“Looks like she’ll have a family now.”
“We take care of our own,” Nagano said. “I must tell you, she looked resplendent.”
“I bet she did,” Kurt said. “Was Joe with her?”
“He’s hardly left her side since the surgery,” Nagano said. “They seem to talk endlessly. But from what I’ve overheard, it’s mostly about cars.”
“Figures.”
A whistle got Kurt’s attention. Gamay was waving at him from the hatch of the submersible.
“I have to go,” Kurt said. “All the best.”
“Arigato, my friend,” Superintendent Nagano replied.
Kurt handed the phone back, climbed up the ladder on the side of the submersible and dropped down into the hatch. Paul and Gamay were waiting. “Next stop, the Serpent’s Jaw.”
A ten-minute descent took them to the bottom of the canyon. Three other submersibles waited for them. Their lights illuminating the walls on either side of the chasm.
Kurt eased the submarine into position and connected with the new docking collar. With the seal confirmed, he opened the submarine’s hatch and climbed out. Paul came with him, while Gamay switched to the pilot’s seat.
“I’ll pick you boys up when you’re ready,” she said.
Kurt closed the hatch and moved to the inner door of the docking unit.
“Not sure why I have to be here,” Paul said, crouching in the tight quarters.
“I thought you’d want to see this,” Kurt said. “After all, you got us into this with your ‘Crow and Pitcher’ idea. Seems appropriate that you’re here for the final answer.”
They reached the inner door. Two Chinese technicians were already there. Deposited by one of their own submersibles. One of them had thick glasses and hair that hung in his eyes.
Kurt cocked his head. “Didn’t I see you on Hashima Island?”
The man nodded. “I was in the metallurgy lab.”
Kurt nodded. “Still haven’t found a barbershop, I see. What are you doing here?”
“They released me to help with this investigation,” the technician said. “I know more about this place than most. I helped design the systems.”
“Many of which are still functioning,” Kurt said. “You obviously do good work.”
“The power is nuclear. The reactor was untouched. When the avalanche occurred, the watertight doors sealed the interior. That’s the only reason.”
Kurt had a feeling there were other reasons. He kept it to himself. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
Opening a side panel, the engineer accessed a manual release for the inner door. Using a large wrench, he turned a spindle and released the latch.
Kurt and Paul pulled the heavy door open. They discovered a tunnel, bored out of the rock and sheathed in steel. Lights running along the top remained lit.
“We need to see the main section,” Kurt said.
“This way,” the technician said, leading them into the tunnel.
The first passageway led to a second and then to a staging area, where stacks of equipment sat undisturbed.
They crossed the staging area and arrived at a huge freight elevator—two cars could have fit in it side by side. “Do you hear something?” Paul asked. “A low hum?”
Kurt nodded. Clue number two. He climbed onto the elevator and waved for the others to join him. “Going down.”
They took the elevator down nearly a thousand feet and arrived at a different section of the mine. On the schematic, it was listed as “Lower Control Room.” It was only supposed to be four hundred square feet, a twenty-by-twenty space. But it proved to be a vast, open cavern. Dark tunnels could be seen all around them.
“It’s like Grand Central Station,” Paul said.
Kurt nodded, looking around. Power cables ran everywhere. Fresh tank tracks marked the ground like a construction site. The humming was louder.
The two engineers crossed the room to a control console. Paul and Kurt wandered in the other direction. The steel walls they’d found earlier had given way to an amber-hued mix of rock and Golden Adamant.
“None of this should be here,” the engineer said. “This is only supposed to be a drop-off connecting the control room to the deep boreholes. This entire room . . .”
His voice trailed off as a rumbling sound became audible. All of them turned to see a bank of lights approaching from one of the tunnels. A crawling machine lumbered into the cavern and then maneuvered to a spot by the wall. Its front end appeared to be damaged. It parked and then used a robotic arm to grab a power cable from the wall that it plugged into its battery pack.
Clue number three. “All of this is here, because the machines built it for themselves,” Kurt said.
“What?”
“They’re still digging,” Kurt said. “Following their orders. Using their artificial intelligence program to determine the best way to accomplish their goal.”
As Kurt spoke, the engineer from Hashima Island brought up a schematic of the mine on the console. It displayed hundreds of tunnels and rooms that had been drilled and excavated in the last year. They’d pushed the harmonic resonators deeper into the Earth than anyone believed possible, overcoming problems and setbacks. Using the minerals and alloys they recovered to buttress the mine in many places.
“How did you know all this?” Paul asked.
“I didn’t,” Kurt said. “But Hiram Yaeger and Priya reviewed all the data that Han’s people had recorded. They came up with this as the most likely explanation. There was no other way to explain the continued and accelerating fracturing of the transition zone down below. The machines had to be digging. Expanding the operation as fast as they could.”
As Kurt spoke, two other machines appeared. One of them went to work on the damaged hauler and began repairing its front end. The second machine crossed the cavern and entered a different tunnel, off to some new task.
