The computer that they were using to plot the results was connected to the ship’s GPS and it used that link to map the images it was receiving over a standard oceanographer’s chart of the ocean bed. After three days, Laurie sat reviewing the results to-date. The image she saw was a chart of the southern Indian Ocean, specifically the area off India’s southeast coast. In the bottom left-hand corner she could see the edge of northeastern Sri Lanka. Protruding from that was the bridge of relatively shallow water that joined it with mainland India, whose southeastern coast showed in the top left corner of the image on-screen.

Sprouting from a point on the Indian coast that she knew was the fishing town of Kodikkarai was the line of their path to the center of their search zone. Either side of the line was the detailed image of the ocean bed that the probe had gathered en route. Once they had reached their starting point, they had started their spiral outwards, making the whole image look like an ever-growing lollipop, its handle lodged in the port of Kodikkarai like it was clasped in the hand of a little girl.

She could zoom in on any part of the probe’s imagery, utilizing its extremely high resolution to see the ocean bed in astonishing detail, all of it color coded by mass like a heat sensitive image or some psychedelic fractal. They had not found anything yet that came close to the density Neal and she had estimated the objects must have to all have survived their trip through the atmosphere, so Laurie stood up to join the captain on deck. They were only 15% of their way through the planned search field, after all.

* * *

That evening, as they both enjoyed dinner, the computer started beeping. It had found an anomaly. Looking at one another in surprise they put down their knives and forks and went over to the terminal. James let the doctor take a seat at the PC and watched as she zoomed in on the flagged part of the image.

Although the program had the ability to highlight that part of the image that it had flagged, that would not be necessary here. In the middle of the screen were two shapes, each completely black. The computer had not found the high-density they had expected. It had found nothing. These two spots on the ocean floor were sending back no image at all. Somehow the objects they were looking at were absorbing the probe’s signals entirely.

* * *

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Laurie.” said James calmly. They had returned to his cabin with a printout of the image so they could discuss it out of earshot.

“Not get ahead of ourselves? This is very strange, James. I’m afraid I can only draw a few possible conclusions from what we seem to be seeing here, and none of them are good.”