Jack looked at his panel. “Here, this canyon falls to about eight and a half thousand feet.”

“Oh no, Captain… is something,” Dmitry whispered.

“Huh?” Jack switched off the powerful beam. “What is it, Dmitry?”

Dmitry stared hard at his glowing green screen. “Coming up, big, but moving very slowly. Still at sixty-two hundred feet, but drifting up.”

“Towards us?” Abby’s voice sounded little more than a squeak.

“Maybe,” Dmitry said. “But it is like it is just drifting or floating up towards us. Maybe it is floating debris.” He looked again at the screen, and then held a hand to one of the cups over his ear. “Fifty-eight hundred feet now; I think definitely coming up at us.” He looked up. “Intersecting course.”

“Hey, I have an idea – when it gets here, let’s all be somewhere else,” Greg hissed.

“Stay calm, Greg,” Jack said evenly. “We’re not sitting in a jet. This submersible is designed for deep-sea exploration, and has a top speed of three-point-five knots – around four miles per hour, walking speed, and we’re doing that now. So we’re not going to outrun anything.”

Jack leaned towards Yegor. “Move in a little tighter to the ceiling.”

“More closer?” The big Russian’s brows went up, but he still eased the wheel back a few degrees, moving Prusalka to within a few dozen feet of the jagged granite ceiling. “I think this close enough, there are currents from below; that might push us onto rock.”

“Currents; I knew it,” Cate said. “The hotter water in the deep thermals will rise, the cooler water will settle. It basically creates a continual current, circulating nutrients and stopping the water from stagnating. This place is a fully-functional but contained environment.”

“Drifting object now at fifty-three hundred feet.” He looked up from the instrument panel. “Coming up out of the deep; that way.” He pointed forward and slightly to the right side of the front window.

“All stop.” Jack placed a hand on the spotlight, but didn’t turn it on. “Everyone stay calm, and brace themselves.” He spoke over his shoulder. “Keep talking, Dmitry.”

“It is as big as we are. Now, just hovering in the water – when we stop, it stops. I think was waiting for us to come to it. Now at one hundred feet out.”

The ring of halogen lights surrounding the window only illuminated a few dozen feet, but now it was further hindered by the upside down forest of crags and hanging mountains from the ceiling that cast deeper shadows behind them. Jack sucked in a deep breath and then flicked on the spotlight.

“Christ!” Greg’s yell made Cate jump in her seat.

“Magnificent,” Mironov said softly.