“If what you say is true…”
Charlie shrugged. “I don’t purport to be an expert on dark energy…at least not yet. But can you imagine the devastation here millennia ago? Quakes that tore apart continents. Massive volcanic eruptions. Ash clouds that circled the world. Floods.”
Jack remembered words in the ancient text: the time of darkness. The insulating layer of ash would have created a greenhouse effect, melting the ice caps and drowning their ravaged lands.
“We got off easy,” Charlie said. “Can you imagine living during that time?”
“We may have to,” George said sharply, his face stern.
Jack and Charlie turned to him.
George held up a sheet of paper. “I contacted the Marshall Space Flight Center. I confirmed what you wanted, Charlie. On July twenty-first, four days before the quakes, the Yohkoh satellite recorded a massive CME on the sun’s surface.”
“CME?” Jack asked.
“Coronal mass ejection,” Charlie translated. “Like a super solar flare. They can hurl billions of tons of ionized gas from the sun’s surface. It takes four days for the explosion to hit the Earth, creating a geomagnetic storm. To support my theory, I postulated that such a violent event would have been necessary for the submerged pillar to react so severely.”
George sighed. “They also confirmed that the epicenter for the Pacific quakes has been calculated to be where the pillar lies. At the spot where Air Force One crashed.”
Charlie lit up. “I was right. Not bad for a couple days’ work.”
Jack turned to George. The historian held a second piece of paper, at which he was glancing nervously. “You have more news, don’t you?”
George swallowed. “After I contacted the Space Center, they forwarded the latest pictures from the Japanese satellite. Another coronal mass ejection occurred just three days ago. It was the biggest ever recorded.” George stared at them. “A hundred times larger than the last one.”
“Oh, shit,” Charlie said, his grin fading away. “When does NASA expect its energy wave to hit us?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“Damn…”
“What?” Jack asked. “What’s gonna happen then?”
Charlie looked over at him. “We’re not talking quakes and tidal waves this time. We’re talking the end of the world.”
7:02 P.M.
Miyuki sat at the worktable in the marine biology lab. In the background she heard the muffled voices of Jack and a pair of his crew talking animatedly in the geology suite. Around her a thousand eyes watched from the clear plastic specimen jars lining the shelves and cabinets. It made it hard to concentrate.
Shaking her head against these distractions, Miyuki continued her own line of research. Earlier she had Gabriel do a global search through all the rongorongo examples gleaned from Easter Island to see if there were any other references to the pillar or the ancient disaster. She had little luck. A few scant allusions, but nothing significant. Now she was rereading through the passages in the platinum diary.
At her elbow, the briefcase-mounted computer chimed. Gabriel’s voice came through the tiny speakers. He had been assigned to work out a linguistic equivalent to the language, using phonetics supplied by Mwahu. Miyuki looked up from her sheets.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Professor Nakano.”
“What is it, Gabriel?”
“I have an incoming call from Dr. Grace. Would you care to take it?”
Miyuki almost fell out of her chair. “Karen…?” She slid in front of the computer. “Gabriel, patch in the call!”
Above the flat monitor, the one-inch video camera blinked on. On the screen, a cascade of pixels slowly formed a jerky image of her friend. Miyuki leaned near the microphone. “Karen! Where are you?”
Karen’s computer image flittered. “I don’t have much time. I was able to contact Gabriel with your coded address for him on the Internet. He was able to encrypt this video line, but I can’t trust that someone won’t catch on.”
“Where are you?”
“At some undersea research base near Jack’s obelisk. Is he there?”
Miyuki nodded. She leaned back. “Jack! Come quick!”
The captain of the Fathom poked his head out of the geology lab, his face worried. “What is it?”
Miyuki stood up and pointed to the screen. “It’s Karen!”
His eyes widened. He fell out the door of the geology lab and stumbled around the table. “What do you—” Then he came in view of the computer’s screen. He rushed forward, leaning close. “Karen, is that you?”
7:05 P.M., Neptune base
Karen watched Jack’s face form in the small square in the lower right-hand side of her computer monitor. He was alive! Tears welled in her eyes.
“Karen, where are you?”
