“I’ve got it now….” He announced. He settled back to let the onrushing river of molecules crash by, bobbing and careening like a balloon in a hailstorm. “I’m sounding ahead now…showing denser structures ahead at forty thousand microns. Crystalline lattice structures—“
Al Glance concurred. “That would be the seamount wall, Skipper.”
Winger studied the acoustic returns. The display showed a grid of pyroxene and olivine and quartz molecules, taut dodecahedral structures linked on all sides like a dense forest of tangled limbs.
“Intermolecular distances are small,” he answered. “Maybe a few hundred nanometers at most. This one’s gonna be a tight squeeze.”
Under Winger’s control, ANAD streamed closer and closer to the lattice.
“I’m starting my replication cycle,” Winger said. He toggled the controls, squirting the commands off to the tiny assembler. Less than twenty feet away through Sea Ray’s hull, ANAD received its new orders and began grabbing atoms to build copies of itself. “Better to do this now…while I have some room to maneuver.”
Mere inches from the rough, rocky surface of the seamount, the black water began glowing with an ethereal phosphorescence. Through a nearby porthole, Taj Singh witnessed the unearthly glow.
“ANAD’s at work…I can see it right out the window.”
In less than ten minutes, the rep counter had ticked over to the commanded value. ANAD had built himself a family of several quadrillions of daughter molecules.
Now it was time to go to work.
Gibby had been up on the command deck, studying the results of the assembler’s acoustic probes.
“This is garden variety igneous stuff, Skipper,” he radioed back. “Nothing unusual that I see. Just gazillions of quartz and feldspar molecules all lined up in formation. My guess is you break the thing at the tetrahedral joint…between the silicons and the oxygens. Bond strength would be weakest there.”
“Agreed.” Winger programmed the sequence, telling ANAD just where to begin working his way into the lattice. Quartz made up much of the first few inches of the Kurabantu seamount…a crystalline grid of corkscrewing tetrahedrons composed of a silicon molecule and a pair of oxygens. ANAD would have the fastest results if he went to work on the tetrahedral joints.
Winger sent the commands. Acting in unison, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler swarm jetted forward and penetrated the lattice, all its effectors fully extended. Engaging the first arrays of the lattice, the swarm began quickly ripping into the molecular formation, severing bonds and burrowing ever deeper into the rock.
In minutes, the glow along the sheer face of Kurabantu’s submerged flanks brightened to a searing white hot incandescence. Nanometer by nanometer, uncountable swarms of assemblers burned their way into the side of the mountain.
It was Singh and Deeno at the porthole who first spotted the faint outlines of ANAD’s ‘tunnel.’
“There’s our way in, just like the doctor ordered,” Deeno said.
Ten feet from the porthole, a shadowy opening in the rock face slowly materialized from the flickering light and silted water. Barely three feet wide, the fissure was easily overlooked in all the folds and crags of the mountain; only the pulsating glow of atomic disassembly made it visible. From deep inside the fissure, a faint amber glow throbbed like a warning beacon.
Johnny Winger studied parameters on his IC panel. “My reps are all good…all effectors deployed and in the green. ANAD proceeding on one-quarter propulsor. Carbene grabbers are really going crazy…I’m pulling silicons like some kind of madman.”
“How long before we can enter the tunnel, Skipper?” asked M’bela. He had sized up the dimensions by estimating from the porthole and wasn’t sure he really wanted an answer.
Winger did some quick calculations. “At his current rate, ANAD’ll have a tunnel deep enough for all of us to fit in about twenty minutes, give or take. Get prepped now…skinsuits checked, belts and masks on, emergency breathers set to max.” Winger checked his watch. “We cycle the lockout and start deploying in half an hour.”
The time went by quickly enough. Singh, D’Nunzio, Gibby, all but Al Glance donned their skinsuits and checked their gear. The CC2 would remain behind to operate Sea Ray. By twos, they back-checked each other’s preparations…connections, fasteners and quick-disconnects, weapons charged, any mistake now could be fatal. Winger ordered Barnes and Singh into the lockout first. As Defense and Protective Systems Tech 2, Singh was particularly well armed, carrying a small coilgun assault rifle as well as a HERF pistol for close-quarters combat. Barnes herself was packing a particle-beam weapon.
