“The habitat has been up and running for six days now,” Orr told them. “We’ve been using an ROV, as I said, for reconnaissance. And yesterday, we launched AUV Orca to gather a detailed surveillance of the city. Data has been coming up in reams, but we have yet to see or even detect a single one of those creatures.” He breathed in deeply and exhaled. “They may be there. I don’t know. I’m not gonna kid you, we’ve picked up some strange life-forms down there on sonar, but nobody has seen them in the flesh. Now AUV Orca has done more than just photograph and map the city, it used an industrial laser to cut off a piece of it for examination.”

The AUVs, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, were like extremely high-tech ROVs, except that they were independent, self-governing. When they were deployed, they followed pre-set programming, diving deep and for extended periods of time to complete their mission and then surfacing at a specific point and time to be collected. All without the aid of umbilicals to a mother ship or submersible. They were essentially submarine robots.

Orr opened a box and removed a rectangle of what appeared to be some corrugated black rock. He handed it to Javonivic and she bounced it in her hand and then passed it to Hubbs.

“It’s light,” he said. “Real light.”

“Yes, it is. We’ve made an analysis of it and fed our findings to the ONR computers.”

“What’s it made of?” Javonivic wanted to know.

“Mostly granite that was probably quarried from the mountains before they were actually mountains. But it also has a high concentration of a titanium-like alloy and several other unknown metals of low atomic weight in a sort of epoxy-resin. So, basically what this stuff is is a rock/metal/plastic composite. The Labcoat Johnnies at the ONR are baffled. They tell us that the technology to bond something like this does not and potentially cannot exist. Their best guess is that the rocks and metals and plastics were exposed to an incredible heat that turned them molten and bonded them at the molecular level, then the material was molded and machined. At least, that’s their guess.”

Murphy examined it quickly and then dropped it into Bell’s outstretched hand. It was easy to see by the look on his face that he did not like touching it any more than the others had, as if there were memories locked up in it that might become active when in contact with human flesh. He didn’t care for the feel of the stuff. It was too smooth and yet too rough. It confused the tactile senses.

But it was only a building material and he tried to remember that. Exotic, yes, but hardly anything to be concerned about.