Deep Storm

28

"CO₂ scrubbers?"

"Check."

"Servo and gimbal control?"

"Check."

"Baffle integrity?"

"One hundred percent."

"Inertial guidance indicators?"

"Green."

"EM lock?"

"Maximum."

"Temperature sensor?"

"Check."

Thomas Adkinson swiveled toward his instrument panel, tuning out the inquisitional turn and counter-turn between the pilot and the engineer. His own board was green, the robot arms fixed to the underside of the Marble prepped and ready to go.

The series of echoing booms from outside the hull had ceased, replaced by a faint swishing noise: the entry plate had been welded back into place, and all traces of the weld were now being polished away. A newcomer to the Drilling Complex, walking around the outside of the Marble, would see only a perfectly smooth sphere with no indication that three men were inside.

Three extremely cramped and uncomfortable men.

Adkinson shifted on his tiny metal chair, trying to find a position in which he could be comfortable for the next twenty-four hours. Because getting into and out of the Marble was so time-consuming-ninety minutes prepping for descent, thirty minutes for extraction afterward-the crews had to take what were essentially triple shifts for maximal efficiency.

Maximal efficiency, my ass. Christ, there had to be an easier way to earn a living.

The comm-link chirped. "Marble One, this is Dive Control," came the disembodied voice over the speaker. "Status?"

Grove, the pilot, took the mike. "This is Marble One. All systems nominal."

"Roger."

Adkinson snuck a look at Grove. As pilot, he was technically in charge of the dive, which was a joke because the guy had little to do other than watch a few gauges and make sure there were no screw-ups. The real work was done by himself and Horst, the engineer. Even so, Grove was the kind of guy who was always aware of the audio-video feed that was being transmitted not only back to the Drilling Complex, but to a secure base outside of Washington, as well. He had to act commanding for the camera…

The comm-link chirped again. "Marble One, water lock is open. You are cleared for descent."

"Roger that," said Grove.

For a moment, all was still. Then there was a sudden jerk as the Marble was swung away from its berth toward the water lock. This was followed by a gradual settling sensation, and then a sudden, short plummet as the clamps were released and the Marble dropped into the lock. There was a booming sound overhead as the pressure doors were sealed. Like all other sounds from the outside, it was strangely attenuated, echoing and reechoing faintly in a hundred crazy ways.

That was due to the unusual-bizarre, actually-construction of the Marble. It had a superlaminated outer hull of titanium-ceramicepoxy carbide and an inner hull of reinforced steel. But double hulls were commonplace for submersible vessels. What made the Marble unique was the stuff between the two hulls. Adkinson had seen diagrams and photographs. There were struts in there: hundreds of struts, thousands of struts. Struts from one hull to the other, and struts in between the struts.

The designers of the Marble had taken their cue from nature. And this was what Adkinson found strangest of all. He'd thought they were kidding when they'd explained it. The incredibly complex bracing was modeled after a…woodpecker. Seems any normal bird, hammering away at a tree day in and day out, would have its brain turned to jelly in record time by the impacts. But the skull of a woodpecker was double layered, with-guess what?-lots of tiny struts in between.

Adkinson shook his head. A woodpecker. Jesus. Still, just like having to be completely sealed up inside this shiny metal ball, it was all because of the pressure…

The pressure.Adkinson always tried hard not to think about that.

"Marble One," the comm-link squawked, "this is Dive Control. You have cleared the water lock. Pressure seal activated."

"Roger that," said Grove. He replaced the radio and turned to Horst. "What's the status on the Doodlebug?"

Horst was bent over his console, which consisted of three screens, a keyboard, and two tiny rubber joysticks. "Acquiring now."

Adkinson watched idly as the engineer worked. Horst's eyes were on the screens. There were three objects visible on them, green-tinted sonar images, one for each screen: their own Marble on the first; the tunnel-boring machine on the third; and, on the middle screen, the oceangoing robot known as the Doodlebug. There was only one "real" external camera on board, a tiny wireless job with a view port barely bigger than a periscope's, and it was reserved for the pilot.

"Got a lock," Horst said.

"Roger." Grove flicked a few switches on his command console, then turned a large rotary pot ninety degrees clockwise. "Boosting gain to seventy-five percent."

There was a chirp from Grove's console, followed by a low humming that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. And then, a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach as the Marble bobbed sharply downward for a moment, like a balloon being given a sudden tug.

"Full acquisition," said Horst.

