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even Atlantis?
    A change in the terrain: the ground ahead dropped away quite steeply. She was just able to make out where it rose again through the murk. If the rest of the area had once been a hilly coastline, this had perhaps been a small gully, marking the point where a stream or minor river reached the sea.
    Which would make it a good place to search for more traces of the mysterious brick-builders. To any primitive society, a supply of fresh water was a key factor in the location of a settlement.
    She swam into the gully. Chase would probably yell at her for going out of his sight, but she could handle that. Bringing up her torch, she shone its powerful beam over the sea floor.
    There was something there, a row of stone stumps rising above the silt and gently swaying plants. A regular row - too much so to be natural. She looked at the laminated sheet again. A line of five similarly sized blobs there , matching the five real-life objects here . . .
    And more, stronger, sonar reflections just a short distance further up the gully. Her heart jumped with the rush of discovery. Something more intact - a building that hadn’t been completely destroyed?
    She swam towards the spot, aiming the light ahead. There was something there. As she got closer, she saw that while it wasn’t intact, the curving wall broken up into shark-tooth shapes, nor had it been reduced to scattered rubble. Somehow, it had survived whatever had laid waste to the settlement, the deluge as the seas rose, the ravages of time.
    ‘Guys,’ she said excitedly, ‘I think I’ve found something. It looks like the remains of a building.’
    ‘Where are you?’ Chase asked. ‘I don’t see your lights.’
    ‘I’m in a little dip.’
    ‘You are a little dip,’ he snapped. ‘I told you to stay in sight!’
    ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Now almost at the ruined wall, she slowed, tracing its shape with her flashlight beam. Whatever the structure had once been, it had apparently been circular.
    The more she looked, the odder it became. Although the tallest remaining point was only a few feet above the sediment, it was enough to tell that it sloped inwards as it rose. It wasn’t a result of damage, either; the bricks had been crafted and arranged quite deliberately to produce just such a shape. Extending the arc would produce . . .
    A dome .
    She tried to picture it. A brick igloo, fifteen feet high, maybe more. Domes weren’t unknown in ancient civilisations . . . but this ancient?
    She swam over the top of the wall and looked down. Slightly off-centre of the circle was a pile of rubble, fronds of seaweed wafting languidly from it. A small shoal of fish glinted through her torch beam, edging closer to the plants before flitting away as one.
    The fallen bricks were probably part of the collapsed roof. If so, then whatever the building had housed could still be beneath them. Nina dropped to the sea floor and squatted as best she could in the cumbersome deep suit to investigate. ‘We’re definitely going to need the pump,’ she said, brushing seaweed strands aside. ‘If we clear out the sediment, we might be able to find—’
    Something erupted from a hole between the bricks.
    Nina shrieked and jerked back reflexively, losing her balance and falling on to her butt. A hideous face lunged at her, a huge mottled moray eel with its spike-toothed mouth agape.
    Its long body twisted, fangs snapping at her outstretched hand—
    Something shot past Nina in a trail of bubbles. There was a deafening bang . The next thing she knew, a swirling pink-tinged cloud of froth and shredded flesh was spreading through the water. The front half of the moray, mouth still open in what now looked like frozen surprise, bumped lifelessly against her before sinking to the sea floor.
    ‘What did I bloody tell you?’ Chase’s voice said in her ringing ears. ‘Don’t go off on your own!’
    ‘Jesus, Eddie!’ said Nina, caught somewhere between fear, relief and anger. ‘Are you trying to