“How can you be sure the bit’s broken?” Perry yelled over the new noise.

The foreman looked down at him. “Experience,” he yelled then turned and strode off toward the ship’s stern.

Perry had to run to catch up. Each of the foreman’s strides was double his. Perry tried to ask another question but the foreman either didn’t hear or was ignoring him. They reached the companionway and the foreman started up, taking the stairs three at a time. Two decks above he entered a passageway and then stopped outside a compartment door. The name on the door was MARKDAVIDSON, OPERATIONSCOMMANDER. The foreman knocked loudly. At first the only response was a fit of coughing but then a voice called out to come in.

Perry pressed into the small compartment behind the foreman.

“Bad news, chief,” the foreman said. “I’m afraid the drill bit’s busted again.”

“What the hell time is it?” Mark asked. He ran his fingers through his messy hair. He was sitting on the side of his bunk dressed in skivvies. His facial features had a puffy look, and his voice was thick with sleep. Without waiting for a reply he reached for a pack of cigarettes. The air in the room was imbued with stale smoke.

“It’s around oh-six-hundred,” the foreman said.

“Jesus,” Mark said. His eyes then focused on Perry. Surprise registered. He blinked. “Perry? What are you doing up?”

“There’s no way I could have slept through that vibration,” Perry said.

“What vibration?” Mark asked. He looked back at the foreman, who was staring at Perry.

“Are you Perry Bergman?” the foreman asked.

“Last time I checked,” Perry said. Sensing the foreman’s unease gave him a modicum of satisfaction.

“Sorry,” the foreman said.

“Forget it,” Perry said magnanimously.

“Was the drill train rattling?” Mark asked.

The foreman nodded. “Just like the last four times, maybe a little worse.”

“We only have one more diamond-studded tungsten carbide bit left,” Mark lamented.

“You don’t have to tell me,” the foreman said.

“What’s the depth?” Mark asked.

“Not much change from yesterday,” the foreman said. “We’ve got out thirteen hundred thirty-three feet of pipe. Since the bottom is just shy of a thousand feet and there’s no sediment, we’re down into the rock about three hundred and forty feet, give or take a few inches.”

“This is what I was explaining to you last night,” Mark said to Perry. “We were doing fine until four days ago. Since then we’ve gone nowhere, maybe two or three feet tops, despite using up four drill bits.”

“So you think you’ve hit up against a hard layer?” Perry said, thinking he had to say something.

Mark laughed sarcastically. “Hard ain’t the word. We’re using diamond-studded bits with the straightest flutes made! Worse yet is we got another hundred feet of the same stuff, whatever it is, before we get to the magma chamber, at least according to our ground-penetrating radar. At this rate we’ll be here for ten years.”

“Did the lab analyze the rock caught in the last broken bit?” the foreman asked.

“Yeah, they did,” Mark said. “It’s a type of rock they’d never seen before. At least according to Tad Messenger. It’s composed of a type of crystalline olivine that he thinks might have a microscopic matrix of diamond. I wish we could get a bigger sample. One of the biggest problems of drilling in open sea is not getting a return of circulated drilling fluids. It’s like drilling in the dark.”

“Could we get a corer down there?” Perry asked.

“A lot of good that would do if we can’t make any headway with a diamond-studded bit.”

“How about piggybacking it with the diamond bit. If we could get a real sample of this stuff we’re trying to drill through, maybe we could figure out a reasonable game plan. We got too much invested in this operation to give up without a real fight.”

Mark looked at the foreman, who shrugged. Then he looked back at Perry. “Hey, you’re the boss.”

“At least for now,” Perry said. He wasn’t joking. He wondered how long he was going to be the boss if the project came to naught.

“All right,” Mark said. He put his cigarette down on the edge of an overflowing ashtray. “Pull the drill bit up to the well head.”

“The boys are already doing that,” the foreman said.

“Get the last diamond drill bit from supply,” Mark said. He reached for his phone. “I’ll have Larry Nelson get the saturation dive system up and running and the submersible in the water. We’ll replace the bit and see if we can get a better sample of what it is we’re drilling into.”

“Aye, aye,” the foreman said. He turned and left while Mark lifted his phone to his ear to call the diving commander.

Perry started to leave himself when Mark held up his hand to motion for him to stay. After finishing his call to Larry Nelson, Mark looked up at Perry.

“There’s something I didn’t bring up last night at the briefing,” he said. “But I think you ought to know about it.”

Perry swallowed. His mouth had gone dry. He didn’t like Mark’s tone of voice. It sounded like more bad news.

“This might be nothing,” Mark continued, “but when we used the ground-penetrating radar to study this layer we’re trying to drill through like I mentioned before, there was an unexpected incidental finding. I got the data here on my desk. Do you want to see it?”

“Just tell me,” Perry said. “I can look at the data later.”

“The radar suggested that the contents of the magma chamber might not be what we thought from the original seismic studies. It might not be liquid.”

“You’re joking!” This new information added to Perry’s misgivings. It was by accident the previous summer that the Benthic Explorer had discovered the seamount they were presently drilling. What was so amazing about the find was that as part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the area had been extensively studied by Geosat, the U.S. Navy’s gravity measuring satellite used to create contour maps of the ocean bottom. Yet somehow this particular undersea mountain had evaded Geosat’s radar.

Although the Benthic Explorer crew had been eager to get home they’d paused long enough to make several passes over the mysterious mount. With the ship’s sophisticated sonar they did a cursory study of the guyot’s internal structure. To everyone’s surprise the results were as unexpected as the mountain’s presence. The seamount appeared to be a particularly thin-skinned, quiescent volcano whose liquid core was a mere four hundred feet beneath the ocean floor. Even more astounding was that the substance within the magma chamber had sound propagation characteristics identical to those of the Mohorovicic discontinuity, or Moho, the mysterious boundary between the earth’s crust and the earth’s mantle. Since no one had ever been able to get magma from the Moho, although both Americans and Russians had tried during the Cold War, Perry decided to go back and drill into the mountain in hopes that Benthic Marine might be the first organization to sample the molten material. He reasoned that the material’s analysis would shed light on the structure and perhaps even the origin of the earth. But now his Benthic Explorer ’s operations commander was telling him that the original seismic data might be wrong!

“The magma chamber may be empty,” Mark said.

“Empty?” Perry blurted.

“Well, not empty,” Mark corrected himself. “Filled with some kind of compressed gas, or maybe steam. I know extrapolating data at this depth is pushing ground-penetrating radar technology beyond its limits. In fact a lot of people would say the results I’m talking about are just artifact, sorta off the graph so to speak. But the fact that the radar data doesn’t jibe with the seismic worries me just the same. I mean, I’d just hate to make this huge effort only to get nothing but a bunch of superheated steam. Nobody’s going to be happy with that, least of all your investors.”