He eased himself out through the door, while Rob picked up the comlink and passed on Regulo’s brief messages. Neither Morel nor Corrie replied to the signal, and he left both messages for automatic repeat. Then he looked at his own watch. It would be five hours to the next meal, three or four before Morel and Regulo came back from the clinic. With Caliban occupied on new data inputs, this ought to be the best possible time.
Moving quickly, Rob left the study and headed for the outer perimeter of the central living-sphere. Corrie would be in the recreation area, hard at work on her conditioning exercises. He didn’t make the turn in that direction. Instead, he doubled back towards the other side of the sphere, to the point where the industrial plant and maintenance services were all located.
Two or three quick trips towards Morel’s locked laboratory had convinced Rob that security was tight. The lab was locked, all the time, and somewhere there must be a monitor that warned Morel whenever anyone approached the door with the red seal. Rob had tried from all directions, but he had been unable to find any other path that might lead to the lab interior. Logic also said that no such path would exist, or Morel’s security precautions would be meaningless.
Rob had been able to think of only one other possibility, one way to satisfy his steadily increasing curiosity and his conviction that the lab held some deep secret.
The lab lay in the outer segment of the living-sphere. One of its walls must form a partition that separated the human living area from the aquasphere. Rob’s first assumption had been the natural one: the partition would be no more than a blank wall. Then he had observed that Caliban often took up a position close to the area of the living quarters that housed the lab; in fact, it was observation of the squid that had first drawn Rob to the lab area. It seemed hard to believe that Caliban would go there, unless there was something more than a blank wall facing outward to the aquasphere. There must be a display screen or a window in the lab wall. Investigation of that could not be done from the interior living quarters.
After a few hours of investigation, Rob had ruled out the possibility that he would be able to see anything useful from outside Atlantis, or from the main entry shafts that led through to the central sphere. The range of visibility, even through the clear water of Atlantis, was at best a hundred and fifty meters. Any inspection would have to be done from the aquasphere itself.
When his train of thought took him that far, Rob was at first inclined to follow it no further. There must be entry points to the aquasphere from the inner sphere, that much he knew. They were used when the food for Regulo’s table was caught or collected. But even if he could find a way into the aquasphere, and also find suitable underwater equipment, he still had not tackled the main difficulty: Regulo did not rule that domain. It belonged to Caliban. Morel could bind the great beast to inactivity when someone was in the aquasphere for food collection, but he would not do that for Rob’s benefit. More likely he would stir Caliban to action.
Rob watched and waited, increasingly impatient and curious. Finally he found the extra fact that he needed. When new data were available for Caliban from anywhere off-Atlantis, it would be displayed on screens for the animal’s viewing. In such cases, the squid would not leave that area until the presentation of data was complete. Apparently Caliban’s curiosity about the world outside Atlantis was not easily sated. Rob wondered how much the huge animal understood of its own unique existence.
He had checked the data that he had brought in with him, and agreed with Regulo’s assessment. Caliban ought to be fully occupied for at least four hours, digesting everything on the viewtapes and data disks. Ample time for Rob’s needs.
The suits for moving about in the water-filled interior of Atlantis were of a standard design, familiar to Rob from undersea construction projects back on Earth. They held enough oxygen for about two and a half hours of use. He carried one with him to the main entry point to the aquasphere, close to the main industrial plant where heating, light and power were controlled, and carefully looked about him. No maintenance staff were in sight. As he slipped into the suit, Rob cursed his own negligence. He had not been exercising his hands adequately since leaving Earth, and his clumsiness with the suit fastenings pointed that out to him. Fully suited at last, he went out through the lock and on into the dim, green world outside the central sphere.
It took a few seconds to orient himself correctly. The water temperature was lower than he had expected, but not enough to cause real discomfort. At this depth there was little diffused sunlight. Any heat here must come from the thermal source that the central living sphere provided, or from the illumination of the arrays of lights. They hung on the spaced lattice-work that filled the water-sphere, and they offered adequate light for Rob to navigate by.
He surveyed the scene about him. The original water of Atlantis may have been very pure, but now it was filled with the detritus of organic matter left by dead plants and animals, and with the nutrients circulated by the re-cycling system of the central living area. Visibility was down to about eighty meters, all through a green, clouded haze. Beyond that, the lights became dim globes of turquoise, soft and unreal.
Rob began to swim steadily through the quiet water, keeping the wall of the sphere close to his left hand. He followed the equatorial zone of the living area, avoiding window panels and keeping his eyes always looking outward into the green gloom. Vegetation grew in profusion from every point of the internal grid, breaking and diffusing the white light at its center. Every thirty meters, a long, clear avenue ran out towards the surface of Atlantis, four or five meters wide and free of all plant growth.
Rob paused and looked out along one of these. The vegetation seemed to have been neatly trimmed, or eaten away. His first thought was of Caliban. Then he recalled, with no comfort at all, that the great cephalopod was purely carnivorous. What he was seeing in the cleared avenues must be the effects of systematic crop farming, carried out by the army of complicated robo-servers who handled most of the maintenance for Atlantis.
Rob halted briefly when he reached the window of the dining-room where he had first seen Caliban. He was about halfway to the area of the living-sphere where the sealed lab was located. He looked at his watch. Almost an hour had gone by since Regulo had left for his appointment with Morel. Not fast enough. Increasing his pace, Rob swam on around the sphere and came a few minutes later to another window area. Keeping all but his head shielded by the metal walls, he looked cautiously in. This was the room with the sealed metal door, guarding the entrance to the lab. Rob turned and stared about him through the gloom. His heart began to pump harder when he thought for a moment that he could see a big, moving shape at the limit of his vision. After a few tense seconds, he realized that it was no more than the shadow of a long frond of weed, moving sluggishly in the thermal currents that transported nutrient supplies around the interior of Atlantis. He swam along to the next window area, and allowed himself to drift along until he could see within.
At first, he felt disappointed. It was a room that he had not seen before, large and dimly lit, but there was no one inside. The numerous tables and benches occupying the interior space seemed to support Morel’s assertion that this was no more than a standard bio-lab, unusual only in that it contained the best equipment that could be bought anywhere. At the far end was a complete surgery, with the fittings for major operations and automated anesthesia, and over by one wall was a full analytical lab. It was while Rob was peering in at that, his face mask pressed close to the transparent plastic surface, that he caught a flicker of movement through the open door that stood at the very end of the lab. He quickly drew back out of sight, then slowly returned to peer in over the edge of the window area.