“I needed to make sure no one on the surface could see this video footage.” Marazzato placed the palms of his hands upward. “Don’t you see how important it is to protect this? It needs to be safeguarded.”
“How protected do you think it’s going to be when we don’t return to the surface?” Sam asked. “And the US Navy, along with major media outlets, send an armada out here to find the truth?”
Major Marazzato said, “I’m sorry.”
Dr. Smyth said, “What about the emergency ballast system? I thought the dome capsule could be released in an emergency?”
“It should, but it didn’t work.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I tried the manual latch. There is something about the pressure that the engineers didn’t quite understand. It’s not their fault; no one has really experimented at this depth.”
“So we’re really trapped here?”
Sam nodded. “For the time being at least.”
“Until when?” Marazzato asked.
“In five days the sodium crystal anodes on the twin pontoons will dissolve, releasing the heavy lead ballast weights. When that happens, we’ll be on a one way trip to the surface.” Sam made an uncomfortable grin. “That is, of course, on the assumption that the system doesn’t have any unexpected faults.”
Chapter Forty-One
The temperature in the submarine dropped quickly.
The hours ticked by slowly.
Boredom struck first, followed by hunger. They had survival rations, but those needed to be withheld for as long as possible. Sam checked the computer, making certain that the life support and gas supplies were going to make it.
Dr. Smyth took photos of the sphere using a hand-held digital camera.
“Hey, you can’t do that!” Major Marazzato tried to take the camera from her. “This falls under the government’s Secrecy Act.”
“What are you talking about?” Dr. Smyth held the camera solid. “I was sent here to determine if someone was illegally dumping nuclear waste.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve already discovered that the nuclear waste isn’t coming from wherever we thought it might have been. It’s clearly surrounding the sphere. That’s alien technology. It should be kept secret until the Navy can send an extraction team to secure it. We’re going to need to protect it.”
“How do you think that will work?” Sam said. “The sphere has a diameter of five hundred feet. We don’t have the technology to secure it, let alone bring it to the surface.”
“That’s for the engineers to work out, Mr. Reilly. My job is to protect the secret until they can retrieve it.”
Dr. Smyth gripped her camera. “And my job is to make sure some rogue nuclear nation isn’t about to poison the ocean with nuclear waste.”
Sam intervened. “We’ve all come here to work out what’s going on. If that means the sphere is responsible for the leaking nuclear waste, then so be it. If it’s alien technology, or something made by one of our enemies, the Department of Defense will take over all responsibility after we get to the surface and brief the Secretary of Defense. Until then, Major Marazzato, I suggest you allow Dr. Smyth to do her job.”
Dr. Smyth said, “Thank you, Mr. Reilly.”
Sam turned his attention to the sphere. On closer inspection, it wasn’t a perfect sphere. It was shaped evenly, but what appeared like a smooth globe of obsidian had some imperfections in the form of deep recesses and crevasses.
He focused on a large one near the bottom of the sphere. There was something familiar about it. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The recess looked like something he’d seen on a nuclear submarine.
To Dr. Smyth, he said, “Can you get a close-up picture of that opening, for me please?”
“Sure. I’ll see what I can get.” Dr. Smyth took a couple photos, zooming in as close as she could to the opening. She handed him the camera, “See if you can make anything of it.”
Sam stared at the image. His mouth opened in shock.
Major Marazzato glanced at him, “What is it? What do you see?”
Sam grimaced, fixing his gaze directly on the major. “James, we’re trapped on the bottom of the world’s deepest ocean, in a bubble not much bigger than the iron coffin of the last generation’s deep-sea divers. In all likelihood, there’s a very good chance we’re not going to make it to the surface again. You understand that, don’t you?”
Major Marazzato nodded. “Yes I do.”
“Good.” Sam met his eye. “That being the case, can you answer me something honestly?”
“Shoot,” Marazzato said.
Sam expelled a deep breath. “Is the sphere one of ours?”
Marazzato held his breath. “Of course not!”
“Are you sure?”
“Good God! Do you think we’d have even been allowed to dive if the sphere was our technology? Hell, the Pentagon wouldn’t have even let you investigate the Carpe Diem if it was going to lead you to their own secret technology.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Whoever that craft belongs to — if they are still alive — they’ve won the game. It’s not a game changer — its game over for the rest of us.” Marazzato balled his fists, as though he might actually win that sort of fight trapped inside a submarine on the seafloor. “Why are you so certain it’s one of ours?”
Sam turned the camera around so that all three of them could see the image clearly. It depicted an opening into the sphere. Despite its massive size, the opening was very similar to the lockout trunk of a nuclear submarine.
And at the bottom right hand corner, painted onto the hull, was the flag of the United States of America.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Dammit Major Marazzato!” Sam said, “How long have you known that this was down here?”
Marazzato bit his lower lip. He met Sam’s eye, and then expelled a deep breath. “Look. I found out about it forty-eight hours ago.”
“They knew about it and yet they sent us here anyway?”
He nodded without saying anything.
Sam asked, “Why?”
“Because they didn’t really believe it was true.”
“What was true?”
“That the sphere really existed.”
Sam tried to blink the confusion out of his eyes. “What are you talking about? They either knew about it or they didn’t.”
Marazzato frowned. “I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple.”
“Bullshit!” Sam slammed his fist on the control panel in front of him. “It exactly that simple. We’re going to die down here because of you, so I think it’s fair that you at least let me know why?”
Marazzato nodded, almost accepting that it was a reasonable idea. “They’ve known about the sphere since the sixties.”
Sam’s brow furrowed. “The sixties?”
Marazzato took a deep breath. “Middle of the cold war they found it floating in the Atlantic Ocean twenty miles off the coast of Chesapeake Bay.”
“A giant sphere with a diameter of a thousand feet washes up that close to Washington and no one suspects an attack?”
Marazzato raised the palms of his hands. “No. They had serious doubts it had come from the Soviets.”
“Really? Haven’t they ever heard of a Trojan Horse?”
“Apparently not.” Marazzato handed Sam the camera back. “And besides, I believe this already answers the question of who built it. The question now is, when was it built?”
Sam arched his eyebrow. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that we don’t currently have the technology to build something like the sphere today. Certainly nothing in the US Navy. You said yourself that the dome that’s keeping the three of us alive is the cutting edge of deep water submersible technology, and it only has a diameter of under ten feet. Do you really believe we have the technology to build something as grand as the sphere?”