Neptune

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‘Submerge with all possible speed,’ the commander ordered.

‘Gas contraction pressure is now twelve point two per cent,’ the bo’s’n said as he monitored the instrument panel located aft in the cigar-shaped bathyscaphe. ‘Rate of descent is increasing, sir. We’re about to hit eleven thousand feet. Now. Eleven thousand.’

The commander of the heavy steel underwater craft nodded, and there was no sound but the hum of the generator that provided the electric current. The basic design of the bathyscaphe had remained unchanged since the first had been developed by Auguste Piccard prior to World War Two. The generators pumped oxygen into the cabin and electromagnets held the iron bars used for ballast firmly in place on the hull; when they were released the vehicle would rise to the surface.

The executive officer peered out of the thick glass porthole, adjusted the beams of the twin searchlights that cut through the dark sea and reported to the mother ship, the USS New Haven, which rode at anchor more than two miles above them in the South China Sea. ‘The school of fish have disappeared. No marine life. No obstructions.’

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