bottom. I’m slowing our descent. Things are getting tighter. I’m going to find the north wall and use it to guide down.”

On the sonar display, the north wall grew closer and closer as DeAngelo steered them toward it.

“There!” DeAngelo said.

Dane looked at the display that showed the outside view lit by the IR searchlights. A gray vertical wall appeared on screen. Alternating between the sonar display and the outer view, DeAngelo took them down along the flat north wall of the Milwaukee Depth.

The depth gauge clicked through 27,000 feet and DeAngelo slowed them further.

“That wall’s not natural,” Sin Fen said.

“Hold up,” Dane ordered DeAngelo. Deepflight came to a halt, floating at 27,600 feet.

A horizontal line had appeared on the rock wall, a black mark against the gray wall, almost a foot thick. It extended left and right as far as the camera could see. Dane leaned forward, getting closer to the screen. The wall below the line seemed to be the same rock as that above, but the rock was totally smooth on the lower portion. The upper portion also appeared to overhang the rock below by a couple of feet. Dane checked the sonar. The wall was completely smooth below.

“The line curves very slightly,” he said. “Follow it to the right,” he told DeAngelo.

The twin propellers churned and the submersible moved along the rock wall, tracing the line.

“It is curved,” DeAngelo confirmed. “We’re descending very slowly.”

Soon Dane could see that the line was on a sloped forty-five degree angle, heading down. “It’s a big circle,” he said.

“Semi-circle,” DeAngelo corrected. “As wide as that curve is, we’re going to be at the bottom halfway down.”

Dane checked the sonar. The bottom was less than three hundred feet below them and the curve had yet to go through the vertical.

“Two hundred from bottom,” DeAngelo announced a minute later.

“This thing is big,” Dane was calculating in his head. “Almost a half mile in radius.”

“The question is,” Sin Fen said, “what is it?”

“One hundred feet and slowing,” DeAngelo’s eyes were glued to the sonar. The line slid by. “Fifty feet.”

Dane could feel the submersible slow, his body pressed slightly against the pad beneath.

DeAngelo switched on the camera in the belly of the sub. Inky blackness met the IR searchlight.

“Twenty-five feet.”

The bottom appeared on the screen. It consisted of striated black rock that met the gray wall. The line was exactly vertical where it disappeared into the black rock. Dane reached out with his mind, but felt nothing.

“This sure as hell ain’t natural,” DeAngelo muttered as he brought Deepflight to a hover. “What now?”

Dane looked at the projection of the muon circle against the sonar pattern and their own location.

“Go west,” Dane said, “along the wall. Take us to the center.”

“Roger that.” DeAngelo turned the submersible and they scooted along, keeping the bottom twenty feet below and the wall fifteen feet off their starboard side. The gray rock was perfectly smooth and Dane wondered if it was rock at all.

“Is the bottom view normal?” Dane asked DeAngelo.

“The only time I’ve seen anything like this is when I was in the Pacific off Hawaii- molten rock that hits seawater and cools quickly. But that was near the surface- magna that flows on land and then goes into the water. Magna that comes out directly into the ocean from a vent doesn’t look like this.”

“So how do we have this type of rock at twenty-eight thousand feet?” Dane asked.

“Hell, how do you have this smooth stuff to our right?” DeAngelo asked in turn. “I’ve never seen anything like that either.”

“It’s a door,” Sin Fen’s voice came over the intercom.

That’s what Dane had been thinking, but the sheer magnitude of the door itself and the depth they were operating at made it hard to accept the concept.

“Damn big door,” DeAngelo said. He glanced at the sonar. “It’s over a mile wide.”

“It doesn’t appear to have been opened in a while,” Dane said. “The bottom half looks like its blocked in.”

“Besides the constant low level field surrounding whatever is behind the door,” Sin Fen said, “Nagoya picked up spikes of muonic activity in this area several times.”

“We’ve got something ahead on the wall,” DeAngelo said.

Dane looked at the video screen. The IR searchlights lit up a black circle in the center of the gray. The black was forty feet in diameter. The infrared light didn’t reflect off of it, but rather seemed to be absorbed.

“Can we see it in normal light?” Dane asked as DeAngelo brought them to a hover.

“It won’t look any different,” DeAngelo said, but he turned on the outer lights anyway. The computer automatically switched to the normal light video cameras.

DeAngelo was right- it looked the same. A black circle that seemed to grab the light and suck it in. Dane had seen something like it before.

“It’s a gateway,” he told the other two. “Flaherty came to me in Angkor Kol Ker through something like that and we went through the same thing to go from Angkor to the Scorpion.”

“A gateway in the middle of what looks like a door?” DeAngelo said.

“I’ve got a smaller gate in my door at home,” Dane said. “My dog uses it.”

