15
It took almost thirty minutes for the men to reach the surface, where they were helped out of the water onto a wide platform. It was large and made of thick stainless steel grating, creating a deep resonating echo when the men dropped their equipment. An old utility elevator ran up the inside length of one of the oil rig’s giant pillars, requiring the men to take turns returning to the rig’s operations level.
Waiting inside the large maintenance bay were both Gorski and Borger, along with the rest of the engineering crew. A few of them had already suited up for the second dive. Together they sat in a semicircle on standby.
Gorski stood, with arms folded, in front of two rusted double doors. Both were open and leading into the Valant’s giant machine shop. The rest of the engineers faced Gorski, sitting on metal benches or against larger tables near the opposite wall.
Caesare, Beene, and Corbin entered through a smaller door. Upon seeing the others, Caesare grinned sarcastically at Gorski. “Well, that was interesting.”
Gorski scoffed. “Not exactly the word I was thinking of.” With arms still crossed in front of him, he raised his voice to address the group. “It seems our spaceship is full of surprises, gentlemen.”
Elgin Tay, wearing wire-framed glasses and of Chinese descent, raised both eyebrows. “What happened?”
“It appears the ship doesn’t just attract metal,” Borger answered. “It attracts energy too.”
“What?!”
“Our dive computers just experienced a sharp battery draw down.”
“When we got right next to it,” Beene added.
Jim Lightfoot, another of the Pathfinder’s engineers, frowned at Borger, then Gorski. “Is that even possible?”
“I’m not sure,” Borger shrugged. “Maybe if there was a transformer or a motor involved. They have magnetic lines of flux to operate.” He thought for a moment. “If this ship had an energy field, it might be possible for it to absorb some of that energy. But that’s theoretical, and we’re not using any motors.”
“I think we’re a little beyond what we consider possible with this thing,” Gorski replied. He glanced at Borger. “There’s not a hell of a lot making sense here. And this drawdown presents some serious problems. Those computers control the oxygen-helium mixture in the heliox. If something causes them to malfunction, and that mixture is off by only a fraction, then we’re going to be collecting your corpses when they float to the surface. At that depth and pressure, Mother Nature is damn unforgiving.”
Tay looked back and forth between his team. “So, are we still going down?”
“Not today. Not until we understand exactly what we’re dealing with.”
“You know,” Steve Caesare thought aloud, “we could still get down to it, without being deep enough to need the computers or the lights. We can still get to the top of the thing using standard SCUBA equipment to get the drill on it.”
The “drill” was a large two-handed unit used by underwater construction crews. It had been left onboard the Valant, and after undergoing some minor repairs, was now sitting on the metal floor in front of Lightfoot.
The truth was, they could only go on mapping for so long. Sooner or later, they needed to know what the damn thing was made out of. Now more than ever. And that meant a sample. The waterproof drill was old but should nevertheless be able to provide a large enough piece of the hull to study.
Gorski stared at Caesare, contemplating. The first drilling was expected to be done quickly, down and right back up. They could still go with all mechanical gear, without the need for any electronics. The only battery would be in the drill, and it was enormous. Once against the hull, thirty seconds was likely all they would need.
“We do need a piece of it,” Borger acknowledged.
“We can always go down again later to understand this energy draw,” Caesare offered.
Gorski reluctantly nodded. They’d already carried out dozens of shallower dives, and only just detected the draw. Admittedly, the risk for the next dive wasn’t great.
He looked to Tay. “Okay. But you’re down and back up inside of thirty minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gorski twisted his wrist and looked at his large Oris Pro dive watch. “Then let’s get in the water. Time is not our friend.”
Once in the water, it took less than seven minutes to reach the highest point of the alien hull. The broadly rounded section was exposed by only a small opening, which the team had made in the dense coral.
Tay, along with Smitty, another of the Pathfinder engineers, moved into position. Lightfoot continued down behind them, lowering the tip of the drill for the first two men to guide in.
The full-face rotary drill weighed over a hundred pounds out of the water, and even with the buoyancy of the ocean, they still had difficultly positioning its crystalline diamond cutter.
Once it was finally in place, a small tripod extended forward around the end of the giant drill bit until each pad touched the hull, keeping the angle straight. More ripples of green snaked out from each of the three contact points and eventually faded.
Tay nodded through his SCUBA mask, and the large unit was powered on, setting the large drill cutter spinning. Lightfoot grasped the large steel arm at the rear and slowly pulled it back, watching the cutting bit move forward inside a clear shaft.
Tay checked the small cameras atop Lightfoot and Smitty’s neoprene-capped heads. Both appeared to be recording. Between the three of them, even with draining batteries, they should be able to capture some video.
He double-checked the whirling bit and gave a thumbs-up before Lightfoot pulled farther back on the lever. The spinning increased and the charcoal-colored bit became a blur, extending out farther toward the alien hull.
When the drill bit finally made contact, none of them were prepared for what happened next.
16
“Good God.”
Borger couldn’t believe his eyes, nor could the rest of the engineering crew standing behind him. All packed into the small room.
Behind Borger, Gorski was frowning again. It had only taken minutes to get his divers back to the surface but that was more than long enough for him. He turned around and looked at Tay, Lightfoot, and Smitty. All three were standing near the back. “You boys sure you’re okay?”
They nodded almost simultaneously.
In the video, the moment the giant bit dug into the metal, a huge section of the hull burst into a bright white light. It was so intense that the normal ripple of green had all but disappeared.
The video from each of the three cameras playing simultaneously onscreen abruptly jumped around as Tay and his men scrambled to disengage the drill. Lightfoot slammed the lever back up, while both Tay and Smitty clung desperately to each side as a series of massive jolts caused the machine to buck wildly.
In all the commotion and shaking video footage, there was no sound. None of the cameras being linked to audio, the videos played in eerie silence. But the panic was evident. Each man worked desperately to get to safety without losing control of the drill, still spinning as it withdrew into its protective sheath.
But what came next was truly remarkable.
Tay, thinking quickly, ripped his tiny camera from its bracket and turned the angle of the lens back toward the illuminated hull. There the video on his camera showed a large fist-sized dimple where the diamond cutter had bored into it. A hole that was barely visible under the blinding light. And a hole that, within seconds, began to change.