Beyond the Ice Limit

25

ONCE AGAIN, GIDEON found himself trying to control his breathing and stave off feelings of claustrophobia as he sank into infinite black nothingness. Forty minutes later, the bottom came into sight in his lower viewport: a gray expanse of abyssal mud, scattered here and there with twisted pieces of debris, looking like a surreal landscape by Yves Tanguy. His target landing waypoint was south of the shipwreck, a thousand yards from the Baobab.

John settled into a hover fifty feet above the seafloor. This time, the sub was wired to the surface; mission control was packed, he knew, and at least a dozen eyes were monitoring his every move. A slender steel cable for lifting the crushed DSV was attached to his mech arm, unspooling from the crane on the Batavia, and he had to be careful to move in such a way as to prevent the wire and the cable from tangling.

“At waypoint zero,” he said.

“Roger,” came the voice of Garza, who was manning the control hub. “Proceed to waypoint one.”

Gideon moved forward, the low hum of the propellers reverberating through the sub. The crushed remains of Paul, at the position of waypoint three, were sitting on the seafloor about fifty feet from the trunk of the creature.

Fifty feet. Given yesterday’s tragic, catastrophic events, that seemed way, way too close for comfort.

Gideon headed for waypoint one. Reaching it, he moved the joystick and the autopilot made a sharp course change, heading immediately for waypoint two, where it would make another sharp change. The idea was that making a zigzag approach to the creature might confuse it. Gideon thought the plan was counterproductive and did nothing but increase the time he would be on the bottom, but he had been overruled by Glinn.

Halfway to waypoint two, his beams began to illuminate the Baobab—and at the same moment he heard a rapid buzzing noise, rising and falling in cadence, come through the hydrophone—and the hull of the sub.

“What the hell is that?” he spoke into the mike.

“It appears you’re being painted with sonar,” said Garza. “Higher frequency than the usual two hertz.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Gideon could hear consternation over the channel. “Hold on,” said Garza. “Do not approach further. We need to take stock.”

“No more delays,” said Gideon. “I can see Paul now. I’m going in.”

More rapid discussion in the background.

“Okay,” said Garza. “Move as fast as possible and then get out of there.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

The buzzing of the sonar sped up, slowed down, rose and fell in register. It sounded like a swarm of angry hornets and it gave Gideon the creeps.

As he approached, his headlights fully illuminated the ruined DSV. It sat on the ooze of the bottom as if it had been placed there: a compact, neatly crumpled ball of metal with things embedded in it. It lay atop a veritable maze of the thin, tendril-like roots that extended away from the Baobab in every direction. The jagged and mashed pieces of the honeycombed titanium hull had been folded over themselves as easily as a sheet of tinfoil. It was almost beyond belief that the creature could have accomplished so easily what the weight of two miles of water could not. A faint, cloudy trail drifted downcurrent from the crumpled mass, forming a comet’s tail. In the beam of his light, reddish water could be seen seeping from a small rent in the structure.

Gideon looked past the wreck to the trunk that loomed above: a solid, rugose wall that resembled some kind of horrible, organic skyscraper. The bloated thing was stationary, no movement or sign of life visible…save for the hideous buzz of the sonar.

He felt apprehension mingling with fury and hatred.

He slowed at the wreck and extended the mechanical arm, which was carrying a steel cable with an explosive anchor bolt at its end. The pre-programmed arm, acting as usual with very little operator input, held the bolt out and placed it against a solid part of the crushed mini sub; with a thud and a burst of bubbles, the bolt was anchored.

The sound seemed to irritate the creature; the sound of its sonar rose in both pitch and volume.

“Bolt secured,” said Gideon.

“Ready to raise,” said Garza.

The mission protocol was for him to wait until the surface team had begun raising the wreck, to ascertain visually that it was holding together during the lifting process. Gideon backed away, watching the slack being taken out of the cable, seeing it gradually go taut. Another moment, and then, with a puff of silt, the wreck rose like some ghastly oversize Christmas ornament into the blackness.

“Looks good,” he said. “Paul secure.”

“We concur,” said Garza. “Drop ballast and surface.”

Only too happily, Gideon hit the release lever, dropping his iron ballast, and John began to rise—fast.

At the same moment, the huge creature began to flex in the most grotesque way: the mouth emerging from the center of the stalk, swelling with water, rubbery lips quivering. Gideon felt a shudder as his sub was caught in the sudden current, and it lurched and began to spiral. There was a snapping sound that he knew instantly was the communications wire breaking free. Half of his screens went dead, the voice of Garza in his headphones went silent, and a bunch of alarms went off, warning screens popping into life.

He jammed the joystick sideways to counteract the spinning, and the sub abruptly slowed, the nose tilting sharply up, the tail being pulled back toward the sucking, grasping mouth. Fighting against this, Gideon goosed the forward thrust and cleared the emergency ballast tanks of water, filling them with an explosive burst of air, increasing the sub’s buoyancy to maximum.

He could feel the sub’s need to rise fighting against the down-sucking current. A vibration started, a rattling, with the thrumming sound of fast water—and then, with a sudden lurch, the sub broke free and tumbled upward, rotating head over heels like a crazy bubble toward the surface. Fighting the controls, Gideon could feel the autopilot trying to correct the chaotic motion. Sensing a rhythm to the ship’s gyrations, he rotated the joystick in the opposite direction, and, with a lurch, John stabilized.

By the time his heart rate had returned to a semblance of normality, blue light was appearing in the viewports and, a moment later, the sub broke the surface. Through the left viewport, Gideon could see the clean, white profile of the Batavia. As soon as he was above water, Garza’s voice came from his headset radio.

“Gideon? Gideon? Do you read?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Are you all right?”

“Shaken up, but fine.”

“We’re getting you out of the water.”

Without his input, the mini sub headed across the smooth water toward the mother ship, half a mile away.