Deep Storm

It was the work of fifteen minutes to go through the rest of the EEGs. The patients had suffered from an incredible variety of symptoms: everything from sleeplessness to arrythmia to nausea to outright mania. And yet every one showed the same thing: spikes in their theta waveforms of a regularity and precision simply not found in nature.

He pushed the stack of printouts aside with a sense of unreality. At last he'd done it: he'd found the commonality. It was neurological. The theta waveforms of normal adults were supposed to be flatline. And even when they did spike, they were never supposed to fire in a precise, quantifiable rhythm. This was something utterly unknown to medical science.

He stood up and walked toward the internal phone, his thoughts piling up fast. He needed to consult with Bishop about this, and right away. With the autonomous nervous system affected, all these seemingly disparate symptoms suddenly snapped into place. He was a fool not to have seen it before. But how was it propagated? Neurological deficits on such a broad spectrum were absolutely unheard of…

Unless…

"Oh, Jesus," he breathed.

Quickly, almost frantically, he reached for a calculator. His gaze flew from the EEGs to the calculator as he furiously punched in numbers. Then he stopped abruptly, staring at the readout in disbelief.

"It couldn't be," he whispered.

The phone rang, shockingly loud in the quiet office. He jerked upright in his chair, then reached for it, heart racing. "Crane."

"Peter?" It was Asher's voice, sounding reedy and artificial in the oxygenated atmosphere of the hyperbaric chamber.

"Dr. Asher!" Crane said. "I've found the common vector! And, my God, it's something so-"

"Peter," Asher interrupted. "I need you to come here right now. Just drop everything and get down here."

"But-"

"We've done it."

Crane paused, mentally struggling with this abrupt shift. "Deciphered the message?"

"Not message. Messages. It's all on the laptop." Asher's voice not only sounded thin-it had an air of desperation to it as well. "I need you here, Peter. Immediately. Because it's imperative, absolutely imperative, that we don't-"

There was a crackle, and then the phone abruptly went dead.

"Hello?" Crane frowned at the phone. "Dr. Asher? Hello?"

Silence.

Still frowning, Crane hung up the phone. He glanced at the pile of reports on his desk. Then he turned and quickly exited the office.

35

The last time Crane had been on deck 7-less than five hours before-the scientific level had been in its usual state of orderly bustle. But now when he stepped out of the elevator, he found himself in the midst of sudden chaos. Alarms were blaring; shouts mingled with cries; marines, technicians, and scientists ran past him. There was a feeling in the air very much like panic.

Crane stopped a maintenance worker. "What's going on?" he asked.

"Fire," the man said breathlessly.

Sudden fear lanced through Crane. As a submariner, he had learned to dread fire underwater. "Where?"

"Hyperbaric chamber." And the man freed himself from Crane's grasp and ran off.

Crane's fear redoubled. Asher…

Without another thought, he tore down the hallway.

The hyperbaric suite was full of emergency response crews and rescue workers. As he pushed his way through the crowd, Crane caught the acrid scent of smoke.

"Doctor coming through!" he shouted, forcing himself into the control room. The tiny area was jammed with security perso

"What happened?" Crane asked Hopkins.

"Don't know." Sweat poured from Hopkins's forehead as his hands flew over the instrumentation. "I was down the hall in Pathology when the alarm sounded."

"When was that?"

"Two minutes ago, maybe three."

Crane glanced at his watch. It has been less than five minutes since Asher had telephoned him. "You've called in a paramedic team?"

"Yes, sir."

Crane looked through the glass partition toward the hyperbaric chamber itself. As he did so, he saw a gout of flame leap up the chamber porthole.

Jesus! It's still on fire!

"Why hasn't the water deluge system engaged?" he shouted at Hopkins.

"Don't know," the medic repeated, still feverishly working the controls. "Both the primary and backup extinguisher systems have been overridden somehow. They're not responding. I'm doing a crash depressurization now."

"You can't do that!" Crane said. "The chamber would have been at peak pressure!"

It was Korolis who answered. "With the sprinklers out, it's the only way to get the hatch open and extinguishers at the fire."

"The pressure in the chamber was set at two hundred kilopascals. I did it myself. You dump it suddenly, you'll kill Asher."

Korolis raised his eyes once again. "He's dead already."

Crane opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. Whether or not Korolis was right, they could not let the fire continue to burn: if it reached the oxygen tanks, the entire level might be threatened. There was no choice. Crane slammed his fist against the bulkhead in rage and frustration, then forced his way out into the waiting area.

Rescue teams were clustered around the entrance to the chamber, readying extinguishers and snugging oxygen masks over their mouths and noses. A small speaker above the glass partition to the control room squawked into life. "Full decompression in fifteen seconds," came the electrified voice of Hopkins.

The rescue crews checked their equipment, do

"Decompression complete," said Hopkins. "Locks disengaging."

With a snap of electronic bolts, the entrance to the chamber sprang open. Immediately, heat and black smoke flooded into the waiting area. The stench of acrid smoke and burnt flesh suddenly became overpowering. Crane turned away involuntarily, eyes welling over with sudden tears. From behind came the sound of ru

He turned back. The extinguishers were still going. The crews were inside the cylinder itself now, and the dark plumes of smoke had been replaced by a thick fog of flame retardant. Stepping forward, he clambered into the chamber and forced his way past the rescue workers. Then he stopped abruptly.

Asher was lying on the floor, curled up around his laptop. Marris was lying nearby. They had crouched on the floor in an attempt to avoid the flames and smoke. A futile attempt: Asher's clothes hung in charred flakes from his limbs, and his skin was horribly blackened. His mane of gray hair had been burned away, and the bushy eyebrows singed to tiny curls.

Crane knelt quickly for a gross examination. Then he reconsidered. It seemed inconceivable Asher could have survived. Blood was flowing freely from his ears, but that was the only sign of movement. Barotrauma-the sudden loss of pressure-had ruptured his middle ear. And that would have been the least of the effects: the emergency depressurization would have caused massive gas embolisms, basically carbonating his blood. And the smoke inhalation, the massive third-degree burns…

The sudde

The emergency crews were receding now, the palls of fog rolling away. Fire suppressant dripped from every surface. Outside the chamber, Crane heard a scattering of voices as the paramedic team arrived. Gently, he laid a hand on Asher's shoulder. "Good-bye, Howard," he said.