Pandora's Temple (33 page)

Suddenly a rumble sounded around them, causing a ripple in the currents trapped inside Pandora’s Temple and forcing the
Crab
to buck. The temple seemed to quake slightly, the way a skyscraper might in the midst of an earthquake.

“What the hell was that?” from Sal Belamo.

“Don’t say it, Captain,” said McCracken.

But Captain Seven couldn’t help himself. “What do you expect from something that doesn’t want to be found, MacNuts?”

“Anybody notices a jar lying around, give me a shout,” said Sal Belamo, sweating up a storm now from tension over maneuvering the
Crab
about without striking anything that might bring the structure down.

“It’s supposed to be the size of a dude, right?” raised Captain Seven. “Big enough to hold the mother lode of sacred weed.”

“Opinions and visual renditions of the jar differ,” said McCracken. “But as far as size goes that’s the prevailing thought.”

“Sorry to disappoint you then, but so far we got no trace of anything even resembling a relic, never mind one that big. ’Course with the right drug, a man can see anything he wants.”

“Still early in the ride, Captain.”

The
Crab
continued to cruise about the temple’s cavernous confines. Here, so far underwater and in darkness, the feeling was that of being contained in a massive tomb, a fact not lost on any of the craft’s occupants, whose heart rates quickened and breathing turned shallow and thin, as if the air was fighting them. There was still nothing given up by the sub’s powerful exterior lighting that even resembled a jar or anything else that might have once filled the structure’s many shelves and built-in storage cases, all of which were empty.

Then one of the
Crab
’s lights, and cameras, passed over something ivory colored and rectangular that looked like an extension of the floor itself.

“Go back, Sal.”

“Already am, boss. I saw it too.”

Belamo switched the craft to a hover directly before what from this angle looked like a husk of marble rising from the temple floor, utterly untouched by algae, unlike all other parts of the temple.

“It looks like a . . . pedestal,” realized Katie DeMarco.

“That was my thought too,” said McCracken. “Only one on the entire level. Tells me something very important once rested upon it.”

“It was traditional for the ancient Greeks to display their most valued items on mounts or bases like this,” Katie added.

Something seemed to catch McCracken’s eye. “Get us closer, Sal.”

Once he did, nothing further about the pedestal was given up to the naked eye, but under ultraviolet light, the main view screen showed a series of unrecognizable symbols, not unlike hieroglyphics but considerably more detailed and sophisticated at the same time, adorning the pedestal on three sides.

McCracken leaned forward to better study the symbols, then leaned back slowly with eyes wide and not seeming to blink.

“Blainey?” Wareagle raised, sending his unease.

“Any read on that, Captain?” McCracken asked, instead of responding.

“Why you asking me?”

“I thought ancient languages were one of your specialties. Basis for those codes you developed in Vietnam.”

“Stoned maybe. Straight, forget about it. But I don’t have to be stoned to tell you I’ve never come across anything like those symbols before.”

McCracken nodded. “That’s what I thought. I believe we’ve shown up after the show’s over. Get us out of here, Sal. The jar’s gone. Somebody beat us to it.”

“What am I missing here, boss?” wondered Sal Belamo. “What’s so important about those symbols on that pedestal?”

Before McCracken could respond, the rumbling and quaking resumed, only more powerfully. He could feel it along his spine like a feather brushing up against his skin, unsettling him. This time the feeling persisted, as the waters around the
Crab
bubbled up into a lightly churned froth.

“Believe it’s time we made our exit, Sal.”

“Couldn’t agree more, boss.”

Katie jerked herself forward, straining the bonds of her safety harness. “No, we’ve got to keep looking!”

“The jar’s not here, young lady,” McCracken told her.

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Yes, I can.”

“How?”

“Because I think I know where it is.”

•

“Get us out of here, Sal,” McCracken continued.

Belamo had already brought the
Crab
around and was easing toward the temple’s façade. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

“There’s something approaching from outside the temple, Blainey,” Wareagle said suddenly, half out of his seat.

