“
Jonas rubbed his eyes. “Okay, Masao, for some reason it seems the story’s being leaked anyway. First off, Danielson wasn’t my C.O., he was assigned to Guam when our mission began, then ended up overseeing the dives as they were in his waters. I had trained for the mission for several years along with three other pilots, two of which eventually dropped out. “The sub was called the Sea Cliff; the navy having refitted her to handle the Challenger Deep. Three teams of scientists were flown out to supervise the mission. I was briefed with some bullshit story about measuring deep-sea currents in the trench in order to determine if plutonium rods from nuclear power plants could be safely buried within the subduction zone. Funny thing—when we descended on that first dive the eggheads were suddenly no longer interested in currents, what they came for were rocks.” “Rocks?” “Manganese nodules. Don’t ask me why they wanted them, I haven’t a clue. My orders were to pilot the sub down to the hydrothermal plume and remain there while the geologists operated a remotely-controlled drone designed with a vacuum.” Jonas closed his eyes. “The first dive went okay; the second was three days later and by the time I had surfaced again I was seeing double.
”
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