The five-foot wrought-iron boarding axe struck the inner transfer hatch of Diving Bell Number Two with the clang of an industrial drop-forge.
KLANG!
Yellow sparks flashed behind the circular quartz viewport as the notched iron blade bit into the steel dogging ring. Outside in Sat-Control #01, the shockwave rattled the brass pressure manifolds.
“Look at the Ashcroft gauge!” Lin Mei shouted, aiming her halogen beam at the six-inch dial. “The needle is past two thousand and four!”
Inside the flooded bell, Bailiff-Entity Number Zero-Four towered in the bilge water, its seven-foot frame bursting through the split seams of Thomas Vance’s empty orange drysuit. With its left iron salvage hook clamped onto the internal equalization wheel, the 1924 Admiralty construct was forcing raw chronological pressure into the trunk.
Two thousand and six. Two thousand and eight. Two thousand and ten.
“Why is it driving the year upward?” Mac Cole roared, bracing his boots against the manifold frame with his brass spanner raised.
“Because Rule Twelve-Zero-Three locks the inner hatch whenever a historical year shows on the dial!” Doctor Victor Corvo called from the life-support console. “As long as the bell sits in nineteen-ninety-six and this room sits in twenty-twenty-six, the chronological differential keeps the hatch sealed! If that creature forces the dial to twenty-twenty-six, the temporal pressure equalizes with the present day!”
