“I’ve had worse.” Jack rubbed his jaw. It still ached dully.

Houston held out his cigar, inspecting it with pleasure. “Cuban tobacco…I’m breaking so many laws…”

“But it’s worth it, isn’t it?”

He replaced the cigar, inhaling deeply. “Oh, yeah.” His eyes narrowed with appreciation as he exhaled.

Except for the admiral and his two personal aides, Jack had the Deep Fathom back to himself, at least for now. With the two black boxes wrapped and under armed guard, David Spangler and the other government investigators had left immediately for the USS Gibraltar. The admiral had remained behind. He would be alerted as soon as any word came through on the flight data and cockpit recorders. Until then, everyone was holding their breath.

“So I take it,” Houston said, “that your reunion with Commander Spangler didn’t resolve anything.”

“What did you expect?” Jack slumped in his lounge chair. First the Gibraltar, then Admiral Houston, now David Spangler. All together again. He had run from his past for over a decade, and ended up right where he started. He sighed. “Nothing changes. Even before the shuttle accident, David hated me. He resented that I took his place on the shuttle.”

“It wasn’t your decision. It was NASA’s jurisdiction.”

“Yeah, tell that to Spangler. We had a major blowout the night before the launch. I was almost scrubbed.”

“I remember. He found out you were dating his sister during the year you spent at NASA training.” Houston pointed his cigar at Jack’s swollen lip. “And it seems that old grudge is still strong.”

Jack shook his head. “He lost his sister. Who can blame him?”

“You should. We’ve lost other shuttles. Everyone knows the risks.” The admiral sucked on his cigar. “Besides, there’s something I just don’t like about our Mr. Spangler. I never did. There’s always been a lot of hatred buried beneath that cold surface. I’m not surprised he’s fallen into the employ of Nicolas Ruzickov at the CIA. Those two sharks deserve each other.”

Jack was surprised at the admiral’s words. His face showed it.

Houston’s voice grew stern. “Just watch yourself around him, Jack.” He pointed his cigar at Jack’s swollen eye. “Don’t allow your guilt to weaken your guard. Not around him.”

Jack remembered the keen hatred in David’s eyes: This isn’t over, Kirkland. Perhaps he had better take his former commander’s advice and steer clear of the man, he thought. Jack closed his eyes and leaned back. “If only I had spotted the glitch a few seconds earlier…or held her hand tighter.”

“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, Jack. But, you know what, sometimes shit happens. You can’t see every bullet aimed at your head. Life just isn’t that fair.”

“When did you become such a philosopher?”

Houston tapped his cigar. “Age grants you a certain wisdom.”

From across the deck Lisa called to him, perched at the sub’s hatch. “Jack, come see this.”

Groaning, Jack pushed himself up. “What?”

Lisa just waved to him.

“All right. Hang on.” He got off his lounger, and the admiral sat up straighter, preparing to follow. “Relax,” Jack said. “I’ll be right back.”

Elvis rolled to his chest, starting to push to his legs.

Jack held out a hand, stopping the dog. “You, too. Stay.” The German shepherd sank back to the deck with a clearly irritated huff.

Houston patted Elvis’s side. “We old men will keep each other company.”

Jack rolled his eyes, then crossed the deck. He climbed down the stepladder to join Lisa. She lowered herself into the sub’s seat, and Jack leaned over her. “What’s up?”

“Look at the Nautilus’s internal clock.” She pointed to the clock’s red digital numbers. The seconds scrolled normally. “Now look at my wristwatch.”

Jack studied the Swatch on her wrist, then looked back at the digital clock. It was off by a little over five minutes. “So it’s slow by a few minutes.”

“Before the dive, I synchronized the clock myself when I calibrated the Bio-Sensor program. It was exact to the hundredth of a second.”

“I still don’t understand the significance.”

“I compared the time gap with the Bio-Sensor log. The difference in clocks exactly matches the length of time you were off-line.”

Jack crinkled his brow. “So the glitch must have affected the clock, too. Must be a short in one of the batteries.”

“No, the batteries checked out fine,” she mumbled, and looked up at him. “When you were off-line, did you see the clock stop?”

Jack shook his head, frown lines creasing the corners of his lips. “No. In fact, I remember checking. The clock was running normally the whole time.”

Lisa wiggled up off the seat. “It doesn’t make any sense. The diagnostics of the systems are perfect. Jack, is there anything you’re not telling me?”