“They’ve constructed other machines,” the engineer said. “Four hundred and thirty-two of them.”
“But why?” Paul asked.
“Because they needed them for new tasks,” Kurt said.
The engineer was still reading off the console. “‘Continue mining until otherwise directed,’” he said. “‘Make all efforts to maximize recovery.’ According to the database, those were the last commands given before the avalanche.”
“And followed to perfection,” Kurt said.
“They’ve created their own civilization down here,” Paul said. “It’s incredible.”
“Almost feels wrong to shut them down,” Kurt replied. “But we have no choice.”
He looked at the engineer, who nodded his agreement. The man powered up the interface. Entered a new code and gave the robots a new authorization.
“Hopefully, they’ll do as ordered,” Paul said. “Otherwise, this could be the beginning of the robot rebellion.”
“Authorization code alpha,” the engineer said.
“Authorization code accepted,” a human-sounding voice replied.
“TL-1,” the engineer said. “Cease all mining operations. All units return to staging areas.”
A brief silence followed. And Paul exchanged glances with Kurt.
“Directive confirmed,” TL-1 said. “Shutting down resonators.”
The pervasive humming waned and then ceased altogether. The cavern grew deathly quiet until rumbling noises began emanating from the tunnels. Before long, a seemingly endless line of machines began flowing back into the cavern and parking in perfect order.
“Time for us to go,” Kurt said. “Our job here is done.”
Over the next two weeks, the water blasting from the field of geysers—which numbered over a thousand—slowed and then ceased. The sea levels stopped rising at the same time, leveling off with a total increase of just over eleven inches.
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Eight hundred and fifty tons of Golden Adamant was eventually recovered from the mine and remained the property of the People’s Republic of China.
Western nations gained their own source of the alloy after deciphering the notes in Masamune’s journal, which led them to a mine in a dormant volcanic region of Japan, where he’d obtained the material for his remarkable sword.
DIRK PITT, KURT AUSTIN, AND THE WORLD OF THE RISING SEA
Clive Cussler
“EVERY OCEAN takes its toll of men and ships, yet none devour them with the voracious appetite of the Pacific. The mutiny on the Bounty took place in the Pacific. The mutineers burning the ship at Pitcairn Island. The Essex, the only known ship to be sunk by a whale, lies under the Pacific’s waves. So does the Hai Maru, blown to bits under the Pacific’s waves when an underwater volcano erupted beneath her hull.”
One story is true, the other two came out of a writer’s imagination.
So begins the prologue of Pacific Vortex!, the first Dirk Pitt novel I wrote (though not the first to be published).
Pitt has fought many nasty villains through these adventure epics, and was introduced lying on a beach in Hawaii, a six-foot-three, deeply suntanned man. “The hairy, barrel chest that rose slightly with each intake of air bore specks of sweat that rolled downward in snaillike trails and mingled with the sand. The arm that passed over the eyes shielding them from the strong rays of the tropical sun was muscular but without the exaggerated bulges generally associated with iron pumpers. The hair was black and thick and shaggy, and it fell halfway down a forehead that merged into a hard-featured but friendly face.”
Giving him black hair and green eyes was easy. In those days, my hair was black, with no sign of gray, and my eyes a deep green. We were both thirty-four. Every hero has a sidekick, and so did Pitt. Al Giordino was his friend from high school and then the Air Force Academy, and those years formed a tight bond between them. Sharing adventures, Pitt and Giordino have saved each other’s lives on more than one occasion.
In appearance, they are complete opposites. Al Giordino is dark, curly-haired, and short in height, broad-chested and tough as they come. It usually comes as a surprise to learn that Giordino was third in his class at the Air Force Academy, and since then has become one of the finest ocean engineers in the world, the creator of underwater submersibles that can operate in water twenty thousand feet deep. Al is also the one character that I based on someone I know, a friend from my Air Force days in Hawaii.
But time marches on. Now Pitt is married with two children, Admiral Sandecker is Vice President of the United States, and Dirk Pitt is the Director of NUMA. All the characters are older than when they were introduced.
With the success of Dirk Pitt, the publishers approached me to write a second series, the NUMA® Files. My new characters also work for National Underwater Marine Agency, and you have their latest adventure in your hands.
Kurt Austin, again a daring man with charming features, is described as tall but with silver hair and blue eyes—quite the contrast from Dirk’s black hair and green eyes. To establish even more of a difference, while Pitt collects classic automobiles, Austin is an antique gun collector.
His partner is Joe Zavala. As always, I kept their first names one syllable. Easy to say, easy to remember, and in an action scene it’s better to have a short name. Certainly calling out “Shagnasty” can interfere with the excitement and tempo of a fast-paced action scene.
Zavala is the name of an historic shipwreck that my foundation, the actual NUMA, found in Texas, half buried just off the waters of Galveston. And Joe is a great one-syllable name.
