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worthless. Timur wasn’t an archaeologist. Junk’s remit was not to preserve the past but to profit from it.
    Junk opened the eighth drawer and something smalland metallic fell out and sank quickly. He trained the torch on the floor and crouched down. He found an old key. He glanced around looking for a lock it might fit but saw nothing. Frowning, he checked his watch. His air was getting low. He’d have to think about surfacing.
    Just then something caught his attention. Thin fingers of green light were seeping in through a rusty hole in the hull. Junk frowned and lowered himself for a closer look. Through a hole about the size of a tennis ball, he could see a bright rectangle of green luminescence some twenty metres away from the boat, just sitting there on the dark, silty seabed. It was taller than it was wide and shimmering as if beams of emerald light were criss-crossing. The centre was brightest and solid, the light becoming more translucent at the unnaturally straight edges. Suddenly something large swam past his viewing hole. Junk pulled back, startled. He steadied his nerves and looked again.
    At first he didn’t see anything. Then he saw a shadow approaching the green light. As it drew closer, Junk gasped. It stopped a few feet away and then walked on two legs. Junk could tell straight away that it wasn’t the creature that took Ambeline, but it was one of his kind. He was shorter, skinnier. Maybe a little more than two metres tall. He had a tattoo of a fish on the top of his hairless head. He stopped in front of the green rectangle of light and glanced back over his shoulder at the
Pegasus
, looking straight at Junk. On his left bicep he sported another tattoo: five stars and a shark’s fin. The symbolof The League of Sharks. Junk froze and held his breath. Then the shark-man walked into the light and vanished. The light was a portal, a door. Slightly ajar. It started to fade. Junk realized the door was closing. What to do? No time to decide. He looked at his watch. He only had a few minutes of air left. He had to go up, but after three years he knew he couldn’t.
    He turned and swam as fast as he could out of the stateroom and back into the corridor beyond. He kicked his legs, powering through the water. In seconds he was out of the hatch. The green light was almost gone, and he was still several metres away. He didn’t see how he could make it before it vanished completely, but he had to try. His legs kicked and his arms pumped. His chest burned with the exertion and the dwindling air supply. Moving like this was wrong. It was using up precious oxygen. It was now touch-and-go if he could get back to the surface at all, but Junk wasn’t thinking about that. He wasn’t thinking about anything except getting to the green light before it was gone.
    Three metres. Two. The light kept reducing. It was possibly now too small for him to pass through, but he kicked harder. No time to hesitate. With one last surge of effort, he went through. He could feel the opening constrict around him like a solid aperture closing.
    Finally the light disappeared completely and Junk with it. All that remained was the tip of one of his fins. Sliced clean through, it floated slowly to the seabed. Junk was gone.

4
    Junk squeezed his eyes shut. His head was pounding. He ripped off his mask, spat out his mouthpiece and filled his lungs. He opened his eyes but found it hard to focus so he closed them again. Closed out the spinning room.
    Room … ?
    He opened his eyes again. There was a cold, hard, reflective floor beneath him. It was metallic, green-black. It made Junk think of a picture of a scarab beetle he had once seen in a book. He was disorientated.
    *
    His head didn’t hurt so much now. He sat up and looked around, pulling the neoprene cowl off. He had no idea where he was. He was in a cavernous chamber so large that he couldn’t see the ceiling or the walls. The distance just dissolved