Grove plucked the radio from its mount. "Dive Control, this is Marble One. We have a lock on the Doodlebug. Descending now."

Horst went back to his joysticks. There was another, gentler downward tug, and then the Marble began its smooth descent down the excavated shaft to the dig face.

Adkinson shook his head again. As strange as the composition of the Marble was, its method of diving was stranger still. He was used to submarines, with their ballast tanks and trim controls. But there could be no ballast tanks on the Marble-holes in its outer skin, or even the smallest porthole, were out of the question. Instead, they had the Doodlebug, a robotic submersible that sat in the shaft beneath them and descended to the digging interface at the beginning of the shift. It was coupled to the Marble by a strong electromagnetic field: when the Doodlebug went down, it pulled the Marble down after it.

Before the dive, the barometric equilibrium of the Marble was set to that of the Facility. Then it descended to the bottom of the shaft, the magnetic link with the Doodlebug doing all the work. And then, at the end of the shift, Horst-whose job it was to control the Doodlebug-simply broke the magnetic link. The Marble rose back up again, seeking barometric equilibrium with the water around it, until it reached the safety of the Facility, where equilibrium was attained and it came to rest.

It seemed bizarre. Yet it had worked like a charm through progressively deeper dives. It even had a fail-safe mechanism: if the Doodlebug ever had a mechanical failure or malfunction, all the engineer had to do was break the electromagnetic link prematurely and the Marble would automatically rise. Adkinson hated to admit it, but the whole arrangement was pretty ingenious. And when you got right down to it, the pressure had allowed for no other solution…

There it was again-the pressure.

"Zero minus one thousand relative feet," Grove announced.

"EM link five by five," said Horst. "Steady rate of descent."

Adkinson licked his lips. The pressure not only forced them to come up with extravagant solutions for working at these depths, but also made the work itself slow and painful. First, the rugged, autonomous, virtually indestructible tunnel-boring machine extended the shaft downward by another dozen feet or so, allowing seawater to fill the deepening hole. Then they stabilized this freshly dug section with reinforcing steel bands, using the incredibly complex and finicky robotic arms attached to the Marble's underside. That was his job, along with sucking the excavated silt up the shaft with a vacuum tube device and out through a wide conduit to a vent in the ocean floor some hundred yards from the Facility. It all had to be done quickly and precisely, or rock and sediment would cave in and-God forbid-bury the boring machine.

"Zero minus two thousand relative," Grove intoned.

Of course, they were too well trained-and the process too carefully controlled-for that to happen. His training-thanks to a certain eccentric old fart-had been particularly onerous, unpleasant, and exacting.

By the end of their shift, the central shaft would have been extended an additional three hundred or more feet straight down beneath the Facility, nicely lined with reinforcing steel-and since the shaft was filled with ocean water, the steel bands themselves were not under any pressure.

"Our rate of descent has dropped," said Grove.

Horst peered at his screens. "The Doodlebug has slowed."

Grove frowned. "It's not like last time, is it?"

"Last time" referred to the prior day's mission, on which the Doodlebug had inexplicably ceased responding to commands for sixty seconds near the lowest point of the shaft. A little idly, Adkinson wondered what idiot gave the thing its nickname. "Doodlebug" sounded small and cute. But the real thing didn't look like a bug at all, and it certainly wasn't cute: it was a hulking, beastly-looking robot, when you got right down to it.

"Nope, not like last time," the engineer was saying. "It's just a temperature gradient. We'll be through it in a moment or two."

Adkinson delicately readjusted himself on the small seat. He recalled that today was a red-letter day of sorts. The night before, the tunnel-boring machine had punched through the bottom of the basement layer-the second stratum of the earth's crust. They would be the first crew to penetrate the oceanic layer-the third, and deepest, section of the crust. Beyond that lay the Moho…and whatever it was that awaited them.

Adkinson was curious about what they'd find in the oceanic layer. All he knew for sure was that it was by far the thinnest of the three layers and the least known. After all, even the Ocean Drilling Project had never dug this deep. They were going where no human had ever been-he needed to remember that.

He sighed, idly fingering the complex trigger mechanism for the robot arm-controlled wirelessly, of course, since no hydraulics or wiring could penetrate the skin of the Marble. The trip down would go a whole lot faster, he reflected, if the company was more interesting. But talking to Horst and Grove was the social equivalent of watching paint dry.

"Zero minus five thousand," Grove said.

