The sound did not belong inside a sheet-metal locker.
PING.
The tone struck at thirty-eight kilohertz, shrill and wet, vibrating right at the outer edge of human hearing. It hummed in Dr. Victor Corvo’s molars like an unshielded bone-saw.
Three seconds of dead quiet followed inside the starboard bunkhouse alcove. Then came the return.
K-krshhh.
It was the deep, hollow echo of sound waves traveling through hundreds of fathoms of cold saltwater and bouncing off an abyssal trench floor. Yet the noise resonated directly out of the slotted louver vents of Crew Lockers #01 through #04.
Corvo set his Pyrex beaker of black espresso down on the steel edge of the mud-logging bench. The dark liquid rippled in concentric rings every time the hull-mounted transducer fired.
“Fascinating,” Corvo murmured in his velvet baritone. “The Simrad echo-sounder is bolted to the lower pontoon eighty feet below our boots. Instead of scattering into the Atlantic, its pulse is returning through employee lockers.”
