The woman in the deep-ocean pressure suit reached up and quickly grabbed a metal bar dangling inches above the water.
Her name was Mary Knox. But she had dozens of names, a confused jumble of names. Here, at SousMer Underwater Resort, she was known as Mrs. Adam Ferro.
"All right," she said, her voice picked up by the EVA underwater suit's communications system and broadcast throughout the open area of this diving bay.
Her voice mixed with the gentle music being piped in, diffuse, nondescript music. Everyone staying at SousMer was familiar with the liquid, synthesized strings that were continuously heard in any public area, a soothing sound designed to promote a sense of calm and peace.
At SousMer Underwater Resort, all the excitement was well planned and anticipated with relish, deep-ocean thrills for the well heeled.
Which was why Mary Knox was here...
Once she grasped the bar, it pulled her to the metal steps. There, she let go of the bar and then trudged up the three steps while burly SousMer attendants helped unsnap her helmet. One attendant gently pulled her helmet off, and Mary shook her mane of long blond hair.
The slightly fresher air of the resort billowed in.
She noticed the men's appreciative glances. But the stir she caused lasted only a moment as they hurried back to get the next diver out...
Her husband, or so they thought.
Mary Knox walked to a long bench of sculpted seats where she could—with help—unfasten the suit, shut off the communications system, and get out.
She looked back to the open water of the diving bay. She saw Cutter—"Mr. Adam Ferro" as he was known here—going through the same procedure, being pulled to the steps and then helped with the helmet.
Jack Cutter also had lots of names.
A young woman dressed in the bright turquoise spandex of SousMer came up to Mary and unpopped the fastening at the top of the EVA unit. The suit was designed for tourists—it went on and off easily, and still provided maximum protection at SousMer's not inconsiderable depth of one mile below the sea's surface.
The young woman spoke, her voice tentative...
"Mrs. Ferro—we lost track of you and your husband out there. We had some trouble with one of the exterior cameras. After you reached bottom, you didn't answer us—"
Mary turned to the woman. Mrs. Ferro—now that was funny, she thought, as if I could actually he someone's wife. Cutter had jammed the camera with electronic static that would appear to be just a glitch in the image processing chip.
Mary smiled. "Yes, I know. Something went wrong with my suit. I guess we couldn't hear anything. We headed north, to take a look past the resort—at the ledge."
The dive attendant looked discomfited. "You should have stayed to your EVA plan. The drop-off at the edge there is very steep. We—"
Then Cutter was there, Mr. Ferro, rubbing his beard.
"Anything wrong?"
Mary shook her head. "They wanted to know if"—she smiled at the young woman—"if we had any trouble on our dive."
Cutter shook his head. "Trouble. No, nothing except for your communications going on the fritz. Some blasted interference. But—God—it was beautiful out there, the way the resort sits right next to the shelf. Made us want to jump."
Cutter laughed.
The attendant chewed her lip.
"That area is to be explored only in submersibles. The power plant is back there, Mr. Ferro. It's restricted. You knew that—"
Jack touched the attendant's shoulder.
"No damage... we're back safe and sound."
The attendant looked unsure, but more people were surfacing from their morning dives, more people to attend to—
The dive attendant nodded, and then she was gone.
Cutter turned to Mary. "Think she'll file a report... think someone will take a look outside?"
He was the worrier. Jack Cutter always worried too much, Mary thought. Always thinking too damn much. You can't think, not when you take the big chances, the big gambles.
Worrying can be dangerous.
"No, I don't. There's nothing anyone will notice, not in time. And if they do, they won't connect it to us. Now, get out of your suit."
Mary smiled, giving Jack's full beard a brush with her hand, a slight touch that they both knew promised exactly nothing.
"I could kill for an icy martini," Cutter said.
Harry Gooding knew the drill cold...
Three times every twenty-four hours, the SousMer maintenance crew ran an exterior inspection of the deep-sea resort. The resort was filled with redundant safety systems.
Nobody wanted to risk the lives of two hundred guests and nearly twice that number of service personnel when there was—literally—no escape.
Harry Gooding eased the green maintenance sub over the dome-like top of SousMer. It was the firm seating for dinner, and there were only a few diving teams still out, stragglers coming back from exploring the nearby labyrinths.
A few people were still outside the resort operating the two-person submersibles, all of them in constant communication with the resort.
But it was quiet out here now, he thought, as the high-density filament tungsten lamps on his minisub scanned the top of SousMer.
It's peaceful here, Harry thought. Not like in the resort, with the music and elegant parties and meals... making sure everyone got their money's worth.
