Deep Storm

"A cubed, plus b cubed, equals c cubed?" Hui shook her head. "There are no three numbers that will satisfy that expression."

"Or how about the natural logarithm of zero? Impossible. And pi is a transcendental number. You can't define it by dividing one number into another."

"And yet it seems Dr. Asher was right the first time. About the translations, I mean."

"He clearly thought he was. But it makes no sense. Why would those sentinels be broadcasting a series of impossible mathematical expressions? And why would they consider them so important they'd be transmitting on every known frequency…and then some? I think that-"

Crane abruptly fell silent. From outside in the corridor he could hear muffled conversation, the sound of tramping feet.

He turned toward Hui. She looked back, eyes wide.

He pointed toward the back of the room. "Into that closet. Quickly."

She ran to the equipment closet and slipped inside. Crane turned off the lights with a quick slap of his palm, then followed as quickly and silently as he could. At the last minute he stopped, stepped back out of the closet and into the room, and plucked the fire-suppressant drop cloth from its hook.

The footsteps came closer.

Crane spread the drop cloth as evenly as he could over the laptops and equipment on the table. Then he raced to the closet and shut them both in. A moment later, he heard the lab door open.

He peered out of the grille in the closet door. Two marines stood in the entrance of the lab, silhouetted by the glow of the corridor.

One of them snapped on the lights. Crane leaned back into the darkness. He could feel Hui's warm, rapid breath on his neck.

Footsteps again as the marines stepped into the room. Then silence.

Slowly-very slowly-Crane leaned forward again, until he could just peer through the grille. He saw the marines standing by the lab table, doing a slow recon of the room.

"There's nobody here," one said. "Let's try the next lab."

"In a minute," the other replied. "I want to check something out first." And-with cautious deliberation-the man stepped toward the closet.

43

Crane shrank back into the darkness. Behind him, Hui caught her breath. He reached down, took her hand, squeezed it tightly.

The thin rays of light filtering through the grille were now obscured by the approaching figure. Crane heard the footsteps stop just outside the door.

Suddenly, a radio squawked. There was a brief fumbling, the snap of a button. "Barbosa," came a voice, so close it seemed almost to come from inside the closet. Another brief squawk. Then: "Aye, aye, sir."

"Let's go," Barbosa said.

"What is it?" asked the other marine.

"Korolis. There's been a sighting."

"Where?"

"Waste Reclamation. Come on, let's move out." There was the sound of retreating footsteps, the closing of a door-then silence once again.

Crane realized he was holding his breath. He let it out in a long, shuddering gasp. Then he released Hui's hand and turned to face her.

Hui looked back, her eyes luminous in the dim light.

Five minutes passed without another word. Slowly, Crane felt his heartbeat return to its normal speed. At last, he put his hand on the closet door and pushed it quietly open. Legs still feeling like jelly, he emerged and switched the lights back on.

Hui pulled the drop cloth off the instruments and computers, her movements slow and mechanical. "What now?" she asked.

Crane tried to force his brain back on track. "We keep going."

"But where? We've gone over all the decryptions. They're just a lot of impossible math expressions."

"What about that other file, 'initial.txt'? The longer one that's being transmitted from beneath the Moho. You're sure there's no translation on the laptop?"

Hui shook her head. "Positive. Like you said, Dr. Asher must have concentrated on the shorter ones the sentinels were emitting."

Crane paused. Then he turned toward the laptop. "What could he have discovered?" he said, almost to himself. "He was beside himself with excitement when he called me from the oxygen chamber. There must be something."

He turned back to Hui. "Can you retrace his final steps?"

She frowned. "How?"

"Check the time and date stamps of the computer files. Figure out what he was doing in the minutes before he called me."

"Sure. Let me get a listing of all the files, sorted by date and time." Hui turned to the computer, opened a search window, and-moving a little more quickly now-typed in a command.

"Most of the files he was working on were in the 'decrypt' folder." She pointed at the screen. "But for the last fifteen minutes the laptop was operational, it appears Dr. Asher was surfing the Web."

"He was?"

Hui nodded. "I'll open the browser, bring up the history." A brief clatter of keystrokes. Crane rubbed his chin, puzzled. We'll be able to access the WAN wirelessly, Asher had told Marris, just before they entered the hyperbaric chamber. It was certainly possible they had accessed the Internet…but why?

"Here's a list of sites they visited," Hui said. She stepped back to give Crane room.

He leaned in toward the screen. The list contained a dozen Web sites, most with dry governmental names. "A few sites at the Environmental Protection Agency," he murmured. "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Ocotillo Mountain Project."

"The list is chronological," Hui said. "The last sites he visited are at the bottom."

Crane sca

He stared at the screen. Then, all of a sudden, he understood.

"My God," he breathed. Comprehension burned its way through him.

"What?" Hui asked.

He wheeled toward her. "Where is the network port in this lab? I need access to the Internet."

Wordlessly, she took a category-5 cable from her tool kit and co

WIPP-Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

Carlsbad, New Mexico

"Wipp," Hui said in a very quiet voice.

"That's what Asher meant. Not 'whip.'"

"But what is it?"

"A series of huge caverns, dug within a massive salt formation deep beneath the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico. Six million feet of underground storage space. Very remote. It's going to be the nation's first disposal facility for transuranic waste."

"Transuranic waste?"

"Nuclear garbage. Radioactive by-products of the cold war and the nuclear arms race. Everything from tools and protective suits to old spacecraft batteries. Right now, the stuff is stored all over the place. But the new plan is to store it all in one central location: far beneath the desert." He glanced at her. "And Ocotillo Mountain: that's a heavily guarded site in southeastern California, a geologic depository for spent nuclear fuel and decommissioned weapons of mass destruction."

He turned back to the screen. "I attended a medical conference on the dangers of nuclear garbage and deactivated weaponry. Where to dump something so lethal is a huge problem. Hence, repositories like Ocotillo Mountain. But what's the co

There was a brief silence.

"Did he say anything else?" Hui asked. "When he called you, I mean."

Crane thought back for a second. "He said it was imperative, absolutely imperative, that we didn't…and then he stopped."

"That we didn't what? Continue the dig?"