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About a hundred feet aas a ht filtering through the net No details were clearly visible, but it was obviously an enormous submarine

Austin instinctively switched the light off, even though it seemed unlikely that anybody aboard the sub are of his insignificant presence

He say fro in the darkness below He angled his body and dove straight down, only to stop after a fewblue objects

Blue medusae!

About six of them floated across his path of descent He waited until the deadly jellyfish were out of range, then dove again toward the bottoht his attention were beacons on the tops of four large spheres built around a hes with disk-shaped footings that reses of a spider

The lobes was unbroken with the exception of one sphere which had a transparent dome Austin swam closer to the sphere and sao people under the dome One was a dark-haired woman and the other was Zavala

The tere sitting in chairs, apparently deep in conversation Zavala didn’t seem to be in any trouble, and, frouffawed, the deep laugh co out as a series of noisy bubbles Only Joe Zavala could find an attractive woman at the bottom of the sea

While Austin was trying to make sense of the scene under the doht up at hihter plane, swam down to the bottom and under the sphere, then toward the heram that the hub was the transportation o shuttle

He swa from the bottom of the hemisphere, and found the hatch that allowed divers access to the module He inflated the buoyancy coan a slow rise At the sa the Bowen froured he could have the pistol out and ready to fire within five seconds of surfacing With the elee he needed

Austin’s head broke the surface of the airlock pool inside the helanced quickly around, and saw that the Boouldn’t be needed and could stay in its pouch for now The circular room was deserted

He swae of the pool,sure it ithin easy reach Then he slipped out of his weight belt, fins, and tank and set them next to the pouch He cli his scuba gear on a hook next to four other sets of dry gear Then he listened for a minute at the only door

All was quiet Austin’s Bowen filled one hand, and his other pressed the wall switch The door slid quietly open Austin set off along a corridor, determined to stir up some trouble

It didn’t take long

He came to a door marked RESOURCE CULTIVATION SECTION He opened it and stepped into a twilit chamber that was circular in shape, the walls lined with fish tanks that contained various jellyfish But it was the larger, chest-high, circular tank at the center of the rooht his attention

It contained at least a dozen giant jellyfish Their bell-shaped bodies were nearly a yard across, and their tentacles were short, thick, and ropy rather than the delicate strealoith a pulsating neon blue that provided the sole illumination in the room