At which point, the sonar screen on Belamo’s main control panel began to flash a warning too. “The big fella’s right, boss.”

“Anything?” McCracken asked, after the
Crab
had emerged through the temple’s open façade.

Belamo rotated the exterior floodlights that struggled to make a dent in the blackness beyond. “Your guess is as good as mine, boss. Steering back for that vent now. Trip back up should be loads easier than the one down.”

With the coordinates programmed into the craft’s computer, Belamo worked the controls to cant the submarine on a slight upward climb toward the hydrothermal vent through which they’d originally entered the cavern. Then something big crossed the spill of the lights, a shape that looked more like a pale blotch amid the darkness, and proceeded to slam into the
Crab
before backing off again.

“Is that a—”

“Giant squid,” McCracken completed for Katie DeMarco.

“And people say drugs make you see things,” managed a wide-eyed Captain Seven. “Guess we don’t need any of them to see this.”

The monster first seemed to be retreating before laying itself sideways in the water with its caudal fin angled farthest from the
Crab
, positioned so it could reach out to test its prey with its two extralong tentacles. Its body alone looked to be even longer than the craft and almost as wide. Its eight arms, meanwhile, flailed and thrashed about as if seeking purchase with the attached suction cups.

“Man, that thing looks mean,” Captain Seven added.

“At least we know what made that graveyard of wrecks on the cavern floor,” said Sal Belamo.

The squid’s massive eyes seemed to be peering straight through the view window until it lashed three of its arms against the glass in search of grip. The squid pulled its arms back, the feel of the glass and lack of suction it provided forcing the thing to continue pawing about the craft’s frame.

“Let’s see if we can give this thing a fight,” McCracken said, taking the chair before the controls of the robotic pincers beyond.

Belamo twisted the
Crab
to pull away from the squid and, when that failed, tried to tow it along for the ride. When that strategy failed too, he was left with nothing more to do than use the craft’s engines to hold its ground and fight against the squid’s determined efforts to drag them downward to join the rest of the wrecks in the watery graveyard.

If McCracken didn’t know better, he’d say the squid was trying to swallow them. But he knew just enough about the creature to figure it saw them as potential prey, having likely feasted on occupants of the other crafts entombed on the cavern floor. And with no whales, the giant squid’s only true predator, in the area, that left nothing above it in the food chain.

McCracken familiarized himself with the controls for the articulated arms as best and as quickly as he could.

“I don’t want to push the engine any more than I already am, boss.”

“Just give me a sec here.”

He drew the left pincer inside and down, slamming the squid in the side of the mantle, or torso, with a force sufficient to at least stun it. It was like hitting jelly, though. So McCracken opened the left pincers and drove them forward in the same moment he brought the pincer apparatus on the right around to reach the base of the mantle from which the squid’s arms extended and where the gaping black eyes peered out.

The squid had small fins at the rear of the mantle it used for locomotion. Like other cephalopods, it propelled itself by pulling water into the mantle cavity and pushing the water through the siphon, in gentle rhythmic pulses. The monster could adjust its speed by expanding the cavity to fill it with water, then contracting muscles to jet water through the siphon. McCracken also knew the creature breathed using two large gills inside the same cavity, as difficult to target as the thing’s closed circulatory system.

These monsters hadn’t existed for tens of thousands of years by being vulnerable.

The squid found the
Crab
in its reaches, clamping its arms all along the steel, while its longer tentacles tried to wrap themselves around the entire circumference of the craft. They looked ready to squeeze, perhaps strong enough to pierce the sub’s hull, when McCracken latched one of the pincers onto the far and thinner end portion of the mantle that looked like a tail and closed them tight.

Outside the view window, something changed in the squid’s eyes. Maybe it was panic, inbred from so many years of avoiding contact with predators and rarely encountering resistance. Based on the creaking sounds that filled the
Crab
, though, it was actually tightening its hold on the craft more than enough to get McCracken working the second robotic pincer apparatus into place on the tip of the mantle as well. He closed it on the squid’s spongy skin and then worked both pincers into a lifting action.

