The ADS hardsuits transmitted their data to the Neptune which transmitted it up to the LSB. It was part of a microwave telemetry system called the WWN, the Wireless Wave Network. Through it, they had instantaneous audio, video, and data transmission back and forth.

“And here I thought that rapping was the beat of your heart for me,” Javonivic said.

Murphy laughed. “Why you always coming on to me when I can’t touch you, Javy?”

“It’s part of my mystique.”

“Tease.”

“Mostly.”

Orr came over the radio as Bell knew he would. “All right, all right, people. Let’s keep this professional, all right? ONR, ONI, and NSF are going to be listening to this stuff and they’re not gonna be much interested in your unrequited love for one another.”

“Roger that,” Bell said.

Murphy grunted. “They’re jealous, Javy, that’s all.”

“Don’t I know it.”

The fiber-optic line was only part of the communication problem, Bell knew. It still didn’t explain how they were transmitting and receiving just fine now, but hadn’t been able to at all on their first excursions into the city. Everyone was aware of that, but like many things concerning the city, they preferred not to talk about it.

They pushed on, moving through honeycombed rooms and arched passageways. They saw lots of marine growths and suspended fields of silt, a few stray jellyfish or crabs, but not much else. They guided the suits finally down a triangular-shaped conduit that seemed to go on forever.

“This is it,” Murphy said.

It took them nearly ten minutes to navigate its length. At the end, there was a stygian murkiness that their lights would barely penetrate. Then they punched through it and it was just another blizzard of algae.

“We reached your chamber, Javy,” Bell said.

Her transmission broke up momentarily with static, but they caught the very end of it. “…happened to us. Watch it now.”

This was as far as any of the divers had gotten. Sonar told them the chamber was hexagonal in shape and rose vertically for nearly two hundred feet and dropped below almost half a mile.

“Keep going,” Orr said.

They passed through more sediment and entered a circular tunnel on the other end. Bell was starting to sweat inside his suit now. The anomaly had to be just ahead. The magnetometer was reading nanoteslas of incredible intensity. It was as if someone had put the mother of all electromagnetic generators down there. And maybe, just maybe, they had.