Free Neurolink by M. M. Buckner Page B

stretched as far as he could see in every direction. Estaban moved his control yoke, and the shuttle banked and dove between two ridges. Its running lights flickered against the mountainsides, revealing twisted girders, crushed vehicles and abandoned machinery. Methane bubbles rose in sluggish columns. Shreds of plastic and fabriglass blew in the current like flags.
    This was a solid-waste site, Dominic realized, probably the dumping grounds for some coastal city. As the bathysphere wound through the V-shaped valley, Dominic studied the cliffs of cast-off debris with amazement. So much of it. He’d never realized how large these dump sites could be. The shuttle cruised just meters above the junk, and he noticed that Estaban showed real piloting skill following its jagged contours. They rounded a bend, dropped into a deeper gorge, and there behind a cone-shaped mound of rock crouched a familiar bottle-shaped vessel. The Benthica !
    This close, the submarine looked larger than Dominic had expected. Its belt-driven treads were mired so deep in bottom debris, it couldn’t possibly move. He studied its shape, looking for the bridge. Yes, there on the forward section, at the very top, he saw the lookout dome. That’s where the Net link would be.
    Then he observed something more astonishing. Other ships also loomed in the rubble. Dominic had to squint to make sure he was seeing accurately. At least six other vessels lay scattered close to the crawler. They were wrecks, all of them. Their hulls were rusted, gashed and riddled with holes, and they lay at odd angles just as they’d fallen. One old barge stood on end with its bow buried twenty meters deep.
    As the bathysphere descended, Dominic began to make out small figures in diving suits swimming through the wreckage. Blue-white flashes sparked around them, and it took Dominic a moment to realize the divers were using underwater welding torches. He motioned Qi to join him. Estaban was clearly enjoying his reaction.
    “The Pressure of Light ,” Estaban announced.
    At those words, a hush fell over the cabin. The passengers all turned to look at the pilot, and even though they couldn’t see Estaban’s little screen, they stared reverently in that direction. Dominic watched the divers moving among the wrecked ships. When he sensed Qi standing beside him, he traced their outlines with his finger. “Did you know about this?”
    She shook her head and studied the screen in frank wonder.
    “All this metal. How could satellite scans miss this?” he asked.
    “It’s the will of God,” the pilot Estaban declared with a broad smile.
    Behind Estaban’s back, Qi shrugged and shook her head again. Her surprise seemed genuine, but Dominic knew better than to trust her. He remembered the sonic noise field. “Gig’s cloaking our position,” she had said earlier. Could the Orgs generate a sonic field large enough to hide all this? Who knew what those quasi-biochemical computers might dream up in their spare time?
    Dominic leaned on his knuckles and peered at the sunken ships. The divers’ suits looked like relics from the twentieth century. Old-fashioned air tanks hung in external harnesses on their backs, and they used fins to kick through the water. Evidently, they had no internal recycling systems because every time they exhaled, tiny bubbles of air rose above them in wavering fountains. Inefficient resource use, he noted.
    Then he took a closer survey of the cone-shaped mound next to the submarine. The mound wasn’t made of junk. It looked like a fresh pile of rock and mud. All at once, he recognized what it was—mine tailings thrown up by an underwater drilling rig. The miners must be digging a tunnel under the trash. What next?
    As he studied the tailings, three divers passed right across the bathysphere’s screen, giving him a close-up view. They were hauling a cargo net filled with jagged sheets of steel. Now he understood what the welders were doing. They were