Gorkin continued to stare at the man. Senchov’s smile looked fragile, and he knew why. There was no such thing as a guarantee in his business. He’d been out on dozens of seabed drilling projects, and most times the caps held. Only one in a hundred didn’t. But he knew deep liquid was always under pressure, and the ocean was quite shallow here, so less corresponding pressure on the crust.

But the deep liquid beds were always trying to escape. Like living things they wanted their freedom. If there was a seabed collapse, then whatever was in that subterranean place would end up right underneath them.

*   *   *

They rowed slowly, Jack and Greg taking first shift. Their paddles dipped in, swept back along the side of the raft to pull them across the water, and then being slid out from the dark liquid. There was very little sound, as both men automatically knew to make as little noise as possible.

By now, Jack guessed they had passed well over the underwater cliff they had seen in the submersible, and below them now was nothing but the pitiless void, where it dropped away thousands of feet into the abyss. There would be movement down there, and he hoped that was exactly where it would stay.

To conserve power, they travelled in the dark, just the glow of the compass to guide them.

Something splashed out in the darkness.

Jack slowed his paddling as the splash came again, and this time it was accompanied by a smell of age-old barnacles and ocean bottoms.

“Stop,” Jack whispered, switched on one of the flashlights and trained its beam in the direction of the commotion.

His breath caught in his throat as at the far edge of his light, something huge lumped the water’s surface, rolled once and then slid beneath the oily sheen of the dark water.

The ripples bumped at the raft, and the small group all sat frozen, watching the water. Jack felt his heartbeat racing in his chest. No one moved a muscle.

Jack trained the beam down into the water, but it was impossible to see anything, and the beam might have stopped at a few feet or dozens. He continued to stare for several more seconds.

He had been in predator’s water before – tagging Great White Sharks down at Hell’s Teeth in South Africa where the monsters grew to twenty foot and as wide around as a hippo. He had also been near orca packs when they rounded up seal pods, herding them in towards an ice wall and then picking them off one by one, playing with the carcasses like vollyballers at the beach. He’d swum with giant saltwater crocodiles, and moray eels as thick as your waist. But those times he had known what was down there, had known what to expect, so when the animal finally appeared, it was thrilling and frightening, but expected.