17

He was standing at the threshold of a vast, dim chasm. At least, that was his first impression. As his eyes adjusted to the low light, he realized he was on a narrow accessway, bolted to the exterior skin of the Facility. The sheer wall fell away behind and below him-freckled by a latticework of rungs-plummeting twelve stories into darkness, and for a moment he felt a wave of vertigo. Quickly, he grasped the steel railing. He realized dimly that one the marines was speaking to him.

"Sir," the marine was saying, "please step out. This hatchway cannot remain open."

"Sorry." And Crane hastily withdrew his other foot from the threshold. The two marines pulled the heavy hatch shut. From within came the rasp of bolts being fixed into place.

Still clinging to the railing, Crane looked around. Some distance ahead of him, and just barely visible in the faint light, rose a curved metal wall: the outer dome. Sodium lights were set into it at regular but distant intervals, providing the weak illumination. Looking upward, he followed the dome's rising curve to its apex, directly above the Facility. Metal tubes rose from the Facility roof to the underside of the dome: these, he assumed, were the airlocks that provided access to the bathyscaphes and the escape pod.

His gaze fell from the dome to the accessway on which he stood. It widened ahead of him, becoming a gentle ramp that spanned the deep gulf between the Facility and the dome. The rest of the group was already heading up it, toward a large platform fixed to the wall of the dome. He took a deep breath, then let go of the railing and began to follow.

The air was far chillier here, and the bilge smell more pronounced. As he walked, his feet clattered against the metal grid of the catwalk, echoing dully in the vast space. For a moment, he had a mental picture of where he was-at the bottom of the sea, walking on a narrow bridge between a twelve-story metal box and the dome that surrounded it, empty space between him and the sea bed below-but found it unsettling and tried to push it away. Instead, he focused on catching up to the group, which had by now almost reached the platform.

Conrad was behind Renault and the two kitchen staffers, and Crane trotted up beside him. "And here I thought Receiving would be some nice little room," he said, "with a television, maybe, and magazines on the tables."

Conrad laughed. "Takes some getting used to, doesn't it?"

"You could say that. I had no idea the space between the Facility and the dome was pressurized. I figured it was filled with water."

"The Facility wasn't constructed to operate at such a depth. At this pressure, it wouldn't last a minute on its own. The dome protects us. Somebody told me they work together, like the double hull of a submarine or something. I don't really understand it, to tell you the truth."

Crane nodded. The concept did make perfect sense. In some ways, it was like a submarine, with its inner pressure hull, outer hull, and ballast tanks between.

"I noticed a series of rungs on the outside of the Facility. What on earth are those for?"

"Like I said, it was built for much shallower water, where a protective dome wouldn't be necessary. I think those rungs were meant for divers to use when moving up or down the sides of the Facility, making repairs and such."

Glancing back, Crane noticed two large, tube-like struts that led, horizontally, from opposite ends of the dome to the Facility, at a point just slightly above its center. These, he realized, were what Asher had called pressure spokes-tubes open to the sea that were yet another device to compensate somehow for the massive pressure. From this distance, they did sort of resemble two spokes of a wheel. But to Crane, they looked more like a rotisserie spit onto which the Facility had been impaled. Compensation or not, he didn't like having the sea that close to the box inside which he was living.

They had now reached the platform at the end of the ramp. It was about twenty feet square and fastened securely to the dome's inner wall. An airlock hatch stood at one side, immensely thick, guarded by still more marines. This hatch, Crane felt sure, led to the deep ocean outside the dome. No doubt the Tub would dock itself here, and the supplies brought in through this airlock.

There were a dozen or so people waiting on the platform already: technicians in lab coats, maintenance workers in jumpsuits. Most had brought containers of various sizes. The maintenance crew had the largest ones: black plastic wheeled containers so bulky it must be difficult to fit them through hatchways. Crane guessed these contained waste material being sent back up to the surface.

Beside the hatch stood a control panel manned by a tall and very attractive woman in military garb. As Crane watched, she tapped a few keys, peered at a tiny display. "Incoming at T minus two minutes," she said over her shoulder.

There were a few impatient sighs from the group. "Late again," somebody murmured.

Crane's vertigo had now receded. His eye moved from the woman at the station to the skin of the dome itself. Its curve was gentle and perfect, designed for maximum strength, oddly pleasing to the eye. Amazing to think of the terrific pressure it was under, the almost inconceivable burden of water that pressed down upon it. It was something that, as a submariner, he'd learned not to dwell on. Unconsciously, he stretched forward a hand and briefly caressed the dome's surface. It was dry, smooth, and cold.

Renault, the executive chef, looked at his watch impatiently. Then he turned to Crane. "So, Doctor," he said, with something like satisfaction, "the Tub arrives. My men here retrieve the foodstuffs. Conrad does a checklist to make sure nothing was forgotten. All under my supervision. Satisfactory?"

"Yes," Crane replied.

"Incoming at T minus one minute," the woman called out.

Renault drew a bit closer. "You had other questions?" he asked. And he glanced again at his watch as if to say, Ask now, while I'm wasting valuable time anyway.

"Has anybody else on your staff complained of health problems recently?"

"My saucier has a sinus infection. But that hasn't prevented him from reporting to work."

Crane had expected this reply. Now that he'd satisfied himself on food handling, he was eager to get to work on the heavy metal possibility. His eyes began to rove: over the assembled crowd, to the attractive woman at the monitoring station, to an electrical bulkhead beside her. Drops of condensation dripped slowly from the underside of the bulkhead. He was half tempted to say good-bye and head back down the walkway to the Facility hatch-only he felt pretty sure he'd need Renault, and his paperwork, to get back inside.

There was a thud on the far side of the dome, and the platform trembled slightly: the Tub had docked. People began to move around, preparing for the airlock to be opened.

"Docking successful," said the woman. "Initiating hatchway decompression."

"What about behavior patterns?" Crane asked the chef. "Has anybody behaved in an uncharacteristic or unusual manner?"

Renault frowned. "Unusual? In what way unusual?"

Crane didn't reply. His wandering eye had returned to the bulkhead, where the condensation was dripping more quickly now. Odd, he thought. Now, why would condensation be-

There was a strange, high-pitched sound almost like the spitting of a cat, so brief Crane wasn't sure he'd heard it. And then, quite suddenly, a jet of water-no wider than the point of a pin-appeared at the spot where the drip had been. For a moment, Crane simply stared in disbelief. The jet was perfectly horizontal, like the beam of a laser, hissing and boiling, and it arrowed straight inward for at least a hundred feet, almost reaching the Facility itself before gravity began pulling it downward in a gradual arc.