The stone capsule dropped through the swirling crimson fumes of Stratum Two. He dropped past minus eight thousand meters into the heart of the Sunda fiery fissure. The surrounding roar outside was no longer a simple gust of air. It had deepened into the heavy, rhythmic thrumming of a world-size blood network, pumping millions of tons of molten dark rock through underground channels.
Inside the shell, the heat had climbed to ninety degrees. Without the insulating barrier of Titus’s nearby gravity ward, the air inside would have flash-ignited human lungs. Arthur breathed through the baked-clay filter of his breathing mask, his long fingers checking the pressure seals on his air-powered needle glove.
Every piece of equipment in his kit had been tuned for the extreme extremes of the deep earth. The air-powered tubing along his forearm was lined with man-made fluoropolymer, rated to resist five crushing deep-sea pressure of pressure and twelve hundred degrees of direct heat. Beside the firing valve sat three heavy magazines of heavy dark metal-alloy needles, each casing padded to hold sub-zero ice-slow marrow extracts without premature heat venting.
“Titus, slow down descent to twenty meters per second,” Arthur ordered, his voice steady amidst the shaking that rattled his kneecaps. “Grimm, on my left flank. Pip, establish aerial overwatch as soon as the shell vents.”