He glanced over his shoulder. The admiral was lost in his appreciation of his cigar. Jack lowered his voice. During the postdive briefing, Jack had glossed over the details of the strange crystal pillar. No one seemed interested anyway. “That pillar I discovered down there…”

“Yeah. The one on the disk you gave Charlie.”

Jack bit his lip. He didn’t want to sound crazy. He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. The pillar was giving off some strange vibrations or harmonics. It screwed with my compass. I could even feel it on my skin, an itchy tingle like ants crawling all over.”

Lisa furrowed her brow. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I didn’t want to prejudice your examination of the Nautilus. If there was any other explanation, I wanted you to find it.”

Lisa’s cheeks grew red. “Jesus Christ, you know me better than that. Either way, I would have been just as thorough.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Lisa scooted out of the sub. Jack helped her onto the ladder. Her eyes flicked toward the admiral, then back to Jack. “Charlie is still holed up with George, studying that secret disk of yours. I’m going to find out if they’ve learned anything.” She shoved past. “You really should have told me, Jack.”

“What do you think it means?”

Lisa shrugged. “Beats me, but it’s worth checking out.”

“I’m coming with you.”

Robert, the marine biologist, crawled from under the sub’s tail. “All the seals check out fine, Jack. If you want to take her for another dive, you should have no problems.”

Jack nodded, distracted. “Robert, could you keep the admiral company for a few minutes? I have some brandy in the cupboard under the microwave.”

“Yeah, I know where it’s at. But what’s up?”

“We’ll fill you in with the details as soon as we have any,” Lisa answered, casting an angry look at Jack. She moved off.

Jack called across the deck to Admiral Houston. “I’ll be right back!”

He was answered with a nod and a dismissive wave.

Jack followed Lisa to the lower deck hatch. She descended the steep stair ahead of him, back stiff. This first of the lower levels contained Robert’s wet lab, the ship’s library, and Charlie’s tiny work station. Below were the crew’s cabins.

Lisa led the way through the wet lab to Charlie’s smaller compartment. She knocked on the steel door.

“Who is it?” Charlie called out to them.

“Lisa and Jack! Open up!”

After a short pause, Jack heard the locks unlatch and the door creak open slightly. Charlie peered out at them. “Just making sure you’re alone.” He sounded excited. The geologist pulled the door the rest of the way open. “C’mon inside…you have to see this.”

“You found something?” Jack asked as he and Lisa entered.

“Oh, yeah, mon, you could say that.”

The geology lab was no bigger than a single car garage, but every square inch was utilized. Equipment and tools were stacked neatly on shelves and counters: rock saws, drills, sieves, scales, magnetometers, even a complete ASC Core Analysis System. Jack was ignorant of most of the equipment’s use. This was Charlie’s domain.

With a dual doctorate in geology and geophysics, the Jamaican geologist could have taught at any university. But instead he ended up on Jack’s boat, doing his own research. “I didn’t earn my degrees to hole up in no classroom,” he had explained seven years ago, eyes bright with excitement. “Not when there is so much to explore out here. The deep ocean seabed, Jack! That’s where the Earth’s history and future are written. Down there! It’s waiting for someone to read it. And that someone is me!”

As Jack entered the lab now, he saw the same excitement in Charlie’s eyes. The geologist waved them over to his worktable. A television and video recorder had been set atop it.

Crouched before it was the ship’s historian. The professor leaned only a few inches from the video screen, squinting through his bifocals. George scribbled on a pad. “Amazing…simply amazing,” he mumbled as he worked.

Jack and Lisa moved to either side of him, trying to get a better look at the monitor. “What did you find?” Jack asked.

George finally seemed to realize their presence. He turned, his eyes wide. “You have to go down there again!” he said in a rush, clutching Jack’s sleeve.

“What? Why?”

“We should start at the beginning,” Charlie interrupted. He pointed the remote, and the video image reversed. On the screen, Jack watched the view of the crystal spire vanish into the ocean gloom. Once he’d rewound it far enough, Charlie stopped the DVD and allowed it to play forward. The obelisk slowly reappeared as Charlie spoke. “You were right, Jack. The crystalline substance appears natural. I’ve analyzed the video closely, and from the fracturing of the planes and uniformity of light refraction, it must be a spike of pure crystal.”