To his left, Harry saw the skylight above the main dining room, the thick, clear plastic strong enough to resist twice the pressure it was under.
Ahead, on the right side of the main module of SousMer, Harry saw the pricey topside rooms, each with portholes that allowed guests to check on what or who was swimming above and around them.
But Harry was out here to check for any structural weakness… any irregularities. A routine maintenance check. Though Harry didn't know why it had to be done. The computer system would warn of any structural problem days before the slightest stress showed in the titanium shell of the resort.
He hovered near the power plant.
No, there was no danger here, but the surface of both the energy and air processing plants had to be examined anyway. They were also carefully monitored by the massive SousMer computer system, linked—directly by satellite—to Geoffrey Harpe's New York and London headquarters, all part of mammoth Harpe WorldWide Enterprises.
But even now, even when the plants could be virtually recreated at Engineering—miniature models exact down to the smallest detail, the smallest imperfection—there were still things that might go wrong.
Or so Harry had been told.
The message was:
Don't trust the technology.
That was the message, from RMS Titanic to Space Shuttle Challenger, to last year's disastrous Mars Expedition II.
There were so many redundancies built into all the life-support systems. And Harry Gooding, flying around the outside of the giant underwater complex, just happened to be one of those redundancies...
Nathan Hale Bridger—officially Captain Bridger for no more than ten days—was wondering why he had let himself be lured back to the seaQuest DSV.
He sat in his quarters arguing with the holographic image of Admiral Noyce's face.
"Now, Nathan—you knew that there was going to be some of this 'showboating.' The seaQuest represents more than merely the strong arm of UEO. It's a symbol of our determination to—"
"Bill, cut the speech making. You're not going to tell me it's actually important for the seaQuest to cruise into San Francisco Bay while this UEO energy conference is going on? The science team on board has been waiting to head up to the deep-ocean stations in Antarctica. Dr. Westphalen says that there are new discoveries being made every day."
Noyce looked away as if someone had come into the office. And when the Admiral looked back at Bridger, his face looked discomfited.
Good, thought Bridger. Hope you feel the pinch, Bill. You suckered me into this, lured me—and it wasn't to be a PR man for the UEO.
"Look—Nathan, just make an appearance, let some of the bigwigs tour seaQuest, let them poke around a bit, and then we'll get your team down to the Antarctic base prontissimo. There have been some amazing discoveries... confusing ones...”
Bridger hadn't read all the reports yet, but he knew that paleoarchaeologists were saying that there would have to be changes to the various theories for the origin of life, perhaps a new theory and a whole new time scale.
Bridger raised a hand. "I know. Lucas has been snatching the security feed off EarthNet and feeding right to our scientific team. Westphalen's ready to explode, she's so eager to get down there."
Noyce took a breath.
"One week, Nate. That's all. Then, if there are no crises pending, no border disputes, no pirates raiding any settlements, then you can let Westphalen have her expedition."
Bridger shook his head. He would have liked to throw something at the virtual image of Noyce.
Except, he grinned, it would have done virtually no damage.
Still grinning, Bridger said, "Okay Bill. We'll make our appearance. Now let me get back to the bridge and give everyone the great news...”
Bridger reached out and hit a button and Noyce's face—about to say something—disappeared.
There was no question that walking onto the seaQuest bridge gave Captain Bridger a jolt.
After all, he had designed the seaQuest so that the captain's chair was at the center of the ship's systems. The chair faced the heart of seaQuest, the navigation and communication command centers.
It was an electric feeling to walk onto the bridge...
The seats for the helmsmen were a few meters ahead and—beyond them—the bank of virtual reality screens.
With the help of the WSKRS system, those screens supplied views from all around the ship, as well as views of the ship itself.
Of course, Bridger saw, Dr. Kristin Westphalen was waiting for him.
"Well—what did the Admiral say?"
Bridger's executive officer. Lieutenant Commander Jonathan Devin Ford, stood by, waiting to see exactly where the seaQuest was headed.
Bridger still wondered how Ford felt about turning over seaQuest to him. It's hard to give up a command... but to give up commanding this ship? That must have stung.
Bridger sat down in the captain's chair.
"In a minute—if you wouldn't mind—"
If a PR junket was in the offing, best to get it going...
"Gator, kindly put up current course." Bridger and the chief of the helm, Crocker, went way back together, back to Bridger's days on a destroyer. There had been a lot of late nights and a lot of poker games.
"Nathan, I must insist—" Westphalen pressed on with her argument. This isn’t going to be fun, Bridger thought.