“Once you get inside the tunnel,” Winger was telling them, as he switched his gaze from ANAD acoustics to the two nanotroopers, “use your suit boost. Set it to minimum and watch your heads. You should be able to get enough traction off the walls to go forward.” Winger took one last look out the porthole. “With any luck, we’ll surprise the hell out of them by coming in the back door. I just hope nobody has claustrophobia.”
From the command deck, Al Glance did a quick sonar sweep of the area and pronounced everything clear. The lockout chamber was closed and flooded. Inside Mighty Mite Barnes and Taj Singh stared straight ahead, not daring to look at each other. Three minutes later, the chamber was fully flooded.
“We’re moving out,” Singh announced. It was a strange, unnerving feeling wearing only the form-fitting skinsuit and mask, with its emergency breather pack, knowing the only way your lungs were getting oxygen was from the billions of respirocytes circulating in your bloodstream. Singh eased out and the shock of the cold stunned him momentarily. The ocean was painfully frigid at this depth, cold, dark and oppressively close, as he shoved the chamber hatch out of the way, grunting with the effort.
Singh kicked ahead, floating through the hatch and in seconds, was steering himself carefully into the dim outlines of ANAD’s tunnel.
His shoulders and belt just cleared the entrance, scraping along the edges, as he went in. Singh wore boosted flipper/assault boot combos on his feet. As soon as he was fully inside the tunnel, he lit off the boost and peered straight ahead, deeper into the tunnel, toward the still flickering swarm a dozen yards ahead. The tunnel walls were slick, glassy and still warm from ANAD’s work.
Singh felt a coppery taste of panic in the back of his mouth, as the walls seemed to press in on him but he fought it off, focusing instead on feeling every square inch of belts and gear…anything to keep his mind from falling pretty to the fear of the tunnel collapsing.
Maybe it was the glow from ANAD up ahead but he was sure the walls were moving, as if he was being swallowed by some huge snake.
Don’t even think about it, he told himself. Instead, he began reciting verses from the Bhagavad-Gita. Just a few feet ahead of his face, the ANAD swarm burned deeper into the mountain.
One by one, the rest of the assault detail followed: Barnes, D’Nunzio, Gibby. Johnny Winger was the last to exit the lockout chamber.
Inside the tunnel, his vision blocked by Gibby’s feet only inches from his face, Winger took deep breaths of respirocyte-boosted air and synchronized his suit boost to the speed of ANAD’s tunneling. He closed his eyes—there wasn’t much to see anyway.
The whole approach would take several hours before the troopers were in position to breach the inner structure of the compound and begin the assault.
To Johnny Winger, the experience reminded him of when he and Archie Hester had gotten lost in an unexplored side tunnel off Dorado Canyon many years before….
It was Archie Hester who'd gotten them both into this fix…Archie and nobody else. He was always daring Johnny Winger, daring him to do stuff. "Betcha can't do this, huh? See if you can top this, wise guy."
Johnny had gotten sick of it, but he couldn't very well back down, now could he? A boy's got to stand up for himself. Got a reputation to protect.
So that's h
ow come they wound up lost that cold winter afternoon in the cramped and clammy dead end branch of a tunnel they'd found in the back of Dorado Canyon. Johnny liked caving--only wise guys and smartfaces called it spelunking, for God's sake. He liked it a lot. You could go places nobody had ever seen before. You could be by yourself, except that was a bad idea. You always went caving with a buddy, so if one of you got hurt, the other could help out or go get help.
It was after school, and Archie had dared him to go into their favorite cave at the back of Dorado Canyon, down there where the streambed petered out, go into that last unexplored branch that they'd named Yawning Mouth a few years ago, because that's what it looked like.
Johnny didn't really want to but then Archie was good at pestering and whining and making a scene. So they went.
Inside Yawning Mouth, they took the dark branch and traveled down, down, down, deeper into the earth, through dripping stalactites and slippery limestone, playing their flashlights back and forth, making funny faces at each other in the dim yellow light, or shadow puppets on the veined walls.
