The nuclear fraternity was large, and getting larger. Nukes were no longer enough to intimidate or impress or keep at bay. What was needed was something new-something whose power was so awesome it would guarantee America's position for the indefinite future.

And that meant appropriating-by any and all means necessary-technology to keep her ahead of the herd. And that technology lay directly beneath them. Technology that could transmit messages from beneath the earth's crust. Technology that could store almost infinite reservoirs of energy in a tiny, iridescent chip.

The thought of passing up such technology was inconceivable. The thought of someone else claiming it was unacceptable.

"Four minutes out," said Rafferty.

"Very well." Korolis glanced from the engineer to the third occupant of Marble Three: the wiry old man with the blizzard of unruly white hair. Dr. Flyte, for once saying next to nothing. Korolis frowned. The man's presence on the Facility had been an unfortunate necessity: as the foremost authority on cybernetics and miniaturization, he'd been the only person capable of devising the complex robotic arm the Marble employed. The man might have been a genius, but he was notoriously eccentric, and-in the opinion of Korolis-a security liability. As a result, he had been kept secretly aboard the Facility, more or less against his will. It seemed the best solution: not only had it kept the all-too-talkative old fellow from speaking to the wrong people, but also Flyte's presence on the Facility meant he could maintain the robotic arms and train others in their complexity.

Korolis shifted in his seat. He'd chosen Flyte for this dive because-as with Rafferty-he'd wanted the very best. And who better to man the controls of the robotic arm than its inventor?

Another throb of pain seared his temples, but Korolis willed himself to ignore it. Nothing was going to get in the way of completing this dive; he would not allow his work to be impeded by human frailty. Something momentous was about to happen.

And it was entirely fitting that he be here in person, to make the discovery himself. After all, nobody else could be trusted. Admiral Spartan had proven himself weak-dangerously weak. This was not a time for going soft or for second-guessing. Spartan had been doing too much of both, lately, to retain the helm of an operation as critical as this one.

In recent days, it had grown clear to Korolis that the admiral was becoming unfit for command. The surprise, even dismay, he'd shown at Asher's death-the single greatest impediment to their progress-had been only the first sign. And his unmanly grief over what happened to Marble One, in truth just a casualty of war. But the admiral's willingness to listen to the poisonous, traitorous words of Peter Crane-that could not be borne.

At the thought of Crane, Korolis's expression darkened. He'd known Crane would be a troublemaker from the first time he'd met him in the Medical Suite. Monitoring the doctor's quarters, overhearing the long conversation with Asher, had merely cemented his conviction. All that cowardly talk about danger, about scrubbing the mission…Erasing Asher's hard disk, as he himself had done-and isolating the equally suspicious Hui Ping so she could not assist with any data retrieval-should have been enough to keep the old crackpot's crazy ideas, his alarmist pet theories, from infecting others. How was he to know that bastard Crane would be able to retrieve the data? If in fact he had, if it wasn't all a lie; no doubt the man was capable of anything…

He calmed himself with the thought that the man was in the brig by now. There would be plenty of time to deal with him later.

The radio crackled. "Dive Control to Marble Three."

Korolis took the mike. "Dive Control, go ahead."

"Sir, there's a situation we need to brief you on."

"Proceed."

"A few moments ago, the Facility was hit by what appears to have been an explosion."

"An explosion?"

"Yes, sir."

"What kind of explosion? Machinery failure? Detonation?"

"Unknown at the present time, sir."

"What was the location?"

"Deck eight, sir."

"What's the present status?"

"No damage reports have come back yet, sir-automatic detectors are off-line and the situation's still a little fluid. Power has been fully restored. There seems to be some issues with the environmental controls. Damage control and rescue teams have been dispatched; we're waiting for a sit rep."

"Well, pass it on when you get it. Meanwhile, have Chief Woburn take a squad up to do his own recon."

"Very good, sir."

"'Hades is relentless and unyielding,'" Dr. Flyte said, more to himself than anyone else. Then he lapsed into a quiet, singsong recitation in what Korolis assumed to be ancient Greek.

"Over and out." Korolis replaced the mike. Woburn could be relied on to deal effectively with the situation-he and his agents had been carefully selected for their reliability and their devotion to him, forged over countless clandestine missions in past years.

He now realized that, in the back of his mind, he'd always known this would happen: that he would need the loyalty and support of the black ops team; that at the ultimate moment he would be here, inside the Marble, to claim the prize.

Rafferty looked over from his perch. "Two minutes to interface."

"Spin up the tunnel-boring machine." Korolis turned to the old man. "Dr. Flyte?"

The cybernetics engineer fell silent, glancing back with his bright blue eyes.

"Commence final diagnostics on the robotic array, if you please."

The response was another quotation. "'Son of Atreus, what manner of speech has escaped the barrier of your teeth?'" But-a little grudgingly-Flyte busied himself at his station.

As Korolis turned back to his own control panel, he allowed himself a grim little smile. Let Chief Woburn clean up the mess overhead. His own destiny lay below-three hundred meters beneath their feet.

54

Crane took an involuntary step backward, bumping his shoulders hard against the metal flank of the Facility. He stared in disbelief.

The platform they stood on jutted out roughly thirty feet over the sea floor, into which the base of the Facility had been embedded. Below, a bizarre, almost lunar landscape spread out toward the dome: the exposed sea bed. It rose and fell crazily, in small, alien hills and valleys and ripples, partly submerged. It was a dark-chocolate color, and in the half-light of the dome it shone with an eerie luminescence. It appeared to be made up of a fine, muddy, foul-smelling silt.

But this was not what arrested his horrified gaze. It was the view above.

The dome that surrounded and protected the Facility rose in a gentle curve until it was almost lost from sight, far above. To one side of their little platform, a vertical line of heavy rungs had been bolted onto the Facility's outer skin. These rose, in a straight and unbroken line, up the sheer metal face. Near the top of the Facility, Crane could barely make out the narrow catwalk that led out to the receiving platform for the Tub-the catwalk he himself had crossed the week before. Between this catwalk and their own small ledge, Crane could see one of the massive, tube-shaped pressure spokes that ran like a hollow skewer between the dome and the Facility. This, too, he had seen before.

Except now it looked very different. At the spot where the spoke met the wall of the Facility, torrents of water were spitting and boiling outward and downward in huge, angry spumes. This was the source of the awful roar: a violent cataract of water, jetting from a rent in the pressure spoke with the murderous intensity of a machine gun. Even as he stared, the tear seemed to widen and the gush of seawater increase.