Steve Alten - Vostok

“Two hundred feet until surface. Counting down: five… four… three—”

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt .

“—two… one!”

We launched out of the water and instantly hit a ceiling of ice, only we never actually hit the ice. It simply washed away into a progressively evaporating tunnel of mist and water while a geyser exploded upwards through the borehole from behind the sub, driving us faster, its wave pushing past around our acrylic dome.

“Congratulations, gentlemen, you’ve achieved orbit and are headed home. Stand by, Colonel Vacendak wants to speak with you in private. See you topside. Schager, out.”

I hyperventilated gasps of relief as I checked my depth gauge, which was already resetting to accommodate the ice sheet. A little less than four thousand meters, about thirteen thousand feet, until we surfaced. Ascending at a steady fifty feet per minute, I estimated our ascent would take a little more than three hours.

And then we stopped moving.

I checked the Valkyrie gauges. “Something’s wrong. The lasers powered off.”

Colonel Vacendak’s voice crackled over the radio. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I thought we might have a private conversation before you arrived topside. Answer my questions honestly, and you’ll enjoy a steak dinner on me. Lie to me, and you’ll end up as dinner for that magnificent creature still circling below.”

The engine shut off. A wave of queasiness hit me in the gut as the Barracuda plunged twenty feet tail-first through a funnel of icy water.

The propeller re-engaged, the spinning blades halting our descent.

I heard Ben wheeze a pained breath.

“This is Wallace. Quit your head games, Colonel. Captain Hintzmann’s in no shape—”

“Captain Hintzmann is dead.”

“What?” Unbuckling my harness, I stood on my seat and leaned over to check on Ben. His face was ghostly pale, his eyes glazed over. I checked his neck — no pulse.

I flopped back in my seat, feeling numb. “Take me home… please. I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Glad to hear it, Dr. Wallace. Did you know the captain and Dr. Liao were working together?”

Don’t tell him about the photos .

“What do you mean by working together? Aren’t we all working together?”

“You’re lying, Dr. Wallace. I think you know exactly what I mean.”

Damn uniform. It’s registering my heart rate. Vacendak’s using it like a lie detector. Don’t get excited. Take slow easy breaths. Answer in truths that keep him off-balance .

“Yeah, so they had sex. So what? We thought we were going to die. Why do you give a shit? Don’t tell me you’re a jealous lover.”

I climbed back to Ming’s cockpit and glanced outside the ship at the tailfin. The umbilical gave the Colonel complete control.

Was there any way to disconnect it?

“Zachary, when you ventured down that crevasse, what did you find?”

“I didn’t venture, I fell.”

“And?”

“The crevasse led down to an old magma tunnel.”

“Nothing unusual?”

“There was a glow, I went to check it out. It was caused by a vein of sphalerite. It’s a mineral that, under pressure, creates its own illumination. The force of the crevasse opening generated friction. By the time I left, it was dark.”

“I see. And this glowing tunnel, where did it lead?”

“It dead-ended at volcanic rock. Why are you asking me this?”

I gripped the seat, clenching my teeth as the propeller ceased and the sub dropped another thirty feet.

“Are you insane? Bring me back up to the surface, you psychopath!”

“Zachary, did you know that the suit you are wearing contains sensors that allow us to track all sorts of things. For instance, changes in your blood pressure told us the moment you had descended another two atmospheres to access that tunnel. Thirty-three minutes elapsed between the time you went down and whe you climbed back up.”

“Now you’re judging my climbing skills?”

The rope!

Climbing back into the third seat, I removed the eighty-foot coil of nylon from Ming’s backpack.

“Time, Zachary, can be deceiving. As you probably know, time is a concept limited to our physical third-dimensional perspectives. It doesn’t exist in a fourth-dimensional vortex — say, a wormhole. Or, theoretically, a vessel capable of interstellar travel.”

“Colonel, no offense, but if you want my opinion about quantum physics, we could just as easily have this conversation back in the dome.”

I proceeded to loop the end of the rope around Ben’s upper body and the chair, using them as an anchor. I looked back, estimating the distance from the bow cockpit to the sub’s tailfin.

Wallace, this is insane .

“Zachary, one of the injections you and your deceased colleagues received prior to your descent was a microscopic probe that calculates blood circulation. It takes approximately sixty seconds for a human heart pumping at an average of seventy beats per minute to circulate an adult’s six liters of blood. According to Dr. Liao’s monitor, her blood circulated thirty-two times from the moment you set out to explore that tunnel until the moment you ascended. Captain’s Hintzmann blood volume circulated forty times, the higher rate due to his exertion while he was doing a bit of rock climbing.”

Measuring six armlengths of rope, I tied the cord around my chest and climbing belt.

“Zachary, your reading was quite a bit different. According to your sensor, your blood circulated 1,127 times, the equivalent of just over eighteen hours of heartbeats.”

“What?” I paused from knotting the rope. “How is that possible?”

“It’s possible only if you had entered a portal to another dimension.”

I wanted answers, but first I needed control.

Grabbing the MANUAL EMERGENCY HATCH, I pulled the lever.

A blast of icy water shot into the cabin as I dropped feet-first past Ming and into the flooded borehole, the dark shaft of ice illuminated by the sub’s exterior light and my night-vision goggles.

Dangling by the Barracuda ’s tailfin, pinned between the sub and a geyser of pressurized thirty-seven-degree water, I held my breath and felt for the umbilical cable. Locating the plug, I attempted to brace my stocking feet against the slippery chassis, cursing myself for not having worn my spiked climbing boots.

Realizing what was happening, the Colonel ignited the Valkyries, attempting to toss me from the rising sub or burn me alive.

The heat evaporated the water around me and warmed my body as I yanked the plug free.

The lasers abruptly ceased.

In the same amount of time it took the Big Bang to explode in a vacuum of space, my ears popped as a vacuum of ungodly pressure flung me back into the aft compartment and slammed the acrylic cockpit shut.

A hundredth of a second later, a geyser of water erupted around the sub, launching it another thirty feet before pinning it, bow-first, against the slush-filled roof of the borehole.

I opened my eyes to bone-chilling darkness. A sonic buzz rattled my ears. Disoriented, I fumbled my way around like the lone survivor in a plane crash, orientating myself by identifying the dead.

Persistence persevered over panic, and I managed to locate the night-vision goggles and power up the sub.

That was the extent of the good news — that I had regained control of the Barracuda . Everything else was bad.

I was trapped in a submersible, lodged in a borehole surrounded by ice. My air gauge had dropped below eleven hours. Calculated for a crew of three, I guessed my supply would last a solid day. More troubling were the batteries. Power levels were down to seventy-six percent. That was sufficient if I was merely piloting the vessel, but the Valkyries would drain that quickly.