Dr. Corvo pushed open the heavy steel weather door leading to the bunker’s seawall parapet.
The Atlantic gale hit them like a wet wool blanket soaked in salt brine. Freezing spray whipped across the granite ledge, misting the glass of Dr. Corvo’s portable oscilloscope as he clutched the gray metal casing against his ribs.
Julian stepped out beside him, turning up the dark collar of his Starlight Mart coat.
Down in the slipway forty feet below, Nautilus-04 settled into her berth. The boat’s automated mooring winches screeched against their mountings, hauling three-inch braided hemp hawsers taut around the massive cast-iron bollards. With every surge of the black harbor tide, the steel hull groaned against the creosote pilings with a sound like tearing leather.
“Look at the water along the waterline,” Julian said, leaning over the stone balustrade.
The foam lapping against the ship’s black plates didn’t dissipate into clean white bubbles. It clung to the iron in thick, oily curdles, tinged with a faint, phosphor-green luminescence.
“The water isn’t aerating properly,” Dr. Corvo said. He set his portable scope on the flat granite capstone, flicked the power toggle, and clipped a copper inductive probe to the parapet’s bronze lightning rod. “Listen to the vibration in the stone beneath your boots, Mr. Vance.”
