'Yes.'

'It doesn't make sense. Identical organisms have near identical DNA.'

'If they're all the same species.'

'But these are the same species.'

'The background mutation rate…'

'No way.' Johanson seemed stunned. 'This goes far beyond any background mutation rate. They're all different organisms. None of the DNA matches.'

'Well, they're certainly not ordinary amoebas.'

'There's nothing ordinary about them at all.'

'What are they, then?'

'I don't know.'

'I don't either,' she agreed. 'But I do know that there's some wine left, and I could really use another drink.'

JOHANSON

For a while they searched different databases, comparing the DNA sequencing of the cells in the jelly with existing DNA data. In no time at all Oliviera had found the results from the day they'd examined the substance in the whales' brains. Back then she hadn't noticed any variations in the sequence of the DNA bases. 'I should have examined a few more of those cells,' she said crossly.

'You might not have noticed anyway.'

'Even so.'

'How were you supposed to guess it was an aggregate of single-cell organisms? Come on, Sue, it's no use beating yourself up. Think positive.'

Oliviera sighed. 'I guess you're right.' She glanced at the clock. 'Sigur, why don't you go to bed? There's no point in both of us staying up all night.'

'What about you?'

I'll carry on here. I want to know if this tangle of DNA has ever been found before.'

'Let me help you.'

Go and get some rest. You need your beauty sleep – it's wasted on me. Nature gave me wrinkles and crow's feet as soon as I hit forty. No one can tell the difference if I'm wide awake or half asleep. You go. And don't forget to take your lovely wine with you – I can't afford to drink away any more of my scientific rigour.'

Johanson saw that she wanted to struggle through the problem on her own. She had nothing to reproach herself for, but it was probably better to leave her in peace.

He picked up the bottle and left the lab. Outside, he realised he wasn't tired. In the Arctic Circle time seemed to vanish. The near-constant sunlight stretched the day until it became an almost perfect loop, interrupted by only a few hours of dusk. The sun was creeping along the horizon out of sight. You could have described it as night and, in psychological terms, it was time to go to bed. But Johanson didn't feel like it. Instead he continued up the ramp.

The vastness of the hangar deck was obscured by abstract patterns of shadows. The bay was still deserted. He glanced over to where they'd been sitting earlier; the crate was all but invisible amid the gloom.

Rubin couldn't have seen them.

But he'd seen Rubin.

He wanted to inspect the bulkhead.

To his disappointment and surprise, it proved fruitless. He walked up and down several times, running his fingers along the sheets of steel and the bolts that held them together. He checked the pipes and the fuse boxes. Oliviera was right: he must have been seeing things. There was nothing there. No door or any other kind of opening.

'But I wasn't seeing things,' he muttered softly.

Maybe he should go to bed. But he'd only keep thinking about it. Or he could ask someone – Li, Peak, Buchanan or Anderson. But what if he was wrong?

You're supposed to have an enquiring mind, he told himself, so keep up with your enquiries.

Unhurriedly he walked back towards the aft end of the hangar and sat down on the crate that had served as their makeshift bar. He waited. It wasn't a bad spot. Maybe in the end he'd be forced to concede that people with migraines couldn't walk through walls, but it was a pleasant place to sit and look at the view.

I le took a sip from the bottle. The Bordeaux gave him a sensation of warmth. His eyelids began to feel heavy. They seemed to gain a gram with every passing minute, until he could barely keep them open. Finally, when the bottle was empty, he dozed…

A soft metallic noise woke him.

At first he didn't know where he was. Then he felt the pain in his back where he was leaning against the steel side. The sky was brightening over the sea. He sat up straight and glanced at the bulkhead.

It had parted.

He got to his feet. A door was open. There was a space of about three square metres. The glow stood out against the dark metal.

His eyes shifted back to the empty bottle on the crate.

Was he dreaming?

He moved slowly towards the square of light. As he got closer he saw that it led into a corridor with plain walls. The neon lighting emitted a cold, harsh glare. After a few metres, the corridor reached a wall and disappeared to one side.

Johanson peered through the door and listened.

He could hear voices and other sounds. Instinctively he took a step back. He wondered whether it would he best to turn round now. This was a warship, after all. The rooms inside were bound to serve some purpose. A purpose that was of no concern to civilians.

Then he remembered Rubin.

If he backed away now he'd never stop thinking about it.

He went inside.

14 August

Heerema, La Palma, Canary Islands

Bohrmann was unable to enjoy the good weather because he knew that millions of worms carrying billions of bacteria were progressing at frightening speed through the thin veins of hydrate 400 metres below. He stared gloomily out to sea.

The Heerema was a semi-submersible, a floating platform the size of several football pitches. The rectangular deck rested on six columns that rose from massive pontoons, supported by diagonal struts. On dry land, the vessel resembled a gigantic catamaran. Now the pontoons were partially flooded and had sunk out of sight beneath the waves. Only the tops of the columns rose out of the waves. With a draught of twenty-one metres and a displacement capacity of over 100,000 tonnes, the platform was incredibly stable. Even when conditions were at their roughest, semi-submersibles rode out the motion of the rolling, pitching sea. Most importantly, though, they were manoeuvrable and comparatively speedy. The Heerema's two main propellers had allowed her to reach a transit speed of seven knots on her voyage northbound from Namibia to La Palma.

At the stern a two-storey tower housed the crew quarters, mess-room, kitchen, bridge and control room. Two vast cranes rose from the front of the platform, each capable of lifting 3000 tonnes. The right-hand crane lowered the suction tube into the water while the other took care of the lighting system, a separate unit with integrated cameras. Four technicians, perched high in the air in their drivers' cabs, had the sole responsibility for coordinating and steering the tube and the lights.

'Gair – hard!'

Stanley Frost was hurrying towards him from one of the cranes. Bohrmann had told him that he could always call him Gerd for short, but Frost insisted on pronouncing his full name in a thick Texan drawl. They made their way into the tower and entered the darkened control room. Some of Frost's team were there, with some technicians from De Beers, including Jan van Maarten. The technology expert had achieved the promised miracle astonishingly quickly. The world's first-ever deep-sea vacuum-cleaner for worms was ready for action.

'OK, folks,' trumpeted Frost, as they took their places behind the technicians. 'May the Lord bless our work here. And if all goes well, it's next stop Hawaii. We sent one of our robots down there yesterday, and the whole south-eastern flank was swarming with worms. Attacks are being launched against other volcanic islands, but we're going to give those worms hell. Our tube's going to blow them right out of the water. This whole planet's going to get a darned good tidy.'