One of the VR screens displayed the current speed and course setting for seaQuest, a course designed to take it out of the North Atlantic. The mammoth sub was slowly heading south. Bridger had been hopeful that permission would be granted to head down to the Antarctic waters.
Well, at least now I know where we are going.
"Helmsmen—30 degrees port rudder... trim forward ballast, and take her down another 5 degrees." There would be some nasty currents ahead. A bit of depth wouldn't hurt.
"Captain Bridger," Ford said, standing to the side, "do you want a course plotted?"
Westphalen waited, as if steam were ready to blast from her ears.
"Yes, to the Panama Canal, Mr. Ford, and from there"— Bridger looked at Westphalen—"plot a course for San Francisco."
The order to plot the course meant that the bank of Cray-Apple Vbs would quickly provide any number of plotted courses, each taking into account various weather conditions current as reported by the net of orbiting LAGEOS weather satellites.
"So, Captain, my team is not to get the opportunity to look at the discoveries in the Antarctic?"
Bridger finally turned to Westphalen, now that the woman's chagrin had been vented somewhat.
"Not now. Dr. Westphalen. But in one week, after we visit the United Earth/Ocean Organization energy conference and make a guest appearance—so to speak—then I've been promised that we can finally use this ship to do the science that it was intended to do."
That I designed it to do, thought Bridger.
Westphalen nodded, as if she were about to continue the argument, but then she turned and walked away.
Bridger looked up at Ford and grinned. "Not a happy camper, eh, Mr. Ford?" Ford smiled, though Bridger guessed that Ford also wasn't too happy at the upcoming junket.
Then Bridger checked the VR screens, now showing their new course, straight through to San Francisco Harbor.
"And neither am I, Commander."
Mary Knox slid into the silvery, low-cut evening dress. She looked up to catch Cutter ogling her.
It would be a shame if Cutter got some unprofessional ideas at this point. A deadly shame.
No telling what I might do, Mary thought.
"Yes?" she said.
"Er, are you ready to check the schema?"
"God—I think we pretty well have the whole place memorized. But, okay—"
Jack Cutter opened up a sleek black box. Inside there was only a small lens and a single button, making the computer look like a high-definition camera. Jack touched the button.
A logo appeared in midair, projected into the open space of the cabin. Twisting coils gradually spelled "Harpe Electronics," and then there was a verbal prompt, words emanating from the small speaker.
"Access Code and voice identification, please."
"Damn, that's too loud," Mary said.
Cutter held a small box up to his larynx and spoke. "System sound off." he said, his voice acquiring an electronic trill. And then, "Access Code I569734."
The screen changed, and there was a general menu floating in the air, listing Files, Main Programs. DataBank, and EarthNet.
"Go ahead," Mary said.
Jack nodded. "SousMer Resort, full schema display...”
And then—there was the underwater resort floating before their eyes, a miniature report, the three-dimensional plans for the resort. But this was better than plans, because the VR image showed every change and modification done since the resort opened, the status of every mechanism.
There would be no surprises.
They were now inside the top-security level of Harpe WorldWide Enterprises, past all of Harpe's ICE—Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics—without so much as a ripple.
Some codes were better than others, and they had the best. And the vocal modulator could mimic the sound of over a dozen high-clearance Harpe executives.
"C'mon, I'm hungry," Mary Knox said. She slipped into a pair of heels and started brushing her hair.
"Interior life-support systems," Jack said, and the VR image of SousMer seemed to open up, liquid, beautiful to look at. Mary saw the engineering decks of the resort, where the air was processed, the energy generated.
"Show all pathways," Cutter said.
Then a bright red, filament-thin line highlighted all the paths to the engineering level.
All so familiar to Mary...
For the past two days she and Jack had tested the entrance to each crawl space, each engineering duct, until they thought they knew these paths almost as well as the computer.
"Show the least secure path," Cutter said, double-checking that nothing had changed.
Mary looked at him. He worries too much, she thought.
And then there was only one red path, leading from the pool and exercise area, a duct that trailed along the bottom of the resort, right into Engineering.
Jack reached out and touched the image, his hand bathed in the red. And then his fingers played with the metallic-gray and green of the resort.
"That's it then," he said. "That's our path."
Jack reached out to shut the machine off—but Mary's hand stopped him.
She shook her head. God, he could be dense sometimes.
She spoke evenly. "You're forgetting something..."
Jack nodded. "Oh." Then, "Erase all evidence of inquiry."
There was a blip as if the command had some trouble being processed. The VR image flickered and then stabilized again. Then—
"System off."
Mary smiled at Jack.
"Guess it's showtime, Jack. Let me get my face on… while you get the explosives...”
Even Jack Cutter laughed at that.