They'd been going down for a good hour, when Johnny figured Yawning Mouth was a bit deeper than either one had bargained for. So they stopped. They tried to get their bearings. They tried to backtrack and see the path they had followed.
But they couldn't see anything. Then the flashlight died.
That's when they knew they were lost.
Archie Hester, because he was Archie Hester, started whining.
"Now what, wise guy? Now what are we going to do?"
"Shut up," Johnny said. "I'm trying to think."
There was about five minutes of silence, broken only by the drip-drip-drip of water from somewhere above them. The air was cold, kind of raw and damp, and the stone ledge where they had stopped was slippery. It dropped further down ahead of them, but without the light, neither boy wanted to move an inch forward.
"Johnny--?"
"What?"
"I think there's a cliff ahead of us. This ledge seems to slope down pretty fast."
"Yeah…I know."
"Are you still thinking?"
"Trying to." Archie had the slightest stutter to his voice. He was growing up; sometimes, he squeaked and sounded like a bird.
"What are we going to do?"
"I don't know yet." Johnny Winger probed the nearest wall with his hands, running his fingers along its damp glassy surface. He swung further and managed to knock Archie in the side of the face. "Sorry…I was just trying to get a feel for what's around us."
"We're stuck here, aren't we?"
"Maybe. You're the turdwipe that caused all this. If you hadn't dared me, we wouldn't be here."
"I'm afraid…didn't you bring your squawker?"
"Me? I thought you did." Squawkers took a hack off the locator sats in orbit. You carried them in your pocket and they chirped out where you were, right down to a few feet.
"Jesus…what are we going to do?"
Johnny was increasingly aware of the quaver in Archie's voice. It wasn't puberty or anything like that now. It was fear, probably panic. But cavers never panicked. You got hurt when you panicked.
Cavers thought things through.
"I got an idea-" Johnny Winger said. "It might not work--"
"What is it?"
He'd been tinkering with Bailey the last few weeks. Dad didn't know about it; Mr. Jamison Winger would have been furious if he had. You didn't go tinkering with stuff without Dad's permission. Jamison Winger was the best damned inventor Pueblo, Colorado had ever seen. The barn out back was full of inventions…you could hardly get in the door without stepping on one.
Bailey was Johnny's favorite. A microflyer--they'd called it u..a..v a long time ago. That stood for unmanned air vehicle. Powered by the sun. No bigger than a hummingbird, with a quantum brain, all kinds of attachments--wings that could flap so fast they were a blur, a real-life jet, some small props--man, Bailey was a hot rod, no doubt about it.
Late at night, when Dad had gone to bed and the house was real quiet, Johnny Winger would fling open his second-floor window and summon Bailey from the top of the barn. He had a nest or a docking station up there. He'd taught Bailey to respond to some whistles, some basic voice commands. Lately, he'd found an olfactory program on the WorldNet, picked up some gizmos around the barn, paid or filched the rest from the store, and cobbled up a basic sniffer nose for the dude. He trained it to search out and home on certain smells, especially his own. Wasn't that a hoot? Bailey trained to sniff him out like a bloodhound, ferret out his own bad breath and body odor.
He figured, after some tests, the dude could sniff him out from as far away as several miles.
Not bad for a kid inventor. Dad would have been proud. Dad would also have whipped him to Denver and back for messing around with Bailey too. But Bailey had become his best friend, especially after Mom had died. Late at night, hours after he called Bailey into his room for a chat, he'd drift off to sleep, then awaken just enough to catch the micro-uav hovering gently in the corner with his big red eye winking on and off softly, or maybe just perched on the old Navy trunk at the end of the bed, quietly whirring in sleep mode.
Johnny told Archie about Bailey and his new sniffer. "I don't know if it'll work this far underground. I really don't know what his maximum range is. But we have to try it."
"Sure, man, sure, try it. Let's try anything."
So he shouted out the magic words--he'd programmed Bailey the Dude to switch the sniffer on and off by voice command, and then winced as the echo cascaded all around them like an amplified drunk, finally dying off into distant whispers of his words.
