We should accept our fate, thought Bohrmann. We haven't got time to get away.

He pictured the dome of water stretching six hundred metres into the sky…

The clatter of rocks stopped.

There was a long silence. No one said anything as they stared at the monitors. The terrace was enveloped in a haze of sediment that scattered the light from the halogen bulbs.

'It's stopped,' said van Maarten. There was an almost imperceptible shake in his voice.

'Yes.' Bohrmann nodded. 'Apparently.'

Van Maarten radioed the operators.

'The scaffold shook all over the place,' said the guy in charge of the lighting unit. 'We've lost one of the floodlights. The others are bright enough, though.'

'And the tube?'

'Seems to be stuck,' came the verdict from the other crane. 'The system's processing our commands, but it's unable to react.'

'I guess the mouth must be buried under rubble,' said the scaffold operator.

'How much debris do you think will have fallen?' asked van Maarten.

'We'll have to wait for the cloud to settle,' said Bohrmann. 'But it looks as though we've escaped with a bruising.'

'OK, then, we'll wait.' Van Maarten leaned into the microphone. 'Don't attempt to free the tube. You can all have a coffee break. I don't want anyone causing any more damage. We'll wait for a while, then reassess.'

THREE HOURS LATER they could vaguely make out the mouth of the tube.

Frost had rejoined them, his hair springing out from his head in an unruly mop of wiry curls.

'It's trapped,' said van Maarten.

Frost scratched his head. 'But I don't think it's broken.'

'The propellers can't turn.'

'How are we going to free them?'

'We could always send down a robot and try to shift the debris that way,' Bohrmann suggested.

'For the love of God,' protested Frost, 'that would take forever. And things were going so well.'

'We'll just have to hurry.' Bohrmann turned to van Maarten. 'How quickly can we get Rambo ready?'

'Right away.'

'Let's go, then. We'll give it a shot.'

Rambo owed its name to the Sylvester Stallone films. The ROV looked like a smaller version of Victor, and came equipped with four cameras, a set of thrusters at the stern and on its sides, and two powerful articulated arms. It was suitable for depths of up to eight hundred metres, and was popular in the offshore industry. Within fifteen minutes it was ready to go. Soon it was descending along the flank of the volcano towards the terrace, attached to its control system via an electro-optical tether. The lighting scaffold came into view. The robot sank further, accelerated and manoeuvred its way towards the trapped tube. Seen in close-up, it was obvious that the propellers and the video system were still intact, but the tube was well and truly jammed.

Rambo's articulated arms started to shift the debris. At first it seemed that the robot might succeed. It lifted the rocks one by one until it came to a sharp splinter of lava that had bored its way into the sediment and was sticking out diagonally, pressing the tube against a ledge. Its arms extended and contracted, twisting and trying to dislodge the splinter.

'It's not a job for a robot,' said Bohrmann. 'They can't generate momentum.'

'Great!' spat Frost.

'What if the operator were to reel in the tube?' suggested Bohrmann. 'That's bound to create enough tension to free it.'

Van Maarten shook his head. 'It's too risky. The tube might tear.'

They kept trying for a while, getting the robot to ram the rock from every possible angle, until eventually it was obvious that Rambo couldn't help. And in the meantime, worms were invading the surface that had been cleared, swarming out of the darkness from all directions.

'I don't like the look of this,' said Bohrmann. 'Especially not here, where the rock's so unstable.'

Frost frowned. 'I'll do it.'

Bohrmann looked at him questioning.

'I'll take a dive.' Frost shrugged. 'If Rambo can't do it, only we can. It's four hundred metres. The pressure suits can handle that.'

'You want to go down there?' Bohrmann said.

'Sure.' Frost stretched his arms until they clicked. 'Is there a problem?'

15 August

Independence, Greenland Sea

The yrr's reply prompted Crowe to send a second, infinitely more complex message into the depths. It contained information about the human race, its evolution and culture. At first Vanderbilt wasn't too happy about this, but Crowe persuaded him they had nothing to lose. The yrr were on the brink of victory. 'Our only chance,' she said, 'is to convince them that we deserve to live. And the only way we can do that is by telling them about us. Maybe there'll be something they haven't already taken into account. Something that will make them reconsider.'

'Shared values,' said Li.

'Or just the tiniest overlap.'

Oliviera, Johanson and Rubin had shut themselves into the lab to get the blob of jelly to dissociate. They kept in constant communication with Weaver and Anawak. Weaver had endowed her virtual yrr with electronic DNA and pheromones. It seemed to work. On a theoretical level they'd demonstrated that the aggregation of single-cell organisms relied on a pheromone, but in practice the jelly was disinclined to prove it. The being, or collection of beings, had turned into a flat sort of pancake and sunk to the bottom of the chamber.

On 02 level, Delaware and Greywolf were busy monitoring the footage from the dolphins' cameras, but there was nothing to be seen on the screens apart from the Independence's hull, a few fish, and the mammal fleet – dolphins filming each other. When they weren't in the CIC, they were down on the well deck, where Roscovitz and Browning were still hard at work, repairing the Deepflight.

Li was aware that even the best minds could seize up or get stuck in a rut if they weren't distracted from their work. She asked for the latest data on the weather forecast and double-checked its reliability. There was every indication that low winds and smooth seas would prevail until the next day. The water was noticeably calmer than it had been that morning.

With that knowledge, she summoned Anawak for a chat, and discovered to her astonishment that he knew next to nothing about Arctic cuisine. The responsibility was delegated to Peak, who, for the first time in his military career, found himself in charge of catering.

He made a series of phone calls and two helicopters set out for Greenland late that afternoon, Li announced that the head chef had invited them all to a party at nine o'clock that evening. The helicopters returned, bearing all the ingredients for a Greenland feast. Tables, chairs and a buffet were set up on the flight deck next to the island. A stereo system was carried outside and heaters were positioned around the perimeter to keep out the cold.

The bustle in the kitchens became a whirlwind of activity. Pots and pans were filled with caribou; seal stock was converted into soup; maktaaq – narwhal skin – was cut into strips, and eider-duck eggs put on to boil. The Independence's baker turned his hand to bannock, a tasty variety of flat bread, whose preparation was at the centre of numerous annual baking competitions. Arctic char and salmon were filleted and fried with herbs; frozen walrus became carpaccio; and mounds of rice were poured into water. Peak, who knew nothing about cooking, had trusted the advice of locals. Only one regional delicacy had failed to make the cut. No matter how much anyone extolled the virtues of raw walrus gut, Peak had decided it was one experience he was prepared to forgo.

He'd arranged for a skeleton crew to man the bridge, the engine room and the CIC, so at nine o'clock sharp almost everyone made their way to the deck – sailors, scientists and military – claimed their welcome drink, an alcohol-free cocktail, and waited for the buffet to open. Soon scientists were talking to soldiers, soldiers to sailors and sailors to scientists.