She coughed to clear her throat, then briefly summarized the past twenty-four hours: her capture, the trip by helicopter, the imprisonment in the sea base. Afterward, she continued, “I tossed a bone the researchers’ way and told them about the rongorongo connection. It’s a useless lead without the additional examples we discovered, but they don’t know that. By feigning cooperation, they’ve given me a little latitude.” She looked over her shoulder when a spat of laughter echoed down the curving length of the tier. “The others are up at dinner or working in private. I don’t know how long I can keep this line open without arousing suspicion.”
“I’ll find a way to get you out of there,” Jack said. “Trust me.”
Karen leaned closer to the screen. “I wanted you to know. They’re planning to blow up the obelisk sometime tomorrow afternoon. They’ve probed the area and seem to believe there’s a larger deposit under it. The tip of the proverbial iceberg.”
On the monitor, Jack glanced to the side. “You were right, Charlie!”
“Of course I was,” someone said off screen.
Karen frowned. “What do you mean? What do you know?”
She listened as Jack sketchily recounted what they had learned from the platinum book and Charlie’s theories. Karen sat frozen as the story unfolded: ancient disasters, dark matter, solar storms. She listened with her mouth hanging open as Jack told her of the coming danger.
“Oh my God!” she said. “When is this storm supposed to strike?”
“Just after noon tomorrow.”
A new face appeared on the screen. Jack made the introduction. “This is Charlie Mollier, the ship’s geologist.”
“So what do we do?” Karen asked. Sweat trickled down her back. She was sure she would be caught any moment.
“Tell me about the explosives and intent of the demolition squad,” Charlie said.
Karen explained the Navy’s plan to blast into the core of the crystal’s main vein.
Jack spoke up. “Maybe that’d be good. At least the pillar won’t be poking out any longer.”
“No,” Charlie said, “if they succeed, it’ll make matters worse. They’ll be laying open the very heart of the deposit, increasing, not lessening, the area of exposure to the solar storm. The only way to protect against this disaster is to bury the pillar or cleanly clip it off, separating it from the main deposit.”
“In other words, knock down the lightning rod,” Jack said.
Karen checked her watch. If the geologist was right, they had only seventeen hours. “What if we specifically target the crystal pillar with the explosives?”
“Still dangerous,” Charlie mumbled. “Even if you could arrange it, the kinetic energy of the blast could be absorbed into the main deposit.” He shook his head. “It’s risky. The strength of an explosion sufficient to crack a pillar of that immense size could trigger the very disaster we’re trying to avoid.”
The video phone line went silent as parties pondered the hopelessness of their situation.
“We need more help,” Charlie mumbled.
Karen chewed on this idea. “I could try enlisting the aid of the head researcher here. Dr. Cortez. He’s cautioned the Navy against blasting the crystal, and I don’t think he’s a big fan of Spangler’s, either.”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I’m suspicious of anyone working alongside that bastard.”
“But he’s a geophysicist,” Karen argued. “Renowned in his field.”
“And I could truly use some expert help,” Charlie agreed.
Jack frowned and looked directly into the camera. “But can we trust him, Karen?”
She sat quiet for a long moment, then sighed. “I think so. But I’ll need your data. I’ll need to convince him.”
Jack turned to Charlie. “Can you download your research?”
He nodded and disappeared.
Miyuki spoke from off screen. “I’ll compile all the translations, and prepare Gabriel to transmit everything.”
“Great,” Jack replied. He turned back to the camera, and Karen thought he seemed to stare right into her heart. “How are you doing?” he asked softly.
“Considering the fact that I’m imprisoned a mile under the sea and the world’s gonna end tomorrow, I’m not too bad.”
“Did they rough you up?”
She remembered her black eye, fingering its sore edges. “No, I fell onto a doorknob…a few times in a row.”
“I’m sorry, Karen. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in all this.”
She sat straighter. “Don’t take the guilt for this, Jack. I’d rather be where I am now than back at the university, oblivious to all this. If there’s a way to stop what’s gonna happen, I’d rather be here on the front lines.”
Miyuki spoke from off screen. “I’ve got all the data collected. But to send it, I’ll need this video line to upload the information.”
Jack nodded. “You hear that?”