Dropping from minus twenty-three thousand meters to minus twenty-four thousand meters was a journey into the total fire of the planet’s anatomy. Here, in the lower convergence chimney pipe connecting Vault Two to Vault Three, solid rock ceased to exist in any conventional state. The entire deep gap was a roaring canyon of liquid white star-fire—the deep-sea margin of the Sea of White Flame.
The outside pressure registered an astonishing seven-point-two gigapascals. At this depth, an unprotected human body would have been crushed into core paste in less than a nanosecond, and standard military armor would have boiled away into glowing gas.
Yet Arthur Vance walked steadily along the glowing dark rock shoreline, fully shielded by the timed together defensive spheres of his companions.
Arthur observed the extraordinary fluid dynamics of the Sea of White Flame through his magnifying glass. Standard magma was a thick, sticky stone-glass slurry flowing at a few meters per hour. This white star-fire was an overload fluid, possessing zero thickness and circulating with the speed of an alpine river. Currents of liquid iron and spark-charged mantle elements cascaded over precipices of diamond bedrock, releasing blinding sprays of soft glow that lit up the underground vault with sky brightness. It was the ancient crucible from which continents were forged.
