“Yes. More or less directly beneath us as we sit here.”

“Then there can’t be any survivors.”

“Survivors?” Barnes looked surprised. “No, I wouldn’t think so.”

“Then why was I called here?”

Barnes looked blank.

“Well,” Norman explained, “I’m usually called to crash sites when there are survivors. That’s why they put a psychologist on the team, to deal with the acute traumatic problems of surviving passengers, or sometimes the relatives of surviving passengers. Their feelings, and their fears, and their recurring nightmares. People who survive a crash often experience all sorts of guilt and anxiety, concerning why they survived and not others. A woman sitting with her husband and children, suddenly they’re all dead and she alone is alive. That kind of thing.” Norman sat back in his chair. “But in this case-an airplane that crashed in a thousand feet of water-there wouldn’t be any of those problems. So why am I here?”

Barnes was staring at him. He seemed uncomfortable. He shuffled the files around on his desk.

“Actually, this isn’t an airplane crash site, Dr. Johnson.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a spacecraft crash site.”

There was a short pause. Norman nodded. “I see.”

“That doesn’t surprise you?” Barnes said.

“No,” Norman said. “As a matter of fact, it explains a lot. If a military spacecraft crashed in the ocean, that explains why I haven’t heard anything about it on the radio, why it was kept secret, why I was brought here the way I was… When did it crash?”

Barnes hesitated just a fraction before answering. “As best we can estimate,” he said, “this spacecraft crashed three hundred years ago.”

ULF

There was a silence. Norman listened to the drone of the air conditioner. He heard faintly the radio communications in the next room. He looked at the mug of coffee in his hand, noticing a chip on the rim. He struggled to assimilate what he was being told, but his mind moved sluggishly, in circles.