Now, my coauthor, Graham Brown, and I write the NUMA series. This book, The Rising Sea, brings together the excitement of adventure and the mysteries of the oceans with the technology of the future.
FACT AND FICTION IN THE RISING SEA
FANS OFTEN ASK how much of a book is real and how much pure imagination? I find it’s always a mix of the two. As a writer, one of the interesting things is how often research into a particular subject results in new ideas for a story. For instance . . .
THE FLOOD
The central premise of The Rising Sea is that a new method of deep-sea mining taps into a vast reservoir of water hidden beneath the Earth’s crust. The release of this water is described like the breaking the seal on a shaken soda bottle, allowing the pressurized liquid to escape. This would be the beginning of a worldwide flood, one that would drown every coastline and perhaps every landmass on the planet. Many readers might think this is the most fictional part of the book, but it’s firmly based on reality.
The water referred to in The Rising Sea really does exist. In 2014, geologists studying minerals brought up from deep within the Earth discovered a rare form of water trapped inside diamonds and a mineral known as ringwoodite.
The water made up only a small portion of the mineral’s weight, but ringwoodite makes up a large portion of the transition zone between Earth’s crust and the deeper layers of rock known as the mantle. The volume of this transition zone is the fascinating part. It’s two hundred and fifty miles thick and it encircles the entire sphere of the Earth.
That’s a lot of volume, a lot of ringwoodite, and a lot of hidden water.
Initial estimates suggested the transition zone held at least as much water as there was on the surface of the Earth.
Later, more accurate estimates put the amount at two or three times the initial guess. To put this in perspective, that is enough water to flood the planet in a worldwide ocean, ten miles deep.
If all of this water was forced to the surface, the Earth would literally become a water-world. The top of Mount Everest would be reachable only by diving in a Bathysphere to a depth nearly as deep as the bottom of the Mariana Trench is today.
Of course, the question is, could this water actually be forced from the depths of the Earth?
Yes, to some extent it’s being released every day. Water and steam accompany every volcanic eruption. This water is brought up from deep within the Earth. Fortunately for us, the amounts are negligible in comparison to the surface area of the planet. Still, the water held in the ringwoodite is under massive pressure, so let’s hope no one taps the seal and starts a gusher or we might all need to start building boats.
ROBOTICS
Another important element in The Rising Sea is the use of advanced robotics. At various places in the book, robots and androids impersonate and even replace humans. So how close is this to reality and how much is just science fiction?
The truth is simple: machines that look and act human are already here. Some experts even suggest that the next phase of human evolution is not biological but mechanical. I have my doubts about that, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
As you might imagine, robots are very popular in Japan. The race to build the most realistic robot is already on, and design studios are already creating human-looking robots that are as realistic in appearance as figures in a wax museum. At the pace technology is evolving, machines that appear perfectly human are right around the corner.
For The Rising Sea, we took liberties in the design and added features like breathing, sweating, and artificial skin. We put in other details that robotic manufacturers have no real need to incorporate—unless they want to fool the public. But the truth is, getting a machine to look human is the easy part. Getting it to act human—to seem human—that’s the hard part.
Currently, even the most realistic-looking androids are easy to spot, with their blank stares and the odd expressions they often project. Human behavior is too dynamic and nuanced to be copied or mimicked—just yet.
Don’t kid yourself, though, designers are working on ways to help robots master the small traits that make us human. Robots that blink and fidget are on the horizon. With each generation, their software and hardware improve. As designers incorporate hundreds of other
instinctive acts that we take for granted, each new advance will make it harder to tell the real thing from the manufactured one.
Another way robots are becoming more human is the reduction in the size of their machinery. The world is rapidly progressing toward the era where nanotechnology and biotechnology merge. At some point, it will become possible to design robots using artificial cells, instead of building them with gears, hydraulics, and wires. Once that happens, robots will truly function like manufactured organisms, and it will become impossible to distinguish between human and machine without studying skin and blood samples under a microscope.
At any rate, traditional robots—machines more like the warbots of the novel—are already in use. Military and police units have bomb inspection and disposal robots to keep humans out of harm’s way. Drones are essentially reconnaissance robots. Walking robots, used to carry equipment, are being developed for the military, along with powered exoskeletons that will make each human soldier into a powered blend of man and machine.
At a smaller scale, crawling robots examine the interiors of nuclear reactors and toxic waste dumps, they search through burning buildings, and have even been used to inspect tiny shafts in the great pyramids where no human can fit.
The future of robotics certainly begins with the more dangerous jobs being taken over by machines, but the question of who controls them remains. Currently, remote operation is the preferred method of controlling a robot, but autonomous thinking and artificial intelligence are being incorporated more thoroughly every year. One day, robots may decide what to do completely on their own. For now, just how much autonomy to give a robot is the question.
HASHIMA ISLAND
Hashima Island is a surreal and beautiful landscape that looks as if it came from the imagination of a comic book artist or as a futuristic rendering of the post-apocalyptic landscape, but make no mistake, Hashima and its crumbling buildings are very real.