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the cover, and winced. Someone had apparently pulled it from the Goya's archive of old science magazines: Scientific American, February 1999. The cover showed an artist's rendering of a supertanker swirling out of control in an enormous funnel of ocean. The heading read: MEGAPLUMES-GIANT KILLERS FROM THE DEEP?
Tolland laughed it off. "Totally irrelevant. That article is talking about megaplumes in earthquake zones. It was a popular Bermuda Triangle hypothesis a few years back, explaining ship disappearances. Technically speaking, if there's some sort of cataclysmic geologic event on the ocean floor, which is unheard of around here, the dome could rupture, and the vortex could get big enough to... well, you know... "
"No, we don't know," Corky said.
Tolland shrugged. "Rise to the surface."
"Terrific. So glad you had us aboard."
Xavia entered carrying some papers. "Admiring the megaplume?"
"Oh, yes," Corky said sarcastically. "Mike was just telling us how if that little mound ruptures, we all go spiraling around in a big drain."
"Drain?" Xavia gave a cold laugh. "More like getting flushed down the world's largest toilet."
Outside on the deck of the Goya, the Coast Guard helicopter pilot vigilantly watched the EMS radar screen. As a rescue pilot he had seen his share of fear in people's eyes; Rachel Sexton had definitely been afraid when she asked him to keep an eye out for unexpected visitors to the Goya.
What kind of visitors is she expecting? he wondered.
From all the pilot could see, the sea and air for ten miles in all directions contained nothing that looked out of the ordinary. A fishing boat eight miles off. An occasional aircraft slicing across an edge of their radar field and then disappearing again toward some unknown destination.
The pilot sighed, gazing out now at the ocean rushing all around the ship. The sensation was a ghostly one-that of sailing full speed despite being anchored.
He returned his eyes to the radar screen and watched. Vigilant.
105
Onboard the Goya, Tolland had now introduced Xavia and Rachel. The ship's geologist was looking increasingly baffled by the distinguished entourage standing before her in the hydrolab. In addition, Rachel's eagerness to run the tests and get off the ship as fast as possible was clearly making Xavia uneasy.
Take your time, Xavia, Tolland willed her. We need to know everything.
Xavia was talking now, her voice stiff. "In your documentary, Mike, you said those little metallic inclusions in the rock could form only in space."
Tolland already felt a tremor of apprehension. Chondrules form only in space. That's what NASA told me.
"But according to these notes," Xavia said, holding up the pages, "that's not entirely true."
Corky glared. "Of course it's true!"
Xavia scowled at Corky and waved the notes. "Last year a young geologist named Lee Pollock out of Drew University was using a new breed of marine robot to do Pacific deepwater crust sampling in the Mariana Trench and pulled up a loose rock that contained a geologic feature he had never seen before. The feature was quite similar in appearance to chondrules. He called them 'plagioclase stress inclusions'-tiny bubbles of metal that apparently had been rehomogenized during deep ocean pressurization events. Dr. Pollock was amazed to find metallic bubbles in an ocean rock, and he formulated a unique theory to explain their presence."
Corky grumbled. "I suppose he would have to."
Xavia ignored him. "Dr. Pollock asserted that the rock formed in an ultradeep oceanic environment where extreme pressure metamorphosed a pre-existing rock, permitting some of the disparate metals to fuse."
Tolland considered it. The Mariana Trench was seven miles down, one of the last truly unexplored regions on the planet. Only a handful of robotic probes had ever ventured that deep, and most had collapsed well before they reached the bottom. The water pressure in the trench was enormous-an astounding eighteen thousand pounds per square inch, as opposed to a mere twenty-four pounds on the ocean's surface. Oceanographers still had very little understanding of the geologic forces at the deepest ocean floor. "So, this guy Pollock thinks the Mariana Trench can make rocks with chondrulelike features?"
"It's an extremely obscure theory," Xavia said. "In fact, it's never even been formally published. I only happened to stumble across Pollock's personal notes on the Web by chance last month when I was doing research on fluid-rock interactions for our upcoming megaplume show. Otherwise, I never would have heard of it."
"The theory has never been published," Corky said, "because it's ridiculous. You need heat to form chondrules. There's no way water pressure could rearrange the crystalline structure of a rock."
"Pressure," Xavia