“I don’t think I like that analogy,” DeAngelo had turned them straight on, facing the black circle.

“The question is,” Sin Fen said, “what is on the other side? Where does it lead? If it’s like the small gate you went through at Angkor, it could transport us anywhere.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Dane said.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” DeAngelo said.

“We’re here,” Dane said.

“But maybe that’s solid,” DeAngelo protested.

“Then I’d suggest you go into it very slowly,” Dane said.

“I don’t-” DeAngelo began but Sin Fen cut him off.

“Go ahead. There is something on the other side.”

“Great,” DeAngelo muttered. He edged the two drive levers forward and they approached the black circle at a crawl.

Dane tried to push his mind forward, through the door, but he was picking up nothing. He wondered what had made Sin Fen say there was something on the other side.

The nose of the submersible was less than five feet from the black circle. Four. DeAngelo slowed them even more. Three. Two. One.

Dane felt the air around him change, press in as if taking on a thicker consistency. Pain rippled across his brain and he was dimly aware that alarms were going off and DeAngelo was throwing switches and pushing buttons in a flurry of activity next to him.

Dane looked up at the screen. Water all around, but the black circle was behind them now. And there was light suffusing the water from above.

“What happened?” Dane asked.

“Extreme pressure change outside,” DeAngelo pushed another button and the wail of the alarm stopped. The sudden silence accompanied the end of the pain in Dane’s head.

“Change to what?” Dane asked.

DeAngelo simply pointed at the depth gauge. It read thirty feet.

“How can that be?” Dane asked. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” DeAngelo said.

“Why don’t we surface and take a look?” Sin Fen suggested from the rear sphere.

DeAngelo edged back and the submersible headed for the surface. They popped up and Dane blinked as the top-side cameras recorded the scene around them.

They were floating in the center of circular body of still dark water, about three miles in diameter. A smooth black beach, two miles in width encircled the water, slowly rising and ending at a rock wall that curved up and in, meeting a half-mile over their heads. A large glowing orb, so bright the camera had to click in place two filters to prevent overload, lit the entire cavern.

Dane had no doubt that this was the muon space that Nagoya’s instruments had recorded. But what hadn’t been recorded were the hundreds of ships and planes that littered the black beach all around them, slowly revealed as the cameras rotated. It was an overwhelming vista; Dane saw ships ranging from Roman galleys through modern warships. Planes from old propeller bi-planes through a SR-71 reconnaissance jet, all tumbled on the metal floor like a madman’s model toy collection. There was even a massive dirigible, the metal skin half-collapsed, lying on its side.

Some of the ships and planes were partially destroyed or disassembled. On the far shore a huge oil tanker had been stripped of its hull, only the steel girders remaining, like a beached whale that had decomposed to its skeleton. A large warship of what appeared to be World War I vintage was missing its bow up to the first gun turret, the metal cut cleanly.

There was no sign of the crews, just the relics.

“It’s a graveyard,” Dane whispered, trying to take in the large numbers and immense variety of craft he was viewing. He reached out with his mind but picked up no signs of life.

“Let’s hope it’s not our graveyard too,” DeAngelo muttered.

“Look to the right,” Dane said. “Between that yacht and the B-24 bomber.”

The escape pod from Deeplab lay on the black beach, the latest addition to the macabre scene.

Ariana Michelet saw the small dot representing Deepflight disappear off her sonar screen. She waited for it to reappear, hoping that it had simply gone behind something but the minutes passed and nothing happened.

She picked up the phone linking her to the Glomar and reported this new development. Captain Stanton told her she had a call that he was relaying.

She waited, then with a belch of static, Foreman’s voice echoed through the operations sphere.

“Do you have any idea where Deepflight is?” Foreman asked.

“It went into the circle of muonic activity,” Ariana reported. “That’s what you wanted from the very beginning, isn’t it?”

Foreman ignored her question and asked one of his own. “You’re aware the Bermuda Triangle gate is growing? Along with the other gates?”

“We heard that it grew when the line of activity came out, but not that it’s still growing.”

“Latest imagery indicates a growth rate that will put it over your location in eight hours,” Foreman said. “You’ll be inside the gate then.”

“And?” Ariana said. “What do you expect me to do about it? Abandon Deepflight? It’ll take the Glomar six hours to pull Deeplab up anyway.”

“I’m just keeping you informed,” Foreman said. “The electro-magnetic activity through the SOSUS system is continuing and increasing. The president has ordered all available ships and subs to sea in preparation.”

“In preparation for what?” Ariana asked.

“That’s what the president asked me and that’s what I’m hoping Dane and Sin Fen can tell us when they get back.”

“I’ll let you know as soon as they re-establish contact.” Ariana cut the transmission and sat back in the command chair.