The apparatus strained to lift the near eight-hundred-pound weight of the squid, coupled with eight arms’ worth of suction cups fastening into place on the craft’s steel to hold itself in place.

“Take us down, Sal. Fast.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Belamo dropped the
Crab
into a dive at the same time McCracken drew both pincers upward. Both gravity and inertia worked in their favor, the combined force just enough to pull the squid’s arms free of the craft and leave it struggling to escape, or at least right itself for another attack.

“Believe we made our point, boss.”

Belamo had barely finished his comment, when the squid pulled free of the pincers and lashed at the
Crab
with its arms, again seeking deadly purchase with its longer tentacles. The creature’s body alone looked to be at least twenty-five feet long, that size nearly doubled when the length of the arms and tentacles was added in; in other words, it was easily bigger than the
Crab
, which explained why the monster had attacked in the first place. Now, angered and threatened, it wasn’t going anywhere.

To prevent the
Crab
from joining the other rotting wrecks, McCracken closed the pincers and crashed one into the squid where he thought it might be most vulnerable, nearest the eyes. Impact rattled the creature, but it lurched toward the sub again, this time from the other side. McCracken fended off this attack with a blow from the other pincer while poking at the squid with the free pincer as if it were a spear.

The monster responded by turning its attention to the pincers themselves, seeing them as the protector of its potential meal. It went for the one on the right first, dipping and then sweeping about to try and catch it in the grasp of its tentacles. McCracken used the left pincer to fight it off and the thing pivoted to that side next.

After McCracken countered with the right pincer this time, incredibly, the squid altered its strategy to focus on both pincers at the same time. The result was a twisted sea-based pirouette as McCracken used the pincers to parry with the monster in the hope it would ultimately tire of the effort and just swim off.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Or at least started to when one of the giant squid’s tentacles got snared on the now-closed pincer on the right side of the
Crab
. The creature responded instinctively by squeezing harder still with the tentacle, which succeeded only in snaring it even tighter.

“Not good, boss.”

“I’m working on it, Sal.”

He tried to use the second pincer to help free the squid, but the creature was in panic mode now, focusing all its strength, and arms, on its escape. That pincer bent under the intense escape effort, the controls for it seizing up in McCracken’s hands as the joints that allowed for articulation were ravaged by the squid’s desperate attempts to pull free.

“Any ideas, Indian?” McCracken asked as the submarine bucked and rocked precariously.

“Just one, Blainey,” Wareagle said, moving toward the craft’s single hatch in the rear of the cabin with the sheath holding his Gerber MK-2 knife in hand.

Wareagle swam out through the pressurized hatch wearing a high-tech, much lighter version of the traditional atmospheric diving suit, or ADS, stretched to the limit to accommodate his proportions. Entering the water without such a suit at this depth would have meant instant death due to the pressure. But this particular ADS model had been tested up to depths of thirty-five hundred feet, giving Johnny as much as another thousand to play with even within the cavern.

The suit might have been pliable, especially when compared to earlier less technologically advanced models, but it still wasn’t constructed with battling a giant squid in mind. The more the thing struggled to free its tentacle from the pincer, the more tightly it seemed to fasten itself to the
Crab
.

“Don’t know how much more this thing can take, boss,” Sal Belamo reported, his entire console shaking from the squid’s thrashing about outside. “Few more minutes and our structural integrity might be for shit.”

“Then it’s up to Johnny.”

Wareagle had just reappeared within camera and naked eye view swimming toward the monster that continued to thrash about. But at the last moment he veered away, seeming to think of something else, an alternate strategy.

“That’s it, Indian,” McCracken urged quietly, realizing his thought as if of the same mind.

Wareagle moved to the pincer assembly itself, swimming around the squid to avoid detection as long as possible. It continued twisting and yanking while he settled into place at the insertion point where the pincers joined the articulated arm itself. Johnny went to work instantly with his knife on the fasteners, couplings, and wiring that connected one to the other.