The Next Continent

A SERIES OF
distant booms reverberated through the bridge of the deep submergence shuttle
Leviathan
. Startled out of a light doze in the rear jump seat, Sohya Aomine opened his eyes. “What's that?”

“It's a school of
anguiras
, sir.”

The pilot pointed toward the quartz viewport from his seat at the controls. Countless thousands of bizarre fish the size of a finger were swarming up from the depths.

“Eel fry, sir. In Japan we only see the adults. They say the breeding grounds are in the Mariana Trench. What are they doing way out here? This is amazing.”

The pilot was struck with wonder at the hordes of willow-shaped fingerlings flooding through the cone of light from the ship's halogens and back into the inky darkness. Sohya glanced around the bridge uneasily. “No, that's not what I meant.”

“I'm sorry?”

“Didn't you hear that?” said Sohya.

“They're striking all over the hull. Sounds a bit like rain, doesn't it?”

“No. There was something else.” Sohya listened closely. The sound that had awakened him, almost like the low-frequency pealing of a temple bell, seemed to have vanished. Or maybe it was back, like a distant echo? Switching his attention momentarily to the shower of fish outside had left him disoriented. “I'm going to have a look aft.”

“You shouldn't miss this, sir. We may be the first to witness it.”

“We had to use ultrasound to keep those things away during construction.” Sohya grinned at the astonished pilot and went into the passenger cabin.

Leviathan
's forty VIPs seemed to have settled in following the excitement that had prevailed during boarding. Half of them dozed or looked about to nod off. The rest perused magazines or chatted quietly with seatmates. They seemed little different from airline passengers, blithely unaware of the hostile environment just outside the metal walls of the compartment. Everything in the windowless cabin seemed peaceful. With no portholes, there was no view; there would have been nothing to see anyway.
Leviathan
was two thousand meters beneath the surface.

Looking good
, thought Sohya with a sense of satisfaction. If this nervous group of VIPs could feel so relaxed, the transition to commercial operation should be trouble free. A group of elementary school students would be hard to keep quiet in this environment, but otherwise the experience seemed unlikely to spark anxiety in the average traveler.

Sohya looked toward the rear of the cabin and stopped in surprise. In the last row, at the end of a long line of heads showing above the roomy seats, a small white beret peeked out, almost concealed by the head of the passenger one row forward.
A child? What's going on
â¦ Then Sohya remembered that children hadn't been bannedâjust not invited, as far as he knew.
She must be with one of the VIPs.
A thatch of snow-white hair rose above the next backrest. Yes, someone else must have brought her along. Nothing to worry about.

In point of fact, there should have been nothing to worry about at all, at least not from Sohya's standpoint. His employer was Gotoba Engineering & Construction, the builders of Dragon Palace. Sohya did not answer to the five-nation development consortium that operated the undersea facilities and the shuttle subs. Operational safety was the responsibility of the consortium, which at this precise moment meant the pilot. Safety had been a priority in the shuttles' development and construction long before the first weld. And even had Sohya been prone to worry, he was in no position to fix a mechanical problem under two kilometers of ocean.

Still, the twenty-five-year-old engineer could not shake a feeling of apprehension. Sea trials had gone smoothly, and the vessel was no longer his responsibility, but he still felt that this was his boat. In any case, he was not heading for Dragon Palace to attend the soft-launch party. The last inspection before handoff would occupy every available minute of his time. Right now he had a glitch to track down.

He refocused his attention and moved slowly down the aisle toward the rear of the cabin. A well-dressed male passenger in the second rowâSohya guessed he was a member of the Philippine delegationâlooked up. “When does coffee service begin, please?”

“I'm sorry, the soft drinks distributed before boarding were the only service on this run. Drinking water is available anytime.” Sohya gestured to a small dispenser recessed into the seat back in front of the passenger, whose silent frown suggested he had been expecting more than tap water.

Sohya continued down the aisle at a measured pace, wondering if bringing stewards would have been a good idea, but in a moment his attention returned to the sonic anomaly.

Leviathan
's layout was straightforward: bridge forward, passenger compartment in the center, power plant aft. Nearly all of the ship's machinery and control hydraulics were contained inside her twenty-one cylindrical meters of high-tensile steel. Two rudder propellers projecting from the stern provided the only source of propulsion and steering. This seamless, primitive shape was required if
Leviathan
was to withstand the two-hundred-atmosphere overpressures at this depth. Her only means of ascent and descent were the ranks of ballast tanks arranged in three independent arraysâforward, amidships, and aftâalong the underside of the vessel. Compressed air injected into the tanks expelled seawater and provided positive buoyancy; drawing water in to expel the air brought the sub lower. Other than the turbopump for compressed air, the sub's buoyancy system used no machinery of any kind.

This streamlined, compact design was not without its drawbacks. Compared to a thruster-equipped submarine, response was slow and pitch control limited at best. The design was adequate for the stable, slow currents of the deep ocean, but three passengers moving forward or aft was enough to affect the sub's trim. Providing drinking water at the seats would hopefully limit movement about the cabin. Sohya's leisurely pace was also intended to ease the pilot's efforts to maintain trim.

Sohya was concerned that the sonic anomaly he heard might signal a design flaw. Gotoba Engineering had acquired the basic design for
Leviathan
and her sister shipsâ
Kraken
and
Sea Serpent
âfrom Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, with modifications and design enhancements implemented during construction. The original plans were meant for shallow-water undersea tourism at one hundred meters or less. For deep submergence, passenger viewports were eliminated, and the hull material was switched to the same dependable high-performance alloy used in the outer shell of the Palace domes. The real challenge was building a compressor capable of forcing air into the ballast tanks at ambient pressures far greater than those near the surface. A solution was finally found by licensing hydrogen-turbine technology developed for rocket engines.

The Mitsubishi engineer assured Sohya that the turbine design had been verified by multiple tests to destruction (in other words, explosion) and was thoroughly reliable. Sohya was not completely convinced. In fact, compressor problems had detained
Leviathan
in port for three hours today after her sisters departed.

Still, even if they were actually forced to halt and wait on the sea floor, two identical vessels were available for rescue operations. The passenger compartment was designed as an independent unit; no critical power or control circuits were routed through that section of the boat. A blue whale could rest on the compartment without causing a leak. Whatever the origin of that sound, it was not a matter of life or deathâat least in theory. But Sohya could not afford to be complacent. He knew too much.

Only one man-made structure is fail-safe: the structure no one builds. Any existing structure is inevitably subject to failure.
Years earlier, Sohya had heard an English automotive engineer drily make this observation, and with these words echoing in his mind, he reached the rear of the passenger compartment and the door to the aft service area.

As he put his hand on the latch, he was stopped by a pure, high voice, like the strings of a harp.

“I saw the sound. Right here.” He glanced down to his right. A pair of sparkling round eyes, like a puppy's, met his.

It was the girl. Her large pupils in the shadow of long lashes were calm, open, and direct. Straight black hair flowed out from under her beret, framing smooth white cheeks and falling almost to her waist. A black sailor jacket with a broad white collar, a white flared skirt, ankle socks, spotless loafers. The overall effect, down to the beret, suggested the uniform of some private academy. She sat with knees aligned, one small, balled fist resting on them. To all appearances, a girl of good family, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old.

Sohya took three of the five seconds of silence that ensued to observe and draw conclusions. The other two seconds went into analyzing the girl's statement, but he still had no idea what she might mean.

“What's this all about?” he answered at length. The girl pointed to the water dispenser with a graceful flick of the finger.

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