"BAILEY…BIG NOSE…big nose…big nose…b-I-g…n-o-s-e…b…i…g…n…o…s…e…"
After that, they waited. And as they waited, Johnny Winger learned just how big a crybaby Archie Hester really was. If they ever got out of there, he was for sure going to put some distance between himself and Archie Hester. By the time an hour had passed, Archie's sniffing and sniveling was about to drive Johnny mad.
They lost track of time. Maybe two hours had passed, maybe five or six. Both boys had drifted in and out of a semi-conscious daze. It was Johnny who heard it first…
In between creaks and groans of the mountain, and the steady drip of water, a faint buzzing could gradually be made out. More like a whirring, like a blender. Johnny suddenly came to, and sat up, straining to make out the sound. Slowly, infinitesimally, it grew more audible, though at first the whirring faded in and out.
Then, the buzz grew quite distinct and he was sure. It was the Dude. Bailey the Flying Dude had been systematically searching up and down tunnels and branches, homing on the distinctive aroma of Johnny Winger's bad breath and body odor. Before he could scramble to his feet and call out, a dim but familiar red light came winking out of the gloom, materializing in mid-air like a ghostly apparition.
Bailey hovered ten feet above them, winking like a firefly, his props and motor whirring with satisfaction. If he'd been a dog, his tail would have been wagging.
"Bailey…you old dude," Johnny laughed out loud. He wanted to hug the bot.
From that point on, it was a simple matter of following the winking red light, up and up and up and finally out of Dorado Canyon's Lost Tunnel. An hour later, when Archie and Johnny had emerged into the cold sweet-smelling night air, they silently hugged each other.
Johnny Winger was glad he'd disobeyed his Dad and inserted that olfactory program after all.
Four hours later, the ANAD swarm had disassembled its way through a long curving tunnel from a point a quarter mile south of the compound’s underwater location. The breach path followed a sinuous route through layers of shale and quartz and feldspar, growing warmer and more oppressive as the swarm neared its target.
Taj Singh was in the lead and patched in along with Winger to the acoustic feed from ANAD.
“ANAD sounding ahe
ad, Captain,” the DPS tech reported. “Rock density dropping off…possible aspect change…looks like a different structure dead ahead…less than fifty thousand microns.”
Winger had noticed the change too. “Could be the outer wall of the compound.” He studied the acoustic display. “My read is reinforced concrete with embedded steel and carbon fibers. Molecular signature seems to match—“
“Thank God,” breathed Barnes, a few yards ahead of Winger. “If I have to spend another minute in this coffin—“
“Cut the chatter,” Winger ordered. “Get your weapons ready.” He monitored ANAD’s tunneling closely, noting when the lead assembler reached the wall surface. Before letting the swarm penetrate, he signaled ANAD to come to a stop. The swarm hovered just inches ahead of Taj Singh’s face and the amber glow subsided as molecular disassembly halted.
Now only the helmet lamps of the troopers provided any illumination inside the tunnel, casting stark shadows on the still warm walls, fused with glassy residue from ANAD’s passage.
Johnny Winger primed his own coilgun and ordered the others to arm all weapons.
“When this thing blows, all hell will break loose.”
“Captain—“ it was Gibby. The CC2’s suit boost stirred dust and rock chips right into Winger’s face. “…any sign of a barrier ahead…any nano we might have to deal with?”
Winger checked the status of all ANAD systems on his mask eyepiece. Everything was clean and green. “Nothing but concrete and steel dead ahead…the pressure hull seems clean. I’m not getting any signatures.”
“We got ‘em by the cojones,” exulted Deeno. “Complete surprise.”
“Remember,” Winger told them, “Dana Tallant and the rest of Bravo may be in there…keep your fire to a minimum and stay on your vectors. Anybody gets trigger happy now and we may put friendly fire on the wrong targets. Understood?”
There was a chorus of replies.
Winger sent commands for the ANAD swarm to resume the breaching operation. The amber glow returned and, if anything, seemed to brighten. Soon the tunnel was bathed in an intense white light and the walls grew too hot to touch.