Your sister,Adkinson thought grumpily.

Ten minutes passed in which the only breaks in the silence came from occasional radio squawks from the surface and Grove's relentless play-by-play. As they at last approached the base of the shaft, Adkinson perked up. Once he could begin his exacting work-receiving the semicircular steel bands lowered by cable from the Facility, slotting them into place with the countless tiny levers controlling the robot arm, sealing them-time would pass quickly.

"Initiate deceleration," Grove said.

Horst tapped on the little keyboard fixed between his joysticks. "Commencing glide down."

Grove grabbed for the radio. "Dive Control, this is Marble One. Approaching the dig interface now. Commence payload deployment."

"Marble One, roger," came the squawk from the speaker. "Initial load on its way in five."

Grove glanced at Adkinson. That was the signal to get his butt in gear. He nodded back, then began prepping his station. He switched his sonar into active mode, preparing to monitor the lowering of the steel bands. He carefully took hold of the trigger mechanism for the robotic arm, flexed it, checked the half dozen tiny joysticks, then began running the test suites, first for the gross motor, then the fine motor controls.

Strange. The arm seemed sluggish, almost lazy, in response to his movements of the trigger…

Grove's voice abruptly intruded on his thoughts.

"We've stopped," the pilot said. He turned to Horst. "What's up?"

"I'm not sure." The engineer tapped at his keyboard, peered at one of the screens.

"Is there a proximity warning with the tunnel-boring machine?"

"No," Horst replied. "It began work on schedule. It's dug four feet of fresh shaft already."

"Then why has the Doodlebug stopped?"

"Unknown." Horst's fingers flew over the keyboard. "It's only responding intermittently to commands."

"Christ. This is all we need." Grove slammed his hand against a bulkhead.

The pilot was bearable when things went well, but hit a snag and he became a prize asshole. Adkinson fervently hoped this shift wouldn't turn out to be one for the record books.

"Can you up the gain?" Grove asked.

"It's already at maximum."

"Well, damn it, you'd better-"

"There," Horst said. "It's moving again."

"That's more like it," Grove replied, tone settling back to normal. "Okay, Adkinson, prepare to-"

"Oh, shit!" Horst said. And the sudden urgency in the engineer's voice sent a stab of fear through Adkinson. "It's rising!"

"What is?" Grove asked.

"The Doodlebug. It's not descending. It's coming toward us!"

Adkinson swung to face the engineer's center screen. Sure enough: through the greenish wash of sonar, he could see the robotic creature moving upward. Even as he stared, it seemed to increase in speed.

"Well, stop it!" Grove cried. "Shut it down!"

Horst typed desperately. "I can't. It's not responding on any of the channels."

There was a sudden, shrill alarm. "Collision warning," said a disembodied female voice. "Collision warning…"

"It's no good!" Horst called out. "Fifty feet and closing."

Adkinson felt another, stronger stab of fear in his vitals. If the Doodlebug rammed them-if it damaged the exterior of the Marble-it could damage the complex webwork of struts that maintained their structural integrity…

In sudden panic he wheeled around, hands clenching and unclenching, looking illogically for an exit.

"I'm scrubbing the mission!" Grove shouted over the bleat of the alarm. "Horst, decouple the EM link. We're heading for the surface."

"It's been decoupled. The Doodlebug's still coming. Thirty feet away now and closing fast!"

"Shit." Grove grabbed for the radio. "Dive Control, this is Marble One. We're terminating the mission and returning."

"Marble One, say again?" the radio crackled.

"The Doodlebug's malfunctioning-we're making an emergency ascent."

Adkinson gripped his seat, desperately trying to keep himself under control. He could sense them ascending now with painful slowness. His eyes were riveted to Horst's screens. Hurry up, goddamn it, hurry up…

"Collision imminent," said the silky female voice. "Collision imminent."

"Ten!" Horst almost screamed. "Oh, Christ!"

"Brace for impact!" yelled Grove.

Adkinson hurled himself over his console, grasping the reinforcing bulkhead as tightly as he could. He clenched his jaw. For a strange moment, it seemed that all the furious noise within the Marble-the wail of the proximity warning, Grove's shouts-were muted in a suspended agony of waiting. Then from below came a wrenching impact; the Marble bucked, yawed sideways, metal squealing and shearing; a sudden, furious, uncontrolled ascent; Adkinson's skull banged violently against the floor…and then darkness closed in over all.