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“Roger that, Chief,” Tom said. “Diver turning left.”

The image on the screen slewed left again.

“Look down,” Clarence said.

The diver did. The image of a black shoe appeared.

“Just a shoe,” Tom said. “It’s stuck in some kind of brown stuff, looks like sediment has leaked in through a crack somewhere.”

Clarence remembered when Murray had come to his house, remembered the picture drawn by Candice Walker.

“Move closer,” Clarence said. “Pan up a little bit.”

“Diver moving closer,” Tom said. “I don’t … wait, I think there’s a foot in that shoe, and the leg is buried in the … oh my G.o.d. Are you guys seeing this?”

“Uh … roger that,” the dive master said. “Stand by.”

Clarence leaned closer to the monitor. Wedged between a pair of equipment racks was a body. Unlike the sitting-down-and-napping body in the torpedo room, however, this one was encased in something, something attached to the hull, the deck, even crusted up over the equipment racks. Tom’s light played off of a brown, b.u.mpy surface that covered the unknown sailor’s torso and half of his face while leaving the mouth and nose un.o.bstructed. The right eye stared, wide and forever frozen open. A left hand stuck out from the brown ma.s.s, fingers curled in a talon of death, just a bit of blue s.h.i.+rtsleeve still visible. Clarence saw a second left hand — there were two people in there. At least. Just as in the drawing made by Candice Walker.

“Diver One to Topside, what the h.e.l.l is this?”

Tom’s voice sounded ragged, like he was becoming overwhelmed.

“Ignore it, Diver One,” the dive master said. “Proceed to your objective. Tom, stay cool.”

Clarence could barely blink, barely breathe. Tom again turned right, toward the room’s main storage locker. It looked like a horizontal, flat-topped freezer, the kind usually kept in a bas.e.m.e.nt, only this one was military gray instead of the white. Inside, Clarence knew, was the soda-can-sized object the Los Angeles crew had collected days earlier.

Tom moved slowly toward it.

On the locker, a tiny keypad glowed green — it had its own power supply, which was obviously still functioning.

“Topside to Diver One, great work, we’re almost home. Prepare to enter access codes.” The dive master read off the sixteen-digit code. Tom read it back. Clarence saw Tom extend his suit’s pincer hand. The pincer ended with a stiff rubber stud, small enough to press the keypad digits.

The last b.u.t.ton drew a beep from the crate, audible over the speakers. The keypad’s glow s.h.i.+fted from green to orange.

The crate’s lid slowly rose on a rear hinge, pushed up by steel pistons on either end. The diver’s lights shone on a small, black, cylindrical container. It wasn’t much bigger than a travel mug.

Hidden inside of that, a piece of an alien s.p.a.cecraft.

“Topside, Diver One, I see the objective.”

“Visual confirmed, Diver One. Retrieve the objective and then exit the vessel.”